The season finale (directed by show creator Matthew Weiner himself) was all about Don's relationships and how he rectifies them in order to move on creating his own advertising agency. Usually happy to be the lone gunman, Don has to rally the troops in order to stake out on his own, which means checking his ego, doing some apologizing, and letting some of the people in his life know just how he really thinks about them. And Joan came back! And Trudy wore a killer hat. All was right with the world as it—and Don—strikes out in a new direction.

Don and Connie: As he has been all season, Hilton is a stand in for Don's father, who also got some face time this episode. We learn from Hilton that Sterling Cooper has been sold to a larger agency, one that Don—or anyone else for that matter—doesn't want to work for. Because of that, Hilton drops Don, which leaves him in the lurch because he had to sign a three-year contract to secure the Hilton deal in the first place.

But what he's really upset about is that he doesn't have his independence. He is energized by Connie's final question: is he going to be a whiner or is he going to be a winner? And with the promise that they'll do business again in the future, Connie gives Don the final push to try to take his future into his own hands.

This leads to the flashbacks concerning Don's father, who we learn wasn't happy with the price his crops were going to get in a cooperative, so he struck out on his own to do what was right for him. Instead of selling for cheap, Whitman Sr decides to hold onto his crop and sell it in the winter when it will fetch more money. Though Don tried to shed his past like a snake wriggling out of a dirty skin that was far too tight, he is still his father's son. When things aren't working out for him, he decided that he would rather do the right thing on his own and possibly fail, than succeed as an automaton for The Man.

This is later reinforced when we learn that Don's father was literally killed by caving in. When there isn't much money left, Don's stepmother convinces her very drunk husband that he has to sell his crop. He says he'll go immediately, and Don goes with him to make sure he doesn't literally fall off the wagon. But he doesn't even get on the road, when a spooked horse kicks him in the face and kills him. If he had stood by his principal and held onto his crop, he never would have been out there to be kicked in the first place, and might still be alive—or at least lived a bit longer.

While Don might be the indepence-at-all-costs, up-by-the-bootstraps, fuck-them-all-I-know-what's-right product of his father, he is determined not to be him. He is not bending over to get kicked in the face while McCann fucks him for the rest of his life.

Don and Roger: It was easy for Don to convince Bert Cooper to get on board with his plan of buying the agency (or striking out on their own, as they eventually do) since Cooper would be let go if the agency was sold again. However, it wasn't going to be a cake walk to convince Roger Sterling, who Don has spent the whole season trying to distance himself from.

It would seem that Sterling would much rather sit in his office counting his piles of coins like Scrooge McDuck while kicking back a few drinks and then going home to goose his pretty young wife before passing out in his expensive bed than actually run an ad agency. But he has the money and the accounts to make a new agency work, and it seems like he still has the ambition too. What he really needs is Don to supplicate himself, which he does with great sincerity. Roger hits the nail on the head when he tells Don he's no good at relationships because he doesn't value them. We see that with his home life as well as how things go around the office.

It's great that egotastic Don can be self actualized enough to know he needs Roger to deal with the clients and make them happy, since that's not in his grainy little heart. As we see during their scene at the bar when Roger tells Don that Betty is seeing Henry Francis, Don and Roger work much better when collaborating than they do when competing.

The other brilliant thing that Roger brings with him is St. Joan. As soon as Cooper brought up the fact that no one knows where anything is, we thought, "What a brilliant way to bring back Joan," and the vision of her sauntering in to save the day with her red hair coaxed into tight perfecting and the gold pen swaying seductively between her enormous knockers brought tears to our eyes. Welcome back, kiddo.

Don and Pete: Don has never been the biggest fan of man-child Pete, but both he and Roger know that Pete is the much better account man for the small (at first) firm they're planning than Ken Cosgrove, the upward failing buffoon who seems like he was made for a life in middle management. While Ken might have beat out Pete at Sterling Cooper because he was a yes man who could fit into the corporate culture, he doesn't have the instinct that Pete has to make it in the big time.

Of course, to get him, Don has to put his condescension aside and let Pete know that he will be a valued member of the team. Of course, Pete asks for more than he's worth, but better that than not asking for enough. This is really the best possible outcome for Pete. He was on the outs at SC anyway, and his interviews at other agencies may or may not have panned out, but he will succeed quite nicely at a firm that will value his gifts while overlooking the fact that he is an immature cad deep in his chewy center.

Speaking of great members of the team, Pete would really be nothing without Trudy. She fixes things up all nice when Don and Roger come a-calling, and excuses herself with a plausible story when they get there. When Pete starts to lose the way her call of "Peter, can I speak to you for a minute," sets him back on the right course. She isn't allowed into the conversation, but just knowing that she's listening turns his rudder in the right direction. She never strong arms, she just nudges. And then she brings sandwiches. And wears a cute hat! If Betty is gone for good next season, we're going to need someone to give us Suburban Splendor Barbie realness, and it's going to have to be Trudy.

Pete got over his hurt quickly and signed up, and another easy sell was Lane Price. Unhappy with being unappreciated, shuffled around, and generally maligned by his bosses and liking the life in New York away from the class constraints of his native land, Price was ripe for the crew to pick off. Considering he was integral to their plan to get the ball rolling, it's good he agreed. We look forward to seeing more of his strangely shaped head around the office. But, oh, his poor wife!

Don and Peggy: Don handled the Peggy situation all wrong, at least the first time around. He naturally thought of her first to take with him to the new agency, but he orders her about like he controls her. It's funny that Don has such a great way with seducing women in his private life but he can be so blind to what Peggy needs at work.

This whole season Peggy's storyline was about empowerment. She smoked weed, she slept around with a boy, she got an apartment and a roommate, she put her domineering mother behind her, she even got her secretary to respect her (even though winning over her colleagues was a bit harder). And finally, she realized that she has a promising career in advertising and a sexual being, both thanks to skeevy Duck. So when Don comes at her like she's a blubbering child, she finally stands on her own, letting him know that she has other offers, and that she is not there for him to kick around. Spurned, Don reacts the way he usually does when he doesn't get his way, by being a cocky asshole.

The way he handles her the second time was perfect though. Don uses his best pitching skills to win Peggy over. Don knows that things have changed—not just for him and the firm, but something fundamental in the culture—and that Peggy is necessary to keeping up with that shift. She's smart and creative and, like Don says, a miniature version of himself. She is often depicted as a mini Don, giving up her personal life for work, but this episode she seemed more like a grown up version of Sally. When Don makes his offer for a second time she says, "If I say 'no' you'll never talk to me again," and starts to tear up, betraying that all she really wants from Don is his approval. The scene where Don makes up with Peggy comes right after the scene where Sally storms off when he tells the kids he and Betty are getting divorced. It seems like Don making peace with Peggy, his office daughter, is somehow akin to him making peace with Sally.

Of course, Peggy agrees to join the team (she nearly broke our heart with joy with the tiny wave of excitement she made when storming the office) and her best moment was yet to come. When the newly assembled Mad Men All-Stars are planning to extricate themselves from the office, Roger tells her to go make him some coffee. She is a secretary no more, she is an equal member of the team, and she is strong and secure in her position. "No," she says in an even and forceful tone, which says, "You will never ask me to do that shit again."

Don and Betty: Wow, Betty actually did it! She asks for a divorce so that she can leave Don and marry Henry Francis. This was the only bit of tying up that had nothing to do with work. This year was very personal, focusing on the denizens of Sterling Cooper in their personal lives rather than in the office, so it was a bit surprising when the final episode centered around the creation of a whole new office. Of course, we couldn't forget about Don's disintegrating home life.

When he comes home drunk to confront Betty about Henry, he puts her journey this season into perspective: Betty was building a life raft. Everything she's done this year has been to get away from Don. Starting things with Henry, finding out his past, getting money from her father—it was her escape route. After all his transgressions, divorcing Don wasn't so much a circumstance, but an inevitability. Poor Betty, doesn't she see that she's leaping from one bad situation to the next. Henry Francis—who barely knows you but wants to marry you!!—will probably be just as bad and stifling as Don. Just as Don said, he gave her everything she wanted, and that wasn't enough, she still wasn't happy. Why does she think replicating it with Henry will have some magically different effect?

When Don chooses to insult her, he really knows how to do it. He calls her a bad mother which, duh, and then calls her a whore. There were several prostitute references last night which are that much more meaningful given Don's mother was a hooker. When he needs to show ultimate disdain for Betty, that's the word he goes for. When talking about the sale of Sterling Cooper, Roger says it's like going from "one john's bed to another." Painting the old firm to look like a whore is the surest way to get Don to distance himself from it. Also, Lane Price's assistant "Moneypenny" is really named Mr. Hooker. We don't know how that fits in, but...hmm?

Back to Betty and Don, she takes off for six weeks in Reno so that she can get an easy divorce from Don, because she can't prove that he's been unfaithful. Maybe she should make about three phone calls, because the wronged ladies shouldn't be that hard to dig up to testify against him. Of course bad mother Betty leaves the kids with Carla while she jets off with her new lover to Reno to get divorced/married. This makes us hate Betty.

Also, the scene where they tell the kids about the divorce was super painful to watch. Don tries his best to pitch the kids on the idea of their new life, but they're not buying it. Betty can't do anything but hide behind her hand and try to keep the tears in. Future lesbian Sally storms off, sad that daddy is leaving. Little Bobby pleads for daddy to stay, but he won't. No wonder this kid is going to be snorting lines with a very dapper, emotionally-distant Halston in the VIP lounge of Studio 54—he's working out some serious daddy issues. But when Don hugged his son and earlier when he climbed into bed with Sally, we see that he really cares deeply about his children, despite his cool demeanor. But he barely sees them now that they live in the same house, how much time is he going to spend with them now?

Sterling Cooper Draper Price, How May I Help You?: Don Draper's marriage may have dissolved, but his firm has just started. He, Roger, Bert, and Lane have drafted Peggy, Harry Crane, Pete, and St. Joan as their coalition of the willing to steal clients and bust into the art department (yes, we saw that someone placed a curlicue letter F in front of Art Department) to take whatever they can get their hands on.

This wasn't necessarily a cliffhanger, because the decisive action has been taken. We won't be left guessing "Will they leave?" a la "Who shot J.R.?" but we are left with plenty of questions to ponder over the winter (or in the comments section). Here are a few:

Now that Peggy and Pete are working in a tiny office together, are they ever going to come to terms with their past?

What is going to happen to Peggy and Duck? Is that still going on? Is he going to ruin Don's new agency?

Just what the heck is Bert Cooper going to do? There's no room for his armor and he can't take naps anymore. Do they even need him?

Lane Price's wife was unhinged before their stay in the U.S. became indefinite. How soon before she goes completely bonkers?

So, does this mean Betty is gone for good or are we going to get to see her staggering unhappiness with Henry?

How soon before Roger starts doing Joan again?

How soon before Doctor Rapist is killed in Vietnam?

Will they think of something interesting for Harry to do?

And what the heck is going on with Suzanne (nee Missy) Sally's teacher that Don was diddling? Why didn't he just go right back to her when Betty called it quits? Will she be coming back?

How sweet is Don's bachelor pad going to be? Just wait for the Mad Men furniture line at CB2.

If Don isn't married, is he just going to spend all of his time scoring ladies or just most of it?

Fuchs was reportedly at a party early Sunday morning when the elevator he was in stalled. Newsday reports:

As Fuchs attempted to jump out of the elevator and onto an adjacent floor, the hood of his sweatshirt got caught on a piece of the elevator, causing him to fall five stories to the bottom of the elevator shaft, according to the police report.

