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You do know how to pronounce Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, don't you? You're not one of those people who pronounces Hermès as "Her-meees," are you? In case you've been having trouble with the names of foreign fashion designers, the Imperial Hotel Management College in Vancouver has uploaded clips to YouTube to demonstrate how it's done. As The Moment points out, though, the school "seems to conflate the house's proper pronunciation with the accent of its country of origin." (In other words, follow the school's instructions and you may end up sounding dumb and/or incredibly pompous.) Worse still: A couple of the clips featuring the names of French designers sound as if they were recorded by French-Canadians, which may very well be a crime graver than the one committed against the House of Versace by Elizabeth Berkley's character in Showgirls. [The Moment via Gawker]

[Former (!) "Hills"ian Lauren Conrad at a party for her new YA book; image via Bauer-Griffin]

In your ugly Thursday media column: a Chinese newspaper executive is brutally murdered, Sears pimps 'Good News,' John Norris picks up a new gig, and somebody's interested in the Boston Globe:

Question answered: Bruno is bad for the gays! Some gay groups are beginning a campaign against Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming realityish comedy, about an Austrian fashion reporter who's a bit light in the loafers. GLAAD seems particularly unhappy.

The feds filed a criminal complaint today against James von Brunn for the murder of Steven Tyrone Johns, a security guard at the National Holocaust Museum. It includes a note von Brunn wrote saying "Obama was created by Jews."

California's liberal millionaires have turned the Tesla Motors waiting list into a thing of wonder. It's thousands of dollars just to sign up. But company bigwigs fetishize their electric vehicle just as irrationally, a lawsuit reveals. Heartening.

• The late night battle rages on: After losing ground to Letterman, Conan bounced back last night, and had a pretty solid first week overall. [THR, NYT]
• Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. confirms that it has been talks with the New York Times Co. to purchase the Boston Globe. [BH]
• Stephen Colbert's decision to broadcast from Iraq worked out nicely: Ratings for the Comedy Central show have been up 25 percent this week. [NYT]
• Joy Behar is launching a new talk show on HLN. The best part about it: She'll be bumping blowhard Lou Dobbs from his 9pm slot on the network. [NYT]
• TV, print and online ad spending fell 14 percent in the first quarter. [WSJ]
• Hope you're a Marley & Me fan. HarperCollins is cemented a deal to publish 13 children's books about the world's most famous Labrador. Yes, 13. [PW]

Earlier this week, Glenn O'Brien, the editorial director in charge of Brant Publications' magazines—Interview, Art in America, and others—left the company. Now O'Brien says the entire company is "going insane."

Hello. My name is Joshua David Stein. I think we should probably talk about what happened last night on Bravo's Top Chef: Masters. It was at once heartwarming and a little creepy.

When you heard that Martin Scorsese was directing an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel called Shutter Island starring Michelle Williams, Leo DiCaprio, and Ben Kingsley, you maybe got as excited as we did. Well, calm down. It looks awful.

Now that the Uighurs from Guantanamo Bay are getting shipped off to exile in the island paradise of Palau, someone's got to cover their arrival, right? So which lucky bastards from dying dinosaur media companies get to go?

Men.Style.com and Kanye West hosted the "The Women of Fashion 2009" at the New York Palace Hotel last night. Intrepid nightlife reporter Douglas Marshall caught up with Kanye to ask him about, well, women and fashion:

The Way We Live Now: Reversibly. No one must feel ashamed of their newfound status as poors; Rather, we shall subtly shift the general public's perception of wealth into something distasteful. Yes. Yes. Class is wealth! Saving is salvation!

A third murder committed by a right-wing extremist? Eh, worth a link, sure. Obama administration takes a "half step" to let shareholders have a say in executive compensation? Fire up the siren.

Ladies, sick of being depicted as gold-dug layabouts who suckle off the teat of their husbands' "hard work"? Well Real Housewives is getting a flipsy-daisy with a new Fox Reality Channel (yes, this exists) series called Househusbands of Hollywood.

Mayor Bloomberg says the city will launch an investigation into who permitted an inmate at the Tombs to host a bar mitzvah for his son inside the prison, an event that included catered food, 60 guests, and six hours of hora dancing. "Clearly, this is not something that should have taken place," Bloomberg said this afternoon. Should we take this as a sign Bernie Madoff's jailhouse Passover seder is not happening next year? [NYP]

Sad Web nerds plan to stay in front of their computers late Friday night to obtain short, easy-to-remember Facebook addresses ("facebook.com/sadwebnerd"). It's the start of a geeky land grab! But true geeks know why this is stupid.

Stop laughing at swine flu right this instant: the World Health Organization has just declared the first global flu pandemic in 41 years, meaning we're all just one mutation away from devastation: