The trailer is out for the movie version of Toby Young's Vanity Fair memoir, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, apparently a longer version of the one that surfaced in December. In an item titled "Devil Graydon," Page Six claims Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter "comes off worse than Anna Wintour did in The Devil Wears Prada." Carter should pray for such a glamorous portrayal. Instead, with actor Jeff Bridges in his shoes at the fictional Sharps magazine, Carter comes off looking a lot more like Jeff Lebowski. Clip after the jump.

Meet Markus Dohle, the new CEO of Random House. His previous job was retooling Bertelsmann AG's printing plants to repair mobile phones, generate billing statements and warehouse pills. In case that's not unglamorous enough on its own, note that Dohle is following in the footsteps of Peter Olson, who while considered a tough-talking bean counter was also a former lawyer and banker fluent in three languages, not to mention a voracious reader. Dohle seems to want to move beyond the rarefied club of literary publishing into more practical, money-making endeavors; according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke news of his appointment this morning citing anonymous sources, he is interested in expanding education services, among other things. Having turned Bertelsmann's publishing division into a "growth engine" and with no obvious emotional attachment to high-minded writing per se, Dohle should be the ruthless numbers man Olson always fancied himself but could never actually become. [WSJ]

When the Daily News needed to illustrate a story on karaoke bars, guess who appeared in the photo? Julia Allison, omnipresent media figure and karaoke aficionado! Her face is the mandated illustration for at least one-third of all breaking lifestyle stories within the confines of Manhattan. And her singing partner is none other than Tumblr founder David Karp, no doubt belting out "Ride of the Valkyries" as undercover PepsiCo advertising operatives furiously scribble notes. Though this song lasted but a moment, the blog debate over the song will surely consume hundreds of hours. Julia Allison's Tumblr'd question that night: "What are the top Geek songs of all time?" Oh, the synchronicity. [via NYDN]

Take a journey, if you will, into the secret inner chambers of New York's cultural elites. It's an exclusive club where well-dressed "raconteurs and bon vivants" chatter urbanely while tuxedoed waiters scurry about. Of course, their meetings are at noon on Tuesdays, their members are mostly over the hill, and they didn't admit women until 1991. Welcome to the Dutch Treat Club, the Algonquin Roundtable for 21st-century Manhattan olds who still like to drink and ogle girls!

One more thing that the good people who run TV Guide have to worry about: Henry Yuen, the company's former CEO, is now officially a fugitive. He was charged with obstruction of justice last week for destroying documents that the SEC requested (in relation to an earlier conviction for securities fraud, natch), but he failed to turn himself in. New owner Macrovision is already preoccupied with trying to sell the print magazine to rescue the entire enterprise from death, so they certainly could do without the headache of answering new questions about Yuen, who was fired in 2002. Luckily for them, this story is far too esoteric for TV outlets to cover. [Mediapost via Jossip]

N+1 founder and sad young literary man Keith Gessen sat down for a Big Think interview last week. He touched on everything from "Dating as a Historical Phenomenon" to "Is political writing political activism?" But the only bit I was curious enough to watch was his response to the question, "Why does Gawker hate you?" According to Gessen, it's because Gawker types once read a lot of books, then we gave up on the value system of books, but we're wrong and we will lose! I don't know, man; I just think it's annoying how much you talk about Harvard. The full clip of this latest volley in New York's most frivolous cultural clash, below:

Jeez. Busty Amanda Congdon left her gig hosting internet video time-waster Rocketboom back in 2006? Has it really been so long since anyone's heard from her? Well, you know the story. She moved on to bigger and better things, on proper television. An HBO development deal and a gig with ABC news. Neither went anywhere. ABC had no use for her, and they were also a little peeved that she was doing "freelance commercial work" for DuPont. Her development deal developed nothing. So now she's hooked up with some production studio called Media Rights Capital to make another cheap web video program. Hooray! Did you know Congdon invented being internet-famous, btw?

Going to the movies is already way too expensive. In Manhattan, two tickets, a large popcorn, and a drink will run you more than $30. And since most movies suck, it's a hefty gamble. But "the price of movie tickets is expected to skyrocket by as much as 30% this year." What? Shouldn't competition from the internet and Netflix be driving the price of tickets down? How the hell can this happen? Besides the fact that Adam Sandler ain't getting any cheaper, this cinematic economic time bomb all comes down to one thing: precious, precious corn.

The New York Post has canned Leonardo Blair, the black reporter who earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD alleging racial harassment. Blair probably got the sense that his employer didn't really have his back when the Post ran an editorial ho-humming racial profiling complaints the same day that Blair filed his suit. Neither the Post nor Blair would comment on the end of his employment there. At least the Daily News is now free to commission Blair to write a scandalous tell-all of racial discrimination in the inner bowels of the Post. If they don't, you have to wonder whether they're sufficiently bloodthirsty (or rather, justice-thirsty) to play with Rupert Murdoch. [NYDN]