Fuchs—who was once in a band with Businessweek media reporter Jon Fine—was a beloved guy in the Williamsburg music scene, and has already inspired eulogies everywhere from Chunklet to the L Magazine to the New York Times.

Besides Williamsburg musicians, the following people in New York wear hoodies: Everybody. Stay safe, everyone.

[Pics: Myspace]

British writer and analyst Charles Leadbeater, and researcher Annika Wong, have put together a report called Cloud Culture to be published by the British Council next year. Their statistical study, provided to me by Leadbeater, is based on figures from the social media analytics company Sysomos. It shows that such a tiny proportion of Iranians are on Twitter that any stories about a new movement based on the social network are meaningless. The figure they provide, by they way, includes the thousands of foreigners who changed their Twitter location to Tehran when the 'Iranian internet revolution' story struck after the elections in June and Facebook and Twitter were afire with Iran sentiment. So the likely figure is even lower.

The report adds that only one third of Iranians have internet access at all. And because opposition supporters are young, and on the internet, and Ahmadinejad supporters tend to be older and rural, the picture on the ground is likely skewed by any analysis that relies on tweets.

Leadbeater and Wong also compile a series of hyperbolic quotes from a variety of media sources at the time of the protests:

• "Twitter has become a key information conduit as the authorities in Tehran have cracked down on reporting by traditional media." Chris Nuttall and Daniel Dombey, Financial Times.
• "After disputed election results and massive street demonstrations in Tehran, Iran, information is flooding out of the country – on Twitter." Ashley Terry, Global News.
• "This is it. The big one." Clay Shirky of NYU.
• "We've been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony... The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over." Jon Williams, BBC World News editor.

The meme was just too tempting, it seems, for anyone to dig into its veracity. The media — this site included — loves to write about Twitter, and loved doing so even more in summer when it was even newer and shiner. The storyline also fit the fact that Iran is a young country, and chimed with the heartbreaking YouTube video of the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

The solidarity that thousands, even millions of Americans showed with the people of Iran during June's elections and the subsequent protests was admirable. It was also potentially dangerous. I was at the UN protests against President Ahmadinejad earlier this fall. Several young men were wearing dust masks they had purchased from hardware stores. I asked one why. "I am wearing it because I have to go back to Iran," said a softly-spoken and shy 28-year-old student who gave his name only as Mohammed. "I return next year and this is for safety, in case they are watching," he added, pointing to his mask. "It could be the best $3 I ever spend."

If Mohammed is picked up despite his dust mask, the fact that the protests in Tehran were partly fomented by Western support based on a false story about Twitter will be of no consolation. It's probably not much comfort to these people either.

Family Guy's jokes frequently rest on so-called "offensive" humor, and this was on full display during "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review," which featured MacFarlane and Alex Bornstein (the voice of Lois) playing to a live audience in front of a big band. The musical numbers, sketches and karaoke-like live performances to Family Guy clips almost universally pushed the very hot buttons of race, class, gender and disability in ways that should guarantee Fox an inbox stuffed full with angry letters for the next few weeks. But "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review" managed to do something Family Guy doesn't always accomplish: Be funny in an "offensive" way while avoiding the sense that to cause offense was an end in itself.

The best "offensive" jokes are those that comment on the very concept of being offended. They spoof the arcane rules of political correctness that dictate what certain people can say about other kinds of people, and how they can say it. The bit above is probably the purest form of this kind of humor: What could have been the worst sort of caricature was deftly turned into a meta-joke on viewers. The realization that Matlin's in on the joke prompts (at least in me) a sense of relief so strong that it makes you question what the hell you were doing laughing in the first place. The reveal is a judo move that uses our own highly-honed sense of political correctness against us, and, basically, is just really funny! Good work, Seth and Alex.

This bit from Family Guy, on the other hand? Meh.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

(A) A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
(B) Eggs Benedict.
(C) A Christmas ham.
(D) A bagel, a blintz, lox, matzo brei, kreplach, shmear, whitefish, sable, a "nosh" of anything, or nothing, because you're getting bar/bat-mitzvah'd next weekend and your parents told you to watch your figure.

Question 2:

You think Larry David is

(A) Not funny.
(B) Who?
(C) Hysterical.
(D) Bad for the Jews.

Question 3:

Your parents are divorced, and they both want you to come home for the high holidays. You:

(A) Go home to wherever you still have a good weed hookup.
(B) Go wherever more singles will be.
(C) Split holidays; Ma gets Yom Kippur, Dad gets Rosh Hashana.
(D) Can we not talk about my mother for once, please?

Question 4:

You want to marry a Gentile man or Gentile woman. How's this gonna work?

(A) Our kids will be progressive, they'll get more presents, it'll be fine. Give your college roommate Aariz a ring, we'll ordain him as a Universal Life minister, turn this thing into a rockin' multicultural experience.
(B) Well, we've lied to Mom for this long. What's another 20 years?
(C) Honestly, who cares? We love each other and we haven't been subject to a New York Magazine profile yet, so this can't be that complicated.
(D) He/she'll convert! We've got a great Rabbi and he's so welcoming and this is gonna be easy; we'll just do it in the closest temple, and be done with it. My spouse has fully embraced my spirituality and culture believes what Jews believe so, you know, draw baby a Mikvah and let's get goin' here!
(E) You're converting in an Orthodox temple, with an Orthodox rabbi, under strictly Orthodox rules. Throw out those Manolos, by the way.

Question 5:

Your parents are:

(A) Awesome.
(B) Annoying.
(C) One's Jewish, one ain't.
(D) They're both Jewish, Mom converted in a conservative Judasim temple a long time ago, but now attends Orthodox services with Dad.
(E) They were both born, raised, and remain Orthodox. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of them converted, but if they did, it was definitely an Orthodox synagogue. Nothing less. If they ever found me with a Shalom Auslander book, they would kick the everloving shit out of me.

If you answered A, B, or C to any of the questions, give yourself -5, -3, and -1 points.

If you answered D to any of the questions, give yourself 0.01 points.

And if you answered E to any of the questions, give yourself 100 points.

0 to -25 Points: Goyim.

1 to 99 Points: Meh.

100+ Points: Mazel Tov! According to certain authorities, You're a Jew! This is the only circumstance under which the government-funded Jews' Free School in North London will admit your child. Congrats:

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews' Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London's Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts....Because M's mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew - nor was her son. It turned down his application.

Mind you, this is the New York Times most emailed articled today for a reason. There are wide, wide gaps in some Jewish communities where, despite regularly attending services, embracing Jewish customs into one's family's lives, and practicing on a daily basis, you are still not considered Jewish. This isn't just in the Orthodox community. A good example came up in last night's comments about this very issue:

I'm a half-breed (Shiksa mother) and I vividly remember being told that I was not Jewish by a girl at summer camp. I cried for days and couldn't understand how I was Jewish enough for a Bat Mitzvah and Hebrew school but not Jewish enough for this little girl in my bunk.

In the great literature of our time, Harry Potter, people without two magical parents are considered by evil angry purebred magical people to be "Mudbloods." This is kind of like that. Am I suggesting the Orthodox community in question in the New York Times today are anything like J.K. Rowling's Death Eaters? Not at all.

But it's interesting to think that the Anti-Defamation League—a Jewish organization whose sole purpose is to "stop the defamation of the Jewish people, to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike," but has been criticized for its often elitist, extremist Zionist positioning—has yet to speak out on this one! Shocking. So: how antisemitic are some of these people Jews?

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one's mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that "having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn't make you less Jewish," Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Damn. Looks like I'll have to re-arrange the next questionnaire.

Jew-on-Jew antisemitism is an actual problem. This thing's gonna strike a very loud chord with many, many people, in many, many places. The case in question has since been overturned on the basis that the school has taken it upon itself to administer an ethnic test and a verdict is expected in the coming months.

Yesterday I was having brunch with a newly married couple in Park Slope—by the way, I know it's cliche and sooo Curbed comment section circa 2006 to mention how many kids there are in Park Slope, but sweet Jesus there are so many [Ed. goddamn] kids in Park Slope!—and they presented to me a piece of paper that may forever change the way I view politics and love forever.

The document was enclosed in an official-feeling folder of heavy navy blue stock embossed with a giant raised seal of the Borough of Brooklyn that features a woman holding a hatchet which: hahahah Park Slope Mom amirite? Inside the folder was basically a cross between the Certificate of Participation that you get in third grade rec soccer or maybe after you finish a Lamaze class, I wouldn't know, and a Blingee if you were to print it out with a dot matrix printer. I think there were still a few places where they hadn't fully ripped off the perforated margins.

The paper solemnly stated: "President of the Borough of Brooklyn MARTY MARKOWITZ Congratulates [name of the couple, rendered in cursive font] on the Occasion of your wedding." Surrounding the text was, no joke, clip art images: cupid, wedding cakes, hearts, a lil groom, what have you, and then most hilariously a right-click-copy-alt-tab-right-click-paste'd picture of the couple cribbed straight from their New York Times announcement.

!!!!!!!!

Seriously, is this a thing that someone from the Brooklyn Borough President's office actually does? Does Marty make it himself!? Do only NYT weddings with right-clickable photos earn the honor? I tried Googling the phenomenon but it was hard to figure out what search terms to input and also I suspect that the real dirt is only to be found in bridal "forums" and you couldn't pay me enough.

But if you've received or ever even heard of one of these glorious mailings please let us know. Maybe I need to assign John Cook to the case STAT.

***

Last week we discussed couples' treatments of Halloween but wow, this couple really took the holiday and ran with it ... I'm kind of scared.

This is not the bride and groom, but I bet they had some wild superhero sex later that night.

Melissa Johnson, "known for her sardonic humor and love of dark, gory films and burlesque" was surprised when she fell for chipper Timothy Lagasse, an "endlessly upbeat designer and fabricator of puppets" who works for shows like Sesame Street. (Dude, what is the Times' deal with the Sesame Street hard-on? Also, hello perverts who found this page by Googling Sesame Street hard-on! You may want to go read this Vanity Fair article before it's too late.)

She became smitten when Lagasse came into her office and told her everything he knows "about puppets, film, food, politics, monkeys and the world all at once." Wait, monkeys? Whatever, they were both involved in relationships at the time but then at another later time they were no longer both involved in relationships and so they got together and then "tested one another's mettle" with trips to Disney World followed by a trip to Morocco in which she refused to book hotel rooms just so she could make sure "he could travel in the Third World."

He proposed to her in a graveyard ("one of their favorite spots in Brooklyn" and this was their wedding:

James Godwin, a Universal Life minister, performance artist, painter and puppeteer, officiated at the ceremony, during which the couple slipped on wedding bands and announced, "With this ring, I mark you mine!" They then downed shots of horseradish vodka and smashed a pumpkin to symbolize their union.

Weird vodka shots and smashed pumpkins? If that's all it takes, I think a lot more of you might be married than you let on. It's like when you go to some unpronounceable country and accept a free necklace from a street vendor and now technically he can sell you for drugs.

If there's one thing the Times enjoys more than Sesame Street staffers it is old people, and Nancy Kelton and Jonathan Zich do not disappoint. Kelton's dive back into the ole dating pool post-marriage was so traumatic that it inspired her to write this book, with chapters like:

• Lawyers and Other Orators From Hell
• Shrinks and Other Psychopaths
• Men with Addictions, Ambivalence, and Wives They Have Not Quite Divorced
• Men Whose Libidos Are in Rest Homes

And that was in 1995! Imagine the horror that The Internet brought into the mix. "An abundance of certifiable loons" is how Kelton charitably described J-Date. And so you can imagine that when she finally met a seemingly normal guy, she took all the necessary precautions on their first date:

"I fired away questions," she said. "Really creepy ones. About his health and the health of his parents, whether they had cancer or problems with their hearts, and if he ever had a colonoscopy."

