Randi Zuckerberg, the limelight-seeking sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a key lesson of media success: As you scale the ladder, make sure to jab your stiletto heels into the faces of those you climb over. Zuckerberg, whose day job is in Facebook's marketing department, has been writing weekly for former magazine editor Tina Brown's mostly ignored Daily Beast website since it launched — but only recently has she turned mean. We love it, of course. The target of her freshly poisoned pen: the hipster lip dub, those single-shot singalongs so popular with startups and would-be Internet celebrities. What Zuckerberg does write: "In case there was any doubt that the chief purpose of the Internet is to perpetuate narcissism, lip dub videos put that to rest." What she does not write:She has participated in many a lip-dub video herself, including one with Julia Allison, the New York party attendee who parlayed a career of writing about nothing for magazines to appearing on the cover of magazines for doing nothing. Allison is not mentioned in her piece, but she is surely present within it; Zuckerberg mentions "Flagpole Sitta," a lip dub performed by the employees of Connected Ventures, the ex-startup of Allison's ex-boyfriend Jakob Lodwick. Allison dispatched, Zuckerberg moves to targets closer to home, taking on the Camp Cyprus 20, the Internet 20somethings who filmed themselves singing along to "Don't Stop Believin'" at a seaside vacation home in Cyprus right as Wall Street imploded. What she does not mention: That the first person we see in the video is her Facebook coworker Dave Morin; Facebook engineers and designers appear later. Zuckerberg slams them all equally: "You hate them for having so much fun — damn that unbridled, financially secure joy!" Next target: Revision3, the San Francisco online-video startup best known for recording Diggnation, a podcast by Digg founder Kevin Rose. "They probably won't be recording any more lip dubs any time soon, we hear they laid off a third of their staff this week," Zuckerberg writes. Ouch! She could have added that after reading her article, Revision3 also won't be lending out its production facilities for any more of Zuckerberg's music videos, as it did for "Dontcha," a spoof about the iPhone. Ah, the smell of burnt bridges. Zuckerberg, in person, comes across as shy and self-effacing. The only hint of bile I ever detected was in a previous video, "Valleyfreude," where she mocks Friendster, an also-ran social network crushed by Facebook, and scoffs at Yahoo for offering Facebook a mere $1 billion in an acquisition offer her brother turned down. But Randi Zuckerberg has always had her eyes on a bigger stage than the Valley. Even her job at Facebook, running the site's election-related features, has been helpful in this regard, landing her on ABC and other news broadcasts to talk about online get-out-the-vote efforts. Now she's moonlighting for Tina Brown, in the hopes of getting her hooks into New York media circles. The Daily Beast, an unwieldy, overstaffed website, is an unlikely candidate to emerge from next year's economic wreckage. But that won't matter to Zuckerberg: She's already perfected the art of stepping over those she can safely discard. Watch out, Facebookers: Do you think she'll forget how you made her take "Valleyfreude" offline?

The names of the most recent crop of people who passed the New York bar exam were made public today, and guess who's not on it? Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel, who decided to enroll in law school after she felt powerless on 9/11 (and her subsequent books Bitch and Now, More Again: A Memoir of Addiction were literary duds). Wurtzel, who graduated last May at the age of 40, doesn't sound like she's the best test-taker.Wurtzel was seen taking the July exam at the Javits Center, a tipster tells us, but, as you can see below, the pass list is Wurtzel-less.

[Amy Winehouse, who is the definition of the term "troubled singer" in London today; image via Bauer-Griffin] Neutralize's new line beats the original, Area Man Not Sure If The 'Monkey Foxes' Are 'At It Again,' But Yes, Miss, He Will Check. And No, Miss, He's Not Leaving. He'll Be Right Back. And Please Put Down That Spatula, Miss.

The New York Times is folding Play, its quarterly sports-focused magazine. FishbowlNY spoke to Play editor Mark Bryant, who said that although the mag broke even last year, "The company needs to make some pretty considerable cuts going forward," and his magazine was one of them. This is a bad sign. T, the Times' fashion magazine, turns enough of a profit to prop up a lot of money-sucking newsgathering operations; the NYT doubtless hoped that Play could do the same. Not in this ad market, apparently. Scratch that off the dwindling list of lifelines for the Times. [FBNY; anybody with more info can email us.]

