Kickass British-Sri Lankan performer and former refugee M.I.A. doesn't seem like a diva, but her tour rider—recently procured by the Smoking Gun—indicates otherwise. Her "2008 Hospitality Rider" demands a very specific assortment of cheeses, as well as various "ORGANIC" foodstuffs and those gold-foil-wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Things, we might add, you'd have trouble finding in the middle of a life-affirming war. But, hey, she's pregnant, so we'll chalk it up to weird cravings rather than stocking her backstage with the most yuppie selection of snacks ever.

Poor Starbucks is barely making any money. The coffee chain's profit dropped 97% in the fourth quarter, because it's spending so much money closing down all the stores it opened earlier, when they thought every block in the world needed a Starbucks. At least they're good at giving away coffee for free! Hey, remember when Starbucks was the emergency backup job of the creative underclass, where you could make some scratch and get health care as a starving artist? Now it's aspirational. The emergency backup job is burglary. [AP]

As exit strategies go, Daniel Craig's long view on stepping away from James Bond is the most progressive we've encountered in some time: At a Quantum of Solace press conference last week in Rome, Craig suggested that Barack Obama's election win had perhaps laid the groundwork for a black 007. Admittedly, we hadn't yet considered the "action-movie franchise" component of Obama's social influence, but at least one critic opened the discussion online — and this only days after Beyoncé Knowles made a public appeal for the role of Wonder Woman in the long-delayed (and presumed dead) comic-book adaptation. And so begins America's next essential civil rights debate: Have our blockbuster heroes moved beyond race?Clearly it depends on whom you ask. By at least one person's standards Batman is already Turkish, and Hancock recently depicted cinema's first drunk, misanthropic superhero as a black dude living on the streets. Global audiences threw $624 million at Will Smith in the latter film, and according to Craig, may be color-blind enough to greet a black Bond with similar largesse:

Let's check in with Washington Post media guy Howard Kurtz. What's he up to today? He wonders how the press will deal with Obama, and vice versa, and instead of coming to any interesting conclusions about anything he quotes some people saying the press will turn on Obama and some people saying the press will cheerlead for Obama and none of it means anything, it's just free-floating cliche and partisan cant. Here are two paragraphs that basically sum it up:

Jason Calacanis, the professional email sender and part-time CEO of Mahalo, is a busy man. Fresh from executing layoffs at his fewer-humans-than-before-powered search engine, he's jetting off to Japan. This, mind you, despite promising to cut down on travel as an austerity measure. Brian Alvey, Calacanis's cofounder at Weblogs Inc., the blog network they sold to AOL for $25 million, is keeping house for him. "Heading to L.A. so I can house sit for @jasoncalacanis and help with any packages that arrive while he's in Japan," he writes on Facebook, according to a screenshot sent in by a tipster. Alvey later admits the "package" that's arriving: Calacanis's $109,000 all-electric Tesla Roadster. Here's the Facebook discussion this prompted:

After we covered the first promotional photo from Nine last week, this follow-up email from the Weinstein Company seemed simple enough: "Attached is a high res version of the shot you put up on the site Friday. Do you mind replacing it with this one?" Sure, we thought. After all, who wouldn't want a closer look at the film's eclectic cast, which includes Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, and Fergie's labia? Strangely, though, one of those performers appears to have gone missing thanks to an industrious Weinstein Co. photoshop. Check out the shocking evidence, after the jump!

[Lauren Conrad, star of the Maysles brothers' documentary "The Hills," in Los Angeles today; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Is this the end of monkey ads? The nonprofit Ad Council—which makes all those famous public service ads you see everywhere—has agreed not to use any more "great apes" in its ads. No chimpanzees or orangutans! Not only that, but the CEOs of dozens of major advertisers and ad agencies sit on the Ad Council's board, and PETA is promising to urge all of them to stop with the ape ads, too. Kiss your precious CareerBuilder monkeys goodbye!

