· Jon Stewart in Rolling Stone, on the Jayson Blair scandal: "Times Executive Editor Howell Raines said, We are not set up if somebody wants to willfully manipulate and mislead us.' You're not set up? Your entire organization is investigative reporters! This guy never turned in expense reports! So he travels to places, but it cost him nothing. Is he a hobo? How do they not get that? It's mind boggling." [Page Six]
· Candice Bergen on Central Park today: "When my daughter was growing up I'd dread the park. We'd sit by the carousel among broken wine and beer bottles and I'd say, 'Honey, don't touch that hypodermic needle on the ground.' We even got to know the rats so well we'd name them" [Cindy Adams]
· The Daily News reports that "www.marthastewartlivinginjail.com is offering a customized "Martha, Department of Corrections" T-shirt. The garment - available only in orange - is being offered for the special 'nine counts' price of $9.99." [NY Daily News]

I know that the above statement is obscenely obvious to most of you, but some people who live in other so-called "cities" just don't get it. Someone on community website Metafilter just posted a thread about the Field Day concert in Long Island being cancelled, to which some frightfully ignorant person replied, "Not everyone lives in New York." Fortunately, a New Yorker was there to correct the offense: "What? Wait a sec... then what are you doing on our Internet?"
Field Day Festival moved to Giants Stadium [MeFi]

Re: Martha Stewart: The Smoking Gun helpfully points to the freshly-indicted home and garden queen's calendar and wonders whether an arrest would prevent the scheduled cleaning of the birdbaths. The answer here is obvious: nothing prevents the cleaning of the birdbaths!!
Martha's schedule [TSG]

New York Social Diary's defense of Martha Stewart: "Nobody had looted the company treasury of billions or swindled anyone out of millions. It was a simple matter of allegedly hearing some insider information about a stock sale, the kind of thing that goes on quite innocently and frequently at the best dinner tables and the best restaurants all over New York (and a thousand other places), and acting on it. Whatever the truth, it looks like Martha Stewart, hearing the news about ImClone, did what a lot of people would do: chose to sell on the news...One small matter seems to have been overlooked: the law...We, most of us, do things like that all the time, on the whim of a moment"
Catching up with Peter and Martha [NYSD]

· Anna Wintour's 17-year-old son Charlie says that when he was 10, he used to keep a toy gun pointed at the door of their townhouse in case there were animal activists outside. [NY Daily News]
· Hillary Clinton, in her new book, on her reaction when Bill admitted to having had "inappropriate relations" with Monica Lewinsky: "I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?' I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea." [NY Daily News]
· It's Round 4 in the Vincent Gallo/Roger Ebert fight. Gallo to Ebert: "You tell that hamhock Roger Ebert he could lose 30 pounds a day for the next four years and still be fat. As for the curse on his colon, what I actually said was that I put an unremovable black magic curse on his prostate, which will enlarge into a large cancerous ball by the fall...I want to challenge that fat cow to an IQ test. I bet him $1 million dollars to take a public IQ test against me. By the way, tell him I also put a curse on [Gene] Siskel [Ebert's partner on TV's 'Siskel and Ebert,' who died of complications from a brain tumor in 1999]." [Page Six]

Madonna's childrens book, The English Roses, will be released in 100 countries in 42 different languages. The book is described as "a story... about friendship, jealousy, sleepover parties, and fairy godmothers." (Truth or Dare without the fairy godmothers?) Madonna has criticized existing children's books as being "vapid and vacant" books that "offered no lessons in life for younger readers." No word on what the title of the next book is, but I'm guessing it's "My First Lesson in Moral Relativity."
Madonna to set publishing record [BBC via Bookslut]

ABC News is reporting that Martha Stewart has been indicted by a grand jury, but SaveMartha.com says there's still time! Under the heading "tempest in a cuisinart", SaveMartha.com chronicles fan outrage at the results and thanks Oliver North "for the opportunty to tell the other side of the story on his radio show [because] If there's anyone out there who knows what it's like to be in the middle of a major political investigation and scandal, it's Ollie North..."
SaveMartha.com

From Craig's List: "So I'm the guy that posted a few days ago that I'd trade 2 Radiohead tix at the Beacon for a 4 bedroom brownstone in Brooklyn. It was a joke. I had seen so many scalping posts and so many outlandish emails with such crazy offers that I gratuitously posted this just for fun. Well, much to my suprise I got several responses."