Al Jazeera English isn't carried by any American cable TV systems, and that's in part because "some... were disappointed it wasn't hanging people or torturing people, said a former executive... 'If it looks like the BBC, why should we add it?'" In other words, the network is floundering not just because some associate it with Islamic extremists, but because others find it not extreme enough. The new managing director of the network, a Canadian named Tony Burman, is promising to change all that and to emulate some of the "fearless, bold and provocative" coverage of Arabic Al Jazeera. The change came after a bunch of Americans and Brits left the network, saying it was being controlled more tightly out of Qatar. Outgoing anchor Dave Marash said he saw signs of anti-Americanism creeping in to coverage before he left. But a certain skepticism toward U.S. foreign policy would make for an enlightening viewpoint on cable news, if only to contrast with the increasingly opinionated coverage from the American channels. And who better to lead some sober antagonism against America than a Canadian? [Times]

Apparently it's 1987, because MTV feels it is very important to educate everyone about how you can't tell from looking at someone whether he or she has HIV. Oh, but it can't be 1987, because only in the 20 years since then have we developed the technology necessary for the Viacom music channel to create a cringey viral (literally!) website designed to communicate this message. Guess whether people have HIV, find out how they got infected, and when they found out! Decide everyone in the world looks HIV positive! Feel guilty if you notice something funny! Hours of awkward edutainment await. [Times, PosOrNot.com]

Wired ran the meth tutorial above under the headline, "Give Your Intellect A Boost — Just Say Yes To Doing The Right Drugs!" That was, like, a month ago, but the Times is now wondering if the article might, you know, give people the wrong idea about drugs. In addition to some positive words about meth, the article also praised drug Aderall and said it is "often prescribed to A.D.H.D. patients (wink, wink)," implying people should lie to their doctors to get the drug and "enhanc[e] concentration, turning mundane tasks into wondrous ones." This incident bodes well for Wired in two ways:

Great job winning a record six Pulitzer Prizes last month for the Washington Post, Len Downie! But you're so fired. Or, as the Times has it in Monday's paper, "pressured" to soon leave the Post so the new publisher, Katharine Graham's granddaughter, can pick her very own editor. Nepotism beats journalism prizes, naturally. (Radar had something on this last week, but was apparently overconfident about the timing.) The publisher is trying to bring together the print and online halves of the Post, which have been warring, so it makes little sense that she's supposedly been trying to recruit as Downie's replacement old-media hands like New Yorker Editor David Remnick, former Managing Editor Steve Coll or former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli. But Remnick and Coll have already turned the publisher down, so it's possible she'll go with WashingtonPost.com editor Liz Spayd, who the Times paints as her friend. Bottom line: the pernicious Pulitzer Prize is not correlated with journalism job security these days, except perhaps negatively (in case that wasn't sufficiently clear from the 2003 departure of Pulitzer machine John Carroll from the Los Angeles Times). [Times]

A reporter from England's Telegraph is explaining The Colbert Report to his countrymen today. "The Colbert Report is news parody of the first order. The show's titular host offers a funhouse-mirror reflection of the bellicose Right-wing opinionisers of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel (among others) who dominate and dictate the political discourse in the States with lengthy and obnoxious opinion-slots that are somehow passed off as 'news'."

The Times' Alessandra Stanley weighs in on the frightening phenomenon: "'Gossip Girl' goes further than most shows in depicting the excesses of the rich and under-age (in this fantasy teenagers are never carded), but most of all it represents the next evolutionary stage of girl power television after 'Sex and the City.' That pioneering HBO series, and the movie version that comes out later this month, celebrates girlish women who joined forces - 'Us against the world'- in the pursuit of success and happiness."

Yesterday marked the merger of two rising lieutenants in Manhattan's Media Mafia as The New York Observer's Spencer Morgan and Vanity Fair executive fashion editor Alexis Bryan were married in Houston. But just who are these two newlyweds, really?

So yesterday the Times weighed in on everyone's most detested yuppie mecca, Park Slope. Today, the new issue of Time Out New York piles on! "Websites like Gawker and Curbed crackle with anti-Slope invective, hurled at the twin bugaboos of the 'Stroller Mafia' (pushy, indulgent yuppie parents) and the bleeding-heart 'People's Republic of Park Slope' (headquartered at the Food Co-op)." Update: Via email from Maureen Shelly: "Hi Ian. I'm the EIC of Time Out Kids. Just wanted to point out that the Park Slope piece you turned up is from last year — not the upcoming June issue. Our piece was also by Lynne Harris, who penned the Times story. I guess she felt she had more to say on the subject."

"Will Elder, whose frantic, gag-filled illustrations helped to define the comic identity of Mad magazine and who was a creator of the Playboy cartoon serial "Little Annie Fanny," died Wednesday in Rockleigh, N.J. He was 86.The cause was Parkinson's disease, said Gary VandenBergh, his son-in-law. A dead-on caricaturist with an anarchic sense of humor, Mr. Elder stuffed the backgrounds of his Madison Avenue parodies and comic-strip spoofs with inane puns, silly signs and weird characters doing strange things."

Once upon a time, a wacky new talk show called Late Night With David Letterman premiered on NBC. And on that very first episode in 1982 was an up-and-coming comic actor by the name of Bill Murray.

I like looking at weird-ass stuff. It's fun! So here is a collection of food art. After the jump, egg babies, a watermelon in some sort of terrible trouble, a really creepy Mr. Potato Head, and an orange assisting in its own doom.