• The View producers announce that they will not search for an official replacement for Star Jones until after September 5, once Rosie O'Donnell plops down on her chair. Meanwhile, O'Donnell is blogging in favor of American Idol finalist Kellie Pickler, who co-hosted yesterday. Yeah, she's real pretty, isn't she, Rosie? [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• Paris Hilton taunts Lindsay Lohan with unsubtle snickering; Lohan manages not to go apeshit. Such remarkable restraint can only mean that Lohan actually took a day off from the marching powder. [Page Six]
• Diana Bianchi, the 19-year-old mistress of Peter Cook (estranged husband to aging supermodel Christie Brinkley), never asked Cook to leave Brinkley for her. She was happy with quiet, complacent fucking. [TMZ]
• And of course, this is not the first time Cook has dipped his toes in the barely legal pool. [Fox 411]
• Oliver Stone likes hallucinogenic drugs. Big surprise there — we all saw Alexander, unfortunately. [R&M]
• After alleging that her ex-fiancee, Sopranos star Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore, beat the crap out of her, Lisa Regina held a reading for her book on domestic violence and invited the entire Sopranos cast. Alas, no one showed, lest they too get a gear shift in the face. [Page Six]

Taking a page from Ian Holm's ass-biting restaurant manager in classic foodflick Big Night, a boss at the Waldorf-Astoria's Peacock Alley dining room is accused of sexually harassing two of his married, male waitstaff — telling one he wanted to "eat his ass." That waiter also claims he had his "testicles and buttocks" grabbed, while the other says he got the hat-trick grope — "testicles, penis, and buttocks" — plus, the manager "'attempted to stick a bottle' between his buttocks." At least the bottle in question would have been a well-chosen vintage, as the accused manager is described as a "flawless host and sommelier."

What is it about Chelsea these days? The New York Post reports that Crobar, recently the tragic victim of a Rohypnol hoaxmail, hosted a decidedly non-hoax double shooting last night. Few details, but as of the NYP dateline, the two female victims were in stable condition, and the gunman was still at large.

New York's dueling tabloids love ladies in distress, and Jennifer Panicali, the 22-years-young woman injured by the Upper East Side explodey townhouse is certainly going through a lot. We wish her nothing but the best as she recovers from having shrapnel removed from 100+ parts of her body. But isn't it odd that both the New York Daily News and New York Post keep obsessing on her looks? Consider "Blast beauty kin thank city" (NYDN) and the typically tasteful "Beauty's Blown Away" (NYP). Since Panicali was a former NYDN intern, they can perhaps be excused a little paternal pride — she's a "beautiful aspiring journalist," and they at least try to mix the physical and the intellectual by twice referring to her as a "brainy beauty." Perhaps she's just naturally smokin', and she must know it, as both papers reported that among her first post-blast words were, "Oh, my God, am I going to be disfigured?". The lesson in soliciting public sympathy for your tragedy is clear: (1) Be attractive. (2) Don't be unattractive.

Stephen Sakai, the former bouncer accused of enforcing a gunfire-based door policy at currently for-sale Opus 22 in Chelsea, may have a slight history of accelerating others' mortality. The New York Times reports forthcoming indictments against Sakai for three previous murders in Brooklyn, revolving around Sakai's bouncing at Opus 22 and Sweet Cherry, a waterfront strip dive in Sunset Park. The now-closed Sweet Cherry is described as "a dark place that maddened neighbors, prosecutors and city officials for years." Of the three Brooklyn victims, one was a bouncer-runner at Sweet Cherry, another a customer of the same club, and the third was another bouncer at Opus 22. Various bizarre statements from Sakai about the Brooklyn deaths (now disavowed) include his admitting to shooting the bouncer-runner "in the cheek or the leg or maybe someplace else." For more spacey criminal confusion, see Sakai's account after the jump of what happened at Opus 22, when he allegedly opened fire into a crowd outside the club, killing one and wounding three.