· "On Saturday 31 May I saw Monica Lewinsky at the deli on Hudson and Charles Street. She lives down the block at the Archive building Christopher and Washington. Also - Chelsea Clinton has alreday moved into her new apartment in Chelsea. Go figure."
· "Radiohead just spotted checking into the Soho House. Thom Yorke was wearing bad blue tinted euro sunglasses."
· "Sunday (5/25), 10-ish pm, saw Albert Hammond from The Strokes at supper with the usual rock star accessories - 2 blondes. He was wearing a really nice grey pinstripe jacket. very nice."

Page Six columnist Ian Spiegelman on the Hilton sisters: "You take the Hilton sisters you can brush 'em off as a couple of stupid rich bitches, and they might be that, but at the same time, they're like this American tragedy. They have everything. There's no reason why they shouldn't live a great life and do great things, but at the same time, they've had no parental supervision, ever. There's no one around who seems to care what happens to them, and so, every time you look at them, they're falling down. And as much as I dislike rich people, I have sympathy for what's happened to them, because they don't even know what's happened to them. They're just two girls who someone should've looked after, and no one ever did, and no one ever will. They're gonna go through guy after guy that they think could be Daddy. It's not gonna be Daddy. And they're going to abuse maid after maid." [See also the letters page for the ULA's Karl "King" Wenclas' complaint that there will likely be celebrities at Ian's book party tonight for his new novel, Everyone's Burning. McSweeney's/Men's Journal contributor John Hodgman jumps in and Ian responds that Dave Eggers is a "sneaking, dishonest freak." Much fun is had by all.]
Spiegelman's burning [MobyLives]

· CFDA Awards slideshow
· NYC newcomer weblogs [via Anil]
· Smoking in Hoboken
· Places to smoke in New York [via Megnut]

· Courtney Love says she quietly dated Ed Norton for four years and that he'll never marry fiancee Salma Hayek because "for one, he can barely understand half of what she's saying." [Page Six]
· Paris Hilton is now supposedly dating "Girls Gone Wild" creator, Joe Francis. [Page Six]
· "Eddie Dean, owner of Discotheque and Tiki Bar, says some of the more dishonest denizens of the night have used the ban to sneak in underage ('But I was just outside smoking!'), skip out on their bill ('I'll be right back I'm gonna have a smoke') and demand free drinks ('I just went outside to smoke and someone took my drink away!')" [Page Six]
· Roger Ebert bites back at Vincent Gallo for calling him a "fat pig" by saying that he lost 30 pounds and if Gallo gained 30 IQ points, they'd be even. He adds that watching his colonoscopy video was better than watching Gallo's Cannes film, "Brown Bunny." [Page Six]
· Madonna fell off her bike while riding around Beverly Hills because she was trying to balance her soy latte on the handlebars. [NY Daily News]

For today's edition of QAASUI, we have two pressing questions:
1. Re: It's Only News if it Happens on W. 43rd St. I'm the guy with the bird, sharing the front page with Eric Rudolph. Does anyone else remember that Spy Magazine article that included a formula that allowed one to accurately calculate the exact number of column inches a Times story would get, depending on how close the it occured to: A) W. 43rd St; B) The Managing Editor's Upper E. Side Co-op; C) Downtown Jerusalem. ??
Answer: "Yes, I remember that SPY story - though, as I recall, it dealt with the number of people who had to die to make the front page - the likelihood of which diminished depending on the number of dead and the distance from W. 43rd St. - unless they died in Jerusalem. The result was that 3 dead in, say, Hicksville had less chance than 2 dead in Jerusalem."
2. Re: Question About Amy Sohn - Is the chick from NY Mag any hot? My friends are coaxing me to go to this obviously gay thing in a couple weeks because Amy Sohn will be there, and they say she is hot. I'm to cheap to spring the $25. I can't find a pic on the net. A simple 1-10 score might do .... Alex K, the former NYT Style&Fasion Ed was about a 7, Carmen Electra, fakeness and all, is a 10. Or ... what celebrity does she most resemble?
Answer: Amy Sohn has a website. And a friendster page. Judge for yourself.