To be fair, at least she didn't make him talk about all his exes! I hear that really turns people off.

Christopher Knott-Craig was equally smooth the first time he met Nichole Stelma. The couple "met at an ATM machine in the basement of an Oklahoma City hotel," and I am going to cancel my subscription to Cosmo right now because they NEVER have put that on their list of 101 Unexpected Places To Meet Men! Knott-Craig noticed Stelma because she was wearing "huge sunglasses in a basement with no windows". So he went in for the kill:

Ms. Stelma remembered that he said, "My, it sure is bright in here!" Ms. Stelma knew the man who was with Mr. Knott-Craig and tried to talk to him instead.

"She didn't pay any attention to me when I was making fun of her," Mr. Knott-Craig said. "I thought he was cute," she said. "He looked like a little surfer boy so I was trying to act like I was too cool for him."

That whole exchange reads much better when you voice it with the sort of thick and dopey Southern accents befitting two people who hail from Alabama and "Sugar Land, Texas".

I just want to highlight this couple because they're so pretty.

Doesn't she look just like Kate Bosworth? Blue Crush era Kate Bosworth, just to be clear, before Kate Bosworth became a scary skeleton?

Elsewhere this weekend, the wedding of the executive vice president of Princeton University reminded me to go back and read this epic Chris Rovzar report from a night at Princeton ("The party was like any regular Yale party, except without hard liquor, dancing, minorities, or jeans"); keep a close eye on any mysterious umbrella-related injuries befalling the lead in Mary Poppins is all I'm saying; a dissertation fellow at the Brown Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America went for extra credit with a wedding that "incorporated Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions"; and you can rest easy: Dr. Jupiter is keeping her name.

And now, you know the drill.

Margaret Claire Hoover and John Phillips Avlon

• The groom graduated from Yale and received an MBA from Columbia: +7
• The groom is on the board of the Bronx Academy of Letters and the CItizens Union of New York: +1
• The groom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute: +1
• The groom is a columnist at the Daily Beast: -1
• The bride's father is a real estate-y guy and "a trustee of the George S. Patton Museum Foundation and his mother is a trustee at the Trinity Pawling School: +3
• The bishop of Florida "took part": +2
• The bride is "a great granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States" and, predictably, "on the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and on the board of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association": +3 (would be more, but I mean, the Hoovervilles and all)
• The groom wrote a book called "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics": +2
• The groom is a liar, because his wife is a Fox News commentator who worked for the White House from 2004 to 2005 AND he himself was "the chief speechwriter and the deputy director of policy for the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani": -10
• The groom kinda looks like Jon Gosselin in this pic: +0

TOTAL: 8

Christine Angele Pace and Andrew Lee Ellner

• Both doctors: +3
• "The bride She graduated [sic] summa cum laude from Williams College and received her medical degree from Harvard": +6
• The groom graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, where he also received his medical degree: +10
• The groom also holds a master's in science from London School of Economics: +2
• The bride's mother is a hospital chaplain and her father retired as a reporter for the New York Times: +2
• The groom's father is a professor at BU and chief of infectious diseases at Boston Medical Center: +1
• The bride is rocking what appears to be a side ponytail in this picture but that seems to be, on closer inspection, one of those half-messy buns: +1, I guess, for not caring? But a true side ponytail would have been awesome.
• The bride and groom met because she was delirious and thought he was her boss and started talking to him about a patient and he thought she was cute so he let her ramble on, which come on, that's just mean, because if it were me I probably would have kept talking for like 20 minutes and maybe even started crying: +2
• Blah blah blah "volunteer work providing medical care for the homeless: +1

TOTAL: 28

Many men have arrived in New York for their breakthrough moments, and many of them haven't had someone around to document their landing. Kermit did not get the same reception.

This is strangely intuitive of Playgirl; they're presenting the photos context-free, as will I. Levi Johnston's an enigmatic figure of our times. He's a small-town kid who was violently ensnared in one of the most intense political campaigns in the history of our country. He became the refuse of the Palin family after that campaign failed—he was no longer part of the image that Gov. Palin needed to maintain in order to carry out whatever political objectives she has. Caught in the middle is his child, and the secrets he may or may not have on Gov. Palin. We don't know if he's telling the truth, and we have just as much of a reason to believe him—Sarah Palin, enough said—as we don't: the appeal of fame, attention, and celebrity.

Levi, Gawker's Celebrity Penis Investigation Team (Brian Moylan and Myself) have invested time and sentiment in your wang. Do not disappoint, sir.

Readers, enjoy Playgirl photographer Todd Kancar's Kennedy-esque gallery of Levi Johnston arrival shots. Welcome to the Big City, kid. Sing a few songs, but in the end: deliver the goods (read: your penis.)

Rush & Molloy, when you deliver, you deliver. Naturally, Scientology spokescreature Tommy Davis and Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields have already disputed the claim, but parts of what Rathbun told the New York Daily News gossips are just too wildly outlandish and extreme to go so far as to believe they're completely without merit, and Rathbun's claims have been backed before in the St. Petersburg Times by several other defectors.

Basically, it boils down to this: whenever Tom Cruise was around, Scientology leader David Miscavige would have "the Tom Cruise arrival preparation drill" which consisted of orchestrating every single move they would make around Scientology's superstar. But that's not the catch. Here's where it gets interesting:

Miscavige had imprisoned Marc Yager, Guillaume Leserve and Ray Mithoff, three Scientology members who were being interrogated. Miscavige was berating Scientology managers for not being hard enough on the three in order to extract confessions from them. And by "hard enough," he means "you haven't sufficiently beat the shit out of them." This is insane:

"Miscavige berated [the managers] for being far too light in their demands for confessions" from the three, Rathbun alleges in his letter, "because they refused to beat [them] ... to pulps. Miscavige said that Tom … had vowed to come to the Hole and personally ‘beat the living [bleep]' out of Yager, Leserve and Mithoff if the managers failed to do so themselves. "In response, the mob rushed at the three targeted gentlemen," Rathbun claimed. "Fists flew and feet kicked into the three. They continued to pound until … each had two black eyes."

Right? This goes hand in hand (or rather: fist in hand) with what the St. Petersburg Times has been reporting, especially considering the multiple reports of Miscavige taking part in violence against other members himself that have surfaced. Spokesthing Tommy Davis' response:

Yager, Leserve and Mithoff have all provided sworn affidavits stating they were not assaulted, and that numerous witnesses have also testified that Miscavige never invoked Cruise's name.

Right, the out-and-out denials without any concessions. Naturally. Rathbun's already confessed to taking part in beatdowns like these when he was a member. Miscavige might not have invoked Cruise's name in this instance—we'll never know—but it's hard to imagine him not invoking His Holy Maverick as a threat against other members. But it feels like the Daily News really buried the lede, here: Cruise lawyer Burt Fields threatening to sue Marty Rathbun if he reveals what was in Tom Cruise's audit file.

Responds Fields: "I would be surprised if David Miscavige was beating people up." And while he says "Tom is not a very litigious person," he said he will sue Rathbun if he reveals what was discussed during "audit" sessions where the actor shared confidences with Rathbun. He may not need to worry about that. Rathbun tells us, "I would never reveal what Tom told me, not if a gun were put to my head. Unlike the church, which does, I actually hold those secrets sacrosanct."

That's certainly interesting, considering the Church already opened up their audit files to the St. Petersburg Times in order to publicly shame defecting members. Interesting how they have yet to open up recent defector Paul Haggis' audit file. Paul Haggis, when he recently defected from Scientology, cited the opening of the audit files as one of the main reasons why he had to leave the church. Also: Tom Cruise had audit sessions? And Marty Rathbun—who defected—was in them?

It's only a matter of time before this guy tells people what happened in Cruise's audit sessions. And Marty, if you're listening, I promise you: we have a very open ear (and wallet).

So, okay: Tommy Davis is having meltdowns on network television and then knocking on ABC's door to make them take the story down. Reports of defectors being stalked by Scientology's private investigators are surfacing. Reports of Miscavige freaking out and beating members came out earlier this year. Paul Haggis defected, John Travolta openly defied them, high level members are defecting, everyone's running their mouths. And now Tom Cruise's American bankability—and the power he once held in the entertainment industry—is dwindling by the day. Remember that time he jumped on Oprah's couch four years ago? Keep it in mind, because it's beginning to look the very first pin being pulled from Scientology's foundation now that all the other pieces are falling down around it.

Maybe Scientology has some good intentions for its members; many religions and spiritual orientations do, whether you call it a cult or otherwise. But one thing keeps getting clearer and clearer: the draconian culture of celebrity worship and the despotic bureaucracy and culture of fear keeps making Scientology look worse, and worse, and worse.

I don't know. The lone Republican "Yea" vote for the bill was Joseph Cao of Louisiana, you know he's gonna get trashcanned after school on Monday. Great, the Democrats made a huge-ass compromise for the Republican moral majority, I wonder what the Freakonomics guys will have to say about it, but you can bet your ass pro-choice activists are pissed. Meanwhile, the TVs gonna be filled with lots of talking heads tomorrow, many of whom will tell you how utterly fucked this country is, like this guy. People will be mad and people will be sad, and people will be happy and people will be elated, and people get their pockets lined.

And maybe, just maybe, one day, some parent with a kid who's got a bad fever in the middle of the night won't have to worry about taking him in to get checked out because they can't afford it or they'll get treated like shit, they'll just do it. And it'll be fine.

Eh. Big dreams. Was that even covered in the package? I don't know. Yay. Health Care, I guess.

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona, decided it would be for the best of the debate that a child be brought forth and tortured by being used as an exhibit by Rep. Shadegg, as he helped floor members understand something about the health care bill basically ensuring this kid would be broke or dead or addicted to smack or all of the above. Watch as the kid tries to do what I want to do, which is eat the microphone:

Yeah, kid, NOM, indeed. But old people like babies so whatever, nobody blinks at what kind of patent ridiculousness this is. But when the "Fat Pride Community" talks about getting healthy, nobody listens to them, even though they're 2/3rds of our country. And what do they have to say? It's not just about getting skinny. O RLY? And who is this talking for them? Professor Bacon, that's who. Seriously:

"I get so angry when I feel people pushing a weight-loss agenda," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco and author of "Health at Every Size," a book published last year whose title has become the rallying cry of the fat pride community. "What we're doing in public health care policy is harmful. We give a direct and clear message that there's something wrong with being fat."

Oh, ho, ho! A conspiracy! The tasty-meat industry has infiltrated all walks, it seems! But they might be screwed, as the House has started debate on the current legislative package, which will eventually lead to a vote on something like a 2,000 page bill, the contents of which most Americans seem to think include a provision that says something along the lines of "YOU, SIR, OR MA'AM, ARE GOING TO DIE. WE ARE GOING TO KILL YOU, AND YOU ARE GOING TO ENJOY IT! AND ALSO PAY US TAXES TOO, THANKS!" So they're getting together and freaking out, screaming mean things at a building where nobody can hear them inside.

"Kill the bill!" a few protesters yelled, egged on by a woman with a megaphone. "You'll be starting a civil war, you fascist tyrant!" yelled Andrew Beacham, 27, of nearby Falls Church, Va. Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail, said in an interview that he believed Mr. Obama was a fascist because-

I'm sorry, what?

Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail,

Unless he's fighting for provisions in the health care package to cover taxpayer-supported Bumble and Bumbles, I will stop processing information past that sentence. And he's not, and I did.

Oh, whatever. If there's anything nice that these Town Hall meetings have yielded, it's that we're no longer shocked and disturbed by the fucked up rhetoric plaguing our national debate. It's hard to be disappointed once something becomes the standard, no? These guys are just being ridiculous, now. Like this one, who killed a bunch of trees just to prove a point that the bill is long and complicated.

....(The representative) took a foot-high copy of the House bill to the podium when he spoke. "This bill steals freedom, and those of us that believe in freedom have contempt for those who would steal our freedom and contempt for this bill," he said in a shout, heaving the papers to the ground below the low stage.

What kind of asshole would do that? Let's go back to the first part of that paragraph...

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona..

Oh, you mean, the baby-puppeteer? Yeah. That one.

Forget obesity for a moment. There are thousands of pages in the legislation. Hopefully, there's at least a milli or two in that thing set aside to look into the causes, effects, and ways to prevent important conversation-born at-large jackassery from infecting our country any further. The biggest health care crisis we've experienced in the history of our country is the one we've brought upon ourselves since we started talking about health care: that we, and our conversations about things that should matter, are getting patently stupider every time we have them.

Today's New York Times article on Munley details the 5"4, 34 year-old SWAT-team member's hobbies thusly:

...A woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports..

So, we have a hunter, a surfer, and an outdoorswoman. Who's also got more balls than anybody you will probably encounter over the course of your life:

Sergeant Munley...bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.

Whether Sergeant Munley was solely responsible for taking down Major Hasan or whether he was also hit by gunfire from her partner is unclear, but she was the first to fire at him, the authorities said.

Bang bang. The name of the training which Munley received is called "active shooter protocol," from which you could probably surmise is what they teach you to do when somebody is firing bullets at other people and/or you. Most people's "active shooter protocol" is to get the fuck out of the way as quickly as you can and start every foxhole prayer you've ever learned. Munley went after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and opened fire. She's already got a reputation for this kind of bravado:

Her partner in Wrightsville, Investigator Shaun Appler, recalled how Sergeant Munley saved him one night when she wrestled a large man off him after the man had pinned him down and was trying to take his gun. She earned the nickname Mighty Mouse for that, he said.

Damn. She's been hunting since she was 11, her husband is in a Special Forces unit, she's got a 3 year-old daughter, and she chases would-be burglars around her neighborhood when she's not working.

One neighbor, Sgt. First Class William Barbrow, said that about a year ago Sergeant Munley chased down a burglar who had been prowling around the neighborhood.

Not only that, but she's got about 3,540 more Twitter followers than you. Is there anything this woman's afraid of?

Naturally. I always feel creepy and weird when placing the designation of "hero" on anybody, because, you know, that's just strange. It's a word that gets thrown around, especially here in New York, where our "hero" cops are often just a bunch of thick-necked, jacked-up crooks using intimidation tactics and barely subtle racism to enforce their own brand of "justice" upon our fair city. But I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that we've found ourselves The Real McCoy in this one, wouldn't you?

2. Eat some pork buns.

3. Eat some steak.

4. Eat some Gray's Papaya.

5. Eat some wings.

6. Eat some tacos. Pork tacos.

7. Eat some bacon (but don't be obnoxious about it).

8. Eat a bacon cheeseburger.

9. Eat some turkey. Some jive turkey.

10. Just be a vegetarian, and understand that most meat-eaters do respect your views, but that they're not as complicated and complex as you'd like to think they are, and that most people are actually, yes, quite aware of the arguments you'd like to "respectfully" make, what they're doing, the various reasons why it's uncool, and that we should eat more vegetables, and that we don't need to be guilted about it, and if we did, we'd read Michael Pollan's book instead, or at the very worst, Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book, which is both (A) quite great and (B) will save you $15 or $20 and save us from hearing you opine on what you read by the guy that wrote Everything is Illuminated talking down to all of us about eating our vegetables.

11. STFU.

Via Torontoist, the story goes like this: the Toronto Star—Canada's largest daily circulation newspaper—is, like every other newspaper, starting to come to terms with how completely doomed it is. So they're going through the company's biggest restructuring in its history, offering buyouts to everyone in the company, and outsourcing both copy editing and pagination work. First of all, is pagination work really that hard? There are people at the New York Observer who write Very Short List, half of Transom, and do Kushner's taxes. Pussy Canadians. Learn from us.

But apparently, it is, or it's hard enough to require outsourcing. Also, they vaguely alluded to this nice gem:

The plans could expand to include editorial content and other production, he added.

So, you know when you call American Airlines and they pick up and they're like AMEERICKAN URLUNES CHALO DEES IZ, URR, BOB, OW CAN YOU BE HALPED PLEEZE? And you're like, Bob, I know you're name isn't Bob, and you're not picking up this call in Austin either, are you? Well, imagine what happens when they start outsourcing your editorial content to the same people who pick up American Airlines' numbers?

Or so was the thought process of a certain Toronto Star editor, who took a memo written by the Star's publisher, John Cruickshank, to the editorial staff, and showed Cruickshank just how much they need their in-house copy-editors by leaking it to Torontoist. Observe:

LEDE!! indeed. If anything, this only serves to remind me how patently annoying copy editors are. Besides, isn't that what #commenters are for? Punctuation Nazis, all of them, imposing their draconian rules on the beautiful words of beautiful writers with flowing hair and long, circumspect...typing fingers. But from a publisher's standpoint, they might, you know, come in handy every once in a while. Like when you're writing a doomsday memo to your staff.

Yes, Gretchen, Tamra, Lynne, Vicki, and Jeana are our muses and we think that this is a fitting tribute for the start of what is sure to be a great season of foreclosures, petty disputes, and plastic surgery.

Gretchen Rossi Has a Dildo with a Cord

Empty
like feet searching for the ground while hurling
out of a plane. Empty like tingling
in the cheeks longing for the flapping rush of wind
and the taut explosion of a screaming descent.

Empty
like a love tank in a Prius that has no sparks
and no oil and is just cruising down a hill to crash
into the community's gate. The neighbors will swell
out of their houses—empty, all their goods pawned—

And they will watch as her bloody manicure
sweeps her hair out of her face and she begins
to climb back up the hill, past the empty homes. The mood
is foreboding and gnawing, like debt, like a husband
who doesn't yell, he talks

But when he talks, he is accused of yelling
because everything about his spouse is empty,
her head, her threats, her rhetoric, she is empty
like a puppet missing a hand
like a marionette bobbing

Up and down on yellow strings trying to force her
body into a desirable shape. She is just gilding it,
like a leather and diamond cuff, like Wonder Woman's
magic bracelets,
bullets deflecting in every direction.

The jewelry is designed by a beast, her
tanned hide stretched tight over ribs
like a fleshen xylophone. Hit her with mallets,
make her sing a song of peace as she brings the enemies
around a table, floods it with wine.

Watch them fight, watch them cower. There are
no angels here. Only the accused, eyes still
puffy from crying at the beach with her little creature terriers
named pain and vanity. She cares for them
but longs for a man

Blank as a slate to throw her around a cluttered garage.
There is no room for your grief in the flotsam.
Clear out a space for your dead husband's hospital bed, the Ming vase
urn, swirling with the blue lines of your tears
protecting the chunky ash.

Around the dinner table, let them talk about flowers,
let them talk about work
Let them talk about truth and grievances.
No victims, just someone to tell you to shut the fuck up
to seance the ghost of your gold digging succubus

Before the final empty accusation:
Gretchen Rossi has a dildo with a cord.

Here's a rundown of some of the more promising names in child-labor media. Some of the names will probably look familiar to you, since these kids are famous. Far more famous than most media hacks. In other words, they're coming for your job, loudly.

The Dating Advice Kid

Name: Alec Greven

Age: 10

Summary: His dating-advice book How To Talk To Girls is supposed to become a movie; he now reportedly plans How To Talk To Moms, How To Talk To Dads, How To Talk To Santa and How To Talk To Grandparents. Original publisher HarperCollins is presumably working with him on all of the followups.

More: Here's video of young Alec.

British Blog Boy Wonder

Name: Scott Campbell

Age: 14

Summary: Started British news website, contributes to BBC and various newspapers

More: Campbell is CEO of Net News Daily; with co-founder and editor-in-chief Nathan Adam, he claims 100,000 unique visitors per month, and has scored freelance gigs with the BBC (left) and writes a regular column for the newspaper First News. Asked earlier this year in a Guardian profile how the economic downturn was affecting his business, he said, "I'm 13, so therefore don't have a lot to lose in the financial crisis."

The Lil' Food Critic

Name: David Fishman

Age: 12

Summary: Aspiring food critic profiled in the New York Times; his Upper West Side New York tablehopping has been optioned by Lorne Michaels for a movie.

More: "As I left, I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip' places in the city."

(Image via Rachel Ray)

The Pint-Sized Political Pundit

Name: Jonathan Krohn

Age: 13

Summary: Talk-radio regular and self-published author became a smash hit when he spoke at the CPAC right-wing convention.

More: The home-schooled youth practiced public speaking at Christian Youth Theater plays and calling in to Bill Bennett's radio show. Has appeared on CBS News and Today. His endorsement was sought by a Georgia gubernatorial candidate.

Barack Obama's Journalist 'Homeboy'

Name: Damon Weaver

Age: 11

Summary: A successful quest to interview President Barack Obama made him the talk of cable news.

More: After ending an earlier interview with vice presidential contender Joe Biden with, "Senator Biden is now my homeboy," got permission from Obama to also be the president's "homeboy." Has completed such other White House Press Corps rites of passage as attending the inauguration on a media pass and dissing an MSNBC talking head.

The Teenaged Tech Titan

Name: Daniel Brusilovsky

Age: 16

Summary: Founder and CEO, TeensInTech.com; product evangelist for video-casting service Qik; writer for TechCruch; has 120,000 followers on his "Verified" Twitter account.

More: He's an adviser to at least two companies; his parents used to shuttle him to and from tech conferences; says you should be persistent to reach your goals. More here.

(Pic by Randy Stewart)

Finally, the last challenge of this dreadful season of our favorite the fashion design competition. It was yet another "here's some cash, go buy a hooker and some fabric, then make her an outfit" challenge. This time they had to be inspired by something at the Getty Museum and they imported the hookers from the show that dare not speak it's name that airs after Runway. It shouldn't be hard to get excited about beauty in the Getty, but the problem is that the collective talent pool of this group is about as deep as Mad Max's well. How can they be inspired by art when they wouldn't even know how to create something mildly interesting, or at least with a bit of color!

Things We Hated:

• Conspiracy Theories: We really hate it when people say things like "they know he's not talented, but they're keeping him around because he's good TV" and things like that. While we know this is television, we like to think that the competition's producers have at least a little bit of integrity. So now we hate ourselves for thinking that the final three is a great conspiracy by Lifetime to make sure that a woman wins this thing. Sure, the boys pretty much sucked this season (even though Epperson and Ra'Mon deserved more of a chance to show us the goods), but it's a little suspect when the final three are all woman and they are picked by an entirely female panel on Lifetime, television for women. We would never begrudge a woman success, but doesn't this just seem a little bit fishy?
• More Bitching about the Judges: Last night Nina Garcia Fashion Director of Marie Claire Magazine had the gall to say "I don't know who Gordana is as a designer." That is because you didn't even know her name and had to look it up on an index card. Maybe you would have known her name and her (paltry) aesthetic if you bothered to show up every week to do your job. Also, Ms. Kors couldn't make it in for the final judging when two designers were booted off and the final contestants are picked. Isn't that a pretty big deal? And if we couldn't get MK to do the duty, why not ask Tim? Other than Heidi, he's the only person that has seen the work week in and week out.
• Choosing Sides: It seems like the producers are working really hard to make the "bitch edit" happen and have all the designers hate each other. It's like if they manufacture some drama it might distract us from the fact that they are all no-talent, no-personality hacks.
• Having No One to Root For: Does anyone care who wins this whole thing? We don't.
• Michelle Pfieffer and Aston Kutcher: Wow, how sad is it for these two that they're now making movies for Lifetime. And how sad is it that Lifetime thinks we'd actually watch this movie. We'd rather tune in for a Dude, Where's My Car marathon than this sappy estrogen fest.
• Being Bored by Runway: Every reality show has its good years and its bad years. But we just hate hating Runway. It's off year just came at the worst possible point, with a new network and a new production company, which probably means that everyone is going to jump ship and in a year we'll be talking about how "remember when Runway used to be good?" We don't want to give up on it, but this season is making it hard.

Things We Loved:

• Cindy Crawford: Damn, how good does she look guest judging!
• Tim Gunn: It was so sweet when Tim told the designers to go "knock Nina Garcia (FDMCM)'s stillettos off so they fly across the runway." But really, did he think that was going to happen? No. But it's cute that he's still enthusiastic.
• The End: Thank God this season is over. Let's all pray that next season is great again and then instead of saying "remember when Runway was good on Bravo" we can just say "God, remember that really shitty season they rushed into production because of a lawsuit? That was the worst."

In the end, both Gordana and Cry-stopher were sent home to crush smurfs and drown in their tears in solitude. It's not like we'll miss either of you, but it is a little crushing that there won't be one Y chromosome in the finale. But they really deserved to be auf-ed, Cry-stopher for his heavy skirt and runway theatrics, and Gordana for her dress that looked like a giant vagina Georgia O'Keefe painting.

Carol Hannah's stunning gold column, Althea's messy gold somethingorother, and Irina's swishing seafoam structured muumuu were enough to take them to the final in Bryant Park. Yay! The end is in sight.

But there was no end to the bitchiness, the crying, or lack of inspiration this week. To the videos!

Art Thieves
Context: The designers stroll around the Getty Museum looking for inspiration.
Vision: That using something beautiful will help them create beautiful clothing.
Delusion: Silly designers, you need talent to turn art into something creative.
What Would Nina Say?: "What's your name again?"
Dramometer: 4

Fashion Factions
Context: It's Carol Hannah and Althea vs. Irina and Gordana in a fight to the death. But only three will survive.
Vision: Bitching about the other designers will someone make your work better.
Delusion: None of you deserve to be there, and the audience hates all of you. So there!
What Would Nina Say?: "Who is fighting with whom?"
Dramometer: 6

Under the Gunn
Context: Tim Gunn knows that Cry-stopher is going to make an ugly dress and go home. It's what he's been doing for about a month of episodes now—minus the going home part.
Vision: Using a rock to make a dress.
Delusion: Better to use scissors and paper to cut it to shreds, roll it up in a ball, and just throw it away.
What Would Nina Say?: "Tim, why are you talking to that...that, boy!"
Dramometer: 4

Runway Arrogance
Context: Althea watches her dress walk down the runway.
Vision: She uses a bed as inspiration and makes something that is actually pretty cool.
Delusion: No delusion here, other than that having the best dress means she's a great designer.
What Would Nina Say?: "If I knew who you were, I would pick this as a winner."
Dramometer: 3

Meltdown of the Week
Context: Cry-stopher defends his dress with, what else, tears! He compares himself to a rock with a piece of algae on it. That's funny, because we think of him more like a mildewy prom dress that has been left in your parents' basement for 20 years. Really, this is the sorriest thing we've seen since we watched Kim Zolciak sing "Tardy for the Party" live.
Vision: That getting emotional will make the judges see that he made something great.
Delusion: Except the skirt is ugly and looks like a Victorian hooker after she's been graffiti-ed on.
What Would Nina Say?: "I don't know who you are, but I know you won't stop blubbering."
Dramometer: 7

The Cruelty of Life as Illustrated by Models of the Runway

Anyone who has watched the show knows that Kim can't sing. She couldn't perform in the recording booth and she couldn't learn when she got voice lessons. Instead she just sort of makes a croaking noise like a sorority girl that is about to puke up those seven beers next to a tree on the quad. It was a bit shocking when the track came out and it wasn't that bad. Catchy, fun, and AutoTuned within an inch of its life thanks to fellow Housewife Kandi Burruss, "Tardy for the Party" became a campy hit in gay bars and for anyway who has a TiVo season pass for the show.

While everyone was just about sick of it, the one thing that Kim can do to further interest in the track was sing it live, without the aid of computer tricks to make her voice sound good. This wasn't like watching a train wreck, because sometimes in a train wreck there are survivors. This was like watching a massacre. Kim couldn't sing, even with a back-up track that was doing most of the work. She couldn't keep up with her stilted back up dancers. She couldn't get the look of pained concentration off her face. Someone give this girl a glass of chardonnay and a shotgun, because she needs both.

But the oddest thing was the reaction of the Housewives, none of whom would say it was the biggest turd they have ever seen. They all said they "liked the song" and it "had a good beat," but none would mention the wigged elephant in the room—it was an earth-shatteringly bad number. It was like when you see your friend's baby for the first time and it's really ugly and you say "What a baby! Look at the baby!" because you can't say "Your baby is ugly," but that's what you're thinking and you're just looking for something to say that won't be a lie but won't be insulting either.

In fact, the whole two-part reunion special was like that. Even host Andy Cohen seemed clued in that the ladies must have gotten together beforehand and decided that they weren't going to trash each other and instead pretend to make nice and keep Bravo from getting any juicy footage to exploit. It made the two hours very sad and somber indeed, with characters like NeNe Leakes and Lisa Wu-Hartwell keeping their opinions to themselves for a change. Well, if we can't have our favorite girls behaving badly, at least we can have them performing badly. And Kim's epic flame out is one for the reality television record books.

The highlight is probably the unveiling of the conspiratorial internal organ chalkboard. All the notes—references to old and discredited texts, the Founding Fathers, transparently phony stabs at nonpartisanship, crying—are hit, though Stewart never quite reaches the operatic unhingedness of a genuine Beck performance. The glasses are a wonderful touch, though.

FORT HOOD, Texas - Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday.

And CNN has what it claims is security-camera footage of Hasan in a convenience store wearing Islamic garb on the day of the shooting:

If true, the above would seem to confirm what many on the wingnut right seemed to positively hope was the case last night—that Hasan's rampage was an act of Islamist terrorism, as opposed to the result of a breakdown or mental illness or the garden-variety insane rage and alienation that has inspired what seems like a mass killing every other month. We all know what first came to mind when Hasan's name was released yesterday. But we suppose a handy guide for finding the line that divides the Glenn Becks of the world from the rest of us is whether you reacted with dread at the idea that it may have been related, however murkily, to Islamism, or if you were filled with smug delight.

Here's some smug delight, from a horrible woman (via the Awl):

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Fort Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me "Islamophobic," call me "psychic," call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent, an American citizen who is an Army-trained physician-a psychiatrist to be exact-as well as a religious Muslim.

And here, from the Corner's Victor Davis Hanson, is a new meme watch: When a Christian or a Jew or any other kind of regular American blows a gasket and kills a bunch of people, there are a variety of reasons we can investigate as to the potential cause. When a Muslim does it, it's a personal jihad:

[I call it] al Qaedism, or the spontaneous rage of disaffected Muslims, who connect their own failures in some sense to generic radical Islamist sentiments, and act out that anger by running over the innocent (San Francisco or North Carolina), shooting Jews (the LAX or Seattle attacks), or shooting up malls or sniping. These are of course different from but in addition to the 24 organized plots that have been broken up since 9/11, four of them this year alone.

Maybe Hasan killed all those people because he thought Allah wanted him to. Maybe he did it because he wanted to exact revenge for perceived slights. Maybe he was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought they were lizard people. Maybe all of the above. We don't know. But if it was Islamism, this is the lesson that Hanson and his partisans want to take from it:

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

A saner approach. No one, anywhere, has ever disputed that there is a small minority of Muslims—or any religious sect, for that matter—who subscribe to violent and extremist religious views. Make no mistake, this is an argument for legitimate fear and mistrust of "Muslims in general." Expect to see more like it.

Following Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's deadly Fort Hood shooting spree, and ensuing media chaos and misinformation melee (final stats: 12 dead, 31 wounded, one shooter, at least two guns), Lt. Gen. Robert Cone's press conference delivered several surprises: Though Hasan was gunned down on the scene, he was not, as previously reported, dead. Nor was the person who shot him. Both were in stable condition in the hospital—and one of them was a woman.

Reporters clamored for details about her, stammering breathless questions about the "hero," who she was, and why she was there. All we know so far is that she is not in the military; that she was a "first responder" (maybe a cop); that bullets from her gun were what stopped Hasan's massacre; that she was shot; that she nearly died; and that, had she enlisted to fight in the front lines of the Army, she would have been turned down. Combat units are male-only.

The tale of Fort Hood massacre will have many morals-of-the-story, complicated stuff about workplace harassment, medical licenses, Muslims in the military, and the twisted state of mental health in the Armed Forces. This, the case for letting women risk life and limb more often, is one of the happier ones.

There are plenty of reasons why dozens of soldiers (77 percent of whom were probably dudes) on the scene couldn't stop the shooter. (The most obvious of which is that even trained-to-kill soldiers don't wander around with loaded weapons at all times, especially when they're at the doctor getting a check-up, which is what Hasan's victims were doing. Which, by the way, only brings him that much closer to stealing Dr. Mengele's title as "shittiest doctor of all time.") But if a woman can storm into that place and save all those people, shouldn't she be allowed serve alongside them in a war zone, too? Yeah, sexual tension has a tendency to spook the Army (which is why there are no gays in the military, not even one!) and, oh, it'd be such a drag to deal with girl toilets and tampons in the barracks. But, guys, a chick just saved all your asses. Figure it out, already.

UPDATE: The female police officer's identity is now known. Meet Kimberly Munley, a "tough woman" with a 3-year-old daughter and military husband.

Lose yourself in art, rich tech people; the proceeds go to charity. Kataoka, an entrepreneur and Julia Allison-grade protocelebrity, has announced her participation in a charity auction. The prize? "Sit back, relax & ... Leave your mark on a conceptual work of art by prominent artist Drue Kataoka... on a private jet across the Bay." That certainly sounds immersive. And if there's any time left over after the art session, you can ask Kataoka about fashion, and her recent conversation with designer Yigal Azrouel for her site Culture Lick (see video below, which opens with Kataoka's trademark ice cream lick.)

Hopefully Kataoka will bring her camera onto the plane, as well. Can't wait for the footage!

You might know Google owns YouTube, GMail, GChat, Google News, Google Docs and Google Reader, but the full privacy impact probably hasn't hit you until you look at the information from all those services condensed into one place, on this dashboard thing. Oh look, it's the last person you chatted with, the last person you emailed, the last video you watched, the last news search you ran, the last Google search, the last image search, the last video search, the last document you authored and maybe what you're buying your wife for Christmas.

