I'm glad Dan Lyons has landed a high-profile gig at Newsweek. But the newsweekly format crushes everything I love about Dan's writing. Look at his latest: He starts with a provocative question — why is Jerry Yang still in charge? — but doesn't answer it in the cutting manner we've come to expect. "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently made an off-the-cuff, public comment that seemed to indicate to some he might still be interested in Yahoo." Dan, this is the kind of writing Fake Steve used to shred with his bare hands. Namaste, but please forward us some of those canned layoff leaks companies send you now that you're a checkout-stand hero.(Disclosure: Sigh. I write for Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post Company, which owns Newsweek, which sometimes runs Slate articles, but never any of mine that I know about. Happy now? I wish Murdoch would hurry up and buy us all.)

[Supermodel and 'Project Runway' host Heidi Klum at a Los Angeles playground yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin] Steverino_Begins' new line beats the original, After An Hour Has Passed And All The Other Kids Are Gone, Heidi Begins To Suspect That Tim Has Forgotten To Come Pick Her Up.

Hey, were you wondering who the worst political cartoonist in the United States is? We have an answer! It's California-based syndicated cartoonist Gordon Campbell, who took a break from his recent joke-free cartoons about how we are now a nation of communists because of the bailout bill to draw a very special cartoon in which he just colored noted traitor Benedict Arnold black and called him Colin Powell. That is the whole of this cartoon, a portrait of the man who betrayed George Washington and this young nation, in blackface, with white flags, and the utterly insane caption "Benedict Powell... Race Patriot." What does that mean? Let's allow Campbell to explain, in his own words:

Bid goodnight to Jimmy Wales's dream of cashing out on Wikipedia, the world's largest collection of infrequently asked questions. The vehicle for his scheme, a derivative for-profit startup called Wikia, is imploding. A tipster tells us that the 43-person company has laid off 30 percent of its staff. (Update: The company now says it has only laid off 10 percent of its employees.) Wikia lets users build their own anyone-can-edit wiki pages. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia sometimes runs advertising on the wikis; its most popular sites have to do with videogames. So why the layoffs?A source who has seen Wikia's numbers says the company is experiencing "a hemorrhaging of cash circa 1999" — losses, in other words, like the first generation of dotcoms. No surprise there, since it has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Poland, and many of its products, like Wikia Search, are staggeringly unpopular. Wikia raised $14 million in venture capital from Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com, the last of which came in December 2006; without a new infusion, it must surely be running low on cash.

The entertainment industry's GOP delegate count remains at historic lows two weeks ahead of the presidential election, a phenomenon glimpsed today in a new survey over at The Hollywood Reporter. It's surely not for lack of trying — not with efforts like An American Carol and the McCain campaign's brief Beverly Hills incursion raising Republican visibility where they can — but outrage continues to mount among right-wingers like Kelsey Grammer and pundit Andrew Breitbart, the latter of whom chimed in yet again to tout the conservative, "Big Hollywood" blog he's been pushing since before the GOP convention in August:

A rumor circulated on Friday that most-popular-actor-in-the-world Will Smith once employed the services of a discreet Hollywood madam. A madam who supplied him with men. The Will Smith gay rumors have been tossed around for years, his entree into professional closet-locker religion Scientology the latest to fuel the whispers. But this particular tidbit? We're not so sure about it. Why would Smith bother to create a paper trail like this? I mean, as the whole Heidi Fleiss fiasco proved, Hollywood stars are willing to drop major coin at a high-class brothel. But those were just chucklehead straight dudes like Charlie Sheen. No one was really shocked. In this instance, though, we're talking about Will Smith. Lady-wooing, ass-kicking, humanity-saving Will Smith. It would be much easier for him to discreetly pick up a fella at a club or, heck, even find someone online than it would be to involve the whole middleman of a bordello. I was watching that horrid documentary Hookers at the Point yesterday (nothing else was on) and, you know, the girls were talking about how guys go to hookers because there is that illicit thrill, that fear of being caught. But that's with street walkers blowing you in your parked Crown Vic, not sensual liasions with "high class" call-boys. The latter just seems a little too out there in the open—what with money exchanged and all—than would be comfortable for Will f'ing Smith who, sadly, could stand to lose a lot if his sexuality was in question. Sure there's an argument to be made that one pays for discretion when using an escort service, but with a random money-free hook-up, the star would most likely have more deniability than he would if there were "Client No. 9"-style records of the various transactions. Unless there were photos. All things considered, we don't quite believe this lascivious hissing. This anonymous madame lady may, you know, just be trying to drum up some business. By, um, supposedly outing one of her clients? Ur doin it rong!1!

