Big news! It's power girl Lizzie Grubman and Rob Shuter of Dan Klores Communications caught canoodling on the cover of Us Weekly. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

• The HuffPost is like a town car, says Simon Dumenco. And he likes Town Cars. [Ad Age]
• Who'd have thunk it: Al Gore TV ain't so bad. [NYT]
• The newsweeklies are dying, apparently. Of course, the newsweeklies are always dying. [USAT]
• Lizzie Grubman, muse. [NY Mag]
• One vote for Charlie Gibson as the new Peter Jennings. [B&C]
• TK soon in Septmeber GQ: "Supreme Court Justices: They're Just Like Us!" [WWD, third item]
• Remember how the Post said the Bancrofts want to sell Dow Jones? Well, the Post also said Dick Gephardt would be running for vice president. [NYT]

Got so excited about my new word that I almost forgot the gossip roundup!
· Comedian Jeffrey Ross will be hosting the WB's revival of "The Gong Show." His commentary: "'The Gong Show' is to talent shows what R. Kelly is to babysitting...Our acts range from the highly talented to the heavily medicated." [Page Six]
· "Deep Throat" may be former Nixon lawyer Fred Fielding. [Page Six]
· Avenue editor Heather Cohane tried to hand-deliver Mayor Mike's invite to a party next Tuesday. "She walked over, climbed the stoop, and started to slip the invite through the door's mail slot when two large plainclothes cops appeared out of nowhere, grabbed her arms and marched her away. 'What do you think you're doing?' one asked. Cohane explained, but the cop replied, 'Next time use a 37-cent stamp.'" [Page Six]
· Marilyn Manson: "This [fedora] used to be my incognito hat. I left a movie theater once and a large group of fat girls yelled, 'It's Michael Jackson!'" [Page Six]
· "OUCH"=Outer Chelsea? [Page Six]
· Lizzie Grubman's bakery will be on 62nd and Madison. [Cindy Adams]
· Tina Brown says her talk show is good to go next Thursday, "assuming we don't invade Syria." [NY Daily News]
· The closed captions for the 6:30 p.m. Tuesday feed of Peter Jennings's "World News Tonight" informed viewers that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was "in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute." [Reliable Source]

To the person who sent me this article with the notation, "Is Lizzie Grubman in Kuwait?": that was in extremely poor taste. (*Bwa ha ha ha!*) Shame on you. (*Snicker*)

Newsday reports that hit-and-run publicist Lizzie Grubman will be returning to the Hamptons this year. "...I want to make it loud and clear that the Hamptons have been my second home since I was a child, and I want to show Long Island and the Hamptons how much I love them by doing positive things." Like not running over people in hysterical fits of rage.
[Newsday via Lockhart Steele]

A reader reports that Lizzie Grubman is doing community service at 475 Park Avenue South. "I just saw her smoking a cigarette right outside the entrance. She's better-looking than I expected, and taller." [Ed. note·Taller? Are we sure it was Lizzie?] "Funny that she gets to do her community service on Park Ave. after running down 'white trash.'"

· Courageous restaurateur Enzo Lentini is taking a stand against the insolent French by refusing to drink any of his French wine. [Page Six]
· EPA Chief and former governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, was spotted at headhunter Heidrick & Struggles' Park Avenue office. Sources say "[She] wants out." [Page Six]
· Men's Health sex columnist Nicole Beland will be celebrating the launch of her book, The Girl Next Door tomorrow night at Lobby. [Page Six]
· Attendees at the Ken Park screening included Lou Reed, John Waters and Interview editrix Ingrid Sischy and Gizmodo Editor Pete Rojas. [Page Six...mostly]
· Ex-Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski's 76th and 5th is up for sale and the brokers are circling. [Cindy Adams]
· Chicago producer Marty Richards lost a Harry Winston watch at Tavern on the Green on Saturday. The reward is $2000. (Or is it really just a marketing ploy to get people to actually eat at Tavern on the Green?) [Cindy Adams]
· Senator Chris Dodd on Richard Gere's remarks to Hillary Clinton at the AmFar dinner: "He's such a jerk...That was just rude. I would love to get him and Hillary in a room alone together. Let's see what would happen then."
· Playwright Tom Stoppard applying his speech prepared for Gwyneth Paltrow to stand-in, director Mike Nichols: "I think you'll agree that he does look ravishing tonight," Stoppard went on. "That he figures prominently in the fantasies of half the men in this room. And yes, I think you would have been totally wasted on Ben Affleck." [NY Daily News]
· Patricia Field's Fashion Week show is sponsored by K-Y Liquid, and she'll soon be curating "101 Alternative Uses for K-Y Liquid," a traveling exhibition. Walter Cronkite, when asked to pose with Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Bob Schieffer for a photo: "Could you bring them to me? I don't want to lose my place at the bar." Lizzie Grubman wants to open a bakery. [Intelligencer]

