The New Yorker's Rebecca Mead reports on what ex-ImClone CEO Sam Waksal is reading in jail, where he's serving time on securities fraud charges. The Week, perhaps? [Ed.—I'd stop mentioning The Week's little publicity stunt but I'm annoyed that I didn't think of it first.] Not on the list: Let's Talk About When Your Parent Is In Jail, How to Establish a Jail and Prison Ministry, and Who Moved My Soap?: The CEO's Guide to Surviving in Prison. All of the books on Waskal's list have been purchased, but we're taking recommendations.

Throw the books at him [New Yorker]

Dr. Sam Waksal's purchased items

Never one to refrain from speaking ill of the dead, English writer (or British blowhard, depending on your tastes) Christopher Hitchens expresses sympathy for the late NYT writer Vincent Canby for having to write late comedian Bob Hope's obituary to make it sound like Hope was actually funny. "It's always a bad sign when a Times reporter has to signal the fact that he's dealing with wit. Some of them do this by resorting to the stale words 'he quipped,' or 'he shot back,' lest we miss the 'barb' altogether...This is comedy for people who have no sense of humor and who come determined to be entertained and laugh to show that they 'get it'...Hope was a fool, and nearly a clown, but he was never even remotely a comedian."
Hopeless: did Bob Hope ever say anything funny? [Slate]

[Gawker stalker sightings are submitted by readers. Send sightings to tips@gawker.com]
· Spotted Adrien Brody, wearing aviator sunglasses and carrying a little white dog that looked more like a rat, with a male friend buying from a fruit stand at the cross section of 8th Ave. and Bleecker St (I know this square has a name, but what is it??). Walked along Bleecker Street behind him, witnessed every person he past [sic] do a double-take and gesticulate wildly.
· I saw 'detectives' Charlotte Ross and Dennis Franz taping exterior shots for an episode of NYPD Blue at the Supreme Court building at 60 Centre Street on Thursday. I took a photo of the beautiful Ross at the top of the stairs and a short video clip (thanks to my trusty Digital Elph) while walking by the set. I also was happy to stop to talk to a freelancer for Steven Bochco Productions who was busy directing New Yorkers off the sidewalk and into the street. He told me they were taping since 6 am and that the show, which is taped primarily in Los Angeles (the horror!), tapes all of its exteriors in the span of 2 weeks in NYC.

Blogger Bunsen, upon reading about Williamsburg staring contests, decides to have one with actor Christopher Walken: "in a staring contest, his eyes are a literal weapon. When first we joined our gaze I felt a sensation in my lower abdomen that I somewhat hysterically believed to be my testicles liquefying. Some say his eyes are dead. They are wrong. You can't know this until you sit across from him joined in competition...Walken snapped his fingers. Verne Troyer waddled just to the side of our sight-line, wearing a tiny grass skirt and a Carmen Miranda fruit basket hat. I felt a twinge at the corner of my mouth, the birthing of a smile. But I swallowed it down as I wondered if the Mini-Me move was even legal."
Gaze dept. [Bunsen]

The Black Table's Will Leitch, in discussing his obsession with celebrities, reveals the following about actor/comedian/writer Steve Martin: "Steve Martin (whom I haven't met) has this great ritual. He refuses to sign autographs, but if you approach him, he will wordlessly hand you a business card and walk away. The card says, simply: 'You have just had a Steve Martin Experience.'" [UPDATE from a reader: "actually, the card bears his signature and says something more like: 'this certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me and that you found me witty, charming and intelligent.' not exactly that, but something similar." UPDATE UPDATE from a reader: "sounds like Martin is ripping off, or more kindly, riffing on, Adian Piper's famous guerrilla performance peice——a business card the light-skinned artist handed out as necessary which read: 'Dear Friend, I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark.' As a big league collector and all-around art maven, Martin can NOT be unaware of the precident. 'The Jerk' notwithstanding, he should immediately purchase an overpriced artwork by a struggling African American artist as penance."]
Life as a loser #167: celebrity [BlackTable]

The NYT reports on the world's largest picnic, which was scheduled to be held in Bryant Park. 1,325 people attended, breaking the world record of 1,059. Some participants "said they were glad the organizers had chosen a low-key record such as picnicking, as opposed to body-piercing." [Ed.Next up: body-piercing while picnicking.]
Call the Guinness people! Crowd eats in Bryant Park [NYT]

LasagnaFarm interviews a New Yorker who speculates that "latent irony" may attract the hipsters out of Williamsburg, now that Williamsburg is No Longer Cool: "I can feel Seattle's latent irony in the marrow of my bones. The city is like a polyester bowling shirt hanging in my great-uncle Morris's closet in 1987, waiting for the world to turn its way. It won't be long until kids in post-Williamsburg Brooklyn will be glomming up all the Patagonia pullovers they can get their pale, white mitts on. Plus, pre-ironic homesteading is the new gentrification. Take the Catskills as an example."
Interview with two young Manhattanites who mention more times than I care to remember that they are going to move to Seattle soon [LasagnaFarm]

LES blogger Lockhart Steele is soliciting pitches for new places on the Lower East Side, and it seems to be working, so I thought I'd shamelessly rip him off and make some requests of my own:
· We'd like to do more real estate/New York architecture coverage. As usual, send tips to tips@gawker.com.
· If we're not covering your publication, it may simply be because I don't have a subscription and/or its not on the web. If you'd like to send me a subscription, email editorial@gawker.com and I'll give you a mailing address.
· Listicles are annoyingly time-consuming because I have to think of a topic and research it instead of just indiscriminately ranting like I normally do. Suggestions for listicle topics are, therefore, greatly appreciated. Tips directing me to useful things, along the same lines, are also greatly appreciated.