"Yahoo will almost certainly fire too few employees when it announces its mass layoffs this week," predicts Henry Blodget, the disgraced stock analyst everyone now listens to. Henry's got a bunch of charts you can look at, or you can read his kicker: "What's the smart amount of spending decline to plan for? We think about 10 percent next year and slightly more in 2010. We would also plan on the decline lasting at least two years."

Oooh, ad war escalation! You remember how Microsoft got so mad about Apple's ads that they had to run out and spend $300 million on a fancy ad campaign consisting of Mac lovers declaring their love for PCs, as well as celebrities doing things seemingly unrelated to computers. Meanwhile Apple has just been sitting back chuckling, and now they've released a new ad making fun of Microsoft's ad spending. Which is too insidery, but very entertaining to people forced to write about ad campaigns. Apple's only problem: the people who buy PCs, such as myself, don't even know what this "Vista" thing is. (If we knew about computer things we would have bought a better one!). I imagine that Microsoft grows ever more apoplectic, though. Full ad below:

Architect Zaha Hadid's Chanel-sponsored "Mobile Art Pavilion" opened in Central Park today. What's inside? Video of naked people beating each other with handbags, apparently. The ship will lift off on November 9th and it's officially sold-out until then, although a certain number of tickets are supposedly handed out every day beginning at 8AM. [Racked]

Like a good episode of The X-Files, David Duchovny's autumn has incorporated one twist after another: shocking revelations (his sex addiction!), creepy, cigarette-smoking men (Billy Bob Thornton!) and now, finally, a guest star who truly is special. Meet Edit Pakay, the actor's 28-year-old tennis instructor, who has given a deliciously rambling interview to The Mail in which she teases that she might have had an affair with Duchovny, though she is eternally quick to back away from the brink of total revelation (also kind of X-Filesy!):

The New York Times had its resident medical doctor reporter examine all the available medical records of all the candidates for president and vice president. The only problem is that none of the campaigns would turn over any records! But, you know, Barack Obama seems healthy enough, besides the smoking. And Sarah Palin didn't release any records at all, not even about her crazy "giving birth en route from Texas to Alaska" thing, but they only devote like one paragraph to that. Because the point of the story is to let you know that John McCain is an old, sick man. He has all the cancers, everywhere, all over his face. Breaking! Ok, sure, McCain's doctors say he's pretty much recovered from his skin cancer, and the chance of it recurring during his first term, say, is like 10%. But they are maybe not letting us know how serious the last bout of melanoma was!

Can't concentrate? Darting from one task to another in between checking emails and news while texting and wondering what to eat for dinner? No wonder the economy's crumbled: According to figures provided by consulting firm Basex, everyone's scattered attention span swallows 28 percent of our work days and takes an annual toll of $650 billion in productivity. So what can improve concentration? Meditation, getting more sleep and exercise, and a tidy workspace, apparently. Or, the government could just pipe Adderall into the water system. [WSJ]

If you ask nicely, Sarah Palin will not only pose for a photo, she'll let you plant a kiss on her cheek, too. [TMZ]

♦ Judy Miller is joining Fox News as a contributor. [WaPo]
♦ David Carr chats with lousy market prognosticator Jim Cramer, who concedes that it's "a completely humbling market," but won't apologize for suggesting everyone take their money out of the market. [NYT]
♦ Jeff Zucker says NBC will cut $500 million from its 2009 budget. [Reuters]
♦ Jeff Probst has a new show in the works: Live Like You're Dying will feature Probst taking a terminally-ill person on "the last adventure of their life." [EW]
♦ A report on the mood at the Frankfurt Book Fair. [NYO]
♦ Rick Yorn has left the the Hollywood management powerhouse the Firm. [Variety]
♦ Max Payne was the No. 1 movie at the box office this weekend, racking up $18 million in ticket sales. [LAT]