All the snow outside of my window must be a byproduct of hell freezing over because it's Friday and the Chic Happens guys actually updated. It's like Christmas came early. And they're promising "hourly" updates from Fashion Week"that is, in the sense Chic Happens is updated weekly meaning every day, maybe two." This week, they take time out of their busy schedulesantagonizing Ralph Lauren, watching Anderson Cooper on CNN (he is cute), and betting on "which suck-bag designer will approach the Wintour kids as 'muses' or models'"to direct us to LizzieGrubman.com, a few thousand kilobytes of sheer brilliance. 1755 days of probation left!
Chic Happens [HintMag]
FU white trash [LizzieGrubman.com]

NY Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams says that she got her start by befriending "whoever was going to the can." The tradition is apparently still alive: "When the city desk called me and asked me, `Can you tell us where Lizzie Grubman is?' well, of course I couldn't tell them where she was, because she was sitting in my living room at the time."
At lunch with Cindy Adams [NYT]

Would you like to set your home page to Lizzie Grubman PR? Um, no.
Grubman PR
Gotta love Google [601am.com]

A few British ex-pats are reportedly up-in-arms over the opening of the NY branch of the UK's Soho House. "They're trying to import the class system!" one complains. We're actually kind of warming up to the Soho Housethey've been putting out pre-launch press stating that "people like Lizzie Grubman and Paris Hilton" wouldn't be allowed to join, and we can't help but like them just a little for that.
Cruel Britannia [NY Magazine]

Grubman mugshot

The Southampton night club where Lizzie Grubman hit and ran is being sold to the town and renovated as a community center. Southampton officials apparently want to keep the Mercedes SUV-driving uber-flak riff-raff out.
Pressure hooks conscience deal [Post]

· Nicole Kidman's new best friend is rapper Q-Tip. [Page Six]
· Lizzie Grubman spotted at Bloomingdale's loudly instructing underlings to find her clothes in "size zero." [Page Six]
· World Health Organization suggests that Bloomberg's cigarette tax may be indirectly financing the current Iraqi regime. [Page Six]
· "21"a favorite New Year's spot for "cafe society"will be closed this year. Lotus owner, David Rabin is opening up a new clubacross the street. [Page Six]
· Celebrities are buying battery-powered cars, George Clooney announces that he "can't feel [his] legs" after several hours of drinking at the W on Lexington, and Jennifer Aniston gets whacked upside the head by a sidewalk Santa. [NY Daily News]

Lizzie Grubman's stint at Spa du Minimum Security seems to have treated her well. Which is good, because her Hamptons "incident" a PR disaster if there ever was one will likely be the air-kiss of death for her PR business.
Busy Lizzie's back, upbeat & all smiles [New York Daily News]

Raiment de riguer for fashionable flaks: Manolos and Blass. (How in the world did poor Lizzie survive 37 whole days without?) The Manolo/Blass combination is mentioned not one, not two, but three times in this New York Magazine article. Peggy Siegal and Virginia Coleman, in particular, give identical answers to the same question. Proving thereby what we've long suspected: New York power publicists really are just clones of each other.
Dress (for Success) Codes [NY Magazine]