Tim Cook, Steve Jobs's second-in-command, may be up for the top job at Apple should anything happen to the company's iconic founder. Indeed, he's already subbed in once when Jobs was recuperating from surgery to treat pancreatic cancer. But who is this guy? Even Fortune's in-depth profile gives few clues: Cook, 48, is a Southerner who's "intensely private," a "fitness nut," and a "lifelong bachelor" who rents a house in Palo Alto. Outside interests? "When he isn't working he tends to be in the gym, on a hiking trail, or riding his bike." Come on. What is this — a Fortune profile, or a men-seeking-men personals ad in Craigslist?Gina Gloski, a classmate of Cook's at Auburn University, told Fortune, "He just never seemed that interested in other people. I'm a hugger and a kisser, but I'd never feel comfortable giving Tim a hug or a kiss." A Republican when he worked for IBM, he donated money to Barack Obama's campaign. We dislike stereotypes as much as the next guy. But an intensely private bachelor in his 40s, with a Southern background? We'd be remiss in our duties as a gossip if we didn't wonder if Cook was gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that: Apple recently donated $100,000 to the unsuccessful effort to defeat Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage. (Photo via ZDNet)

With all the recent layoffs, it seems like there are no media jobs left in New York. So we bet every female in town under 35 is getting ready to pounce on Double X, Slate's forthcoming answer to successful ladyblog (and Gawker sibling) Jezebel. (Former Gawker Elizabeth Spiers is planning her own, "less urban" women's site.) But! Double X will be a magazine (a web magazine—because web-content can be called magazines if they feel like it), which will "spin off" from its pre-existing XX Factor blog. Here's the "we're hiring" memo, gals. (Hurry—we hear that interviews are already taking place!)Excerpted from this announcement:

Antonio Villaraigosa, the first Latino Mayor of Los Angeles, is a Democratic party darling. Lots of observers think he has a nice career ahead of him in California state politics or maybe even national office. He shows up on TV a lot, delivered the Spanish-language response to the 2006 State of the Union, and hey, there he is lined up with Larry Summers and Robert Reich in Obama's Economic Superfriends Advisors Meetup Party! Oh, good for him. God, let's hope that his role in the Obama Administration is limited to that photo-op, because his success thus far is due mostly to how much the LA press sucks and the fact that no one out east pays attention to left coast politics. Did you hear about his sexy Telemundo Affair? Maybe you did, and forgot about it, or forgot the details, because who cares about what the mayor of Los Angeles does? The Los Angeles Times doesn't even care what the mayor of Los Angeles does! Their political reporters had the story of the end of Villaraigosa's marriage, and they put it on page B-4. They also, oddly, left out the reason for the split, which surely they could've found out with a couple minutes of reporting—Villaraigosa was sleeping with a hot political reporter from Telemundo! The Times did get to the story eventually, but no one outside of LA noticed or really cared about Villaraigosa's infidelities. America is sort of beyond that, you know? The Republicans just ran a dude who married his mistress, and Newt Gingrich is looking good in 2012 (hah). What none of that changes is the fact that Villaraigosa is precisely the kind of telegenic useless Democrat who can get David Hasselhoff and Natalie Cole to play his mayoral inauguration and who then spends his term gallivanting around the world building recognition and support for his causes without having any causes beyond promoting himself. As the LA Weekly put it a couple months ago, "the mayor spends most of his working day flying in and out of town, holding staged press conferences, attending banquets, ceremonies and parties, raising political money and providing face time to high-powered special interest groups in a position to help his political advancement." So yes, of course it makes perfect sense that Villaraigosa was standing up there with President-elect Obama, because there were a shit-load of cameras there. But what the hell did he have to add to the discussion on the current economic crisis? Guys, let's not let this useless hack become an important new face of the Democrats in charge of the country, ok?

Last night's True Blood finally gave us some hard answers as to why hunky, lovelorn bar owner Sam Merlotte occasionally will pause from restocking the beer case to scratch behind his ear with his foot: He's a shapeshifter! "Shut the fuck up," you're likely saying, much as vampire-sexing cocktail waitress Sookie did when she first beheld her boss's amazing trick. (She was equally blown away by his ability to balance a biscuit on his nose without eating it, and say something that sounds a lot like "Obama!")Yes, it seems vampires aren't the only supernatural B-movie entities the population of Bon Temps has to mingle with on a regular basis. Sam was kind enough to lay out the shapeshifting rules: 1. He can turn into any animal, but leans towards dogs, because everyone loves a dog. 2. He needs an actual animal to use as the shapeshifting blueprint. 3. He can't do humans—too complex. 4. He can usually control the impulse, except on a full-moon night, at which point he can only turn back into a human once he falls asleep. 5. But that DOESN'T make him a werewolf—got it? But yes, werewolves do exist. 6. There's several thousand other shapeshifters out there, but he hasn't found them, and he doesn't know if it runs in genealogy because he was adopted. (And abandoned.) That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: Should you feed your shapeshifter gluten-free kibble? What do you do if your shapeshifter doesn't get along well with other shapeshifters at the shapeshifter run? With only two episodes left, we doubt we'll learn everything there is to know about the ductile species. In the meantime, enjoy the above montage of Sam doing what he does best. Good boy! Attaboy, Sam! Whozagooboy? Yes you are!

