The New York Times' Economix blog has found yet another upside to the recession: It's only happening to men.

Gretchen Carlson knows that not agreeing with "facts" is an American Right. Nancy Pelosi wants to destroy that right, by calling for reasoned, informed debate instead of red-faced shouting. What would Paul Giamatti do?

Go Utah! Only a fraction of you are crazy! It is initially surprising that conservative, lily-white Utah is less nuts than, say, Virginia. But when you think about it for a minute, it makes sense.

Possession of a small amount of weed in New York is only punishable by a ticket and a small fine. So why do cops bring so many people to NYC jails for the same violation? They use tricknology.

Oh no, Westchester will be forced to house black people! All because they were forced to apply for federal housing funds...? And that money was supposed to go to providing affordable housing without furthering segregation and they didn't do that.

How will the Huffington Post turn around its much-criticized health coverage? With a doctor who consults for the likes of McDonalds, PepsiCo and Mars Inc., the candy maker. Dr. Dean Ornish is already at work plugging his clients.

[Nolan Funk survives a mob of rabid tweens at the opening of the Bye Bye Birdie box office on Broadway. Image via Getty]

• The hot dog vendor in front of the Metropolitan Museum has been given the boot. Why, you ask? Shockingly, it seems he's been having some trouble coming up with the $53,558 he has to pay the city in rent each month. [NYDN]
• A roundup of restaurants that just opened, or will be open this week. [TONY]
• Frederick's Downtown closed last week; now Frederick Lesort's Eurotrashy Madison Avenue location has suffered the same fate, alas. [Eater]
• A former assistant to Tavern on the Green owner Jennifer LeRoy claims she was fired from the restaurant after she revealed she was pregnant. [NYP]
• The Wicked Wolf on First Avenue is closing to make way for a second 2nd Avenue Deli, which, once again, won't be on Second Ave. [Eater]
• Want to start your own food truck? It's not as easy as it looks. [GS]
• A few months ago, Gordon Ramsay's food empire was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy; now he reports he's in expansion mode once again. [WSJ]
• The favorite burger chain of leading chefs? In-N-Out, by a landslide. [GS]

Peaches: "If you had to sum up jeans in one word, what would that word be?"
Reply: "The hottest thing to wear."

Phoenix Books president Michael Viner, the man responsible for publishing books by some of the most objectionable figures in recent American history, has died at the age of 74.

Lose your job recently? In search of a new career? Maybe you should consider becoming a hand model! Provided your hands are "veinless, poreless and flawless," you could follow in Ashly Covington's footsteps and earn up to $1,200 a day to fold a tortilla in half or squeeze a little mousse on to your fingertip. Not that it's a bed of roses, mind you. Covington, whose hand modeling reel is above, says she has to moisturize 20 to 30 times a day and estimates she wears gloves 90 percent of the time. "When it's your livelihood, you've got to think hands first," she says. Nor is it necessarily the most glamorous profession. "It seems people think we all live like supermodels and rockstars," says Kimbra Hickey, who made the hand model hall of fame when she appeared on the cover of the novel Twilight. "But it's really just a regular job." There go all your preconceived notions! [CNN via NYM]

The critics think her first big-budget movie sucks. The Washington Post thinks Sienna Miller's famous for no reason. But just wait until you see how Vogue goes after her in The September Issue! This girl's got it bad.

There isn't much of a difference between a dog and a two-year toddler, according to new research. Both are on the "same mental plane," according to a psychology professor and dog expert who reports that like two-year-olds, "dogs can experience fear, anger, happiness and disgust, but not guilt." (Humans don't experience guilt until the age of four or so.) Regrettably, the study did not look into cases in which the parents were operating on the same mental plane as the toddler and dog, but we'll assume the results of that study will be coming along any day now. [Yahoo! News]

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has an interest-free $5.3 million mortgage on his four-story greek revival townhouse in Greenwich Village, courtesy of his sweetheart deal with Condé Nast. What's he pay? Oh, $2,083 a month.

Hot-tempered, wild-eyed, self-pimp Vincent Gallo will have you know that he does not do cocaine.

Famous prosecutor and TV commentator with absolutely no respect whatsoever for the fundamental principles of Western Criminal Justice Nancy Grace wrote a novel! It's about a hard-charging no-nonsense prosecutor....

Do you buy the cover story about the New York Times firing heroic famous person Ben Stein over a "conflict of interest?" You are so naive. This was a preemptive hit, to protect Barack Obama, our dictator.

Not only have House lawmakers proposed blowing half a billion dollars of taxpayer money on eight new jets to ferry them around the world—the same taxpayer money that auto companies and banks were scolded for spending on their own corporate jets a few months ago, of course—now it turns out that the government is probably significantly overpaying for the planes, too. [WSJ]

Only some sort of sicko would see these NYT stories next to each other and go, "Uh, related?"

In your sweltering Monday media column: Don Imus may be back in the big(ish) time, one reporter gets arrested in pursuit of Deion Sanders, another reporter narrowly escapes beheading by the Taliban, and you kill photojournalism.