Being a regular girl is work enough—God knows what being a Cosmogirl entails. A tolerance for fruitinis? The ability to exist on salad alone? The shamelessness required to "[come] to bed in a soaking wet white tee shirt"? We've been gleefully following Cosmopolitan blogger Leo (Smith '07)—her blog's narrative is "one socially awkward girl's attempts to transform into a sexy, social butterfly." At first, we pointed and laughed like bullies—but it was only because deep down, we all feel awkward. We teased her about her use of the word "[doing] the grown-up" as a euphemism for sex, and how she wondered aloud if playing the field was "immoral". We also said that "increasingly, watching her thirty-day evolution at the hands of people who professionally suggest 'how to be a total man-magnet' is like watching a gazelle getting torn apart by hyenas." That was bitchy. But we were rooting for her all along. Leo's written her goodbye post, and we were worried: did the Cosmo machine spit out a Cosmotini-swilling, Choo-wearing girl-droid in the shape of their brand?Writes young Leo:

Before we begin this tale, a word: our exposure to animated sex is mostly limited to Ralph Bakshi, Japanese anime, and a picture some guy showed us once that had Aladdin and Jasmine doing things that Aladdin and Jasmine should simply never be doing. It was with this thin resume, then, that Defamer ambled into UCB last night for what was supposed to be a Halloween edition of the the theater's "Comedy Death Ray" show but that unexpectedly provided a sneak peek at the first footage ever shown of Rob Zombie's upcoming, decidedly R-rated animated film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. Were you ever curious what a nude cartoon version of Rosario Dawson might look like, fighting? Then read on, pervs (and get ready for some NSFW animated action)!

In case you're wondering what your favorite underemployed socialite, model, or heiress is dressing up as for Halloween this year (pictured above: Gemma Ward, Fabiola Beracasa and Lauren Santo Domingo), you now have a big gallery of pics to peruse. [Guest of a Guest]

Let's face it: Google's every attempt to venture outside its holy circle of search and ads has been a financial nonstarter. So is it thinking about getting into the energy business? Yes. Read between the lines in CEO Eric Schmidt's statements to the New York Times. "Our primary mission is one of information," he says. "As to whether we will be in these other businesses, we will see.” See? When a project is some years off, America's CTO out-and-out lies. Remember how he denied, for years, that Google was working on a Web browser, and then presto ta-da, Google Chrome emerged fully formed from the forehead of Sergey Brin? Right. So if Schmidt is merely ditherating about the idea that Google could play in the energy business, you might as well be getting utility bills in your Gmail tomorrow.

[Robert Downey Jr. on the set of his new 'Sherlock Holmes' movie, directed by Guy Ritchie; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Happy 75th, Variety! Defamer wishes the best of anniversaries to Daily Variety, which today celebrates 75 years in business — albeit a month late, as is customary with so many of its biggest stories, but in a festive, infectious spirit nonetheless. Not to mention surprising as well, according to the blurb featured on its Web site's front page; we knew Peter Bart had been tottering around the deck for a while now, but to think Bart himself may have once run the printer with one hand while memoing Gone With the Wind notes to Louis Mayer with the other... Well, kudos indeed. And don't stay up too late partying! [Variety]

Why did Google engineer Michael Frumkin pay $7.75 million for an oceanside house in Santa Cruz? It was ideal, he says, for boogie boarding. Frumkin is contesting his tax bill for 240 Geoffroy Drive, claiming the property is only worth $3.5 million. When he purchased it from venture capitalist Gerard Casilli in 2006, he paid $4 million for the house and $3.75 million in "option money" — essentially paying Casilli for the right to buy the house in the first place. Frumkin essentially overpaid for the place to entice Casilli to sell. Boil it down, and you have a classic tale of a VC screwing an engineer. Nice house, though. (Photo by Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Google's office in Chelsea may not be a culinary paradise for much longer. The company has announced to employees plans to cut back on its famously generous cafeteria and "snack service," according to an internal memo. [Valleywag]

