It's tough to be an Oscar favorite in October, five full months before the awards. And a little film called Precious is learning that it's even harder to be Oscar's front runner, especially if no one has seen you yet.

Chris Anderson has plenty of distractions from editing Wired, including a lucrative sideline on the global lecture circuit and a tour to promote his new book. Anderson's prior commitments even removed him from the office on Wired's layoff day. (Updated)

• The much-hyped Breslin opens for lunch on Thursday, but co-owner Ken Friedman already has a detractor: the mosque across the street. [NYO]
• Closings: Centro Vinoteca in the West Village has been shuttered by the city. And the Bread Bar at Tabla is closing as of tonight. [Eater, GS]
• François Payard's eponymous patisserie closed four months ago, but he'll make a mini-comeback next month when he opens a chocolate bar. [NYT]
• How busy is restaurateur Michael "Bao" Huynh? He's opening one restaurant a week during the month of November. So he's pretty busy. [GS]
• Greenhouse is facing more legal trouble: A couple of weeks after the club was sued for $1 billion comes another discrimination suit for $1.5 billion. [NYDN]
• A roundup of restaurants offering various Halloween specials. [Zagat]

You didn't think the first 48 hours of marital bliss would suppress her genetic tendencies, did you? [Twitter]

Hollywood has been in awe this week watching the details trickle out about the group of teens arrested for burglarizing the homes of stars including Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom and Audrina Patridge.

Food & Wine editor describing the challenges of styling bird carcasses for magazine covers, in the New York Times via CJR's The Kicker.

Twitter's not all narcissistic minutiae and celebrity retweets: Jonathan Ames used it to obtain a TV, from his employer, via "whining."

The Way We Live Now: To the extreme. We will sell ourselves for food. We will torture someone over loan modifications. We will make an entire nation too broke to afford McDonald's. What a seductive lifestyle!

Shepard Smith just cut off one of his correspondents at the knees, demanding after she conducted a live interview of the GOP's New Jersey gubernatorial candidate when she would give equal time to his Democratic rival. How awkward.

A tipster tells us that National Geographic laid off 8-10 staffers today. Reason: "The economy."

Autistic artist Steven Wiltshire can draw precise, detailed cityscapes after a single viewing of a city. He is incredible. He's currently drawing the New York skyline. You can watch him live. Click through to see a bit of Wiltshire's Tokyo.

• Nell Scovell, a writer on Dave Letterman's show in the late '80s, has stepped forward to detail the show's "hostile, sexually charged atmosphere." [VF]
• Layoffs: Yesterday's cuts at Forbes claimed 30-40 people; reality TV-focused Teen Vogue laid off half a dozen staffers today; the cuts continue this week at W; and a big round of cuts could go down at Time Inc. sometime next week.
• Sarah Palin's memoir, which comes out next month, had already earned her $1.25 million even before she stepped down as Alaska's governor. [AP]
• Michael Jackson's This Is It debuts in theaters tonight. [NYDN]
• How's Jay Leno's new show doing more than a month in? Not so good. [NYT]

Thanks to Bloomberg News, we now have a good idea how much of that $13 billion pass-through bailout Goldman Sachs got from AIG last year was pure taxpayer-financed gravy: $5.2 billion, courtesy Tim Geithner.

[Mickey Rourke, looking tattered, struts his stuff with a sexy blond in New York today. Image via X17]

Bender (1999)
Perhaps the greatest television robot of all time, Futurama's Bender has a harder time NOT shoplifting than Winona Ryder.

Doree Shafrir has a new story in Details about rich guys who just won't stop spending money, during this recession. And all the guys have pseudonyms, like criminals! Do you know any evil rich people who fit these descriptions?

Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot (1988)
Robots can do all sorts of things, but you know the singularity is near when they're making fun of your movie-making abilities on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

If you see a bunch of suspicious-looking nerds loitering in your dorm courtyard and plotting privacy violations, don't panic, according to Johns Hopkins University administrators: It's just Justin Timberlake and his buddies pretending to be Facebook founders. (Update: No Timberlake!)

Robby the Robot (1958)
Created for the 1956 Sci Fi film The Forbidden Planet, Robby didn't make it to the small screen until two years after he won over his audience. Robby is still working today, and hasn't had a decade go by without showing his "face" on both big and small screens the world over.

How Arthur Sulzberger discusses his paper's problems: "What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?"