In your yet-another-synonym-for-"snowy" Wednesday media column: HuffPo no longer cool, The Daily's latest launch date, Demand Media's distressingly popular, Michael Cohen leaves the Village Voice, Newsday hires people, and Brian Lehrer's a reasonable guy.

Kate Winslet turns 34 today. WNYC host Brian Lehrer is turning 57. Nicky Hilton is 26. Daniel Baldwin turns 49. Gerald Shargel, the attorney now in the news for defending Dave Letterman's alleged extortionist, is 52. Fellow defense attorney Mark Geragos is turning 65. Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi turns 39. Teresa Heinz Kerry is 71. Bob Geldof is turning 58. Jeff Conaway is 59. Actress Josie Bissett is 39. And Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Hayden Planetarium director that People once described as "the sexiest astrophysicist alive," turns 51 today.

Lyor Cohen and Al Sharpton are both celebrating today: The Warner Music chief (and boyfriend of Tory Burch) turns 49; the rabble-rousing clergyman is 54. Others marking the special occasion: socialite Alexis Bryan is 32. Clive Owen is 44. Jake Shears is 30. Gwen Stefani is 39. Ashlee Simpson is 24. Composer Steve Reich is 72. Tommy Lee is 46. Neve Campbell is 35. Actor Sean William Scott is 32. And the notoriously precise Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley is 53. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

New York public radio staple Brian Lehrer is the host of the WNYC current events call-in show, The Brian Lehrer Show.

In specific: Alec Baldwin hates "horrible" Amsterdam Avenue—all those bars. He would also like a job, if WNYC is hiring. We've got the audio from today's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC: Have a listen!

Hey Alec. Honey, we all know off-the-cuff situations involving recorded audio aren't exactly your forte. We've talked about this in our last meeting, remember? About how you were going to call your publicists before you got that urge to say something moroni—sorry, creative—anywhere near a mic? So what is this I'm hearing about your having called into the locally-beloved WNYC Brian Lehrer Show just now during a quaint little discussion about city streetscapes to trash his tote-bag-toting audience's favorite neighborhood? You couldn't possibly have mentioned, during a live taping, that the Upper West Side is "one of the dirtiest neighborhoods" in the city? That its cachet is marred by "all the mid-priced restaurants" clogging up the place? And you actually let on that you've lived in this dirty mid-priced neighborhood for years? Those liberal literazzi will so hunt you down, bro. If you survive the week, give me a ring and we'll talk about an ironic make-nice SNL appearance. Or maybe a permanent Left Coast relocation. You are so fucked. Lotsa love, Matt Hiltzik & the gang.

"For the past week, I've had this nasty cough that wakes me up a lot in the middle of the night, so I've been hearing the Brian Lehrer show replay on WNYC around 2 a.m. Last night the topic was about terrorism, again. This was good: A listener suggested Christo wrap the city in duct tape."
A city wrapped in tape [Amy Langfield's New York Notebook]