Ex-SPY writer Joe Queenan, once (okay, more than once) made fun of Kitty Dukakis for her drinking problem with the explanation that he "was a meanaholic and couldn't control his impulses." I wish I could say that I'm a nice person, and that I can't relate, but I just read that Keanu Reeves is giving the special effects team behind the Matrix what amounts to £1.75 million per person because he just "doesn't need the money," and not making a smartass comment about Keanu is complete torture. He's running around giving people money, and clearly deserves a pat on the back, but I can't help but think that maybe he's giving money away because two of his three brain cells are no longer functioning properly and...oh my god, I really can't stop myself. Keanu: Dude! Like, good job! Seriously!
Keanu Reeves gives 50 million to unsung heroes of the Matrix [Hello!]

From a NY Mag article about hamburger recommendations Hamptons party planners: "[Party boys] Goldstein, Ural, and Heller's [guest] list is composed almost entirely of city brats: David Lauren, Shoshanna Lonstein, Hard Rock heir Harry Morton. Goldstein's coup last year was bringing Gwyneth Paltrow and Renee Zellweger to the Star Room. Everyone shares Tara Reid." That last sentence says it all.
The boys of summer [NY Mag]

In the continuing service journalism vein, Jason Kottke offers "rules for using the NYC subway," which include "Get the hell out of my way, I'm coming through," "If you need to move, do so with purpose and well-defined direction," and "Do not stop at the top of the stairs to put your MetroCard back into your purse/wallet. You are between me and my train."
(Jason's originally from the great state of Minnesconsin, or something like that, and has been living in New York for less than a year. Anil's alt tag for the link reads, "Holy cow, we made an asshole New Yorker out of that nice midwestern boy in just six months!")
Jason's rules for the NYC subway [Kottke.org via Anil]

· Celebrities with zits [via Treacher]
· Overheard: at the NYC parks and rec pool and weight room. [via Zulkey]
· Historical maps of NYC [via Muxway]
· GothamMenu - delivery menus [via Muxway]
· A restaurant opening not on the Lower East Side: Rocco's on 22nd between B'way and Park. Opening tonight.

A to-do list suggestion from a reader: staking out 80th & Broadway to watch a handoff of high-priced art. I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but it looks like the missing Picasso print and (Sophie) Matisse study that framer William Bailey left in a subway last week are being handed off at the designated location this (?) afternoon. "No third parties" instructed the man with the art. There's nothing to prevent third parties from showing up like an article in the New York Times announcing the exact location.
Appointment for return of art left in subway [NYT]

Choire Sicha, traumatized by the claustrophobia of his Hamptons share, devises a set of house rules designed to preserve the sanity of its inhabitants. Among them, "It is truly best not to have sexual intercourse with fellow housemembers," "The homosexual is in charge of matters relating to taste, plumbing, and salad dressings," and "The Jews and Blacks of the house have control over the ways in which the Jews and Blacks are discussed."
Notes toward a constitution for communal beach houses [ChoireSicha]

From the Village Voice classifieds:
SOHO HOUSE NEW YORK
UNIQUE VIBRANT 24rm
MEMBERS CLUB
LMT w/Thai Massage, Hot Stones and Hydrotherapy a plus
Butler, Fine Dining Servers, Breakfast Servers, P/T Restroom Attds. PLEASE FAX RESUME to Human Resources at 212.627.2386 or BRING RESUME Mon to Fri 9am - 12pm (or) 2pm - 4pm to 47-59 NINTH AVE Suite 201 bet 14th & 15th Streets
[Ed. notealso a plus: experience monitoring flat surfaces, flood prevention, etc.]
[Village Voice - Classifieds]