Topping nightlife whiz Steven Kamali's real-estate portfolio is this hot little gem, new to market. Not a bad rent for a nameless "West Chelsea" clubspace, eh? Especially if you like a joint with a little history. Then there's undermarket rent! State-of-the-art sound! Built-in bad karma!

Philadelphia Will Do directs us to this video of crusading journalist Geraldo Rivera visiting the City of Brotherly Love to investigate a plot to whack him. It's pretty much what you'd expect (i.e., a lot of Italian guys with whiny voices yelling, "Hey, get outta my face") but what struck us when watching was this: Why do we need the Philly mob to put a hit on Geraldo? We're New York Fuckin' City, our mob can kick your mob's ass. This sixth borough shit is getting out of control.

Residents of Hell's Kitchen - or, as they would no doubt prefer it to be called, Clinton - put up with a lot: expensive apartments, the mental agony of being way the hell over on the far west side, Rudy's. But now, these unfortunate, wealthy souls are suffering from a new indignity: prostitutes. Well, it's not actually a new indignity: anyone with any sort of institutional memory knows that prostitutes are and have been endemic to that neighborhood back unto time immemorial. Frankly, we wouldn't be surprised if prostitution were invented at the corner of 48th and 11th. But to the "young families dishing out up to $3,000 a month in rent," who had been "assured... [by realtors!] that the neighborhood was 'up and coming,'" living in an area where New York's hardest workers ply their trade well into the early hours is unacceptable. "It's a lot of money to be paying to have this activity going on," says one of them.

This week's Time Out New York is full of chirpy advice about crime-themed "staycations," where one can exult in the city's summertime calm by seeking out locales famous for scandal, pain, suffering, and/or death. For example:

• Lil' Kim ate well in the joint.
• Rocketboom parted ways with the world's most miraculous pair of breasts. And before we got to make our "More like Rocketboob" joke.
• Even in death, Ken Lay gave life to the P.R. industry.
• Some web site made minor changes, mostly bumping up font sizes and such. No big deal.
• There's Something About Larry: He's a big-time farter.
• Benji Madden got in a fight with a MisShapes kid, which is almost as challenging as beating up someone in a wheelchair.
• Hopefully "I just wanted to touch him like a kitten" sounds less molestery in Russian.
• You never know what's going to happen when you ride the train, but it usually doesn't involve getting sliced in half by power tools. Usually.

Because You Demanded It — deranged man attacks subway rider with industrial tools, then absconds with teddy bear on continued crimewave. The Today Show has the goods above. Shocking, as even with the trials and tribulations of a normal New York subway commute, one rarely expects an assault from a pair of cordless reciprocating saws. And there's some question about whether or not MTA workers at the scene fled and/or observed the carnage with bored disinterest. See zone-flooding repetitive linkfest after the jump for full details, but the upshot is that the alleged saw-wielding maniac has been apprehended, and the victim is recovering from his wounds in the hospital. Plus, as Newsday notes, subway officials don't think this will make customers feel unsafe, and they're right — an interviewed straphanger says of the saw attack, "It doesn't happen that often." [emph. added]

What can you say about a criminal justice system that returns this man to the streets? Dude looks scary. We wouldn't want to meet up with him in a dark alley. Well, not without $165,000 in gifts to give him, anyway.

At least someone's free today: Lil' Kim, the bulbous rapper who has spent the past 10 months in the Phildelphia Federal Detention Center, has finally reasserted her street cred enough to be released back into the wild. Kim was sentenced to one year and one day behind bars for perjury and conspiracy stemming from a 2001 gunfight outside of, naturally, the Hot 97 building, when her posse crossed paths with rival Foxy Brown's posse. Kim got out this morning at 6 AM, appearing in an "all-white, cleavage-baring outfit," thus demonstrating to would-be prisoners how to manipulate the lonely lesbian-driven system into an early release.

