Microtrend-spotting genius Mark Penn hasn't had a new WSJ column since it was pointed out that he's using the column to recruit PR clients. (Which the WSJ doesn't care about!). Potential clients are waiting, Mark! What are you—chicken??

[George Clooney closes his eyes and imagines himself in a better place while walking the red carpet with girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis at the premiere of The Men Who Stare at Goats at the Venice Film Festival. Image via Getty]

The annual pilgrimage of Bay Area pyromaniacs to a Nevada desert playa is over; now comes the inevitable Burning Man hangover, in which participants and haters alike bemoan the bacchanal's worst excesses.

The Way We Live Now: In a Mad Maxian hellscape. Do you even realize how far we've fallen? Our political campaigns are staffed by hobos. Our police forces are stocked with vigilantes. And our "states" are just gussied-up liquor stores.

Matt Drudge is playing up Andrew Breitbart's latest Obama conspiracy theory—that he is enlisting the aid of the all-powerful visual arts cartel in support of healthcare reform. How long before artist thugs are dragging conservatives from their homes?

That ridic WWF 9/11 spec ad that raised such a ruckus last week actually won an award from the One Club, don't forget. So now the One Club is banning all "fake ads" from their awards show. Wise. [Agency Spy]

Leave it to the media to get the story wrong. Last week, the web was swarming with talk that the new Rambo movie would bejust a big dumb action flick. Hard to imagine anyone would believe such talk.

• Tyra Banks is launching a web-based magazine. Tyra: Beauty Inside & Out will feature an "audio 'manifesto' that asks readers to dream big, ignore the haters, celebrate uniqueness and seek the beauty in everything." [WWD]
• James Patterson has signed a 17-book deal with his publisher, Hachette. And all 17 of them will arrive in bookstores before the end of 2012. [AP]
• All the competition online appears to be taking a toll on the Zagat guide series. Sales are down and the company has been laying off staff. [NYP]
• It was a mixed bag for Hollywood studios hoping for a big summer box office. Revenue was up 2 percent, but attendance fell 2 percent, too. [NYT]
• The Final Destination and Inglourious Bastards came in at No. 1 and 2 at the box office this weekend, beating out a handful of newcomers. [LAT]
• Following in the footsteps of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, USA Today is the latest newspaper to launch an online "wine club." [E&P]

In your suddenly Tuesday media column: Jon Capehart speaks on his morning workout routine and why MSNBC should get a life, a journalist gets punched, another one gets run over by a football player, and Stars & Stripes grows balls.

We know the world is bereft of new ideas, but doesn't the "Into the Wood" shoot in the September issue of Vogue remind you of something? Like, um, the "Into the Woods" shoot W did two years ago?

Yes, it is happening. Melrose Place is back and even more scandalicious than our old '90s frenemy. Dr. Michael Mancini and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz sharing a screen? Sign us up! Series premiere tonight, Sept. 8 only on the CW.

Barack Obama has finished his highly anticipated address to the nation's schoolchildren. It was chock full of propaganda and lies as expected, including this doozy: "The truth is, being successful is hard." Mr. President, do you watch television?

A few weeks ago, Ruth Madoff received a property tax rebate from Palm Beach County for $13,821.74. The problem: The check was made out to both Ruth and Bernie, and since cashing it would have required her to deposit it into their joint account—which is frozen—Ruth wrote a letter to the agency asking that it be reissued in her name only. Was this just one more attempt to avoid turning over the cash to the authorities? That's what some people are suggesting! [NYDN, Palm Beach Post]

Foursquare has raised its first venture capital investment, and it couldn't have been easy: There are persistent rumors the social networking company stole its code from Google. Plus, it wanted to invest the money in a domain name. Ooof.

At this hour, the survival of the internet remains in doubt after the release of a new still from the upcoming Twilight film New Moon caused teenage girls to flood chat boards and fan sites worldwide.

Former Lehman Bros. CEO "Dick" Fuld, the Big Villain of All Financial Villains—what's he up to these days? A Reuters reporter trailed him to his remote Idaho hideaway to find out!

Have you already forgotten Sunday's episode of Mad Men? We haven't. It had all the ingredients of a Russian novel: sad families, death, and bad Ann-Margret imitators. Also like Dostoevsky, we learned five new ways we can fail our parents.

Did Anna Wintour ever strike you as the type who was a precocious teenager, hanging out in the "discotheques" of mod 1960s London? Suspicions confirmed! We have a copy of a nightlife review a 17-year-old Wintour wrote in 1966.

It was all a trick, by marketing people, to get you to buy body wash! The NYT digs deep into the dirty scam—it turns out that instead of being an honest appraisal of body wash's ability to engorge the loins of females, all those sexxxy Axe ads may have been tainted by hyperbole. Furthermore, girls were using body wash before boys, and now boys are using it which makes them totally gay, differently-designed packaging be damned! Like Big Tobacco, Big Body Wash gets you while you're young:

It's been nearly a year since Lehman Brothers went bust, making it the perfect occasion to send a reporter to hunt down Lehman's former CEO, Dick Fuld. A Reuters correspondent managed to find him last Friday, looking tan and dressed in and well-rested at his "country house in a bucolic setting beside a river and amid tree-covered slopes in Ketchum, Idaho." So how's he doing?