The Bureau of Prisons says Bernie Madoff "is not terminally ill, and has not been diagnosed with cancer." And it claims that the NY Post story that said so based on anonymous prison snitch testimony is "full of inaccuracies." No!

Trained Blackwater assassination squads will probably track us down and liquidate us for this but the people need to know: Dick Cheney has Gulf War-themed Russian nesting dolls painted to look like members of George H. W. Bush's administration.

Jared Kushner's New York Observer has always been heavily reliant on real estate advertising. It's been hurt as much as anyone by the collapse of the real estate market. So Kushner is launching a new real estate paper. What?

Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint a prosecutor to determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute CIA interrogators who tortured and murdered detainees. This will not please Leon Panetta!

Ever had trouble taming your Jewfro? So has Matthew Rothschild. And he can tell you it's even harder to do when you're the only Jew at Briar Patch Elementary on the Upper East Side.

Elon Musk is becoming a welfare case. Federal auto-industry loans helped save his electric-car company, Tesla. Now Musk wants another federal bailout for his embarrassing space startup. And he may well get it.

The Way We Live Now: In a cul-de-sac in Moreno Valley, California.The NYT has made it the national headquarters of recession-oriented media interest! Meanwhile, back in New York, the Hamptons crumble, and everyone's ready to kill to be a plumber.

• Harvey and Bob Weinstein are breathing a sigh of relief today. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds did better than expected at the box office this weekend, raking in $37.6 million in sales. Not that one good weekend will be enough to lift the studio out of the financial mess it is in. [NYT, THR, WSJ]
• Related: In what may be a first for a movie opening, Inglourious Basterds seems to have benefited by a "crest of tweeting goodwill." [THR]
• Some 48 years after it was first published, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now No. 1 on the New York Times' best-seller list. [NYT]
• Has the Glenn Beck brouhaha made advertisers skittish about buying commercial time during political shows in general? [AdAge, Politico]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer is launching a new paper called The Commercial Observer. It's about commercial real estate, naturally. [NYT]
• Magazine newsstand sales continue to suffer, not surprisingly. [AdAge]

When Anna Wintour agreed to the Vogue documentary The September Issue, she probably thought it would be the greatest stop on the Make-People-Like-Me-Before-My-Contract-Is-Up Tour 2009. Too bad she is cast as the villain to Grace Coddington's triumphant hero.

The highest grossing retailer on Fifth Avenue? The Apple store on 59th Street, the only one of the company's locations that is open 24/7, which generates sales of more than $350 million a year, according to real estate experts. [Bloomberg]

In your unnerving Monday Media column: The paper of record cannot stop talking about Skye Parrott (??), the Tribune Co. sells a losing team, JPMorgan takes over publishing by accident, and the great political talk show ad debate. No worries!

Why does Jonathan Capehart let people treat him this way? The dashing Washington Post editorial writer wore Prada pants to MSNBC today and it was the funniest thing Joe Scarborough had ever seen.

Liskula Cohen won her case last week to force Google to reveal the identity of the person who had set up a blog to call the ex-model a "skank" and "ho." And although Cohen initially responded to the news by filing a $3 million defamation lawsuit against the blogger involved, Rosemary Port, she later decided against pursuing the case, saying she was all "about forgiveness" and just wished Port "happiness." (For her part, Port now says she plans to sue Google for $15 million for outing her.) So you may be assuming Cohen can now focus her attention on non-legal matters, right? Not so much. Cohen has another lawsuit pending in State Supreme Court. And, coincidentally, a judge issued a ruling in that case last week, as well.

Don and Roger both deal with dramatic changes to their home life, Ken goes on the offensive against Pete, the Brits ruin everything, and Peggy got laid. We always knew she'd be good in the sack.

Barack Obama is on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, with his family, his dog, and the traveling press corps. This is terrible news for that island's struggling community.

Have they moved Mark Penn's fortnightly genius column to Saturdays just to thwart us? No matter! This week's Microtrend secretly shaping our society: Glamorous Camping, or "glamping." (Utter silence). Uhhh. Maybe Saturday is the right day. [WSJ]

Earlier this year, Twitter internally referred to Sean "Diddy" Combs and its other celebrity clients as a "distractionary element." When that swipe leaked, via a hacker, the microblogging startup went into full-on pander mode.

Bernie Madoff may not be dying of cancer, after all. The Federal Bureau of Prisons just released a statement on the subject, and it's denying the report in today's Post that the fraudster's days are numbered:

Writer Fred Bernstein took his 7-year-old twins to P.S. 1 in Queens recently to take in a little contemporary art. The problem was that he missed the tiny sign at the entrance which warned that the galleries contained "graphic imagery," which meant he had to usher his sons out of the room when he realized one of the exhibits contained "a giant photo of Katie Couric delivering the evening news with her genitalia exposed." Really? No, not really. It's Couric's head attached to Britney Spears' body. But who knew the museum was home to such a cultural treasure? If you're not working today—or you are at work, but you have a boss who appreciates the boundary-pushing nature of contemporary art—the photo can be seen in all its glory here. [NYT/City Room]

Owner of us Nick Denton is 43 today. Happy birthday also to Vince McMahon, Yasser Arafat, Dave Chappelle, Mike Huckabee, Reggie Miller, Steve Guttenberg, Rupert Grint, and Richard Blakeley. Quite the auspicious group. Also on this day in history: