Oh look, it's that nutty Berkeley chef Alice Waters, telling 60 Minutes we should all eat non-poisoned food. Doesn't she know organic produce is a "luxury," in Lesley Stahl's words? It's a recession!

From Salon: "The Violent Femmes and Gnarls Barkley are a mutual appreciation society formed in oddball heaven. Two years ago, Barkley did a cover of the Femmes classic 'Gone Daddy Gone' that took the song's already hypnotically manic energy and bent it into something new and just as lovably weird. Now, the favor has been returned. Visitors to the MySpace page for an ensemble billing itself Violent and Crazy can currently sample a taste of the Femmes' reimagining of Barkley's athemic smash 'Crazy' before the single releases later this month." Listen here.

Tricia Walsh-Smith, the soon-to be-ex of Shubert Organization prez Philip Smith, posted a rambling YouTube video about how the old man never sexed her a couple weeks back (Oh, here's that other story about it). She has returned as a self-proclaimed "YouTube Superstar" and she's still as batty and frighteningly hypnotic as ever. Fear her!

The tabloid frenzy over Richard Martin, the crazy old Bay Ridge super who enjoys posting crazy signs insulting his tenants, continues to escalate. The Daily News gains the edge today by breaking the story that the cranky old man is letting his building's lobby fill up with garbage. To teach those dirty tenants! The city's other media outlets are surely deploying crack investigative teams to Bay Ridge at this very moment, intent on uncovering all the serpentine twists and turns of this developing, inconsequential matter. After the jump, an actual photo of the abrasive sign that the coot posted warning his tenants of his rotten scheme.

Professional media spokesman and dessert entrepreneur Michael Sands is already helping his new client, Britney-associated character Sam Lutfi, put a nonchalant spin on his shady activities. What's the best PR strategy when a client is facing legal peril as well as the public dismantling of his reputation? Make bizarre rationalizations to a little-known Hollywood blogger, of course!

Just an hour ago, the man formerly known as "buttercupbutterscotch stallion" and now simply known as "crazy," Owen Wilson, was seen walking on Broadway wearing a fedora - not riding a bicycle or even a unicycle.

Karaoke chanteuse and former publisher Judith Regan turned down a $6.5 million settlement from her former employer HarperCollins, we learned a few too many words into today's Observer cover storyHer lawyer says she found that number "unacceptable," but is Judy really motivated by a desire for more wrongful-termination money? Based on the nutty scope of her suit (bringing down Rudy Giuliani! etc) and its timing, this article posits, it seems like she's more concerned with grabbing the spotlight than the cash. Also, this is confusing: in Judith's article about herself in Harper's Bazaar, she claims that she wants her "life to get smaller now, not bigger." So why is she now doing the most attention-getting stuff possible? Hey, is Judith Regan, like, crazy or something?

Famously crotchety book blogger Edward 'Edrants' Champion has a bone to pick with Time Out New York EIC Brian Farnham, he declares via his website. "I wrote a profile piece for them in July, but didn't get payment for it until four months later. And the only reason I was able to effect payment that quickly was through persistent emails and phone calls, going directly up the ladder to Farnham," he begins. But according to Ed, that trip up the ladder was a rocky one! "This afternoon, I got a phone call from Farnham. It was an effort to try and shake me up. I had experienced this approach before by bullies in high school, but hadn't seen much action in my adult life outside of bars and law firms. 'How dare you!' he screamed at me repeatedly over the phone. 'Who do you think you are?' These were lines out of a bad melodrama. I responded with facts ... 'You'll get your check,' he seethed, sounding like a frat boy who can't get a new pledge to hand him his beer bong." Gosh, it sure sounds like Brian overreacted to Ed's "professional" insistence on being paid. Why was Brian so mad?

From the mailbag: "at Milberg Weiss, Judith Regan has just filed a defamation lawsuit against Harper Collins, NewsCorp. and Jane Friedman." Looks like Judith is making good on the promise she made back in January, getting it in under the wire before the statute of limitations ran out. Brace for crazy!

The sale of 666 Fifth Avenue, the building purchased by the Kushner Companies just back in January for $1.8 billion dollars, is now being held up as an example of the bygone crazy financing of yesterday. (Remember early 2007? Wasn't it nuts?) The Kushner family got an interest-only mortgage for $1.215 billion—that's the kind of mortgage the poor people get too! But the mortgage was based on potential projected rental income rates, not the insanely cheap leases that currently exist—and the retail space is locked in for another seven years. So the building's shortfall between its mortgage and its income is just $5 million a month. (This will really add up as the years go by.) So to keep the building, the company is using its own cash to pay back things like $200 million bridge loans! [NYT]

Buffoonish "Inside the Actor's Studio" host and author James Lipton is the gift that keeps on giving. He's so generous with his ridiculous that one can't help but feel grateful that he exists in this world. Even for the lost internet travelers who have somehow landed on the Amazon page for Inside Inside, he's got something for you. And it might just be the greatest video of James Lipton of all time.

A review of the cover story in the September Harper's: "I'd love to be able to summarize the 11-page piece for you, but given the author's penchant for language like 'wielding bathymetry collected by its petroleum directorate' I'll have to give up, and say that Mr. (or Ms.??) Mr. Funk's previous article in Harper's, 'I was a Chinese Internet Addict' sounds like a lot more fun." [MediaPost]

Things Unspoken is a memoir by Oprah's father, Vernon Winfrey. It's out on submission to agents right now—and we'd guess that no one will end up representing him unless they are so so SO SO crazy and never ever want to work again. In the proposal, we learn that Winfrey had some seriously old-timey views on childrearing!

Hello, and welcome to the stream—make that majestic gushing river— of former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein's consciousness. Today, you might want to wear your life preserver! "What a week, huh? And the media has been making it worse! All the airings of the killer's video were just pouring salt into the wound of our nation. I can't imagine how the families of the victims felt. My heart is with them forever. But my beef with the media extends beyond their coverage of the tragedy. What did you think about the Alec Baldwin voicemail message that's been going around the internet?" Whoa, hold onto your oars! We're about to make a hairpin turn towards some even choppier waters.

Penelope Green's House and Garden salute to Kips Bay in the Times reads like an exquisite corpse and rivals i ek in pure inscrutability.

No wonder YA author Ned Vizzini posted such a crazy help-wanted ad on Craigslist: he is super crazy! Apparently an official website, a blog, a MySpace and several books could not contain all his deep thoughts about his own craziness, because he recently moderated a panel about "Straight Talk About Antidepressants" over at Siren magazine. Ned says he has been prescribed Wellbutrin, Zoloft, and Effexor over the years, but he's currently happily dosed with so-hot-right-now Lamictal. It's made him feel "a lot better," but he does worry that, when he gets older, it might cause him to have "flipper babies." Now that's a Babble essay we can't wait to read!

With the first Love-Crazed-Astronaut-related project now officially jammed into the development pipleline (even one that's only tangentially connected, but apparently sold on astro-sizzle), studios that want to stay on the cutting edge of fundamentally cinematic batshit-level insanity should already be scrambling to discover the next unhinged hotness. In the interest of making their jobs a little easier, we introduce you the The Valentine's Day She-Vampire: