Forbes, September 2: "Scott Gould happily ditched the securities market for a restaurant job." WSJ, yesterday: "Scott Gould went from trader to waiter-by choice." It's almost as if one followed the other for some easily determined reason. We'll never know.

[Ben Affleck takes a swing at an unoriginal extra while filming outside of Fenway Park in Boston yesterday. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

Public Policy Polling just keeps revealing how stupid, paranoid, and misled the American electorate is. Here are some results from their new national poll on conspiracy theories that aren't true.

The Way We Live Now: Forced into a life of crime. The System doesn't want us to go straight. Madoff's scam barely even hurt anyone. Spectacular helicopter heists get all the attention. Meanwhile, our big beet business plan gets torpedoed!

Mackenzie Phillips is setting the media ablaze with her revelation that she had sex with her father. Having come this far, just what will celebrity biographies have to confess to get attention a decade from now? Here's a preview!

• Condé Nast editors and publishers may be forced to cut their budgets by as much as 25% now that the consultants reviewing operations are completing their tour of duty. Not surprisingly, "significant layoffs" are expected. [NYO]
• More trouble for Harvey: The Weinstein Co. says it plans to cut 35 additional positions at the film company over the next month or so. [THR]
• A new bidder for beleaguered BusinessWeek appears to have emerged in ex-BMG chief Strauss Zelnick and former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz. [BW]
• WSJ, the glossy owned by the Wall Street Journal, is expanding [WWD]
• The CW is planning a reality show about what it's like to be a Virgin flight attendant in search of "good times, great parties, adventure and love." [Wrap]
• Mark Consuelos (or Mr. Kelly Ripa) has been given the boot by Oprah. [NYP]
• The Observer is moving from the Flatiron district to a Jared Kushner-owned building in Midtown: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." [NYO]
• Eight out of ten Americans say they would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to bail out failing newspapers. You're shocked by that, we're sure. [E&P]

It's official. The richest man in Russia, Mikhail Prokhorov, has taken control of the New Jersey Nets. The 44-year-old oligarch, who is worth $9.5 billion according to Forbes, signed a $200 million deal today with real estate developer/Nets owner Bruce Ratner that will make him the principal owner of the team, as well as a major investor in the Nets' long-delayed new home in Brooklyn. This makes Prokhorov the first foreign owner of an NBA team who isn't Canadian, and the "the only NBA owner who can dunk," according to Prokhorov. And the tri-state area now has its very own Mark Cuban, clearly. [NYT]

Microsoft's next operating system, Windows 7, is available to the public Oct. 22. So why not host an awkward launch party for a perfectly diverse group of your friends? Microsoft made an unbearable video tutorial to get you going.

Usually when people accuse Politico of cutting-and-pasting GOP press releases into their stories, they're speaking metaphorically. But no—that's what they actually do. They select the angry words, hit the "copy" thing, and paste them right onto the internet.

We trust that, like any self-respecting woman, you're no longer sporting the pathetic stunted eyelashes you had to go out and buy, but have been using Latisse to grow lashes that are "longer, thicker and darker." And as shocking as it might be that Latisse manufacturer Allergan, in its noble quest to save us from the shame of small eyelashes, would mislead its customers, the FDA recently sent out a letter warning the company that it's been minimizing some of the risks associated with use of the product.

Rocker Marilyn Manson has been diagnosed with Swine Flu.

Saw Arthur Kade goose-stepping his way through the 34th Street 123 station at 5:45 PM. He has the strangest walk; he puffs out his chest and thrusts his hips out. The overall effect is that of someone with something down the back of their pants. He was eating something doughy and chewing with his mouth open.

Sad! Mike Dukakis will not be the interim Senator from Massachusetts. Instead it will probably be announced tomorrow that a 71-year-old dude named Paul Kirk will keep Ted Kennedy's seat warm (for the naked dude).

Tinsley Mortimer has returned to NYC after a brief jaunt across the pond to hit up London Fashion Week. (She's now "living between New York and Knightsbridge," she explained to WWD earlier this week.) She rushed back to NYC yesterday, though, so she could make an appearance at the annual New Yorkers for Children gala at Cipriani 42nd Street last night.

In your wonderful Wednesday media column: the NYO's getting a new home, the WaPo redesigns its magazine, Michael Moore has fancy party, and Katie Couric meets Glenn Beck and they totally make out (or do they?).

Sarah Palin gave a speech in Hong Kong. Despite what you may read in "news" "articles," the content of the speech was unimportant. No one thinks she knows anything about economics or China. What matters is how it played!

And neither has his audience! Last night he featured two tired bits from '90s punchline Pee Wee Herman. What's next, dancing Itos? Even the new talent he's found is spectacularly unfunny. Oh, and he just discovered gentrification in Harlem!

One good thing about summer ending and fall beginning, according to the blog EVGrieve: If you're not too into guys wearing pink shirts (or draping pink sweaters over their shoulders, as the mayor is wont to do now and then), you can look forward to seeing a lot less of that on the streets of the city from now on. At least not until next May. [EVGrieve]

The internet continues to baffle and comically anger Justine Bateman. The Family Ties star and manic blogger is calling people "shithead" and "human waste" for spamming her Twitter homepage, unaware she's seeing a new feature announced over a month ago.

Oh, Rahm. Why must you meddle? Emanuel and White House political director Patrick Gaspard tried to force New York governor David Paterson out of the 2010 election to make room for Andrew Cuomo and they just made everything worse.