Someone sent along this side-by-side of Kurt Andersen and John Hughes, two men whose sensibilities came to define the late '80s and early '90s, for better and for worse. Where have we seen this bit before?

The best college in the country? That would be the U.S. Military Academy (otherwise known as West Point), believe it or not—at least according to Forbes, which just issued its list of "America's Best Colleges":

In your good old-fashioned Friday media column: A legal tiff over SEXTING (are your kids doing it?), the looming end of magazine subscription cards, Dana Milbank needs help, and thieving Oprah is sued, for $1 trillion. Yes.

Lady Gaga has a knack for getting attention. So it's no surprise that video of the singer revealing a mini-penis at a concert successfully captured the attention of the Googling hordes. Britney Spears would be proud of this NSFW non-slip-up.

Peggy Noonan likes Barack Obama, she really does. But he should know, she writes, that he is terrifying everyone. And that is why they are all shouting at congressmen, now. Because Obama scared them.

The Way We Live Now: Alone. Abandon the kids! Or better yet, don't have the kids in the first place. They're the reason you're broke. And they'll just grow up to hide out in tax havens and rob taco trucks.

It's been more than two years since restaurateur (and drama magnet) Nello Balan filed suit against Amy Sacco's Bungalow 8, accusing the club's bouncers of beating him up during a visit to the former hot spot back in May 2006. Nello came forward in the spring of 2007 to say that a bouncer had punched him in the eye and hit him over the head with a metal object (he also said his 21-year daughter was pushed), and the altercation left him with 10 stitches and a fracture to his eye-socket.

Is that good or bad? We just don't know anymore in this topsy-turvy world of bailouts and bonuses and government ownership of corporate monsters. But whatever—AIG pulled in a cool $1.8 billion last quarter.

Richard Rushfield is still on vacation before joining Gawker, but he couldn't resist weighing in with another dispatch, involving dearly-departed director John Hughes, an LA-area deli, and some serious trash talk.

Padma Lakshmi announced in January that she was branching out with a "food-inspired" jewelry line. The items went on sale at stores like Bergdorf this past spring, and they've been selling briskly, according to WWD. So now it's time to expand, apparently. An ad campaign for the collection kicks off this fall, one that, per usual, plays to Padma's passion for not wearing clothes unless it's absolutely necessary: "The photos show a glistening, nude Lakshmi draped in her delicate gold and gemstone spices, which take inspiration from foods such as lentils and cardamom pods." [WWD]

Wrigley had the bright idea to pay Chris "Bubblegum" Brown to put out a pop song that was actually a Wrigley commercial—but without telling anyone it was a Wrigley commercial. The public ate it up! It went huge on pop charts! Proving that people who drive chart sales have no taste, and Wrigley has no ethics.

Mel Martinez (R-FLA) is resigning from the Senate. Not in a "not seeking reelection sense," but in a "not coming back from the recess" sense. Why? The dreaded "family reasons."

Bernie Madoff's Montauk estate hasn't been sold off yet. Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard has yet to pick a broker(s) to handle the sale yet—possibly because he's been too busy counting his money—although the competition for the listing is fierce, according to Dan's Papers. And while Dan's debunks one myth that's been making the rounds—"Reports that a group of untidy pot smoking surfers are using the pad to hang out, party and chill is false"—it does offer up a rather tantalizing new rumor, one that may have you rushing over to pay Casa Madoff a visit this weekend:

Joe Scarborough was on Jimmy Fallon's show last Wednesday night, and he wanted to work through his mid-life crisis by playing some rock'n'roll guitar. So he played an Elvis Costello song about desperately wanting to get laid, with the Roots.

Paper Heart comes out in limited release today, with Michael Cera playing — surprise! — an awkward teenager in a twee comedy. Satirists have already mocked Cera's typecasting; are they overstating things? Here's a side-by-side comparison of the actor's work.

Breaking: The New York Times Co. would maybe like to sell the tanking Boston Globe, the company revealed yesterday after everybody already knew it for months. More surprisingly, somebody might actually want to buy the paper!

We're getting tips that NBC Universal is laying off the creative services staffs—the people that make those awful "news at 11" promo spots—at all of its stations nationwide, and will start producing all promos out of New York.

A DDoS attack is one of the oldest, simplest, and lamest ways to "hack" anything, but lost in the news of recent attacks on Gawker and Twitter has been this even lamer "hack" of Congressional websites.

From George Wayne's chat with Michael Kors in the new issue of Vanity Fair:

Current TV journalist Laura Ling did actually momentarily, for a second, "very, very briefly" cross into North Korean territory before she was arrested there last March, her sister said. Kim Jong-Il was right! Let's go to the official record.