• Former president George W. Bush has signed a deal with Crown to publish a memoir. Rumor has it he landed a $7 million advance for the book. [AP, NYP]
• For his part, Barack Obama has two books in the works with Crown. He plans to release an abridged, youth-oriented version of Dreams From My Father as well as write a nonfiction book once he leaves office. [CBS News]
• CNBC's keeping it classy. Larry Kudlow set a dollar bill on fire today. [CJR]
• Jim Cramer is still rattling on about Jon Stewart. [Gawker]
• NBC is planning to launch a "singing competition series" that sounds a lot like—yes, you guessed it—Fox's American Idol. [THR]
• CBS is keeping Two and a Half Men on the air through 2012. [NYT]
• The finalists for the Man Booker International Prize include E. L. Doctorow, V. S. Naipaul, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa and Alice Munro. [NYT]
• The noms for the National Magazine Awards are out. [AdAge]
• The cable channel Starz would like to remind you that it exists. [NYT]
• How screwed is the newspaper biz? Here's a pic that sums it up nicely. [BI]

What can one say about this particular episode of The Real World: Brooklyn, this pop-music-scored, messy smear of patriotism and war protest and voting frenzy? Not much, really. But let's try anyway.

"Slanties": stupid hipster joke, or racist hipster serious business idea? Either way, we never thought we'd see something that would make us long for the days of cash fans and shutter shades:

Kelly Ripa jogging in Central Park ... Ed Westwick and Jessica Szohr walking their dog ... Danny DeVito filming scenes for his new movie, When In Rome ... Michelle Williams walking with Matilda in Brooklyn ... Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts pushing son Alexander in a stroller in the West Village ... Jay Mohr carrying his dog in Midtown ... Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian leaving Owl Lab on East 12th Street ... and Josh Duhamel getting out of a cab in front of his hotel.

Marcelo Tas is a Brazilian TV host described as "a tropical version of...Jon Stewart." But you could also describe him as "the first celebrity to trick a company into paying him for bullshit on Twitter."

[An undersea volcano erupts six miles off the coast of Tonga yesterday, awesomely. Pic via Getty. Click to enlarge.]

Poor Donald. The posh tennis club above Grand Central Terminal that the Trumpster has been leasing for a song for three decades now—he pays just $4 a square foot and the rent has never been raised—isn't going to be around for much longer. Metro-North says it plans to tear the courts down to make way for a "rest area" for 1,100 conductors and train engineers. Blue-collar workers taking over a fancy tennis club owned by Donald Trump? We smell revolution! [NYDN via Curbed]

The man you see hiding behind the blue binder is Josef Fritzl, the sick Austrian who plead guilty to enslaving his daughter for 24 years in his own rape dungeon. But what about the binder company???

We're going to take a leap here and say that the wedding registry listed in Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone's names is not, in fact, the real deal. Because while we're sure that both men do their fair share of shopping at JCPenney, we really don't see either of them being too interested in a $14.99 deviled egg plate or a set of cheap towels in coral. (Nor do we imagine they'd be so gauche as to schedule their wedding on Christmas Day.) But we could be wrong, in which case we hope they make the most out of the faux leather massage chair headed their way. [JCPenney]

This striking image was sent to us in response to news that Project Runway contestant Kenley Collins has been arrested for throwing a cat at a person. Free Kenley! And Mumia, while you're at it.

A SAG-sack returns, two beauties team up for impossibly beautiful lovemaking, Up graces Cannes, Kevin Costner is back, and so is Behind the Music.

We suspected it; you prayed for it (especially you, hippie); now it has actually happened: the US government is no longer coming after your "medical" marijuana. Dude:

If the brutal morning news war was played by microfame rules, Good Morning America would be winning. But since broadcast TV is measured by things like ratings and ad dollars, second-place GMA is still losing.

In the treacherous and cut-throat playground of modern sexual politics, it's easy to imagine how one's morals could get slightly compromised, even to the extent of engaging in some light stalking. But given the technologically-savvy, post-privacy age we live in, is there really such a big difference between monitoring someone's Facebook status and secretly implanting a tracking device or hidden video camera in order to catch them cheating on you?

Millions of Americans are struggling on account of the crappy economy, but can we all take a minute to reflect on the especially difficult situation in which Marie Douglas-David now finds herself? The Swedish countess, former investment banker, and estranged wife of United Technologies chairman George David appeared in divorce court yesterday and started things off by asking a judge to toss out the $36 million postnup she signed, since that kind of chump change will "barely last her a decade," and it's not like she can go out and get another finance job or anything what with her husband's constant ridicule having "diminished her self-confidence." She's now asking for a larger cut of David's $300 million fortune, but maybe a new career for Douglas-David isn't out of the realm of possibility. David's lawyer said that the countess constantly subjected her husband to long lectures on "how he held his fork or how he drafted invitations." And isn't that how Martha Stewart got started? [NYP]

If there's one thing we know, it's that readers could not possibly, under any circumstances, care less about any "award" a media outlet receives. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 National Magazine Awards nominees are here:

Is there anything left to the Jim Cramer-Jon Stewart feud? Probably not, but Cramer went on the Today Show to ask for a do-over, claiming his groveling on The Daily Show was just an act.

Today we have a football player who can drank, a skeezy casting couch situation, an STD-riddled TV actor, and a PA fed up with covering for his cheating boss.

Oh no, "Skanks in NYC," the city's top craptastic Blogspot blog about the alleged skankiness of cover model Liskula Cohen, has been pulled from the internet in the wake of Cohen's ridonkulous lawsuit. Never forget:

Just think of all the wonderful things that could have been purchased with the $165 million that AIG spent on employee bonuses instead. For starters: 4,538 elementary school teacher salaries; 8,250,000 pills of Ecstasy; 4,364 free rides to a state school; and 471,428 one-way tickets to China. [Jossip]