Elite media types and financiers aren't the only ones suffering during this economic downturn, you know. Models are suffering too! And who better to shine a light on the travails of modeling these days than Isobella Jade, the short, self-made woman who rose from homelessness to microniche prominence by writing her memoir in the Apple store and then triumphantly eating a burger. Remember her? Yea! She's still a hardworking self-promoter, so we checked in and got her take on the crucial question, "How Does the Economy affect a Body Parts Model?":

Our breathless coverage of the backstage bitchfights befalling The View in these tense days leading up to the election have elicited what will surely go down as the Golden Age of View-Issued Denials. From Whoopi on Regis and GMA, to a very special "We All Love Each Other!" Hot Topic, to a show rep chuckling off our McCain T-shirt ban story, to Sherri Shepherd telling CNN the tales are as flat-out wrong as the Earth itself is flat, never before have the ladies doth protested so much. And yet, further reports of animus come. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a story yesterday claiming that things had "gotten so ugly, they only speak on air or when a camera is anywhere in their vicinity." Accurate? Yes, says a Defamer source who's managed to penetrate their inner kaffeeklatsch sanctum:

♦ Details on the layoffs and management changes at Time Inc. [NYP]
♦ More on the demise of Maer Roshan's Radar and its God-awful TMZ-like reincarnation. [NYO, HuffPo]
♦ Fox News has apologized for putting a racist and anti-Semite on the air. [MM]
♦ Noted media expert (and former basketball player) Charles Barkley thinks Fox News is "corrupt." [B&C]
♦ Barack Obama's 30-minute infomercial airs tonight. [AdAge, Politico]

Barack Obama's finally taken a shot at Republican Vice Presidential charade Sarah Palin, America's Favorite Halloween Joke-slash-Future of the Republican Party. The official campaign ad repeats the fun old McCain quote about how he doesn't understand that "economy" thing and his VP pick will probably have to help him with math. Then, cut to Palin winking. Remember how she can't even wink correctly? It was stupid when George W. Bush winked in debates, but at least the man can actually wink. Palin flinches. When it comes to the economy, can America handle flinching? Until we read otherwise, we're going to assume this is one of those ads that are just sent to political journalists and not necessarily played on real tv? There isn't even any talking in it. Click through to watch, and also read a preview of a zinger to be delivered in North Carolina today! Click to view From Obama's prepared remarks for a rally in Raleigh, today:

Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover is a socialite married to a vacuum-cleaner heir, and likes to play up her tenuous ties to Italian royalty. She just wrote a thinly-veiled novel about life in the upper strata of Manhattan called Gilding Lily. Her sister, Natasha Boncompagni, has chick-lit aspirations as well. FIGHT! As Page Six reported yesterday, the sisters are in court—Natasha told us that Tatiana installed a "remote keylogging device" on her computer, which she says Tatiana used to steal the manuscript and copyright herself as the co-author of the upcoming Hedge Fund Wives. Tatiana says that Natasha stole it from her computer and that she's the sole author. Who's sort-of winning?Tatiana, so far: "A federal judge yesterday issued a temporary restraining order against former Wall Street gal Natasha Boncompagni, forbidding her from staking claim to the soon-to-be-published Hedge Fund Wives," Page Six reported. But: "Given my sister's motto 'No publicity is Bad Publicity,' I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't pleased with all the attention," Natasha told us, later pointing to Patrick McMullan photos of Tatiana at the Dylan's Candy Bar party last night, "basking in the attention." Ladies, ladies. You can both wear high heels! Let's not let a feud deprive readers of this sure-to-be remarkable work of post-colonial fiction.

With less than a week to go before the presidential election, all of America is waiting, pondering the same pressing question: will the fate of Sarah Palin be wrapped up in a final, valedictory Tina Fey performance or will Kristen Wiig have to start practicing her "You betchas!" for the next four years? Until that day comes (and until 30 Rock has its TV premiere), Fey is milking her impression for all its worth, and last night, she talked to Conan O'Brien about what happened behind the scenes of her run-in with the actual Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.It turns out that Palin, who had correctly researched that the child of her tormentor was named "Alice," asked after Fey's daughter, who had been sent home earlier that night. This disappointed the vice-presidential candidate, who claimed that she had readied pregnant Bristol ready to "baby-sit" Alice. The tale sounded fishy to Fey, and it raises our suspicions as well. Sounds like you dodged a bullet, Tina — the fruit of your loins almost got fired, Palin-style.

Jessica Simpson heading out on the town after an event at Macy's ... Martin Scorsese outside the Waverly Inn ... Matthew Broderick walking in the Village with son James ... Keira Knightley and Guillaume Canet kissing on the set of their new movie in the Meatpacking District ... Katie Holmes holding an umbrella outside her East Village building ... Pink, Nick Carter, and A.J. McLean posing outside MTV ... America Ferrera and Becki Newton on the set of Ugly Betty ... Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman leaving their hotel ... Mandy Moore standing outside the Waverly Inn ... Marcia Cross posing for photos outside the Letterman show ... Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson arriving at JFK, then leaving Citrine after a night of partying.

You may have heard that the Commie LA Times has in its possession a video of Barack Hussein Obama giving a speech in 2003 in which he declares his friendship with Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia professor and Palestinian activist who, clearly, probably knows some terrorists from the Middle East. The LAT says they won't release the video because they promised their confidential source they wouldn't, which is pretty ironclad reasoning. But the truth about these two Muslims and their plotting must come out—and be available on YouTube!—according to the McCain campaign. Luckily there's a way for the layoff-plagued newspaper to appear heroic and score some much-needed cash at the same time: A guy allegedly actually named Aston Grimaldi II, of Dune Capital, is offering $150,000 for a copy of the tape. So why doesn't the LA Times just sell theirs to him? They're a Tribune paper. The company's strongest asset is a parking lot, for god's sake, and that's up for sale. They need every last penny they can get. Plus you would bring a smile to the twisted visage of John McCain, American hero! The only losers would be Hussein Obama and the paper's secret "source," a terrorist. U no U want 2 sell it LAT, LOL!

An angry Focus Features is doing a bit of air-clearing this morning, the day after it premiered its Oscar-chasing biopic Milk to an adoring hometown crowd in San Francisco and offered its first screenings to press in L.A. and New York. But it's a few people who haven't seen the film who are of particular interest to Focus president James Schamus, who all but firebombed Hollywood Reporter headquarters Tuesday in a letter to the editor denouncing its coverage of his film — a screed conveniently CC'd to the rest of the Internet as well.The contretemps started yesterday morning when THR reporter Steven Zeitchik — who mostly sounded ticked off he wasn't invited to the first press screening — wrote about "the Milk marketing conundrum," suggesting that Focus had "eschewed publicity" while pushing director Gus Van Sant and star Sean Penn's biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the country, who was assassinated in 1978. The main point of comparison was Focus's Brokeback Mountain, which THR noted was a lightning rod for conservatives months before it was released in 2005. Citing no festival appearances, limited press exposure and, bafflingly, a Las Vegas test screening in which two senior citizens reportedly sought to leave during a love scene between Penn and co-star James Franco, THR's big picture showcased a movie that Focus depoliticized on purpose, lest the early backlash hinder its box-office and awards chances. "With all the politicking going on (not just the election but, here in California, with Proposition 8, a subject that mirrors eerily one of Harvey Milk's battles)," Zeitchik wrote in a blog follow-up, "the company was eager to avoid talk-radio defining the movie for it."

Perhaps you're bullish on the local economy and the city's ability to lure tourists to NYC no matter what experts say? If so, you may be interested to hear that two W Hotels on the same block in Midtown are now up for sale. It's a package deal: You'll get the W New York Tuscany and the W New York Court for $150 million and $160 million. [NYP]

As supporters of California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative picketed last night's San Francisco premiere of Milk, producers of the film fired back at allegations that Focus Features is hiding their spiritual follow-up to Brokeback Mountain because it's too gay to promote during an election season. In a letter to The Hollywood Reporter, Focus chief James Schamus slams the report, citing the film's "most explosively received and appreciated trailer in the history of our company" along with a litany of gay tie-ins.As you'll recall, Steven Zeitchik slammed Focus' marketing approach yesterday, resulting in an angry letter from Schamus, who first cites the film's production schedule as the reason for the delay, and then tries to counter Zeitchik's criticism of the studio's gun-shy approach:

This is a really subtle joke, right, Fox production team? Or is it just our birthday? [CityFile, Related]