NBC began teasing Rosie Live in prime-time over the weekend, alerting viewers to Rosie O'Donnell's Nov. 26 variety-show experiment by touting a slate of America's most well-recognized holiday-season talent. Alanis Morissette! Kathy Griffin! Ne-Yo! Acrobats! And, in a booking coup loaded with potential for grandeur, onstage collapse and/or both, Liza Minnelli, herself the host of one of TV's all-time great variety specials and a showstopping Rosie idol from way, way back. What to expect? O'Donnell defies you to wait and see:

Eliot Spitzer, you fool. You could have been a contender! When Spitzer resigned as governor of New York in March, rather than standing and fighting like the stubborn-to-the-point-of-idiocy man that he is, he was ceding his political future to the vagaries of luck. And his luck is not good, obviously, or he would still be sneaking into hotel rooms with Ashley Alexandra Dupre. But what if he had hung on, boldly stood up for his imaginary right to patronize hookers, and stayed in office? He'd be headed to the US Senate in January. Think about it: if Spitzer had decided not to resign (as we advised at the time), he'd now be a scandal-ridden and likely ineffective governor. He would also, however, have the luck to be a high officeholder in New York now that Obama has been elected. Obama is very likely to name Hillary Clinton to a cabinet position. That will mean New York needs its governor to name a new Senator to fill her spot. If Spitzer were still the governor, who better to name than himself? The state Democrats would surely support it, just to be able to clear him the hell out so the party could move on to a slightly more scandal-free future. And nobody in Washington would really mind, because they all fuck whores there, at least metaphorically. So Spitzer could have put himself in Hillary's seat and installed David Paterson as governor, just as he is now. Spitzer's particular skill set—cracking down on corporate profligacy—is looking pretty good right now. Once the Post got off his ass about the scandal, he'd probably be able to do some good. But he resigned, so none of this will happen. It would be kind of nifty if Paterson appointed him to the seat now, as some have suggested. (It would be great for Paterson, who would have neatly gone from being a little-known Lieutenant Governor to having Spitzer owe him a huge favor). But it won't happen, because in America you can screw taxpayers, but not hookers. Live and learn. Spitzer will be back on the scene in two years either way. [pic via LAT]

The silly pranksters at Improv Everywhere just posted their latest stunt: The performance group sent 20 "agents" to JFK to welcome home total strangers with flowers and balloons, cribbing their names from car service signs. More photos and video of the shenanigans here. [Improv Everywhere]

Hatteras Networks, as the name suggests, is in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company bragged to the Wall Street Journal that they've laid off 20 of 80 employees, weeks after Denton and Calacanis beat them to it. Tough times, totally awesome decisions! I only hope you recognize this one-company trend story for what it really is: An ad. The message is at the end: "Revenue has grown more than 100% every year for the last three years." Now they're sure to get a decent acquisition offer. All they had to do was fire the 20 most problematic employees.

Meh, the unimpressed expression of "who cares" coined on The Simpsons, has now officially entered the lexicon. It's being listed in the Collins English Dictionary! In these crazy times of war and crumbling economy it could have been some dread-filled "word" like ZOMG that got the honor, or it may have been a Hope and Change rally word like Obamamania (well, all right, that would never happen, but still). I guess it speaks to a young generation defined not by apathy exactly, but by a sense that we're (they're?) not supposed to be easily impressed, that this dismissive, tarty little word made the list. Kids have been sort of unimpressable for a while now, probably, but only recently has the idea of childhood become such a resoundingly cynical one. Markets are tested and groups are focused and everything's dangerous and sarcasm is now mistaken for cute, youthful willfulness. That 'meh' became the battle cry for this seen-it-all generation makes perfect sense; it's funny in its onomatopoeic nonsensicalness—it's like someone gave up halfway when trying to come up with a word. It's a bit sarcastic, just like kids like it, and it came from a pop culture touchstone. It worked its way up, in such a modern little cyber-organic way, through the school halls and internet chatting rooms and it's now in a big British book. It even beat out the über-popular Sex and the City term "frenemy," which was being considered too! Maybe that means that a meh attitude isn't a path to slackerness and failure, but rather an alternative route to success! The meh sentiment demands a lot—impress me!, it yells. And maybe that's a good thing. Or, you know, whatever. Maybe not. Who cares anyway.

Where do you mine for easy laughs when you no longer have the most satirizable election in history at your disposal? In SNL's case, that would be the Gays, a topic this week's Paul Rudd-hosted episode visited and revisited so often, we lost count. And where does the show stand on the subject, in this, arguably the most important week for gay civil rights in history? Enjoy the highlight reel above, accompanied by this handy synopsis: · The fun starts with a sketch about an overly affectionate family that builds to Samberg making out with Fred Armisen for no apparent reason. · Then there was a legitimately funny Digital Short in which Rudd and Samberg paint each other naked, that ends in what has to be the most violent scene in the show's history. (If the episode had a secondary theme, it would be guns blowing people's heads off.)· Moving along, we have a carload of seemingly straight guys admitting shocking things in song, that—surprise!—starts with Jason Sudeikis admitting he had sex with a male cab driver. · Here's where things get really interesting. Seth Meyers introduces the topic of Prop 8 on Weekend Update. The crowd boos, which annoys the anchor, who admonishes them by saying, "OK. Vote's over." What follows is an over-the-top flaming Bobby Moynihan as Hanna-Barbera character Snagglepuss, who decries Prop 8, but denies he himself is gay. He finally admits it, and says he has a "partner"—the Great Gazoo. · A parody of Beyonce's "Put A Ring On It" video featuring backup dancers Justin Timberlake, Moynihan, and Samberg in high heels and leotards. They could have played this straight, and it would have been funnier, but instead they lisp and mince the way gay people do (that's supposed to be sarcasm for those of you currently wearing your fierce, Tom Ford irony-ray-blocking sunglasses), and it gets old kind of quick. · Another direct reaction to Prop 8 features yet two more characters in the closet—tough guy parking attendants played by Rudd and Bill Hader. The humor derives from the fact that they are so in denial about their homosexuality, they act as if their random sex acts in bathrooms, and with each other, is all a joke. It ends with them proposing to each other and talking about how excited they are to have a wedding. Before you leap into the comments to either defend the material as hilarious and that's all that matters, or decry it as ugly stereotyping that couldn't come at a more insensitive moment, we'd just like to remind you all of one thing, OK? Vote's over.

Nevermind that Lipstick Jungle was axed by NBC last week: Brooke Shields thinks the show is doing great! In fact, she says the show has a "huge fanbase," people have been demonstrating their support by mailing NBC chief Jeff Zucker tubes of lipstick, and the only reason the the show is rumored to be on the rocks is because it's "so popular on DVR" that advertisers don't know what to do with it yet. Possibly related: Shields shares a birthday (and astrological chart) with Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. [NYO, NYP]

The company whose "Think" slogan became a generational buzzword isn't doing so well with the brand identity campaigns lately. A tipster points out that IBM's latest mouthful of a proverb, "A mandate for change is a mandate for smart," comes illustrated with what looks exactly like a 1981 Keith Haring drawing rinsed of its pizazz. The accompanying essay reads like Kevin Kelly in Wired circa 1993. I stopped reading when I got to the claim, "Smart healthcare systems can lower the cost of therapy by as much as 90%." Call me when that's ready.

Though she'll always have a permanent place in our heart/loins, we're a little worried that Helen Mirren is toeing the thin line that separates saucy cougars from grandmothers who say totally inappropriate things at dinner. First, the Oscar-winning actress made it known that she eschews bangers and mash for a somewhat more unpalatable "date rape and eightball" combination platter. Now, in an insane 3500-word interview with the Times in which writer Chrissy Iley can barely restrain herself from pouncing on Mirren to reenact Caligula's most salacious scenes, the Dame airs some even more controversial views on women:

Paris wears the same dresses as Vanessa Hudgens, Vanessa Minnillo [NYDN]

Ha, well we had a chance to look over the SEC's insider trading complaint against mouthy billionaire Mark Cuban, and it's surprisingly entertaining! Mostly because they allege that Cuban may have tried to pull off the single most idiotic inside trading move in history. To set the scene: The CEO of a company Cuban partially owns calls him up with (confidential) bad news; Cuban gets pissed, knowing the news will sink the stock price; but he just received confidential information, so he can't sell! Here's how they say he handled this financial quandary:

Sheikh Abdulla Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa is Bahraini royalty and was, at one time, a close pal of pop megastar turned lagoon creature Michael Jackson. But now, sigh, one old friend is suing the other. Jackson spent six months living on the small desert island in the Persian Gulf three years ago. See, he'd just been acquitted on child molestation charges and needed some time to decompress. He and the Sheik were friends, and supposedly they cooked up some big plans for a Jackson comeback. The Sheik gave Jackson lots of money and equipment, and even wrote some songs himself! And they actually recorded one of the Sheik compositions. But then Jackson decided that he didn't want to make a record with the Sheik after all, even though he'd spent the money and used the equipment:

For decades, mankind's brightest minds have struggled to crate the ultimate convergence device, a machine so powerful that it could play Simpsons cartoons and order an extra-cheese combo at the same time. Today, November 17, 2008, that convergence has arrived. First Obama/Biden, now Tivo/Domino's. It's a great time to be alive.

Take a short break from coughing up charred trailer siding to glance at the weekend numbers: 1. Quantum of Solace - $70.4 million Having the playing field all to itself couldn't have hurt the second installment of the Daniel Craig franchise reboot, and it didn't: The broodiest Bond yet earned $70.4 million on approximately 5,900 screens—the highest opening not just of any Bond film, but of any espionage drama in history. Today's trade ads boast Solace's hefty take with the agent screaming in agony as Le Chiffre takes a double-knotted rope to his fourth and fifth digits.2. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $36.13 million David Schwimmer the Giraffe should enjoy his last hurrah before John Travolta the Spayed German Shepherd bolts in to steal his long-necked thunder. 3. Role Models - $11.71 million Paul Rudd's SNL hosting triumph only helped boost ticket sales for Role Models, bringing in a contingent of horny Ruddites hoping for an unpixelated glimpse of the goodies, and ended up laughing so hard their eyes bled. 4. High School Musical 3: Senior Year - $5.879 million If your one excuse for not seeing HSM3 so far was the fact that it features neither Officer John McClane nor the phrase, "Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!" well, then, you've just run out of excuses: 5. Changeling - $4.247 million If you haven't yet caught The Changeling, we highly recommend you do. Yes, it will require you overlook star Angelina Jolie's well-documented uncoolness for a couple of hours, but this could well be one the last performances from the actress before she wanders off the Ghanaian sunset three decades from now.

Slate has been planning their new ladyblog—sorry, "online magazine"—as a sort-of-but-not-really competitor to our sister site Jezebel. Gals all over town want to get in on the action—some the few media jobs left! Now we know the ladies who will lead it, according to Fishbowl NY. It will be a "triumvirate" of editors (that means three): Emily Bazelon, Meghan O'Rourke, and Hanna Rosin. Three eds? Bad idea. Their cycles are gonna sync up after spending that much time together, which means fighting and crying might derail the publishing process once a month. But seriously, a little more on the new editors' credentials:Hanna Rosin is a journalist who started out at the New Republic and has written for heavies such as the Atlantic and the Washington Post—and is coincidentally married to Slate's managing editor. She published a book last year called God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America—about students at a new evangelical college—and often writes about the intersection of religion and politics. Emily Bazelon is a senior Slate editor. She has a law background (Yale, actually) and often covers jurisprudence. Fun fact: she's The Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan's cousin. She's also written for The New Republic and Washington Post, as well as the New York Times. Meghan O'Rourke is also a Slate editor (culture), but a poet as well—she published a poetry book that garnered a full page New York Times Book Review and edits the poetry section of the Paris Review. She's married to New Yorker staffer James Surowiecki. O'Rourke is also a former New Yorker staffer, a job she got at 24, which is what partly led to our 2007 "Field Guide" called Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke.

You've never heard of media analyst company Screen Digest. Keep that in mind when you stumble upon a few dozen news reports today that claim "Hulu ... a smaller upstart backed by News Corporation and NBC Universal ... is forecast to draw level with Google’s YouTube in US advertising revenues next year." Any reporter who reads that sentence in the Financial Times instantly wonders, "forecast by who?" By the Financial Times? By Hulu executives? No, by Screen Digest. Take that as you will.