• Thomas J. McInerney, Barry Diller's right-hand man and IAC's chief financial officer, paid $4.8 million for a 12th floor apartment at 300 East 79th Street. The 2,664-square-foot space has four bedrooms. [Cityfile]

Have you gotten your toddler into a top pre-K program yet? Have you started touring elementary schools? Have you at least enrolled him/her in French lessons yet? No? Little Max/Emma is never getting into Harvard now! Yep, he's totally doomed and you're to blame. According to the Times, private schools are in a "crisis mode in terms of capacity." It doesn't matter that the country is in an economic downturn and that your banker husband may have already lost his job. Mandell School director Gabriella Rowe says the school received 100 applications within 48 hours of announcing a new 25-student kindergarten class. So what are you supposed to do if you still haven't started bulking up your unborn child's extracurriculars?

Tatiana Platt is a socialite, former AOL executive, and the wife of architect (and man-about-town) Campion Platt. These days, Tatiana is working on a new project, the website called Famegame.com. It's amusing stuff: If, say, you attend eight events a week and you're wondering if you're quite as ubiquitous as Daniel Benedict or Tinsley Mortimer, it's a godsend, spitting out a popularity rating based on how long you lingered on the red carpet and how many photos of you were then uploaded to a site like patrickmcmullan.com. And there are dozens of society-obsessed attention addicts who check their scores daily. Unfortunately, while it's nice that Tatiana took some time to describe the site in detail in this week's Observer, she seems to have a small problem getting the details of her own life straight. After the jump, the tall tales of Tatiana Simone Gau Platt.

The Observer sits down with attorney Jonathan Mechanic, widely considered to be one of the city's best-connected real estate attorneys. His clients? How about Jerry Speyer, Steve Roth, Stephen Green, Mike Bloomberg, Bruce Ratner, Doug Durst, Mort Zuckerman, Harry Macklowe, Miki Naftali, William Zeckendorf, Gary Barnett, Bill Rudin, Donald Trump, Kent Swig, Joe Moinian, and Larry Silverstein. We're exhausted just reading that list. [NYO]

Wisconsin newspaper distributor Martin Holtet had a little trouble convincing people in the small town of La Crosse to subscribe to the New York Times. So he took matters into his own hands and created a big bunch of fake subscribers. Too many, in fact. Perhaps not surprisingly, Times executives back in New York were a little surprised to see that the number of Times subscribers in La Crosse jumped from 65 in 2006 to 2,718 in 2008. (That's, like, the whole town, isn't it?) Now Holtet is in trouble for the $227,096 he collected in distribution fees and the $100,000 in unnecessary printing costs. He's since been arrested and charged with fraud. You can review the criminal complaint yourself after the jump.

Answering machine at Regis and Joy Philbin's Upper West Side apartment.

Hope you don't have to travel to Moscow on your own dime! According to a corporate travel firm, Hogg Robinson Group, the average room rate in Moscow has jumped by 93 percent in the last four years, making Moscow's hotel rooms among the most expensive in the world. The Baltschug Kempinski will run you a minimum of $1,600 a night. Rooms at the Ararat Park Hyatt and Ritz-Carlton start at $1,300. And the city-wide average of $540 is more than $150 above the average in New York. (Sounds like Moscow needs Sam Chang.) Fortunately, these rooms are all stocked with expansive mini-bars and many varieties of vodka. So if you are, in fact, paying out of your own pocket, you'll be able to drown your worries easily enough.

According to the newspaper Recklinghauser Zeitung, Helene Indenbirken has died at the age of 93 in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Why should you care? She was Leonardo DiCaprio's grandma. Obviously! [People]

New Jersey's former governor—and gay American—Jim McGreevey turns 51 today. Also celebrating: The man who brought Gossip Girl to TV, Josh Schwartz, turns 32. Publishing queen Jamie Raab turns 55. Creepy director M. Night Shyamalan is 38. The man to blame for all those celebrity-laden American Express commercials, Amex marketing chief John Hayes, is 54. Reality "star" Adrianne Curry, who you probably fondly remember from America's Next Top Model and My Fair Brady, is 26. And former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell is 36.

• Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo were supposed to have two weddings coming up—one in Mustique and one at The Plaza—but now they're having none because the whole wedding has been called off. The Post's suggestion: "Maybe he should rethink his hairpiece." [Page Six]

• Dan Och's Och-Ziff reported a net loss during the second quarter; the stock has been cut in half since its IPO last year. [Reuters, NYP]

• Is Jovovich-Hawk over? Milla Jovovich tells Lucky magazine she's finished with the line. [The Cut]

DailyCandy, the girly e-newsletter founded by Dany Levy and acquired by Bob Pittman's Pilot Group for $3 million in 2003, has changed hands: Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Comcast has picked up the company for $125 million. [SAI]

Oh no! A laptop belonging to an employee of Clear—that would be Steve Brill's VIP airport security company—went missing at San Francisco International and now the names, addresses, and drivers license numbers of as many as 33,000 Clear customers could be compromised! The TSA has suspended the company from enrolling any new passengers until the situation is resolved, but we eagerly await in-depth coverage from Brill's news-breaking daughter at EssentiallyEmily! [AP]

It seems Jews prefer John McCain over Barack Obama—at least the ones in the market for silly, politically-themed yarmulkes. In that enormously relevant demo, McCain beats Obama 56 percent to 44 percent. [NYDN]

• That story in the Journal about Barack Obama being too skinny to be president? The reporter pulled the quotes from a message board thread she started herself. The WSJ prints a correction, Slate deconstructs. [Slate, WSJ]

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Kate Hudson and son Ryder crossing a street in the Village ... America's Next Top Model's Jay Manuel leaving the ABC studios ... Madonna and Lourdes leaving the Kabbalah center ... Seth Rogen playing outside Late Night with David Letterman ... Bernadette Peters walking into a Midtown office buidling ... Lindsay Price taking a stroll downtown with her mom ... David Cross and Amber Tamblyn walking David's dog through the East Village ... the cast of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants outside TRL ... Shaquille O'Neal leaving his hotel in Midtown ... Leighton Meester getting in a limo at JFK ... and Aubrey O'Day and Lydia Hearst holding hands on their way out of Butter and kissing in the limo waiting outside.

Olafur Eliasson's East River art installation was supposed to delight both New Yorkers and tourists and even make money for the city, what with an uptick in tourism. (Yes, city officials actually expected people to travel from far to see the man-made waterfalls.) One party that hasn't seen much of a benefit: the environment. The plants and trees outside the River Café in Brooklyn have turned "prematurely brown," but, thankfully, they're expected to survive. [NYP]

Michael Fascitelli