[Madonna leads her troupe of children (including boyfriend Jesus Luz) through the streets of Italy earlier today. Apparently she is in mourning for her 51st birthday. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

Thanks to the magic of advertising, we now know what The Simpsons would look like if they were Angolan. Huh. Angolans sell everything to buy big speakers, apparently. [Click to enlarge. Via Copyranter at AnimalNY]

Bloomberg has hired Dan Colarusso as its managing editor for U.S. television. It will be interesting to see how an editor known for his bright-burning departures melds with the combustible financial news company.

• Controversial right-wing columnist Robert Novak is dead at 78. [NYT]
• Sunday's hyped-up premiere of Mad Men attracted lots more viewers, as expected. Some 2.8 million people tuned in, up 33% from last year. [Reuters]
• Struggling studio MGM has dumped its CEO and hired a new one. [WSJ]
• Is Sam Zell going to walk away from Tribune? That's the rumor. [NYP]
• The president will speak at next month's Walter Cronkite memorial. [NYT]
• Steven Spielberg's new movie studio now has $825 million in the bank. The company says it plans to make 21 movies over the next four years. [WSJ]
• It looks like MySpace is buying the site iLike for "around $20 million." [DB]
• Newsday is under fire after rejecting an ad by the Tennis Channel that happened to be critical of the newspaper's parent company, Cablevision. [NYT]
• Irony alert: BusinessWeek, the struggling business mag desperately seeking a buyer, just launched a new website called "The Case for Optimism." [BW]

The Way We Live Now: Off someone else's credit card, mostly. It's the only way to afford Panera sandwiches and still have enough left over for our health care premiums. Hope this "riskless" paper we invested in pays off!

New York's epic article about Annie Leibovitz in this week's issue is well worth a read, particularly since it sheds a little light on how it is one of the world's highest-paid photographers now finds herself on the brink of financial ruin. (If the only person you'll allow to repair your air-conditioner has to travel to NYC from Vermont to do the work, that's probably not a good sign.) Leibovitz's financial fate will likely be sealed in September when the $24 million loan she secured from Art Capital Group last year is due. Interestingly, though, Leibovitz appears to be hinting that the terms of the loan— which required her to put up the rights to her photos and real estate holdings as collateral—only became apparent to her after the Times reported on Art Capital Group back in February. Friends of the photographer suggest that Leibovitz had no idea she was giving up so much when she took out the loan; they also seem to be shifting some of the blame to Ken Starr, the financial adviser who took the photographer on as a client in 2007 and who was also responsible for introducing Leibovitz to Art Capital Group. Pinning the blame on Starr, who boasts an insanely long list of celebrity clients, may be a hard argument to make.

The Krupp's Bagger 228 is more than meets the eye. It is the world's largest digging machine, and it moves! If Michael Bay hasn't already ordered it up for the screenplay, he's not doing his job.

The cyclist who says he was dragged around Central Park by a Fox News writer, who won't face any charges in the incident, tells us neither cops or prosecutors tried very hard to investigate the incident.

In your dehydrated Tuesday media column: Sam Zell may be looking for a new business, a discrimination suit against the WSJ, Sharon Waxman has no idea who anyone is, and more!

Oh, hey, you know how Obama's Justice Department keeps filing briefs in support of the Defense of Marriage act equating gay marriage to incest and pedophilia and all that? They don't actually mean it!

"Spike Lee is organizing a block party-style celebration in Brooklyn to mark Michael Jackson's birthday. The filmmaker's bash in Kings County for the late King of Pop will be on Aug. 29, when Jackson would have turned 51." Naturally, Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's useless borough president, plans to be fully involved with the planned celebration. He will proclaim that Aug. 29 is officially "Michael Jackson Day"—in Brooklyn, at least. [AP]

Two years ago, music service iLike appeared to be set: Its CEO said it was "made," its investor mused it could be a "billion-dollar winner," and the press was enthralled. Now the poster child is a cautionary tale.

Reader's Digest reported yesterday that it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection any day now. The firm that Reader's Digest retained back in June to try and restructure the company's debt so it could prevent a bankruptcy filing? Miller Buckfire, the same financial advisory firm now counseling Harvey and Bob Weinstein on how to prevent their media company from going under. [Forbes]

Former NYT food critic Frank Bruni's big (eh) Nightline appearance is coming up. Its highlight: Bruni giving the full review treatment to a Choco Taco. No stars? Hey bro, I'll eat it. Watch the magic, below.

Andre Balazs' quest to make the Standard the official hotel of visiting nudists seems to be paying off. (Either that or the hotel's adult-themed promo campaign continues.) A blogger spotted a naked man in the window over the weekend, and it didn't require much waiting around either: "It took less than 20 minutes into my first visit to the High Line, on Sunday, to capture it," he says. [Restlus via Curbed]

Conservative political journalist and long-time syndicated columnist Robert Novak died early this morning after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

This morning we heard that 5WPR, flackery-mongering home of incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian, had a run-in with the Labor department yesterday. We have details from insiders. They are more ridiculous than you may have anticipated. Craziness, ahoy! [UPDATED below].

Harvey Weinstein is so desperate for Inglourious Basterds to succeed that he's flogging tchochkes on a tiny invitation-only web site for millionaires. Keep an eye out—you might just spot him on the street wearing a sandwich board.

Bob Guccione once lived like a king. The founder of Penthouse magazine, Guccione was once enormously wealthy (he made the Forbes 400 list in the early '80s), and he resided in a massively ornate townhouse off Fifth Avenue decorated with neo-Classical female busts, Byzantine style fountains, and carved marble commodes (above). Then he got a little too ambitious and tried to expand his empire by building a nuclear power plant (no joke) and a casino (slightly more plausible, but no more successful), and by the early '00s—just as the Internet was making his flagship magazine increasingly irrelevant—Guccione's business went bust.

The biggest problems with the New York Times: fluff stories being given prominence, a withering reporting staff, and credulous hacks ready to put lies from politicians on page one. Welcome to 1964.