· Celebrity flacks get skewered. [Page Six - where I'm once again freelancing for the day]
· Page Six covers one of the subjects of yesterday's listicle: ironic Che Guevara t-shirts [Page Six]
· Gavin McInnis, the editor of VICE magazine, says it has "become fashionable to link liberalism with weakness and conservatism with honesty." [Ed.VICE is a conservative mag?] [Page Six]
· September 16th - public hearing on the effects of the smoking ban. [Page Six]
· Mothers, lock up your sons: the Olsen twins are going to college in New York. [NY Daily News]

MTV/VH1 employees: Profiling the Strokes for the hundredth time not punk rock enough for you? Learn to crochet! It's cost-effective!

Also in Black Book: Bruno Maddox, formerly of SPY magazine, profiles Karl Wenclas, literary antagonist and head of the Underground Literary Alliancewhich, despite being "underground," is happy to do press and most recently got no small amount of publicity by going after The Believer magazine and Page Six's Ian Spiegelman. An excerpt:

I have no real graphics skills, so we're basically incapable of doing charticles (chart + article = "charticle") for Gawker. Which is unfortunate, as charticles work well for people with no attention span who don't like to read, which is our primary demographic. As a result, I've decided to default to one of the magazine world's last great lame clichéslists. Lists as articles. Listicles. (I feel dirty even saying it.) Consider this my homage to sappy service journalism.

Excerpt from a Friendster tale:
"Dude, have you updated your Friendster profile lately?"
They were hunched over the crowded little condiments nook at the Verb Café on a Saturday afternoon spilling milk and honey and sugar and little red straws all over the counter while ten others just like them tried to squeeze in, pushing forward with their pale little claws gripped around $3 soy mochas and spears of chocolate-chip biscotti.
"No."
"Yeah, it didn't look like it. You really should update it dude," said Jim...
Friendster [The New York City Anti-Hipster Forum]

[Gawker stalker sightings are submitted by readers. Send sightings to tips@gawker.com or add to comments below]
· At Da Silvano last night: Diane von Furstenberg at a table with a man in a white suit. The blonde guy from American Pie who had that weird rectal exam in Roadtrip. And Phyllis Diller (or an amazing doppelganger) who came out of the men's room while I was waiting for the ladie's and said, "Take the risk, Honey. It's not as bad as you'd think."
· Courtney Love literally ran into me at Victoria's Secret in Soho on Monday evening. She was being what seemed to be typical 'Courtney' rushing through, bumping into people, trying to get the saleslady to help her find her size Her boyfriend and the rest of the entourage were trailing behind. I was kind of disappointed that I couldn't get a better look at her face I wanted to check out how obvious all the plastic surgery is (it always shows up in the pictures), but I was trying to be the 'cool New Yorker,' like everyone else, and didn't stare. She was thinner than I thought she'd be.

· Soho House thread on Mediabistro
· The Middle Eastern Gawker?
· New York has been sodomizing me for the past decade, and it's only in the last year that it has started to feel good [via TMN]
· Verizon NYC wifi points [via Muxway]
· Drinking and shopping
· Justin Timberlake gets pelted with garbage

Moby explains why his concert rider demands "10 pairs of white cotton crew socks and 10 cotton boxer shorts": "Oh underpants!...Yeah, but it's not for me. It's for everybody on my tour. When I travel, there's like 12 of us on tour, and a lot of time, you're too busy to go shopping for socks and underpants...'Cause, you know, jeans you can wear for a week straight...T-shirts you can always get, 'cause you're selling T-shirts, but socks and underpants are really hard to come by...No, I don't have a underpants fetish." Suuuure. That's what they all say.
Brief encounter with Moby: it's a freebie not a fetish [NYT]

· Man Ray kitchen staff walks out. [Page Six]
· Anna Wintour spotted at the Starbucks in the Sony Building "tearing into an apple fritter'the biggest, most sugar-laden thing you can get'while waiting to pay for her coffee with a large tip." [Page Six]
· Paris Hilton was spotted making out with Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath in an LA bathroom stall. [NY Daily News]

TMN's Magdalen Powers, finding a mouse in her apartment, grows attached to it, and it apparently dies before the exterminator arrives. Powers writes, "So yes, he probably had fleas. Maybe worse. But still, he was such a nice tiny bit of outdoors here in bulky, brickish Brooklyn." Yeesh. This is what happens when you live in a city where a 3' x 3' plot of grass is considered a "garden." Rodents are considered "a nice tiny bit of the outdoors."
Mus on the loose [TMN]

LES evangelist Lockhart Steele is soliciting PR pitches from business owners on the Lower East Sideand grading them. So far, the highest grade has gone to the owner of a soon-to-be-opened coffee/juice bar, who sent him pictures of, I kid you not, a boarded-up storefront.

New York can afford new walk/don't walk signs and Segways for the police department. Go figure. (I do, however, look forward to cops on Segways chasing people on those ubiquitous little electric scooters. If, that is, they don't ticket each other for using non-registered vehicles first.)
Cops on a roll [NY Post]
Signs of stupidity [Buzzmachine]