Are you a tragically understood artistic genius? Hey, us too! Here's a chance to spread the misunderstanding of your art to a whole new audience. Gawker Media is looking for a Photoshop/Illustrator necromancer to serve our whims, on call, for a few hours a week. Assignments will typically include whipping up one-off graphics to order for various Gawker Media sites, with occasional, more complex tasks as they come down the pike. Payment, dispensed at an hourly rate, will be cheerfully low; however, we promise to invite you to the fourth-tier parties and to pretend to recognize your name when we (rarely) meet in person. Interested individuals should obviously possess excellent skills in Photoshop and Illustrator, have a lifestyle that allows for completing the odd assignment on short notice during the workday, and must live in New York City. If you possess these sterling qualities, send a very brief introduction to artgawker@gmail.com, plus links to samples of work online. No attachments, no resumes.

Does anyone have Cell Phone Plague (known to historians as "the Yak Death") worse than Silicon Valley? (Okay, probably Seoul, but the Koreans will always beat us.) The VCs and sales guys chatting it up on the street — as well as the ad kids calling Mom — should take a hint when "portable phone booth" art projects start popping up.

Here's a good one: Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes reports that Times art critic Grace Glueck sits on the Board of Trustees at the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires. Which makes writing about art so much easier for her, really. Except:

Is there anything Brett Ratner can't do? Despite being relatively un-special, the man can direct movies, sleep with tennis stars, pull a gun on producers, command the attenion of the ever-elusive Lindsay Lohan, and wear a tracksuit whenever he damn well pleases. Now, add to that impressive list Ratner's latest accomplishment: tonight he unveils Portraits by Brett Ratner, a stunning exhibition of the artist's talent for taking his Elph to various after-parties.

• "His ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon—what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior?" Tom Cruise, watch out — the New Yorker is onto you, and Sy Hersh might be looking for a new beat. [NYer]
• Apple v. Apple, resolved: the Beatles' record label loses to Apple computers, meaning that we can all download the boys on iTunes with reckless, 99-cent abandon. [Variety]
• Glamour EIC Cindi Leive has been named the new prez of the American Society of Magazine Editors. Just another damn responsibility for her assistant. [FishbowlNY]
• 60 Minutes may get Anderson Cooper, but they only get him 5 times per year. He'll be filling Christine Amanpour's part-time position — what we lose in classy accents, we make up for in piercing pools of blue. [AP]
• Kaavya Viswanathan may have fucked up, but she's no James Frey. Give the girl a crackpipe, though, and anything's possible. [USA Today]
• New Jersey's new tourism slogan, "Come See For Yourself," is wisely abandoned. As it turns out, West Virginia is already using the catchphrase, along with the Dakotas and any other states no one would willingly see for themselves. [Adfreak]
• Behold the unimpressive aesthetics of the Art Rock show at Rockefeller Center. Glance now and save yourself the effort of going to the real thing. [Animal]
• Elle creative director Gilles Bensimon loses a 14-year-old beauty to a 17-year-old amateur. So, who's the young waif in question? And why is Gilles such a dirty old man? [Breakfast]

Google this morning:

Hmm. A Joan-Miro-inspired Google cartoon. I like it. Designed by Larry Page's baby niece or something, right?

[Click to enlarge, if you must.]

• For their weepy reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, ABC casting execs are hunting for families with multiple children born with Down's Syndrome — or, even better, kids suffering from Progeria, aka "little old man's disease." Sad, but we always knew Ty Pennington was bad news. Never trust a dude in a hemp necklace. [TSG]
• Through the power of lemonade, one girl will try to save Lil' Kim from the harsh realities of prison life — now in pre-production for Lifetime. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• How to be a really questionable curator, courtesy of those daffy dilletantes at the Whitney. [Art Fag City]
• We're not sure if the author of the following post is really named Jen, but could she actually be the mythical Evelyn the Food Whore? [Craigslist]
• Wearing Prada loafers for your Condé Nast job interview means nothing if your family isn't sitting on piles of money. [Almost Girl]
• Who uses Meetup these days? Rat people, that's who. [Meetup]
• You're not going to believe this, but: Celebrity publicists use gossip columns as PR tools. We know, we know — is nothing sacred? [OPRN]
• Last but certainly not least, the kings and queens of Manhattan now know how to shit like royalty. [NYM]

