From Jay McInerney's New York mag cover story on the modern icons of NYC rock, the Strokes, we happily present you with your easy-reference cliché guide:

On the bright side, this is an improvement for the Post: at least the god-fucking-awful photo actually is of Avril Lavigne. Er, we think. We can't really tell.

We had some fun yesterday with publicist Rob Shuter's deposition from the Paris Hilton-Zeta Graff slander suit, in which the high-priced celebrity mouthpiece admits that he did nothing more than pass on verbatim what his client told him — that Graff attacked Hilton at a London club, which Hilton has now admitted never happened — in the manner she told him to. It's a nice tale, in which all the blame falls on Paris's skeletal shoulders, and steadfast Shuter is shown as dutifully doing his job.

Lock your doors and stock up on bottled water: Today's Sun reports that 16 bright-eyed, bushy-tailed little bunnies from the master's program in arts journalism at Syracuse have invaded the island as part of of a 10-day immersion course. During their time here, they will RAPE AND PILLAGE our artistic resources, DEFILE our professional journalists, and FROTH about how they paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn "to take the small journalism jobs and assignments as a means of eventually landing the bigger ones."

• Go forth, little mischief makers, and make your own subway sign — just because you can. [Subway Fun]
• If you read that Times article about a month ago about the magically irritating converted schoolhouse shared by a bunch of creatives in Bushwick and thought, "Hey, that's neat," now's your chance to move in. You're an idiot, but, hey, we're not judging. [Craigslist via Lindsayism]
• How she gets the scoops: Daily News gossip girl Jo Piazza is a kissing bandit. [NYO]
• Three of the top seven most emailed Times articles pertain to macaroni and cheese, and yet we wonder why America is the land of the obese. [NYT]
• Only the brave should listen to the new Kevin Federline track. We, as we've noted before, are total pussies. Knock yourselves out, though, and tell us how it goes. [Yahoo! Music]
• Whether or not author JT Leroy is real, at least the experience of figuring him out is decidedly surreal. [Guardian]

Days like today remind you of the advantages of living under a totalitarian regime. When no one has the right to free speech, or to assembly, or to association, or to control his own labor, at least the trains always run more or less on time. (In Soviet Moscow, the subways arrived every 90 seconds! Or something like that.)

For the first time in the 34-year history of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Debacle, a singer will perform live from Times Square during the final minutes of 2005. It'd be an entertaining development, were that singer anyone but Mariah Carey.

The picture at right is featured (in an alarmingly large fashion, we might add) in the Village Voice with the caption, "The inimitable Sinead O'Connor."

While the Learning Annex has typically been our go-to source for bizarre seminars on nondescript shit, we're happy to see that life's lovable losers are branching out to where they're needed most, like Dallas. For $60, one can listen to Joe Simpson (father of Jessica and Ashlee), Bachelor host Chris Harrison, and Britney Spears's personal assistant Felicia Culotta instruct the masses on how to be a star in any career. According to the program, this moving experience "will give tips for being an A-lister in life."

Earlier, we asked the masses:

From today's Page Six:

Hey, remember when awards like the Grammys used to, like, matter? Us neither, but we're sure that at some point they must've, right?! Maybe in an era before inexpicably named bands like Maroon 5 and SugarLand, both of which are nominated for awards this year, perfectly exemplifying why the Grammy lacks any sort of prestige. And, to make matters worse, Mariah Carey's garnered nominations all over the place, which only encourages her to continue making offensive fashion choices. (To wit, she's on the Today show right now, discussing wardrobe malfunctions. Seriously.)

• John Huey is finally initiated as the successor to Norm Pearlstine's editorship at Time Inc. The ceremony involved branding, hazing, and some tasty swag.
• Daily News EIC Michael Cooke barely lasts 10 months before scampering back to the Windy City. At least he'll be taking a nice, new pair of shoes home with him.
• The Upper East Side's finest brats open their own under-18 Chelsea nightclub, where they won't be drinking or blowing rails.
• Fabulist Jayson Blair returns to the Times building, but naturally lies about the incident.
• Actor Chris Klein attends the Condé Nast holiday luncheon!
• We haven't sold out to the New York Times Company, but can you imagine if we did?
• Body-armor magnate David H. Brooks breaks all records for nauseating indulgence by throwing his daughter, Elizabeth, a $10 million bat mitzvah at the Rainbow Room, complete with A-list entertainment and princess costumes.
• Woody Allen graces Lincoln Center, prompting us to recall when his films were consistently good.

After taking a break to complete her latest work, Break, Blow, Burn, awesomely intellectual feminist and bestselling author Camille Paglia has returned to her column at Salon.com to tackle the pressing issue that affects thinking women and Gays everywhere: Madonna's new album, and whether or not it's any good. Writes Paglia:

At this point, most interested parties have seen the horrifying images from Elizabeth Brooks's $10 million bat mitzvah, for which her body-armor-bearing father flew in Aerosmith, Tom Petty, 50 Cent, and Stevie Nicks. We've all had our fair share of retching over the extravagance of the event itself, but we'd like to focus on something else: Elizabeth's dress, pictured above. What is that thing? We don't believe Vera Wang makes gowns for underage brides, which would suggest that Miss Brooks sporting something off-the-rack from the Disney Princess Store. How gauche.

From an article in today's Times, we "discover" that teens and their baby-boomer parents are embracing the vintage rocker aesthetic:

"Don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep, 'cause I'd miss you, bat mitzvah girl Elizabeth Brooks, and I wanna say mazel tov."

A few weeks ago our new (and, we're sure fleeting) hero, Lloyd Grove, carried word of one David H. Brooks, a Long Island gazillionaire looking — at that point, not so successfully — for big-name musical acts for his daughter's bat mitzvah. Well, the big day arrived this weekend, and blogger and comedian Susie Felber has the inside scoop on who ended up performing:

In a story that features no dateline, the Post tells of a panel called "Indie Night School: Lawyer Edition," held at the standard Lower East Side venue for such a bizarrely titled gathering, Pianos. Tom Sean, a 26-year-old member of the Black Spoons, introduced the speakers, noting that the entertainment lawyers were "also TOTALLY COOL! Because even lawyers are indie."

In case you forget, our fair city has an anthem. We never much liked it, though — it was cute in a nostalgic, old-school-Big-Apple sort of way, but it didn't really speak to the New York as we know it. You know what does, however? The new Madonna album, that's what. It's so dancey, so gay, so throbbing that it practically oozes NYC vibe with every trancey thud. And? It even comes with a brand new New York theme song, handily titled I Love New York: