Though boring Jill Zarin and crazy Ramona Singer are still holding out for more money, a third season of Real Housewives of New York City has been greenlit, and the producers are in the hunt for more housewives...

• Rumor has it the end may be near for Marcus Samuelsson's Aquavit. [TFB]
• Café Noir, on the other hand, will live on. Following reports the Soho spot would be forced to close its doors this summer comes word that the owners have convinced their landlord to renew their lease for another year. [Eater]
• Danyelle Freeman of the NYDN gives four out of five stars to Andrew Carmellini's "thoughtful and imaginative" cooking at Locanda Verde. [NYDN]
• Philippe Bertineau, the executive chef at the now-shuttered Payard, speaks out about the UES pâtisserie/bistro's untimely demise. [TONY]
• Butcher Bay, the seafood spot in the East Village, has filed suit against Community Board 3 over its decision to deny it a liquor license. [Eater]

Sure, the Department of Defense designed it to be military-grade rugged, but no one really knew if the internet could handle a memorial service webcast of a pop megastar. Oh, it was brutal. From a network engineering perspective.

While you were all just hanging out last weekend swimming in a pool and smoking weed, Michael Phelps was being quietly reintroduced as a pitchman for Subway.

George Allen, the Republican senator from Virginia who thought he could be president before hurling French racial epithets at dark-skinned people and attempting to hide his shameful Jewish ancestry, is writing a book called The Triumph of Character.

Drudge protege Andrew Breitbart's logic-free sound insane via voicemail. But on Twitter, he's just an adorable curmudgeon. And on the topic of Michael Jackson's funeral, he has the benefit of being a refreshing antidote to the cable news saccharine sweetness.

The Guardian's Paul Collier has proposed a brand new crime (and a brand new word): bankslaughter: "With bankslaughter, when the bank blows up—even if it is a decade later—a criminal investigation traces back to determine whether crucial decisions were reckless. If a reasonable banker faced with the information available at the time would not have taken those risks, the person responsible is dragged off the golf course and jailed." Clusterstock's John Carney thinks this may just be the dumbest idea ever and should be "nipped in the bud before some populist lawmaker tries to make a garden party out of it." In the meantime, if you see Jimmy Cayne, Chuck Prince, or Dick Fuld on a golf course tomorrow and they look a little queasy, now you know why. [Guardian via Clusterstock]

Well, that was both horrifying and depressing. The Michael Jackson Public Memorial has lurched to a close and, to paraphrase a commenter, we feel like we've been underwater for hours. Messy and strange, let's remember the remembrance.

Chris Brown, woman-beater, showed up at Puffy's White Party last weekend wearing a $300,000 pendant "that spelled out the word 'OOPS!' in diamonds." What a fucking asshole. [YBF via The Awl]

The Michael Jackson memorial is over, the 20,000 people who attended the event at the Staples Center have long since returned home to cry into their pillows, and the millions more tuned into the spectacle via TV and the Web have gone back to watching the usual—sitcoms, crappy reality programming, and Internet porn. The spectacle is expected to go down as one of the most-viewed events in history. (A few people less than the "several billion" predicted by Jackson family flack Ken Sunshine this morning, but still.) But just because the memorial is over and Jackson has been laid to rest (or has he?) doesn't mean you can't keep Jackson's memory alive in your hearts. And on your skin. Have you been thinking about a Michael Jackson memorial tattoo? You are not alone! [Buzzfeed]

Crowds may be wise, but they're not necessarily savvy. Witness this online poll, where the first 2,500 respondents have deemed Mario Lopez flamingly gay, while Kevin Spacey and Vin Diesel get loads of votes as straight.

A successful PR pitch starts with a subject line that grabs the eye. Congratulations to Eric Schwartz, who pitched us a spa review story with the subject line above. Aspiring writers, take note. Here's a taste of the story's magic:

Jeffrey Epstein, the shadowy money manager who pleaded guilty in 2007 to soliciting underage teen girls for sex, is expected to leave a Florida prison in a couple of weeks. (Not that he's been spending much time behind bars in recent months: As part of a work-release program, he's been allowed to leave the jail from 10am to 10 pm, six days a week, to "work" out of his "office" in West Palm Beach.) But while Epstein has something to be cheerful about these days, one of his old acquaintances was handed a major defeat last week. Maximilia "Ava" Cordero, the transgender teenager who sued Epstein and claimed she'd been forced to engage in "bizarre and unnatural sex acts" with the billionaire in exchange for his help advancing her career as a model, just lost her libel and defamation lawsuit against the New York Post.

If you've been craving the re-entrance of PotUSA into your life, why not take this survey, email the last question to surveys@gawker.com, and register to win a Nintendo Wii? You'll be one step closer to churning out the bass line of "Lump" in your living room using Rock Band 2.

The Way We Live Now: Under the thumb of the papacy. The Pope is calling for some super-Illuminati to rule the world economy. No need, dude; we had one already, called Ikea. And it's laying people off.

Google finally dropped the "beta" label from GMail. A bit hasty, no? The product launched just half a decade ago; its inventor left Google barely 18 months back. Why the rush to commit?

Yes, the Michael Jackson memorial — going on now! — is being watched everywhere right now. But the only question if you happened to have been on TV filling time was "How big is this?"

Not that you'd ever need one to make a call, of course, but if you happen to be a film location scout and you're looking for an old phone booth to capture the look of a pre-cell phone NYC (or you just enjoy changing your clothes in them à la Superman), do note that that there are only four of them still standing in Manhattan. [Scouting NY via Gothamist]

In your failure-prone Tuesday media column: The Printed Blog does not revolutionize the media, the Washington Post investigates endlessly, the newspaper industry declines more than 100%, and—what's this?—the City of New York wants to give money to you!

• The Sci Fi Channel is now called Syfy. It's pronounced the same way, except it's less science fiction-y, which is why it was changed to begin with. [THR]
• Justin Timberlake has tapped lit agent David Vigliano to sell publishers on the notion that Timberlake is just the person to write a book about golf. [NYO]
• After a heated, two-year battle, big record labels and online radio stations have finally agreed on new royalty rates for streaming music online. [NYT]
• Who says embattled media companies are doing their best to spend money more wisely? The soundstage for Jay Leno's new primetime show will be "specially fitted to accommodate his passion: expensive cars." [THR]
• "Online predators" have hit Twitter. Paging Dateline's Chris Hansen! [LAT]
• A new study finds that kids are spending more time online. Surprise! [AP]
• Equally shocking: Breaking the Jackson story has boosted TMZ's traffic. [AP]