It's hard to imagine anyone taking seriously a satirical proposal to build an airport on Central Park. Except maybe for the Huffington Post, which ran with the story on its front page tonight.

• Christian Lacroix saved? Possibly! Although Lacroix is keeping mum, a bidder for the struggling fashion house may have emerged. [WWD, Reuters]
• More depressing news about the state of the retail: Manhattan's vacancy rate is 6.5% and rising. [NYT]
• Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen are on the list of the 31 new inductees into the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Like, congrats! [FWD, Cut]
• Hermès reports sales were up 12% during the second quarter. If you've continued to shop there despite the downturn, don't pat yourself on the back. Credit the strong sales of Kelly purses in Asia. [BN]
• It's bad news all around for fashion magazines this September. Ad pages in W are down 53% from last year; Allure has witnessed a 52% drop-off; Vogue is down 37%; and Elle has experienced a 21% decline. [AdAge]
• Rumor has it reality TV star/train wreck Susan Boyle is posing for a Harper's Bazaar photo shoot. The good news? She won't be on the cover. [DM]

These are desperate times for newspapers. Experimentation abounds. For the San Francisco Chronicle this means trying to charge for their fancy (but relatively cheap to duplicate) columnists and giving away less-glamorous (but expensive) reporting.

The latest creation in the Ass-Covering Studio Excuses R&D Dept. is the "Twitter Effect." Movies aren't making money, you see, because too many people are learning, 140 characters at a time, how bad they are.

[Job seekers talk to a Hustler strip club representative at a career fair in San Francisco; image via Getty]

We don't care how many free Disneyland trips you hand out, Tyler Perry! Your newest flick I Can Do Bad All By Myself, appears to be another brick in the towering wall of suck you've built.

Common side effect of Beastie Boy MCA's salivary cancer: dry mouth. Solution: Brass monkey.

Good news: Jackson Browne won his lawsuit against John McCain! The Ohio GOP used "Running On Empty" in a 2008 campaign ad, and so Browne sued them all. And then McCain countersued, weirdly.

• Permanent Brunch, which will only serve brunch (obviously) and will feature the city's first-ever "bacon menu," opens this week or next. [UD, Eater]
• The recession is forcing some restaurants to close, have you heard? [NYP]
• Fedora in the WV isn't closing after 57 years; the hiatus is temporary. [Eater]
• The super-secret entrance to Café Select is no more, alas. [GS]
• A survey of the city's few remaining traditional Jewish delis. [Citysearch]
• The owner of Via Dei Mille is accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. [NYP]
• Rumor has it there have been layoffs and budget cuts at The Box. [DBTH]
• Frank Bruni says he's a big Nora Ephron fan. He also adored Silence of the Lambs, which probably says something about his current career, no? [TDB]
• The Bronx is NYC's fattest borough. Manhattan is New York State's Eastern European model: It's the slimmest of the Empire state's 62 counties. [NYT]

The Huffington Post has hired its fourth ex-Washington Post reporter, young Jose Antonio Vargas. How did Arianna pull of this latest bit of poaching? Emails of "passion" and "exploration." Oh, my, Ms. Huffington!

Turns out that a couple of state workers in Albany hid in some back room smoking weed and selling weed and watching DVDs and passing out on the couch instead of working. And?

[Wicked witch Katherine Heigl arriving at her New York hotel today; image via Splash]

The Economist Group, which owns Roll Call, just bought Congressional Quarterly. CQ was formerly owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute. The Economist Group is controlled by a trust including one Rothschild. Pearson PLC (owners of the Financial Times Group), owns a 50% non-voting stake.

The St. Regis Monarch Beach, the rich-people hotel that AIG executives partied at after getting all their bailout money, couldn't pay its bills and so now a bailed-out Citigroup owns it. And it's losing money. Your money.

Last week, Donald Trump's silly suit against author Timothy O'Brien was tossed out of court by a New Jersey judge. Now another one of his silly legal actions has ended in defeat. Trump filed suit against the law firm Morrison Cohen last year for having the audacity to list him as a client on its website.

Max Isaacson, who directed the fake Sprite Blow Job Spec Ad that was too hot for the world emails: it was a spec ad. Not a real ad. Not connected to the Coca-Cola Company! Hopefully they won't sue him now.

Billionaire teen-girl-massage aficionado Jeffrey Epstein is soon to be a free man! As dawn breaks on Wednesday, the gates of the Palm Beach County correctional facility shall fling ajar and Epstein, lust-crazed from 12 months confinement, will flee.

Trent Reznor has had it with Twitter. The microblogging service let the singer give fans a peek into his personal life; that turned out to be not such a good idea.

Fashion photographer Steven Klein opened up his Bridgehampton estate on Saturday evening to host the summer benefit for the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (Acria), which funds HIV and AIDS-related research, treatment, and education. Sponsored by Calvin Klein Collection and Vanity Fair, the benefit attracted Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Francisco Costa, Italo Zucchelli, Rachel Zoe, Daphne Guinness, Lauren Santo Domingo, Euan Rellie and Lucy Sykes Rellie, Nacho Figueras, Olivia Chantecaille, Stefano Tonchi, Jane Holzer, and Royal Pains cast members Mark Feuerstein, Jill Flint, Paulo Costanzo and Reshma Shetty, among others. Cityfile correspondent Douglas Marshall took a few mintues to chat with famed artist—and longtime Acria supporter—Ross Bleckner about art, life, and Dash Snow.

The New York Times is home to many of America's most annoying columnists: Mustachioed metaphor-mixer Tom Friedman; nature-gazing space-waster Verlyn Klinkenborg; unnecessary pop-politico nickname-giver Maureen Dowd. The paper's best columnist—against all odds!—is in the Metro section.