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• How did an Indo-Englishman with an all-American name become synonymous with Brazilian music?, asks Flavorpill of Joe Davis. Beats us. But he DJs at APT tonight, with free vodka between 9 and 10pm to boot. [flavorpill]
• Steven Berlin Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Pop Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter (also known as How We Justify Watching Desperate Housewives Reruns This Summer Even Though We Saw The Same Episodes The First Time Around), speaks at the National Museum of the American Indian on "how the design of social spaces in interactive environments is based on the translation of metropolitan values, or the 'value of sidewalks,' building on the intelligence of great cities and neighborhoods." We'd probably have to watch some more TV if we want to figure out what the fuck this means. [Upcoming]
• Victor Navasky and David Levine of The Nation partake in a discussion at the Strand Bookstore regarding the ethical issues entailed in political cartooning. Now you know where to go to get your questions answered on the decency of the latest Ben Sargent quip. [Strand]

What, so you don't like R. Kelly?

The Post reports today that Americans are wasting about two hours a day at work, twice what employers previously thought was the amount of wasted worktime. In New York State it's even worse: an average of 2.4 hours are wasted every day, costing employers $56.3 billion.

Moments ago on ABC's estrogen-fest The View, Barbara Walters and the ladies debated whether or not rich people are more happy than poor people. "Not necessarily," says one. "But poor people are definitely more unhappy than rich people," says another. They would know, after all. You don't honestly think any of the hosts makes under six figures an episode, do you? (Besides Hasselbeck. She doesn't count.)

Sightings are sent in by readers; send yours to tips@gawker.com.

• We forgot to mention that amidst Fabian Basabe's Hamptons Racist RageFest 2005, he shoved Publicist of Destruction Jonathan Cheban. Someone give the Basabe a medal! [Page Six]
• Meanwhile, we've IM'd Lizzie Grubman to see if her shoes are okay after Rush & Molloy reported that she broke a heel during the Fabian Fracas (so many alliterations, so little time). We've yet to hear back; things are looking grim for her Choos. [R&M]
• Would Donald Trump be so outlandish as to pit a team of black contestants against a team of white ones for his next season of The Apprentice? Why, yes. Yes, he would. [Scoop]
• Why in the world would MSNBC remove blue-eyed devil Dan Abram's poster and replace it with that of post-op Rita Cosby? She doesn't have her own show yet and, well, she sounds like a scary man. [Lowdown]
• Actress Cameron Diaz heads to the witness stand to testify against a photographer she claims "stole" photos of her baring her average breasts. [NYDN]

Because we're dedicated to helping our fellow mediaistes, we thought we'd flag this request, which Matthew Flamm of Crain's New York Business recently posted to ProfNet, an email list that distributes reporters' queries to thousands of PR flacks. It's your chance to be a star!

Go ahead and say it: We're going soft. We know. It's the heat, the TiVo, the carbs. These lethal lazy elements have weakened us, made us sensitive to, like, "human plight" or some shit. (Also, 1/2 of Gawker is on the precipice of menstruation, so that might have something to do with it. You guess which half.) So, with that in mind, a reader email has us wearing our warm fuzzy costume:

Memory, all alone in the moonlight... I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then...

Last night, we got a strange little email from one claiming to be Fabian Basabe. Our jaded souls snickered — hell, we've been FabianB@catlover.com for two years now, so we've no reason to believe much of anything that comes in our inbox. Nevertheless, we read the email (we are nothing if not hopeful children, wishing for golden nuggets of email truisms), in which Fabian wanted to give us a heads-up on something that would be running in Page Six today:

We're sorry, dear readers, for denying you the answers to our blind item bonanza for another tortorous 12 hours. We were actually ready to publish this business yesterday at the end of the day, but then it hit us: No Lohan. Seriously, these are the first blind items in recent memory where the possible culprits really aren't Lindsay Lohan. The implications of this earth-shattering revelation were far too great; we had to take a step back and breathe. A blind item without Lohan is like a glass of water without hydrogen, and it took us a whole night to wrap our heads around that.

Apparently, Roosevelt Hotel revamping mastermind Amanda Scheer Demme's definition of the "really great, interesting people" that she wanted populating the new Tropicana bar doesn't include "guests of the hotel." After all, anybody with a credit card can book a room without being screened for their "great" or "interesting" qualities, potentially threatening to skew the great/interesting balance of the poolside area. A reader tells the LA.comfidential blog:

• The Manhattan 7-11 is here to stay and, to assure itself of your love, they're giving away free Slurpees. Go ahead, you know you want to scream "Brain freeze!" like it's 1991 all over again. [Manhattan Offender]
• The WWD Overexposure Index, strangely enough, is followed by a straightforward item on Lindsay Lohan. Ahem. [WWD]
• More on the celebrity weeklies' usage of creative covers: Even your precious People magazine is guilty of this sort of bullphooey. Sure, it was a long time ago, People's cleaned up since then — we've heard it all before, and we trust no one. [WND]
• To give the Post fucking dating section more than a passing glance requires a very serious problem. Ladies and gentlemen, meet that problem, love the problem, and make it your own. [Lectern]
• Britney Spears has the golden ticket, and it's not to Planned Parenthood. Live, Federletus, LIVE! [OAN]
• You know what we're sending to Judith Miller? A "Free Judith" t-shirt. Duh. [CafePress]

From Craigslist today:

• It's springtime for Bloomberg, and no German-speaking New Yorker will go un-campaigned-to. [The Politicker]
• After 85 years of "temporary" closure, a new park opens at the far west end of Canal Street. [Downtown Lad via Curbed]
• Introducing the "Harper's iPod," which proves Andrew Hearst has too much time on his hands, and too few obsessions. [Panopticist]
• Bed, Bath & Beyonc , in Chelsea, natch. [BlogChelsea]

• Cintra Wilson, the fame-hating, catty quasi-celebrity prone to unapologetic snark (yes, we used these exact same words to describe her last year, but nothing's changed and we're lazy) solicits the help of Jonathan Ames, Mike Albo, and others to read from her new book, "Colors Insulting to Nature," at Joe's Pub tonight. [flavorpill]
• Longtime New Yorker staff writer Mark Singer's new book Character Studies is (you guessed it!) a collection of profiles he's written. He reads from said collection at Half King tonight. [Half King]
• The Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance-number vehicle The Gay Divorcee screens at the Bryant Park Film Festival. We haven't seen it, but we're pretty sure they don't mean "gay" in the literal sense. Shame. [Bryant Park]

Fellow celeb Scientologists Kirstie Alley and Kelly "Travolta Had Me At The Experts, Once Arye Gross Showed No Interest" Preston have publicly joined Tom Cruise in the Church's crusade against psychiatry, but without any high profile projects to gain them access to a televised session browbeating Matt Lauer over his appalling lack of knowledge of the history of pseudo-science, they've taken up the time-honored practice of activist letter-writing:

We're hardly halfway through our latest pack of Ortho (yes, we're using the royal "we," because everyone at Gawker is either a woman or gay and on womanly hormones) and already we're perusing online baby store Buy Buy Baby. We blame a reader, however, for our latest maternal obsession: The gift registry for skank-chic actors Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger of Brooklyn, NY. You can buy Mommy Michelle a Breast Friend pillow in a lovely shade of "stonewash," or, if you're feeling particularly generous, why not splurge and pick up the Volo Stroller in peony — a steal at $99.99.

• Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston compare Ritalin to cocaine and heroin. We'd agree on the former, which is why we're such huge fans, but heroin? That's unfair. [Page Six]
• And the Worst Pet Husband Ever award goes to J.Lo's love, Marc Anthony, who submitted a witty "Fuck you" scrawled on paper as an illustration for a charity drive. [Lowdown]
• Even celebrity children's books need ghostwriters. Allegedly, Madonna's Kabbalah friendly kids' books were actually written by the Centre's Eitan Yardeni. Fair enough — who has the time, really, to write 300 words or less? Besides us, we mean. [Page Six]
• An HBO documentary about Yankee legend Mickey Mantle will feature his mistress, Greer Johnson. Somewhere in the Bronx, an old man weeps. [Gatecrasher]
• We're really ready for Jeanette Walls to return to her Scoop column, if only so MSNBC.com will take down that annoying TomKat photo. [Scoop]