How many ways can you analyze 30 seconds of silent footage? An infinite number of ways! Over the last 24 hours, cable pundits, our modern Vienna Circle, have explored all the possible meanings of a bunch of guys drinking beers.

Bill O'Reilly recently agreed to let fellow Mexican-hater Lou Dobbs onto his show to talk about how Barack Obama is from Kenya. But Dobbs' employer CNN apparently wouldn't let him appear on its chief competitor, Fox News. Imagine that.

In your sweltering Friday media column: the summer doldrums bring lazy story-theft to the New York Times, Conde Nast quits buying newspapers, a new documentary about reporters , to watch, and Pat Kiernan's Twitter is America's most powerful media outlet.

This blurry photo was purportedly taken in the dark heart of Wall Street this morning. As you can see, it clearly shows... uh...

The rain on Wednesday evening didn't keep the crowds away from the launch party for BlackBerry's new Tour smartphone at the Thompson LES. (The bait—a complimentary Tour along with three months of free Sprint Service—probably helped.) Turning out for the occasion, despite the weather: Brooke Shields, Chloë Sevigny, Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford, Ugly Betty's Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato, Erin Lucas and Olivia Palermo from The City, designer Nicole Miller, and IMG senior veep and reality TV judge, Fern Mallis. Not everyone was planning to use their new phone to tweet away, though, as Cityfile correspondent Douglas Marshall found out when he chatted with Shields ("No, I'm not a Twitterer"), and Sevigny ("I'm not really into any of that. No Twitter. No Facebook. No MySpace. None of it"). Mark Indelicato was an exception. After the jump, the Ugly Betty star on his obsession with texting and tweeting.

Three picture deals, reunions, prequels, and the secret ingredient to box office success have all been revealed! Like a fresh patch of skin that emerges after a viscous sunburn, this last week of July has some rejuvenating news from Hollywood.

Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has prostate cancer. He'll have surgery early next month and be back at work, his office says, in September. And he is still seeking reelection in 2010.

The Way We Live Now: With bells on. Jingle bells. Sweaty, stank jingle bells. They get that way when you wear em in July. But the economy demands Christmas shopping now. I want a hideous Jeff Koons diamond sculpture, Santa!

Police say MC Hammer's cousin sexually assaulted a woman in a San Francisco-area hotel. Twitter will be in the lead of every story about this, and not just because that's where the accuser and accused met.

You may not have as much money in your 401K compared to this time last summer, but there is one reason why the summer of 2009 totally rocks: We're all sweating less! The summer is on track to be one of the coolest in history. "Not one 99-degree day. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature will have failed to reach 90 in either June or July." [NYT]

Mayor Bloomberg managed to get the law changed so he could run for a third term. So does that mean he might run for a fourth term, too? Will he be the mayor of this city for the rest of our lives? NY1's Josh Robin put that question to Bloomberg today. The answer? "I don't know." [Politicker]

Kay Bailey Hutchison, who running to replace Rick Perry as governor of Texas, is in trouble because some ridiculous 1990s-style search engine juicing program she bought called her opponent "gay."

The wonders of electrical technology have created an iPhone app for the Weekly World News. Below, a look back at more than a decade of the fattest, skinniest, Satan-est, most eerie predictions and reports of America's greatest paper. Nostradamus, hello!

Yesterday, the guy who created the bull sculpture down by Wall Street filed a lawsuit over what he said was an attempt to exploit his work without permission. Today, a body turned up on top of it, clad only in his underwear. Coincidence? [Dealbreaker]

Today's New York Times Page One recession-porn dispatch is so unrelentingly hackneyed that William Shatner ought to read it aloud to bongos. And it neglects to mention that the hero—a gruff homeless-encampment leader—is a convicted child rapist.

*Which means it's probably a marketing ploy for something.

Today, noted Twitterer Peggy Noonan is writing fanfic about the ghosts of FDR and Nixon, who are coming back to Earth to advise their modern political parties. It is insane.

Hedge fund manager Richard Perry and his fashion-designer wife, Lisa Perry, live in a 17-room penthouse on Sutton Place. They're also big-time modern art collectors and home design obsessives. (Their Manhattan apartment earned a 10-page spread in Vogue a few years ago; in the Hamptons, they may own the only house that has a pool installed in its dining room.) But their art collection has landed the couple in a bit of trouble. The Perrys installed a green stainless-steel "diamond" sculpture by Jeff Koons, which they purchased for $2.3 million in 2005, on the terrace of their Manhattan pad. (A crane was required to put it there.) Not only do the couple's neighbors totally despise the piece ("I think it's as ugly as it comes," says one), some are now complaining that it's blinding them:

"Socialitopoly," from Vanity Fair. Its unbiased rankings: Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar has above-average prestige, but the disgustingly easy-to-enter Waverly Inn is nowhere to be found. Take heed, board game-playing social climbers. Click to enlarge. [VF]

Get ready to hear these a lot on the cable news next month: Republican Minority Leader John Boehner issued his members their August Recess Talking Points. They're a little familiar, and a lot dishonest.