• The art you've always wanted: A sculpture of Britney Spears giving birth. On a bearskin rug. And "the crowning of baby Sean's head." Where would you find such a thing? In Williamsburg, of course. [Send2Press]
• This week's Times correction of the week: "An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens. Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid." People are so nit-picky these days. [NYT]
• AC 360 finds a new scourge to campaign against: The evil practice of puppy smuggling. [CNN]
• There are dates that end well and dates that end less well. And then there are dates the end in night court. Even worse, without Judge Harry T. Stone. Yikes. [CourtTV]
• Is this for real? Who knows. But it would seem that Mobile, Ala., residents found themselves a leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day, according to the local NBC affiliate. [YouTube]

For those of you keeping track at home, let's run down the tortured history of the Times coverage of that Picasso sold through Costco.com.

• Teri Hatcher never had to testify against her uncle who sexually abused her, so why would she come forward and spill the story to Vanity Fair, apropos nothing? Because of George Clooney, that's why! Captain Sexy gave Hatcher the fuck-n-run, and she had no choice but to go to VF with an unrelated, attention-grabbing story. Don't we all deal with break-ups like that? [Page Six]
• Once you're inside Lindsay Lohan's lair at Bungalow 8, there's no escape. Not even Lance Armstrong is strong enough to fight off her emphysemic charms. [R&M]
• Paris Hilton refuses to pay for the $2500 ticket to Elton John's AIDS benefit/Oscar party and instead pulls the "Don't you know who I am?" Meanwhile, even Us Weekly refuses to write about the skankbot. [Page Six]
• Two words on why the art world sucks: cash bar. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• Dennis Quaid, unsuspecting manorexic. [Page Six]

From an article today on a major revision to Janson, the definitive art-history textbook:

Earlier: 'Caligula': Everything You Could Ever Want in a Fake Movie

• Now that we're certain British crackhead Pete Doherty is a real person, we can fully appreciate his latest arrest for car theft. Oh, don't worry — he was charged with possession, too. He wouldn't drop the ball and let you down like that. [BBC]
• Funny how a handful of the featured artists at the Whitney Biennial are with or have shown at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Funny how Sylvia Chivaratanond, who works at the gallery, is partners with Biennial co-curator Philippe Vergne. [Anonymous Female Artist]
• Think about it: You've lost your home, your city, perhaps even your loved ones. The last thing a Katrina victim wants is an afternoon shopping with Britney Spears. [AP]
• There is no line between a normal New Yorker and an actual bad person. They're one in the same, you fucking twit. Now move. [Logged Hours]
• Stars nowadays suck. [Ad Age]
• Bad news for Broadway, as casting for the musical version of Legally Blonde is requesting "Abercrombie & Fitch fraternity and sorority types." [NewYorkology]
• Life ain't easy when you're Mark the Cobrasnake. You have to, like, wear visors and stuff, even when you don't feel like it. [Vulture Droppings]
• More headline laziness. Why not be creative? We're thinking more like "Mrs. Smith Sucks Off Washington." [Gilded Moose]

Yesterday's Times has an article on what is sure to be the most entertaining piece in the Whitney Biennial: Francesco Vezzoli's short film Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's 'Caligula'. As the title implies, the piece imagines that there is a remake of the porntastic Caligula, and Vezzoli makes an over-the-top promo short for said remake starring Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren and Karen Black — plus toga costumes by Versace. The only indication that the whole thing is a gag comes at the end of the trailer, when Courtney Love appears as Caligula — the only role she was ever really meant to play.

Under any circumstances, it would be difficult for us to ignore the Observer engagement announcement of pending nuptials between a high-powered newsweekly writer and a high-powered arts-world flack. (It's also difficult to ignore an announcement in which half of the couple spent about six years sharing an apartment with half of us.)

Lock your doors and stock up on bottled water: Today's Sun reports that 16 bright-eyed, bushy-tailed little bunnies from the master's program in arts journalism at Syracuse have invaded the island as part of of a 10-day immersion course. During their time here, they will RAPE AND PILLAGE our artistic resources, DEFILE our professional journalists, and FROTH about how they paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn "to take the small journalism jobs and assignments as a means of eventually landing the bigger ones."

We think we're choosing to take this as a compliment. But we're not entirely sure. The press release for an exhibit opening Saturday in Dublin arrived in our inbox today; here's part of it:

It's the annual dilemma we all have: What to get for that special PR girl (or reckless driver) on our Christmas list?