The Gay Pride parade came and went on Sunday with the usual fanfare and excitement afforded by wet rainbows, soggy Metrobears, and disappointing poppers. At the post-parade gathering at the pier, however, blogger Scott Anthony claims to have witnessed quite the buzzkill:

• Instead of serving hard time for cocaine possession, Boy George will be doing community service. Specifically, he'll be working for the Department of Sanitation. With the summer heat melting rat turds everywhere, we would've opted to be a prison bitch. [OMG]
• Terror returns to the financial district: Naomi Campbell moving into 55 Wall Street. [WSJ]
• Peter Kaplan and Arthur Carter are surprisingly hot. [The Real Estate]
• If Star Jones and Al Reynolds were fish, she'd be the bug-eyed starfish and he'd be a gay-as-a-rainbow trout. [Gallery of the Absurd]
• Heather Graham gets ice cream and you don't. But really, she needs it more than you do. [Almost Literary]
• If you combine Times heds with the final paragraph of the accompanying story, you get a simplified, if not mildly insane, result. [Bumper Active]
• Grace Edwards toes dangerously at the nipslip line — really, New York Social Diary just doesn't do that sort of thing, dear. [NYSD]
• This is extremely late-breaking, but when in doubt, blame sagging circulation on natural disasters. You can't argue with God's weather patterns! [Mediaweek (last graf)]

Oh, and some good news for those of you following the sage of Wayne Pace, the Time Warner CFO named by an alleged Manhattan madam as her sugar daddy (a story we really should have been paying much more attention to, except that it broke in the tabs over a weekend, and who reads the tabs on weekends): Time Warner announced late yesterday that it has completed its review of the case, and the media giant is now confident that no company funds were used in and sugar-daddying that may or may not have occurred. And was the CFO in fact the sugar daddy to a madam? Eh, who cares, seems to be the feeling at the Time Warner Center. As long as no company money was used, it's all good.

Over at privileged Hamptons blog The Beach, some nostalgic weirdness in the mailbag (at right). The note reads:

There's an interesting piece in today's Los Angeles Times revealing that the FBI is investigating an L.A. paparazzi agency at the behest of Us Weekly. Seems the agency was founded last year by a former Us staffer, Jill Ishkanian, and the mag had become suspicious that Ishkanian was gaining access to its reporting scoops for her own gain. The FBI executed search warrants at Ishkanian's home and office, and the working theory was that she was somehow tapping into the Us Weekly computer system to conduct this industrial espionage. What does Ishkanian's lawyer have to say to all this? Oh yeah, he says, she was in the email system. Yikes! And how did she crack the intense security measures? By using a password she'd been given, which no one ever bothered to change.

• Jesus lives and saves us all: Star Jones is reportedly announcing her departure from The View, preferring instead to continue her rapid shrinking in the privacy of her own home. If we're lucky, her on-air farewell will be the exact opposite of Katie Couric's: hilarious and laced with blood. [Access Hollywood]
• Producer Dallas Austin has now been in a Dubai prison for one month for trying to bring drugs into the country for Naomi Campbell's birthday party; Campbell has yet to forgive him for ruining her big day. [MTV]
• A sneak peek at a former Playboy Bunny's tell-all, plus her requisite cleavage. [Hollywood Interrupted]
• Best Week Ever comedian Sherrod Small slams the John Mayer report, insists that the musician's use of the n-word was funny. [BWE]
• Extremely loud and incredibly derivative. [The Velvet Blog]
• One block of 103rd Street is renamed Humphrey Bogart Place in honor of the actor's childhood home. Not that it makes the locale any more appealing. [Cinematical]
• Unintentional hilarity: Laura Ingraham as the next Jon Stewart? It's a pilot we'd gleefully kill to get our hands on. [TV Newser]
• Overheard in NY gets its own stalker map. [Overplot]
• Kudos to the generous Daily News editors who allowed Ben Widdicombe to out both Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith in one fell swoop. [Gatecrasher]
• Hipster Swiss Army knives, crafted especially for Bedford Avenue stabbings. [Consumerist]
• Does Us Weekly have a problem with Britney Spears? Is People coddling her? And at what point will we all collectively agree to just look the fuck away? [Media Orchard]

Grab some coffee and thank the gods you weren't replaced by a temp in Bangalore. It's a happy happy Monday, because: