Trend: predicting doom and bust in the art market, as the auction season is nigh. Slate asks why the art press seems to be "rooting for" disaster: "You don't usually see writers who cover, say, the price of wheat rooting for its decline. Are [they] trying to will the art market into failure? Probably not: They're more concerned with competitive pressures. Everyone wants to be the first to identify the next crash." [Slate]

Uptown's craziest scandal has reached a major meltdown point! Upper East Side dealer Lawrence Salander and his gallery Salander O'Reilly are getting sued every which way but loose by angry clients and dealers and lenders, and so a State Supreme Court judge has shut the shit-blizzard down entirely. We can guarantee one thing: A number of really rich people are gonna get shafted out of this, no matter how much court supervision takes place. Carol Cohen, the widow of the CEO of Madison Square Garden? She's never gonna see the $3.4 million worth of art she "stored" at the gallery that Salander allegedly started selling off behind her back. We cannot believe Salander didn't take off for some country without an extradition agreement with the U.S. (China maybe!) with a bunch of cash a few months ago while he still could. What an idiot!

Congratulations to photographer Andres Serrano! On Friday, a gang of neo-Nazi hoods swept through his show in Sweden with axes and crowbars and destroyed $200K worth of (overvalued) prints. Not since a million years ago, when Jesse Helms went postal over the photographer's "Piss Christ," has Serrano had such an important moment for his market (and his "artistic relevance")! We hereby issue a STRONG BUY. Call up dealer Paula Cooper right now and get in on this action! Apparently there is video of this on the YouTube, but we sure can't find it—if you can, do send it our way.