Here are some of my recent searches, for example, and keep in mind this is just one small part of the dashboard, which in turn is one small part of what Google knows:

Insane. And yet, nothing I didn't know about, on some logical unemotional level. There's a Google video explaining everything above, and you can find your dossier here, but be warned: looking at it could change your life.

Here's the rest of mine, not including my main Google Apps email and Docs accounts, and heavily redacted (sorry) (click to enlarge):

Glenn Beck survived his appendicitis surgery and issued the following real statement:

Glenn and his wife Tania are so thankful for all the kind words, prayers and support from everyone. Well, almost everyone. Those compassionate loving liberal bloggers were bummed things didn't end differently for Glenn.

We hear the microchip-implanting portion of the operation went just fine Fuck, that was supposed to be a secret.


A tipster sends us more on the layoffs at Essence we heard about yesterday: "Essence relaunched their digital services last week via the re-design of its new website. 18 of the 20 people who worked extensively on this until, the day of launch (10.29), were let go yesterday without previous notice. In addition to digital, essence laid off several within their sales division. Severances were extended to those who had been there over a year, however, no warning or notice was provided to senior staff members.Their method was distinctly different compared to People and Sports Illustrated, for example. It was calculated and underhanded... Apparently a lot of pissed off people there."


Keith Kelly says that the hardest-hit magazines in the Time Inc. layoffs with be Fortune and Sports Illustrated, with about 40 layoffs each. Idea for avoiding this: ... ah, we got nothing. Sorry.


"Weird," "Bizarre," and other synonyms come to mind as we inform you that, starting Monday, the dying San Francisco Chronicle will be printing on "magazine-style glossy paper." What the fuck? I really don't know.

Instead of opening to a buzzing chorus and a heat-seaking Slushie cruising down the hallway, we are introduced to Fabio, who will be the heavily-accented Virgil for our tour through this fresh hell. Apparently this episode is meant to show us what all of our favorite Glee club members are going to look like in 10 years. Apparently they have all become chefs and been on some sort of reality show, but not all at the same time. They have also given up singing and dancing, which is sad.

He starts bringing in all these people we don't even recognize. First is some chucklehead who must be Finn after getting married: bloated, haggard, but still walking around with that confidence that says he has the biggest dick in the locker room. Then in saunters Mercedes, the big girl with the big voice and plenty of sass to back it up. She's also pulled a Michael Jackson and lightened her skin a whole lot.

Then the Will Schuester arrives. He is going by Ilan these days, and he is still cute in a nerdy way and a little bit too earnest. Shortly after comes Puck, throwing about oblivious bravado just like he used to swings about his massive man guns, except now his mohawk has grown out into a nest of scary nettles. Babygay Kurt's has grown into chubby adolescent and screeches when he sees the sexy and kinda mean Quinn Fabray, who has dyed her hair brown and is wearing a very cute outfit that is nothing like a cheerleader's uniform. They are joined by some guy named Hung who was one of those silent Asians in the background of the Glee club who they trot out whenever they need someone to do break dance moves.

Next is Ken Tanaka, with a face that looks like it was attacked by a hive of bees and a haircut only a lesbian could love. Speaking of which, in saunters Sue Motherfucking Sylvester. Well, at least we thought so, until we realized that this dykey lady was about as funny as spending a night in county jail for public urination. What could have happened to ruin her spirit?

Finally the diva of the show arrives, but Rachel has gone from an awkward, strangely attractive and totally totally self absorbed bitch into an awkward, strangely attractive tall black woman with giant eyes. She's not nearly so full of herself though. Then we see that pot-dealing, Josh Groban-loving Sandy has gone back in the closet. What a sad day to see him without the protection of a sherbet colored sweater tied around his neck like he was pretending to drive to the country club.

Now that we've met the dramatis personae, we're ready for them to start talking about how they're going to put on the show. A little doo-wop and be-bop later, and we'll have ourselves a cheerleader-themed production number that will make every hair on your body stand on end for two whole minutes before falling off your body in exhaustion. It's like the television equivalent of a full-body wax, and it hurts so good. Well, they start talking...and talking and talking. We keep seeing flashbacks of them actually doing things—namely cooking and bitching at each other—but now that are not doing anything. It's like a third year high school reunion, where everyone is still far too familiar and the wounds are as fresh as newly-picked hemlock.

Fabio the Fabulous must be the director, because he's going around and talking to everyone and trying to find out about their character's motivations. We're ready for him to start blocking a scene or something, but instead he just seems to be practicing to host a reality show all his own. Finally, he starts to get things rolling by pulling out this crazy block with a bunch of knives sticking out of it. We get prepared for the massacre, as each gang of two (or three in the case of Babygay Kurt, Quinn, and nameless Asian) draws their weapon. But they're not fighting, they're just randomly assigning numbers. Somehow this translates into Rachel and Sandy having to make dessert, which is funny because Rachel would never eat dessert or else it would ruin her elliptical-based aerobic exercise regime and Sandy only eats dessert when he's stoned. Any situation this tedious would probably sober him up right quick.

Next thing you know, everyone is in the supermarket. This is like some kind of fever dream, when you expect to see Judy Garland dance with Mickey Rooney, and instead you get a Nicolas Cage chewing the scenery up and down a liquor store aisle as he fulls his cart full of the booze that he's going to use to kill himself. But instead of Nic's bad hair, you have a whole bunch of bad lesbian hair all competing for your attention. And it is dotted with all these wretched reminders of better days, when they were playing this awesome game that was judged by beautiful, wise, and witty people, including Parvati, the Hindu goddess of love. But these xenophobes keep mispronouncing her name and calling her Padma. God, Americans are so stupid. There is no mention of the evil goddess Kali, who once ruled the land, but was replaced by someone more charismatic and photogenic.

Then they go back and cook, but not in a way like they're actually trying to get something done (except for nameless Asian who is all high kicks and head spins around that kitchen like he's the third chorus boy in Barefoot Contessa: The Musical!) Rachel is talking about how stressful life is as a star. Sandy is walking around trying to prove how straight he is by hitting on all the lesbians. The lesbians are rolling their eyes, and Sue Motherfucking Sylvester doesn't even threaten one person except with her scowl, which could peel the hides off of a battered cardboard box of newborn puppies.

Director Fabio is making the rounds and asking everyone what they are doing, but we don't really care. We're just thinking that after this extravaganza of tedium that there has to be a great closing number with tap dancers, showgirls in headdresses, and stairs that light up when they are stepped on. Instead they all sit down to dinner. The only way this could be good is if Fabio puts on a corset and a curly wig gets Rachel in a maid's outfit and Finn as a bald butler to flank him for a rendition of "Eddie's Teddy" from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and at the end of the number he rips the table cloth off the table to reveal the body of dead goddess Kali below. But they don't, and we still don't know what happened to Kali Joel.

Instead, they sit around and talk about how hard it is to be on reality television and how no one understand them. Puck has it the worst, apparently, but it seems he deserves it because he behaves so appallingly that it makes it seem like he has some sort of personality disorder. In the middle of all this, Fabio gets all incensed for no reason. We think he's going to suddenly blow his top and scream "prostitution whore" and flip over a table, but instead he just makes some speech that we couldn't quite understand because the only Italian words we know are puttanesca and DiGiorno, which we think means delivery.

They're all eating and everyone likes most of the food, except everyone agrees that Babygay Kurt's pirogi thing is about as bad as that "Single Ladies" song the millionth time you've heard it. Then there are more memories, good and bad and more bitching. We have to check the calendar, because it seems like Thanksgiving came early this year, except we don't get to eat any of our mother's famous Indian Pudding (maybe Parvati stole it?) and we just get all the fighting. Finn tries to keep everything positive, but despite the swagger, no one listens to him anymore because he's fat now. Quinn and Rachel try to make nice and say that Rachel has forgiven Quinn for ruining her life, but we know she was kicking her under the table through the entire meal. She has very long legs now.

After more misty watercolor memories of everyone playing and getting drunk in some dirty room that must be Mercedes' basement where everyone goes to party after an especially tough rehearsal, the whole thing is over. Like sex with a bad hooker or a community theater production of Into the Woods, it ends with no climax, with no big final scene, and it took way too long to get there. We can't wait for next week when everything is back to normal, because this episode of Glee sucked.

Disregarding the warnings of everyone from male fashion designers to male bloggers, a certain portion of American women every day force themselves into "Spanx," only to be faced with embarrassing situations like needing to pee, or wanting to get naked, and then having no choice but to duck into some nearby restroom like Clark Kent for the purpose not of donning a superhero outfit and rescuing helpless civilians from criminal forces, but for the purpose of unburdening themselves of the tight-fitting "Spanx" unobserved by anyone who might consider such a display to be awkward or, indeed, unattractive.

Furthermore, thanks to the vagaries of our capitalist system, various competitors who have observed the popularity of "Spanx" undergarments are now creating their own variation of the "Spanx" formula, namely, spandex tubes into which women are expected to climb, in order to appear very tightly constrained throughout the midsection, in what could be termed an outright deception, not to mention an unhealthy constriction of one's bodily vital fluids' ability to flow freely betwixt and between whichever organs our subconscious brain deems necessary and appropriate, based on its millenia of evolution.

We do not need "Spanx" in snakeskin prints. We do not need "Spanx" in new hues and tints. We do not need "Spanx" for wedding nor ball. We do not need "Spanx" at all.

Michele Bachmann has called for a revolt against healthiness starting at noon today, and according to Politico, thousands of tea partiers have heeded the call so far, standing outside the Capitol and chanting "Palin/Bachmann 2012!", which is maybe like their version of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project or something?

The protesters, who are occupying the patch of grass only a few yards from where Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, have also chanted "you work for us!" Many are holding signs that echo their distrust of Obama and their belief that he is pursuing socialist policies.

They've advanced to within yards of Obama! Fix the bayonets and say a prayer boys, it's happening.

It's not just teabaggers taking back their government: Eight protesters were arrested this morning for occupying Sen. Joe Leiberman's office and demanding that he support reform. If you're a member of Congress, today's a good day for a long lunch in a dark bar.

Also: Strangely, Fox News isn't staying live with the tea party without commercial interruption—they're talking about some baby someone found in a box somewhere.

As soon as the New York Times broke the news of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's habit of patronizing high-end call girls on the afternoon of March 10, 2008, his communications director Christine Anderson pretty much knew she was out of a gig. But along with managing the media frenzy surrounding Spitzer, she also had a new boss, Gov. David Paterson, who almost immediately stirred up his own press storm by disclosing past affairs and drug use.

But before all that happened, Anderson was getting buried with requests for Spitzer. Among the first out of the gate was Matthew Zimmerman, Matt Lauer's booker at the Today show. He didn't land the exclusive Spitzer interview everyone was clamoring for—that went to CNN's Fareed Zakaria a year later—but in the course of pursuing the get, Zimmerman casually mentioned to Anderson that he'd be more than happy to help her find work at NBC News. He also turned up his nose at a shot at Paterson just hours before news broke of Paterson's past infidelities, at which point Zimmerman immediately did a 180 and begged for an interview with Paterson. Because governors are boring unless they're fucking people they shouldn't be fucking.

Read on to see how the exchange unfolded in e-mails, which we obtained by filing a public records for correspondence between the press and Spitzer's communications office during the crisis.

This is Zimmerman's first e-mail seeking the interview that every news producer wanted, just a few hours after the Spitzer story broke. It has the standard expression of sympathy common to television bookers ("I'm sorry to be reaching out to you in such circumstances") but reminds Anderson that he's not your run of the mill news lackey: "I am Matt Lauer's producer at NBC." Anderson politely brushed him off with a terse "will get back to you as soon as I can," which considering the circumstances could be a way of saying don't hold your breath.

Two days later, Zimmerman and Lauer decided to up their efforts and go the direct route. Lauer had written "a personal note" to Spitzer, and Zimmerman wanted to know if he should it "walk it over" to Anderson's office or leave it with his Spitzer's doorman. Anderson says, "Feel free."

Five days later, on March 17, Spitzer's resignation became effective and Paterson was elevated from lieutenant governor to become the first African American governor of New York. Zimmerman circled back to thank Anderson for "all her help" during the crisis of the previous week, and to let her know that he's thinking about her. Anderson wrote back to say she heard Today was interested in talking to the first African American governor of New York, and she seemed to be willing to entertain the idea. How about it? At this point, though, Paterson was, in national news terms, the previously unknown politician who had replaced the celebrity governor who had been accused of sleeping with a hooker. Zimmerman's response to the offer is underwhelming and puzzling: "Believe it or not, I think it might have been related to the weather for Gov. Paterson... I'll check with Missy Dunlop who would be handling that request." The weather?

We're not sure what Zimmerman's "weather" comment referred to, but it could have been to this request of March 15 from another producer for Paterson to appear on the weekend edition of Today to talk to Lester Holt about the crane collapse that had killed seven people in Manhattan that day. Weather, cranes—both involve things falling from the sky, right? In any event, Zimmerman didn't exactly jump at the chance to book Paterson for Lauer, and Dunlop's request was for Weekend Today, which has a different staff. The Spitzer story had sex, scandal—the things people want to see Matt Lauer talking about at 7 o'clock in the morning. Paterson was kind of boring.

And Today has shown that it can be picky about the governors it books. We know they spurned an interview with some another lame boring governor who would become newsworthy because of scandal just a few hours later. Back in December 2008, Today had booked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on what turned out to be the morning of his arrest by FBI agents. But they bumped him at the last minute in order to make room for a segment flogging the announcement of Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show.

But back to the conversation Anderson and Zimmerman were having on March 17. Once Anderson told Zimmerman that she wouldn't be sticking around the governor's office, Zimmerman—who seemed to be aware that Anderson once worked as a producer for Good Morning America—thoughtfully offered to help her secure a new job: "If you ever want to get back into tv (and not ABC!) let me know and i can see about openings here."

Gosh, that was nice of him, wasn't it? Then, in the very next sentence after he offered to help her get a job, he got back to business, letting Anderson know that he'd been in touch with a flack at Sard Verbinnen & Co., the PR shop that Spitzer's law firm hired to handle media requests, and expressing doubt about his chances. But Anderson promised to keep Zimmerman "apraised" of Spitzer's thinking, and thanked him for the "kind offer."

Was it a generous and human thing to do for Zimmerman to offer to keep his ears open on the job front? Yes, it was. Was he also trying to get Anderson to help him secure access to Spitzer at the same time? Yes, he was. Both things are true, and the casualness with which he made the offer speaks volumes about the relationships between flacks and—oh, who are we kidding? It's Today.

Anderson's quip about how dealing with a hooker disclosure is nothing compared to working for Shelley Ross, the legendarily horrible producer who was her boss at GMA, gave them a chance to gossip together. Zimmerman joked about how awesome it must be for Spitzer that former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's one-time aide recently claimed that he'd engaged in threeways with McGreevey and his wife. There would be more news to take the pressure off Spitzer in just a few hours....

...when the Daily News story detailing Paterson's past marital troubles hit the web that night. All of a sudden, Zimmerman was much more keen on having Matt Lauer talk to the first African American governor of New York on the Today show, because he had screwed state employees in the past. Anderson hadn't even seen the story yet, so Zimmerman sent it to her.

Anderson promptly forwarded it along to political consultants Ryan Toohey and Jeff Pollock to brainstorm how to spin it. Hilarity ensues: "Unreal." "Ideas?"

Neither Spitzer nor Paterson ended up appearing on Today during the height of the scandal, and Anderson wound up getting a job as vice president of communications at the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. But eventually Today got their man: Spitzer sat down with Lauer this past April as part of his public image rehab campaign and told the nation that there were "no excuses" for his behavior.

Zimmerman didn't respond to requests for comment, and Anderson declined to comment.

The Associated Press reports that a 13-year-old cat was lethargic, had trouble breathing and had a loss of appetite. When it was taken to the vet, bang! Swine flu. The unnamed cat is now recovered. "This may be the first instance where we have documentation that transmission occurred involving cats or dogs, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Tom Skinner told the AP.

The report also casually mentions that two ferrets - one in Oregon and one in Nebraska - had the swine flu, "but they died." Because apparently no-one cares about ferrets and they're allowed to die without making news. Let's all take a moment to remember them please.

I'm waiting for the Glenn Beck animal swine flu vaccination backlash. And also for a wild panic about millions of cats dying that is not really justified.

The Parisian magazine magnate has long been a fixture on the Manhattan scene; he even sometimes gets his own area at high-end parties in which to take pictures. But, apart from his own musings on nightlife in the city, has mostly avoided doing press. Now Blackbook has picked up on this Japanese magazine interview with the indoor sunglasses-wearer.

"People recognise him," says the unnamed journalist, "by his signature tousled hair and stubble, a pair of tear-drop sunglasses, a tight-fitting leather jacket, pointy boots, a gold wristwatch… an intriguing mix of sexiness and discretion."

"This is a disguise," explains Zahm. "Five or six years ago, I decided to wear this kind of outfit and behave as if I were a celebrity. It's not out of narcissism. It's for the magazine. For an independent magazine to exist, I had to incarnate it personally,"

Take a look at these pictures, from Zahm's blog, and judge for yourself. There are plenty more if Thursday morning is a pensive, French, black-and-white kind of time for you.

A naked lady in Paris:

Terry Richardson leaping:

A naked lady in Paris again:

Paul Sevigny with a surfboard:

What if it's too small?
Grower not a shower, baby. This was the same strategy that got your kid's grandma halfway to the vice presidency. Sure, her resume was distressingly short, and her intellectual prowess a bit thin, but everyone said she was a quick study. It's all about potential.

But, like, really small?
Blame it on the weather. Page Six is already doing this for you, noting that "one location for the shoot is a chilly ice rink."

What if this hurts my chance at getting custody of Tripp?
Sure, work in the adult entertainment industry may at times seem like a reason for revoking custody—Sarah Palin thinks so, and so does Sandra Bullock. But you're a teenage high school dropout with no wage-earning skills to speak of and, if we had to hazard a guess, not much by way of savings. Any level of legally-acquired financial security is going to be a boon here. Also, though Tripp's very existence proves that physical maturity does not always pair itself with mental or emotional maturity, our Pavlovian response to "Levi's manhood" might turn into some sort of subconscious message-making conceit at some point.

What if my mom sees me?
Oh, honey. They don't have Playgirl where your mother is. Just tell her you finally got that job on the oil rig.

What if it gets gay?
Well, we already know you're OK with a little bicuriosity, but a good old fashioned "no homo"—plus a dash of anatomical ambiguity—always helps:

Levi's manager, Tank Johnson [sic, it's Jones], tells Page Six, "We haven't had any discussions of that nature at all," and refused to confirm whether Johnson would go full-frontal during the shoot.

See? Already troubleshooting like a champ. Now drop those pants and start posing!

It was during his radio program, so sadly there is no video of Glenn clutching his abdomen, vomiting, and finally collapsing in pain.

Beck is expected to make a full recovery, after his appendix was removed at "an undisclosed hospital."

Let's hope things go better than they did the last time he went to the hospital, when he had to wait for 40 minutes in the emergency room! This was back when he was with CNN, so he blamed the health care industry instead of secret Maoist-ACORN Lizard People.

Stars Cross the Lily Pond
by Betsey Morgenstern
Hamptons.com Contributor

Last night there was another packed crowd at the Lily Pond, the hottest nightclub in all of East Hampton, and the dance floor was especially star studded, with the likes of Whitney Port, Roxy Carmichael Olin, and Sammie Somethingorother in town for the weekend staying at the Fackelmayer's luxe compound. Nearly identical brothers Freddie and Harry couldn't have been dressed more differently for the late night fun. Harry came wearing a T-shirt and shorts, looking like he just finished a shift at the Crab Shack down the street and was stopping by for a drink on his way home. The buff and bronzed Freddie, however, was wearing an open tuxedo shirt and jacket, looking like he had just been thrown out of the End Alopecia Now benefit that was happening earlier that evening at McGuffan's Farm.

While the gemini brothers couldn't have looked more different, they both had the same goal: to score with Whitney. Apparently Whitney insisted on bringing her friend Roxy C.O. along for the weekend, much to everyone's chagrin. We hear that Sammy tried to swerve her Audi when Roxy was sticking her head out the sunroof so that she would be hurled headlong into the gutter, never to bray or instigate ever again. Her plan did not work. Neither of the Fackelmayers, with their upper-class, East Coast cool, could stand the brash California girl, and she was left to do the Tiffani dance all by herself while wearing a pair of glowing green sunglasses.

Harry (who I met when dating his brother Freddie, full disclosure!) ambled over and told me that he was thinking of hitting on Sammy, but she just wasn't that cute, and was on the prowl for another girl. I said, "What about Whitney. She's really giving you the signals."

At that moment, she was on the dance floor grinding with Freddie, who was popping the cork off a bottle of champagne and making sure that his girl was having a good time. I told Harry, who was a little drunk, that was the chance to make his move. He went in to kiss her, but Whitney kept turning her head. "I love you," I overheard him say as I sat on a banquette nearby watching the action. Freddie could clearly see the scene play out, and he bent over and shouted something to Roxy C.O., but I couldn't hear over the thump of the music from DJ Skeezy, who once asked me if I would do a line of coke off his penis. It's not as difficult as you would think.

Freddie made his way back over to Whitney, and Harry slumped over with the look of defeat all over his face where his limp bangs usually hang. I sat next to him and patted his knee and told him everything would be fine. As he slipped his hand under my blouse (but over the bra), I thought of an even better plan. "Hey, why don't you tell Whitney that I'm Freddie's girlfriend and that she should break up with him. Then maybe she'll sleep with you."

Harry weaved his way through the crowd of glamorous hangers on, stepped over Sammy, who was making out on the floor with Ship Needermacker, heir to the Needermacker frozen waffle fortune, and sidled up to Whitney. I swished my martini around and mustered up my biggest scowl as Harry whispered in her ear and Whitney's face festered with even more confusion that usual. It was like someone just told her that her little puppy hadn't been sent to a farm in Connecticut to live with Martha Stewart, but really wound up under the wheels of Lizzie Grubman's SUV. She grabbed Roxy C.O. and told Sammie to stop being a slut on the sticky floor of a suburban club because it was time to storm off in a huff.

I went over to Harry to ask what happened, and he slumped onto my shoulders like a lonely corpse. I patted his head and thought he was going to cry. Then he vomited down my back, and it was time to leave.

The next morning, I had to find out the scoop and hid out in the shed next to the Fackelmayer pool. As the brothers did cannonballs, I could see the three witches plotting inside throwing little ingredients into a cauldron. Sammie would stir and Roxy would throw back her head and emit painful bleats that made the boys cower like Glenn Close taking a shower in The Big Chill. They came downstairs and coven leader Roxy gave Freddie a piece of her mind, but Whitney wanted to do the talking. She changed a spell of truth, and Freddie had no choice to admit his girlfriend and say he was sorry, but offerend no explanation.

Then I burst out of the shed, leaves still in my hair and chucks of dried puke flaking off my dress and shouted, "It's me! He's in love with me!" and the witches screamed, running with hands over head like a gaggle of crazed hula dancers. They ran right to the Audi and shuttled back from the city. It might have been a shaky night, but this party ended with the best of mornings.

Interview with Betsey Morgenstern, Blogger for Stylehive.com
By Olivia Palermo

There are many style blogs on the internet, but the bloggiest belongs to Betsey Morgenstern, the girl who has something to do with Stylehive.com.

Olivia Palermo: Hi Betsey. How are you?
Betsey Morgenstern: I'm fine, how are....

OP: That's great to hear. So, how would you describe your personal style?
BM: Well, I really like a mix of fashion-forward and more...

OP: That's awesome. I have something like that myself. Who are your favorite designers?
BM: Right now I'm really into Jason...

OP: I'm friends with Phillip Lim. And I lost my virginity in Zac Posen's hot tub on Fire Island. What trends are you seeing now?
BM: The thing that's going to be a hit for fall is...

OP: Great. That's all I need.
BM: What? You wouldn't even let me say...

OP: I'm leaving. Bye.

Horrible parents across America are selling off their children's looks to make a few extra bucks during these tough economic times, according to the WSJ. They seen them other girls doing it on the teevee show and them girls aren't even as purty as Caitlin, gah.

Natacha Andrews recently signed up her 4-year-old daughter, Anaya, with a modeling agency. Anaya says she wants to be "like Tyra"-that is, model-turned-media-personality Tyra Banks.

Her mother, a 36-year-old Phoenix attorney, has another motivation. "I know people who successfully saved money this way," she says

I know a dude who said he made all this money stuffing envelopes at home, too. Get the fuck out of here. I wanted to be a fireman when I was four, but my parents didn't buy me a fucking fire truck.

Carol Stevenson, a public-relations consultant, signed her three kids up with Peak Models & Talent because she wanted them to start saving for college.

Your special model child will look just fine shoveling driveways this winter for five dollars, and, later, applying for a job at McDonald's. All you parents are way psycho.

Scientology refugee Marc Headley has written a book called Blown For Good—featuring a dramatic, action-scene-type cover—detailing his 15 years of work inside Scientology. The Village Voice interviewed him about his 1990 "auditing" session performed by Days of Thunder-era Tom Cruise himself.

"You do a lot of things with a book and a bottle," Headley says. "It's known as the book-and-bottle routine." Cruise, he says, would instruct Headley to speak to a book, telling it to stand up, or to sit down, or otherwise to move somewhere.

"You do the same with the bottle. You talk to it. You do it with an ashtray too," he says. "You tell the ashtray, 'Sit in that chair.' Then you actually go over and put the ashtray on the chair. Then you tell the ashtray, 'Thank you.' Then you do the same thing with the bottle, and the book. And you do this for hours and hours."

This was supposed " to get your intention over to the bottle...to rehabilitate your ability to control things." Well then. Tom Cruise can control books and bottles with his mind and don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Headley also says that there are only about 10,000 Scientologists in the whole world. They could be whupped by the Unitarians!
[Village Voice. Pic by Richard Blakeley]

NOM raised a zillion dollars or so from hateful bigots across the nation whose names they refuse to disclose, which is, of course, a violation of state campaign finance law. But if it works, who gives a shit? 53% of Maine voters agreed that if the gays get married, they will attempt to force the children to learn, in public schools, that gay people exist, and that they should not be beaten to death for crimes against God.

Once again we learn the shocking truth that putting the civil rights of minority groups to a popular vote does not work very well. Crazy, right?

Here is a classic sketch from The Dana Carvey Show that is more relevant than ever, again:

On March 10, 2008, few people on the planet had more difficult jobs than Christine Anderson and Errol Cockfield. They were the communications director and press secretary, respectively, for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and at roughly 1:07 p.m. on that afternoon, the Times went live with a story documenting their boss' entanglement as "Client No. 9" in a federal investigation of a high-end prostitution ring. We were curious what the inside of a PR meltdown looks like, so—following in the footsteps of The State's investigation into the media's efforts to land an exclusive interview with Mark Sanford while he was hiking the Appalachian Trail—we used New York's open records law to obtain e-mail traffic between Anderson, Cockfield, and the dozens of reporters barraging them with inquiries in the days following the Spitzer revelations.

The e-mails total 1,300 pages, and we're still reading through the stack of paper. Any other interesting finds will be going up in subsequent posts. But what we've seen so far has been surprising: You'd think that, with blood in the water, the traditional coziness that develops between official flacks and the beat reporters who have to talk to them every day would break down into some kind of last-man-standing slugfest. But in the Spitzer case, the opposite happened. The revelations upended the worlds of both reporter and flack alike, and the uncertainty, long hours, and breakneck pace of the scandal actually seemed to throw them together as they worked toward what seems, if you read the e-mail exchanges, like a common goal of getting the news out and behind them.

Which makes sense on a human level. But sometimes good reporting—especially of the government watchdog variety—requires an inhuman suspension of compassion. The infractions documented in these e-mails are misdemeanors, but—in addition to being an unvarnished peek inside the media machinery—they're indicative of the creeping social and professional alliances that inevitably develop between PR handlers and their overworked, easily manipulated charges in the press corps. And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the "hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism," remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer's dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed Gov. Paterson's flack to request permission to call Paterson's former mistress.

This first installment documents the shocking amount of control that Keller's Times allowed Anderson, a former Good Morning America producer and PR veteran of the Clinton White House, to exercise over his paper's coverage. After bringing Anderson's world down around her head by breaking the story, Times reporters previewed portions of their stories with her before publication, asked for her permission before contacting sources, and let her tell them how to characterize its reporting in the paper.

We'll begin at the beginning: On March 9, 2008, Anderson had not yet been informed of Spitzer's transgressions. Which makes this e-mail exchange with Times reporter Danny Hakim, who broke the story along with William K. Rashbaum, almost painfully poignant in retrospect.

Clueless, Anderson tried to sniff out what Hakim was up to, apparently to no avail (Spitzer himself broke the news to his staff early the next morning):

Hakim and Rashbaum's story went live the next day at roughly 2:08 p.m., using the Drudge Report Archives' timeline as a chronological guide. At 1:34 p.m., Hakim was still working his scoop, and e-mailed Anderson to make sure he had a detail right about how Spitzer broke the news to his staff. The subject line was, "can i do this?", and the message body appears to be the actual text Hakim planned to write—in other words, he appears to have been previewing his copy for the woman charged with managing Spitzer's image crisis, and seeking her signoff.

Anderson had a minor quibble with the facts—there was no single meeting at which Spitzer made the announcement—but she objected to the idea of repeating the phrase "ensnared in a prostitution ring," and asked Hakim to simply say Spitzer told his staff about "the matter."

The original Times story has been repeatedly updated, but the current version renders that detail thusly: "The governor informed his top aides Sunday night and this morning of his involvement."

Two days later, Spitzer announced his resignation, and the media scrum's attention turned to then-Lt. Gov. David Paterson. Paterson had his own press aides, but Anderson stayed on while Spitzer was still nominally in office and managed the coverage of the transition. On March 14, Times reporter Jeremy Peters was working on a profile of Paterson's chief of staff, Charles O'Byrne. He interviewed O'Byrne for the story, apparently working under an agreement that any quotes had to be cleared through Anderson.

Anderson replied that none of the quotes could be used, and recommended some of O'Byrne's friends for Peters to call for (presumably positive) quotes, a fairly routine practice.

Peters didn't push back. He simply asked Anderson how best to characterize O'Byrne's refusal to be quoted. "Say he declined to be interviewed?" asked Peters. Of course, O'Byrne didn't decline to be interviewed—he just declined to be quoted, a distinction that Anderson caught:

It's a bizarre world where flacks are more vigilant than reporters when it comes to trying not to mislead readers. The exchange continued, with Peters trying to gather competitive intelligence from Anderson and Anderson trying to make sure Peters spoke to the sources she wanted him to speak to.

Peters' O'Byrne profile eventually ran on March 20, including a proviso that "Mr. O'Byrne would not comment for this article" and several positive quotes from Ethan Geto and Eric Schneiderman, another source recommended by Anderson.

The PR disaster didn't end with Spitzer's resignation: Just days after Paterson ascended to the governor's office, the New York Daily News reported that both Paterson and his wife had engaged in multiple infidelities. The question of the hour on the afternoon of March 18 was the identity of the governor's office employee mentioned in the Daily News story as one of the new governor's ex-flames. Hakim knew who it was, but the Times would never stoop to delve into someone's private life so tastelessly. Unless the Daily News does it, in which case, yeah, maybe they would. So Hakim checked in with Anderson to find out if some filthy tabloid was getting ready to be first out the gate with Kirton's name, in which case he'd try to beat them.
Worried, Hakim sheepishly—"again, if others are calling her"—asks Anderson for permission to make the call.
Astonishingly, Anderson gives him the go-ahead, and provides him with her phone numbers.

Kirton's name came out a few hours later online. The Times never ended up mentioning her name, because only filthy tabloids do that.

For a sense of the differential treatment that flacks dole out to reporters, have a look at how Anderson responded to Daily News political correspondent Celeste Katz's request for confirmation about Kirton after the name came out—Anderson confirmed it off the record, but offered no contact info unbidden. Perhaps Katz should have asked for permission to call Kirton.

Newsday's Melissa Mansfield made the same request of Anderson's deputy Errol Cockfield, and got even colder treatment:

Mansfield didn't mind the brush-off, and responded with the same sort of sheepish, we-don't-do-gossip ass-covering that Hakim employed:

LOL, indeed. This is just from our first read of the batch of e-mails. There's much more to come. We contacted Hakim and Peters for their responses, but neither reporter agreed to comment for the record.

UPDATE: Diane McNulty, a New York Times spokeswoman, responded in an e-mail to Poynter's Jim Romenesko:

Any suggestion that the Times went too easy on the Spitzer administration seems a bit absurd in this context.

Our goal, always, is to get the facts right. Dealing with sources responsibly and professionally serves that goal, and that is what our reporters did in this case.

The Jane was closed down last month after a concerted campaign by yuppie neighbours who were shocked to find that downtown Manhattan is not monastery-quiet and hired a PR guy. Beatrice was closed down earlier this year under similar circumstances. (Yes, I am linking to an article by me, sorry!)

Rumors flew that the Jane had reopened on Monday, but they were apparently false; people who attended said the small front bar was open but not the main room. Now someone died in the hotel. Actually literally died, not 'oh my god I just DIED' died. A Texan visitor, staying in one of the $99 rooms, noticed a bad smell. And, after hearing the usual excuses about plumbing, found the room next door sealed with Police DOA notice on it. "Older guy, lived here," explained one employee.

As for Beatrice Inn, this post on Purple Magazine's Olivier Zahm's page got the plaid-clad masses frothing over a pre-Christmas reopening. Because Zahm is friends with the owner Paul Sevigny. Sevigny is not a huge fan of the press but people working on a new deal with him told us the following:

"He's still fighting to open Beatrice," said one. "But if it reopens, Beatrice won't be the same because of the neighbors, so that plan is to move the controversial party downtown to a space that does not have the same sound issues." Until that happens expect to see various swaying French people at Hawaiian Tropic and Hooters.