Not but an hour ago, we solicited your classy-lite New York memories photos, to help us get through these worrisome times. Well if that's just a little too thinky of a Yearbook project for you, here are two photos of lesbian deejay Samantha Ronson (she dates a former actress named Lindsay Lohan) back when she was in high school. A little videogame playing nerdette! Who hugged boys. And... oh pish. It's a Friday. Peep away at a larger version of the above pic, and at another snap, after the jump.

There is no form of activism lazier than Internet activism. A new startup promises not to harness that laziness as much as to embody it, aiming to convert clicks into do-gooding, through some online alchemy of advertising.

New Yorker author Hendrick Hertzberg's made a powerful enemy: Bill O'Reilly! O'Reilly selected Hertzberg for the honor of an ambush by that smug "producer" who ambushes people mostly because Hertzberg wrote something mildly critical of O'Reilly that was easy to take out of context and also in terms of imaginary powerful "liberal elitists" to battle, you can't do better than a political writer for The New Yorker. The sadly anti-climactic video of the ambush, attached.

Amid its Oprah-crowning and Miley-dragging, THR's new Power 100 list of the most powerful women in entertainment yields little turnover and few surprises. But when it does, at least it makes it count. Like naming Katherine Heigl the fifth highest-paid actress in Hollywood? Surprise!

The New York Daily News has trailed the Post's Page Six in the New York gossip wars for a long time. Now the paper is blowing up its gossip columns and starting over. Two major changes went down today. First, husband and wife gossip team Rush & Molloy announced this morning that they'll be moving from a daily column to a Sunday-only schedule, after more than 13 years. Second—and more dramatic—we hear that Jo Piazza, who wrote the paper's Full Disclosure column, has resigned.

Sad news: pivotal science fiction figure Forrest J Ackerman has passed away. Ackerman was a true renaissance man; he founded the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, discovered Ray Bradbury, and is widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi." He also owned an amazing Los Feliz house filled with memorabilia that became known as the Ackermansion, which he would let fans visit every Saturday:

So the British attached some teddy bears to weather balloons, floated 'em up, and enthusiastically reported that said bears had reached the edge of space—and returned safely to earth, as well! They've "become the first soft toys to take part in extra-vehicular activity (to use correct NASA jargon) at such an altitude," reports the Daily Mail. Um, good work, Great Britain! Now what? (America, fuck yeah!)

Back in the day, bloggers who didn't do any reporting like Mickey Kaus and Jeff Jarvis and probably Glenn Reynolds used to spend a great deal of time talking about how the blogs (specifically their blogs) would soon supplant the "Main Stream Media" forever. Well, some years have passed, and the MSM is in dire straits, but blogs have not really made much of a dent in CNN and the New York Times' market share, eyeballs-wise, and the boundary-blurring has manifested itself mainly as old school publications getting a little more "webby" in tone and content. There is one metric, though, that has bloggers pulling ahead of their MSM counterparts: jail time! The Committee to Protect Journalists just released its 2008 prison census, and as you can see in the attached pie chart, internet people finally make up a greater share of the journo prison population than snooty newspaper jerks. Way to go, internet, and Burma! [CPJ]

The celebrity-industrial complex will expand, must expand, can't help but expand until every site on the Web features gossipy famous-people headlines. The latest entrant: DailyFill, MySpace's slapdash copycat celebrity-news site.

· A Spanish version of SNL will premiere early in 2009, but not necessarily on a Saturday night. Fernando Jerez, programming director of Cuatro, said in a statement the sketch show is "going to be pretty much like the original version" and that the network "couldn't be more excited to host its first token Negro." [Variety]
· Barbara Walters's 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008 lifted ABC to a Thursday win. We were sure she was going to pick Obama for the top spot, but she threw everyone a curveball and chose a certain courageous and tenacious woman from the campaign trail instead. We couldn't agree more. [Variety]
· Joseph Fiennes and John Cho are close to starring in ABC's new Lost companion series Flash Forward, the tale of a worldwide two-minute blackout caused by watching ABC's last, snore-inducing Lost companion series, Life on Mars. [THR]

Please direct your tawdry gossip, useful info, and corrections here.