At a time when some blogs are trying to reinvent themselves as news websites, the Financial Times, a U.K.-based rival to the Wall Street Journal, is considering a redesign adapted from blogs' reverse-chronological-order presentation of stories. [Silicon Alley Insider]

The skittish stock market rose early this morning, but finished down 73 points, despite the best efforts of Neil "Ferrari" Kashkari, the Republican ski bum in charge of our government's Wall Street bailout package. Neel had a press conference this morning where he explained to everyone why the government is sinking $40 billion more into failed insurer AIG. Then he said "our capital markets are fragile." The market fell for the rest of the day. Dude, come on! How about a motivational phrase? Here's one we know you're familiar with:

Charlie Rose is just showing off. Back in June, he had all the Emanuels on! No one has done that, before, and no one will probably do it again for some time, so Charlie replayed the episode to rub it in, that he had new Obama Chief of Staff Rahm "Rahmbo" Emanuel, Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, and the mysterious other one, Dr. Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, the medical ethicist, all in his weird featureless void of a studio, all at once. Watch this clip and join us in the alarming conclusion that Rahm, the intense political hatchet-man, is actually the calmest Emanuel. How did Charlie Rose manage to book all the Emanuels on one show? So many have tried, but this is the only time we've ever seen it. The secret, we're told, is start with the doctor. Once Zeke, the eldest, is on board, Ari and Rahm are obligated to follow suit. And, man, family dinners with the Emanuels are clearly terrible. You never get a word in edgewise and they'll all be brawling by the end of it. Still, you ladies seem to like this Rahm, so here he is, enjoy.

Evidence! Though we were certain that was James Franco at the Drew Barrymore vehicle known as the Silver Lake Prop 8 protest, here's photographic proof, thanks to Deeply Shallow. In a clever career move, Franco is seen appealing to both of his 2008 audiences: the gays who will flock to see his turn in Milk, and the Pineapple Express-worshiping stoners who know a deeply toked face when they see one. (Sorry, Nights in Rodanthe fans — Franco's unbilled cameo warranted nary a bit of synergy.) Click through for full-size. [Deeply Shallow via Towleroad]

I confess, I'd never heard nor read of Solid Cactus, a company that builds Yahoo stores, before the following cri de coeur dropped into the inbox a few minutes ago. I have no idea if any of the accusations in this email are true. But I liked the part where the CEO blogs his vacation pics. "Time to Get Away," indeed.

♦ Kate Moss is joining honorary chair Marc Jacobs as co-chair of the next Costume Institute Gala Benefit at the Met, along with Anna Wintour and Justin Timberlake. [Telegraph]
♦ Jacobs will also be hosting Housing Works Fashion for Action auction on November 13th. And it's not just his karma bank that's overflowing: He just signed a five year deal with Staff International SpA to produce a men's collection. [Fashionista, WWD]
♦ Mark your calendars: On November 25th, Sarah Jessica Parker's familiar voice will be the one you hear when you take the audio tour of the "Costume: The Art of Dress" exhibit at the Costume Institute. [The Pipeline]

New York's prep-school kids... they've gone wild. What else do you think will happen when a charity party is chaperoned by Sandra Bernhard? Dancing and making out, duly chronicled by Guest of a Guest. While the parents of these teens with terrifying last names (Greenspan, but no relation) will have no problem paying their $30,000 a year tuition, they may be the only ones left in Manhattan's elite private high schools: the Intelligencer reported this morning that more prep-schoolers than usual are seeking financial aid. The Post echoed them, saying that some families are having to pull their kids out of private school because they're no longer able to afford it. Related: U.S. News says that minority attendance is still down at New York's best public high schools. [Photo: Zach Hyman for Patrick McMullan]

Tina Brown appeared on Fox Business today to chat about her new site, the Daily Beast. It turns out that credit for the venture goes to Barry Diller, who, Brown says, was having trouble finding anything worthwhile to read on the Web and brought the idea to Tina because he wanted someone he could trust to tell him what to read every day. Oh, and don't be fooled by the title of the segment, "The Battle of the Blogs," or the lead-in, which suggests she's giving the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report a run for their money. She isn't competing with anyone. "It's not a competitive situation... it's a collegial model."