This should come as a surprise to no one (save for a few clueless Bauer publishing execs), but we're hearing that celebrity weekly Life & Style (you know, the one that isn't Star or US or InTouch or Celebrity Living) is hemorrhaging people like Egypt after Moses. Our source, Hearsay Jones, suggests that almost a dozen employees have fled the premises in little over a week, including some high-ranking editors. Sadly, we saw this coming.

We make fun of him for a boring New York mag column. We pass along (although question the veracity of) Radar's revenge accusation that some crazy Russian fleeced New York on his watch. But then he goes and writes something like this in the Times Book Review:

We haven't been this excited by a Romenesko item since Howie Kurtz was caught canoodling with Steve Brill: Jon Fine's new BusinessWeek column debuts today! He comes out swinging, uncovering a dastardly new scheme by advertisers — Toyota, specifically — and magazine execs to plant product placements in the text of stories! Fine names names, too, revealing which mag companies are engaging in this despicable practice. Brace yourself for this hall of shame:

We're not sure what's wrong with us today. Maybe it's the abrupt change in temperature, our exhaustion, or that old fried rice we just ate, but we're feeling...reflective. Thus it's time for some media-inspired self-flagellation:

We were all set for this week's Death Watch, in which we compare the page count of free satirical paper The Onion to that of the incredibly shrinking alt-weekly, the New York Press. While we easily found a copy of the former (clocking in at 45 pages), spotting a copy of the the Press has been considerably more difficult.* In fact, we're not seeing the paper at any of its usual spots: coffee shops, street corners, under the bodies of slumbering homeless folk.

Ever since the Times' Jon Pareles went to town with his earth-shattering damnation of Coldplay as "the most insufferable band of the decade," we're noticing a trend. Let's call it the Pareles Effect:

We just wanted to check in after a month or so and see if the playing field has been leveled. It hasn't.

We're looking forward to the ensuing debate on proper comma usage.

The Nation's got something new today on our long national Deep Throat-a-thon:

The latest issue of Time magazine has a stunning — if not nauseating — account of prisoner abuse at Guantanomo Bay:

Our commitment to the truth, no matter how painful it might be, compells us to point out the NY Press' increasingly dramatic fall from glory, as it closes the gap with another popular weekly:

Bad news, gang: Your fantasy vacation, the Battle For American Values cruise featuring Bill O'Reilly, has been destroyed. While the cruise will still set sail, Our Heavenly Father of Fox News will not be in attendance, nor will any of the scheduled speakers or events take place:

A blueprint of the prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay help to explain admitted the desecration of the Koran by American interrogators and, more specifically, how the holy book was splashed with urine:

Hey, remember that whole Koran-in-the-toilet thing? Us neither. Apparently, back in the day (er, a month ago), Newsweek reported that American interrogators were desecrating the Koran in order to "rattle" Muslim detainees. After the requisite rioting and pressure from the men in suits, Newsweek issued a kinda-sorta retraction (read: they knew they were right). Funny, then, that shortly after poor Newsweek's reputation gets assfucked over a barrel, the Pentagon releases a report detailing five instances of desecrating the Koran. (None of these instances included flushing the toilet, but we think "splashing with urine" is close enough.)

Summer in New York means one thing, and one thing alone: Condé Nast sports leagues! The grass is green, the air is warm, and it's time for the Vogue girls to don their Team Judgeypants t-shirts while the GQ boys to pretend they know how to throw a baseball. Start sending us scores and schedules, and we'll be at every game with oranges and juice boxes.

The New York Press, publisher-less and possibly keeping a blind man prisoner in their basement (if Knipfel's not fired, where the hell is he?), demonstrates again this week the winning formula that's made them New York's favorite free alt-weekly besides the rest of them: unhinged rage at minor annoyances with a liberal dose of making shit up.

Al Qaeda's not the only group trying to rid New York of a few excess pedestrians — the "Times Square Alliance" announced some great ideas yesterday to help ease congestion in the city's horrible, soulless center. Some of their suggestions, like expanding the sidewalks, seem quite reasonable. Here are some of the aspects of their plan to cut down on the number of slow-walking mouth-breathers clogging the 40's that we especially like:

Are you practically gagging on the Deep Throat media coverage? (Had to use a pun sometime, come on.) No worries; we've finally figured out how to manipulate your LexisNexis searches so that your returned documents are a bit more manageable:

While the Post exercised an unprecedented level of restraint, we can't say the same for the Boston Herald's front page coverage of the Deep Throat story. Not that we object, mind you — the explicit visuals are high on educational value.

While everyone has their panties in a bunch over the revelation that Watergate informant "Deep Throat" is actually former FBI top brass W. Mark Felt, one has to wonder: How does WWD Scoop-boy Jacob Bernstein feel about all this?