Time to unzip your Happy Weekend Suit and step back into your Monday Morning Iron Maiden: The work week is again upon us. Quick—jumpstart your productivity with some box office numbers before someone finds your position detrimental to the bottom line: 1. Max Payne - $18 million Fresh off his ass-whispering turn on an especially excruciating, Sarah Palin-boosted episode of SNL, it's Mark Wahlberg who's doing most of the laughing today: The actor's latest cinematic foray clicked with young male moviegoers, despite being dismissed by most critics as being hyper-stylized junk, like some spiraling turd floating in the Wachowski brothers's septic tank. Still, not all were left unimpressed, as a giddy Colin Powell, his eyes reflecting a steady downpour of slo-mo bullets, gushed to his wife that the "transformational" third-person-shooter adaptation who would "electrify" our country's fanboy electorate.2. Beverly Hills Chihuahua - $11.2 million Audiences continued to roll onto their backs and squirm in delight as they had their bellies rubbed by Disney's bat-eared superstars. Not surprisingly, then, the hit's microscopic sequel—Fleas of Beverly Hills Chihuahua, about a poor, parasitic insect family that hops from rich chihuahua to rich chihuahua so that their children can enroll in the area's public schools—is being rushed into production. 3. The Secret Life of Bees - $11.05 million Gracefully developing, is-she-or-isn't-she-stroppy? superstar Dakota Fanning and friends balanced out the vast gender divide for Fox, giving their Searchlight label the women who avoided Max Payne like the plague. "We had something for everyone," explained Fox VP Bert Livingston, temporarily forgetting about the 99.999999% of the world's population interested in neither. 4. W. - $10.55 million Let's run down W.'s numbers: It's Oliver Stone's fifth-best opening ever, right behind Natural Born Killers. Exit polling showed 47% of audiences were over 40, 90% don't like the President, 80% were voting Obama, and 6% McCain. A round 100%, however, thought the movie was intermittently engaging, but by and large a cojones-deficient mess. 5. Eagle Eye - $7.343 million "If you want to live, you'll do as I say. Now get wasted, hook up with Adrian Grenier's girlfriend, and lose a pinkie nail in a near-fatal car accident at the corner of Hollywood and La Brea. You'll get your next instruction there."

Here's what you can expect in the coming year, internet lovers: lots of young internet companies going broke. The ones you love! Including, but not limited to, user-generated video sites, ad networks, fringe social media sites, and companies that make all those sweet apps. Why? Because in our brave new economy, companies are slower to buy bullshit ads of questionable efficacy on every random "Web 2.0" site. How bad will it get? We'll tell you: Ad Age predicts a small amount of growth:

Sad news that catty style assessor Mr. Blackwell passed away this weekend. Though, maybe not so sad for the decades' worth of celebrities that he slammed as his Worst Dressed picks of the year. If you're curious about who Mr. B selected as his top (bottom?) choice each year since 1960, you can find a list here. We've also compiled a photo gallery of the most recent 20, after the jump.

The Wall Street Journal has an 800-word report this morning announcing Eric Schmdt's plans to "hit the campaign trail this week" for Barack Obama. Blah blah blah natural evolution, Google is officially neutral, "I'm doing this personally," says Schmidt, a week after self-appointed Internet Co-Founder Vint Cerf came out of his own Obama closet. What does Schmidt really want? It's buried at the end of the WSJ's report:

Richard Sylvan Selzer — better known to pop culture observers as the acerbic, list-making fashion zealot Mr. Blackwell — died Sunday of complications from an intestinal infection. He was 86. A former hustler, petty thief and model whose acting and B-grade fashion career overlapped with the infamous 10 Worst-Dressed Celebrities list he launched in 1960, Mr. Blackwell found his voice firing one-line zingers into a crowded pop culture at a time when celebrities could do little wrong. His latter-year rhymes weren't always fully functional, but some of his early jibes were as vicious as anything you'd find online today; 10 years ago he said of his commentary: "The list is and was a satirical look at the fashion flops of the year. I merely said out loud what others were whispering. ... It's not my intention to hurt the feelings of these people. It's to put down the clothing they're wearing." Believe us, Mr. Blackwell, we can relate — as can so many of our peers and colleagues in print and online who, for better or worse, trade on his influence every day. After the jump, we mourn his passing with our own top 10 of Mr. Blackwell's withering witticisms from nearly 50 years on the scene. Rest in peace, (un)kind sir.10. Jane Fonda (1967) — "Stretch pants on angel food cake." 9. Howard Stern (1995, the first year a man topped the list) — "Let's face it. Howard's 'Miss America' drag looks like Godzilla impersonating Gypsy Rose Lee." 8. Elke Sommer (1973) — "Do-it-yourself kit with the wrong instructions!" 7. Martha Stewart (1999)— "She dresses like the centerfold for The Farmer's Almanac."

"I'm going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I'm tired of the fight," whines Ted Dziuba, the formerly fearless voice of Web 2.0 hateblog Uncov. It's a lie. Ted loves a fight, but he's got a sixth sense of when to quit. The math major got his dream job at Google, then bailed on Google to start Persai with two friends. Now he's quitting Persai, recently renamed Pressflip, to get steady work for the kid. It's too early in the morning to roust him on IM, so I don't know if he'll continue writing his Fail and You column for The Register. My guess is he will, because Ted needs to complain and The Reg pays better than Denton.