Question for insane advice columnist Cary Tennis: "Should I ask you for advice?" Response: "Some days I ask myself if I want to live and the answer is eight pelicans going north in a gray sky." In other words, "No."

[Comedian/provocateur Russell Brand in New York today; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Today The Wrap henpecks at the troubled Universal, citing flagging box office returns and office infighting. But the most interesting tidbit is that the studio tried to cut 30 minutes off of Judd Apatow's two-and-a-half-hour Funny People, but failed. Why?

• David Burke's chauffeur is accusing the chef of "punching him in the face and slamming a car-trunk hood on his head" after he asked to take time off for his wife's birthday. Burke faces six months in prison if convicted. [NYP]
• Beatrice Inn's chances of reopening? Slim to none, it seems. [P6]
• It looks like it's the end of the line for Jeffrey Chodorow's Ono. [GS]
• A roundup of places that just opened, or will be open later this week. [Eater]
• A roundup of what will be new in the meatpacking district this fall. [GS]
• The Hamptons scene is a little less decadent this year. Surprise! [NYP]
• The ice cream of the future isn't cold and doesn't melt, apparently. [NYM]
• Coke is testing out a new carbonated milk drink called "Vio." [Fox News]
• Try to block this out when you go out to eat later, but an audit of restaurant inspections finds that 22% of city eateries weren't inspected last year. [NYDN]

Aspray your butt. Why have a stank butt, or stank privates? Aspray them. The odors disappear. As this commercial that's really been running on TV emphasizes: Aspray is safe for your butt, and privates. Click to watch. [via Adfreak]

Oh happy day! The whole Fox & Friends gang was back together again this morning. The wind-blown pumpkin patch was discussing the Gates/Race Police White House beer sit-down, and Brian Kilmeade said more weird isolationist stuff.

Apparently she calls into a local talk radio station all the time. In this clip, she is talking about aliens. Also she predicts Armageddon in 95 years.

Michael Lohan has been out and about in the Hamptons, squiring his new BFF, Jon Gosselin, around town and telling reporters what a fantastic guy he is. Dina Lohan's been busy complaining to the tabloids that her ex-husband is behind on his child support payments. And what's Lindsay Lohan up to?

The Wall Street Journal is up in arms about it; the Associated Press is building a robot army to fight it. But it turns out online news piracy is at most a $250 million-per-year problem. Just how small is that?

The New York Times counts four different legislators trying to attack the epidemic of 'Viva Viagra!' ads from different angles: they violate decency standards, they promote dangerous overuse of risky drugs, they're a poor use of the tax code. Which is fucking true, come on:

That NBC chair Ben Silverman is flying/being pushed out of the peacock coop isn't really all that surprising. He's always been kind of a disaster. A blowhard (in more ways than one) party boy with streaks of ego and irresponsibility.

Delay tactics and procedural shenanigans by the minority party are generally harmless and often entertaining traditions in the House of Representatives, but guess which party is way better at them?

The Cambridge Police Department has released the 911 call that led to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. The caller didn't say the men were black, and she said they could have just been having trouble with their keys.

In your mockable Monday media column: Fox News needs sources for a follow up to their "Tin Foil Hats" scoop, Thrillist gets down, Carol Rosenberg's colleagues speak, Tom Shales is replaced, and we are all corporate tools.

If you're sick of paying for parking—or paying the city for those $105 parking tickets you've been getting—you may want to consider investing in a color printer and a laminating machine. Transportation Alternatives, the advocacy group that promotes bike-riding and mass transit, tested out the city's crackdown on parking permits last week with a totally bogus one they created bearing the seal of the official-sounding (and non-existent) "Citizen Protection Administration." It worked like a charm: Not a single ticket was issued. [NYP]

Everyone got upset earlier because it looked like AT&T had banned notorious website 4chan for hosting tasteless content and maybe for inventing annoying memes. But no! The site was blocked for a purported hack attack against AT&T.

Fox anchor and car chase aficionado Shepard Smith is probably the best anchor on TV right now, both for pure entertainment value and for his genuinely non-partisan commitment to telling the truth as he sees it. Also he hates Boston.

WWD has gotten to the bottom of that lawsuit filed by Condé Nast against the Turks and Caicos last Friday. It seems the archipelago paid for a bunch of ads in a handful of Condé titles in 2007 and 2008, but then never paid its $1 million tab. It also seems the ads played a role in a corruption scandal earlier this year:

The Way We Live Now: Standing. There are so many unpaid interns, we can't even find seats for them all. It's good practice. The 2016 Chicago Olympics' hot new sports are "Standing on the unemployment line" and "Standing there, drunk."

Today we have news about unexpected rising stars, videogames turned movies, and gay people on TV. There are no gay people on TV!