Few figures on the New York social scene are as ubiquitous (or charming) as Euan Rellie, the Brit-born banker, husband of Lucy Sykes, and veteran man-about-town. So when he sits down with Men.Style.com and shares his list of holiday party tips, you'd be well advised to pay close attention. (After all, he'd better have something to show for his 665 pictures on Patrick McMullan.) After the jump, Rellie's tips on playing the perfect guest and hosting the perfect soirée, including what you should and shouldn't talk about (talking about kindergarten admissions is boring; discussing racism with Spike Lee is dangerous); why people will have more faith in you if you pretend you're British ("there's a spurious credibility that comes from speaking in an accent"); why decor doesn't matter (it's the guest list that counts); and why it's important to make sure lots of pretty girls are there: "Everybody likes pretty girls, from octogenarian aunts to your kids to gay guys to boring married guys." And don't let the grim talk of a recession (including our own) deter you: "When the economy gives you lemons, you'd better be able to twist them into some festive cocktails."

With this old decade of riches crumbling around us, how can we soothe our jangled nerves? We suggest with an act of remembrance-as-catharsis. You know, like putting old photos of you and your New York heyday buddies up on Facebook!

♦ A sensational robbery was carried out at Harry Winston in Paris last night. Robbers—dressed in drag, no less—made off with $108 million diamond rings, gem-studded bracelets and other jewelry, making it one of the largest such heists ever. [AP]
♦ Sofia Coppola is in Tokyo this evening to unveil her new line of accessories for Louis Vuitton. [WWD]
♦ Courtney Cox is the new face of Avon's women's fragrance, Spotlight. [WWD]
♦ "Save Anna" t-shirts have materialized, of course. [Racked]
♦ More on the party last night for Vera Wang's new boutique in Soho. [WSJ]

Sure, we got problems, but at least the Queen of England didn't indirectly shut down our government. Sucks to be Canada! [Slate]

Attention Disney: If you're truly serious about positioning Wall-E as a Best Picture candidate, please send out these Wall-E bentos as a culinary For Your Consideration ad. Like, now. We're hungry, and we'll take two. Full-size after the jump:

A frequent viewer of The Hills once explained it to us as "Professional wrestling, but for women. You know it's fake, but you want to keep up with the storylines anyway." Perhaps that's why MTV continues to ignore the actual, tabloid-documented reality of what has happened to its successful stars in favor of an increasingly more laughable alternate universe where all four women are still struggling 9-to-5ers. Today brought two more examples of their tomfoolery:

If only Michael J. Fox, the actor and professional Parkinson's disease victim, had been an Internet genius like Google cofounder Sergey Brin, think of the good he might have done.

We hear that Outside's "upscale travel and style magazine" GO has laid off several staffers, and may be planning to fold after a couple more issues. If you have any info on this or any other candidates for the Great Magazine Die-Off, email us. UPDATE: The magazine's PR person emailed us a press release from two weeks ago saying the magazine is cutting back to two issues next year. There you go!

Remember SaveKaryn.com? Back in 2002, a young blondie NYC lass in major credit-card trouble posted an online plea for donations towards her "cause"—crowdsourcing her debt solution, as it were. The Observer certainly remembers: "Ms. Bosnak parlayed her moment of internet 'fame' into a book called Save Karyn and then a novel titled 20 Times a Lady." That second book was about the lady exploring her sexual "quota" and bednotches and what it all meant as she searched for Mr. Right—Who Also Has To Have Money, Too, Obviously. And now it has been optioned for a movie. God help us. Starring the impossibly bubbly Anna Faris, who is just so cheerful and cute that we want to stab her! [Vulture] I mean, how could you go wrong with a film adaptation, given this review on the book's Amazon page: