In New York mag's latest Look Book, we're served a helping of Sunhwa Chung, an East Village choreographer who believes that in getting dressed, one needs freedom to express the passion of transforming one's body. This, she says, can be found at a Korean H&M-type store.

We gotta hand it to New York magazine this week. We've supported the guy before, naturally; we've voted for him in primaries and generals, and we've given him money and stuck buttons on our bags and hung posters in our windows. But we've never actually liked Al Gore. (Has anyone — other than Tipper, of course, and our yellow-dog mother?) But now, thanks to John Heilemann's New York cover story, we actually find ourselves a bit enamored of the guy. Never mind a general-excellence Ellie; this is truly an accomplishment.

Would you let this woman near your dog? Didn't think so, but apparently a lot of folks do, as this week's fashion victim for New York mag's Look Book is a professional dog-walker named Suzanne. Just one name, mind you; she's more comfortable that way. Suzanne considers herself both extremely feminine and extremely masculine, and loves mixing her tribal punk look with some hints of Sideshow Bob. She's also in an unnamed all-female hardcore-slash-punk band — but you already knew that, didn't you?

It's not even a Monday and, still, New York is breaking some interesting news. (Amazing thing, that internet.) The scoop? The mag thinks Arthur Carter has finally found a buyer for the Observer.

In this week's edition of the Look Book, New York mag introduces us to Desmond E. Wilder, a financial analyst living large in North Bergen, New Jersey. Actually, he sounds and looks pretty normal to us: after a morning of midtown meetings, Wilder hit Bond No. 9 to pick up the "Wall Street" scent. He's also the co-publisher of Renaissance Man, a lifestyle magazine for men of color that will launch this summer. Interestingly, Wilder is not quite a Renaissance Man himself, but he intends to mix-and-match items from Saks and Century 21 until he reaches his goal.

• Does it count as a New York magazine stunt if no one notices, or cares? [Romenesko]
• ASME elects new prez and veep; new prez and veep promptly make Bush and Cheney jokes. [WWD]
• Lachlan Murdoch has a second son; Choire Sicha promptly begins lusting for him. [Advertiser]
• WSJ editor Paul Steiger named chairman of Pulitzers board. This will have no practical effect on you in any way. [NYT]

Four reasons to completely disregard New York's list of "influentials":

We feel genuinely bad for this week's victim in New York's Look Book. Not because Onia Jane Balsebre looks particularly mangy, but because she moved here from Barcelona for love, and it didn't work out. Now she's still here, watching reruns of Felicity and trying her hardest to be an actress, despite her accent, desire to dress like a boy, and her lack of familiarity with Neil Simon. Yeah, we're thoroughly depressed now — time to draw the shades and call it a day.

We wanted to read New York mag's article today on Howell Raines, his new book, and his post-Times life. Really we did. But then we got to the full-page portrait that opens the feature and, man, we just couldn't get any further. Are we appalled? Are we intrigued? Is it the jowls? Is it the nose? Is it the dark, penetrating eyes? We have no idea. But we haven't been able to look away.

As we weren't reading Times public editor Barney Calame yesterday — does anyone read insufferably boring and continually irrelevant Times public editor Barney Calame anymore? — we happened across Carl Swanson's Q&A with former public editor Dan Okrent in the new New York mag. It's a discussion of Okrent's new collection of his public-editor columns, which apparently his fans demanded. A highlight:

In their latest installment of the Look Book, New York magazine takes its Brooklyn Style issue to the extreme by hitting Fulton Mall and interviewing Glenn Staley and Kyle Mingo, two "urban b-boy" party promoters. Staley likes his clothes by Pharrell, but Mingo prefers shirts with Muslim themes and "Afghanistan scarves" around his neck. The guys keep the stickers on their hats to show that they, uh, have a lot of hats, and they both think they'd fit in better around Soho. What, not fans of Maclaren-laden Brooklyn?

The sun is shining, the pollen is in the air, and that means one of our favorite times of year is right around the corner: Media softball season! And with that comes our favorite part of our favorite time of year: Media softball memos! And here's the opening pitch, an announcement of New York's first — and compulsory — softball game. In which they will be playing against themselves. (But don't knock it, to paraphrase the Woodman: It's a game with someone you love.)

The only thing more old-school than a dot-com (okay, except a BBS, grandpa) is an at-dot-com — an e-mail newsletter like DailyCandy. The Manhattan-based shopping guide snagged a feature story in New York Magazine, and every detail seemed eerily familiar.

Profound — and, granted, profoundly inconsequential — sociomediacultural thought of the day:

We've always argued — long before we started this gig, even — that the first rule of being a smartass is that you have to be right. (The only thing more insufferable than someone smug about being correct is someone who's both smug and incorrect.) An obvious corollary to this idea, we'd imagine, is that if you're going to be a pretentious name dropper, you've got to at least drop the right names. Which is why we were so pleased to see in New York's glossary of names dropped in Plum Sykes' new roman-a-pretention, The Debutante Divcoree, this mention near the bottom:

A few weeks ago, as you might recall, New York mag announced that Shopsin's, the West Village institution with an interminable menu and a cantankerously charming — charmingly cantankerous? — owner, was up and moving to Brooklyn, looking for cheaper rent. Then the Daily News followed up on the story, downgrading the move from fait accompli to something Kenny Shopsin was considering. But now we're hearing it's not true at all. A source who lives across the street from the restaurant emails:

God, we hate it when this happens. New York hands their readers a woefully misguided fish in the sartorial barrel, and we are forced — yes, forced — to go to town on the poor soul who posed for their Look Book. This week, that person is Gloria Ward, a wig-wearing beautician who admits that on the day this photo was taken, she was looking "a little flashy." Indeed! Gloria is into fake eyelashes and a triple coat of mascara, paired with a disturbingly large blazer. You should also know that she was once a drummer in her husband's band, the Ink Spots, and she fell in love with her husband after he asked her if she did any typing. We suppose this makes Gloria a real romantic.

Realizing that perhaps an online poll is not even close to an accurate gauge of the general public, New York shoved a few interns out to Union Square, where they took a random survey of 100 pedestrians on matters of media, gossip, Page Six and fedoras. For those of eating, sleeping, and shitting in the clusterfuck, the numbers are a refreshing reminder of how much (or little) this stuff matters. That being said, we still think this story makes Darfur look weak.

• New York mag's sex columnist Amy Sohn spares us her return. Instead, she'll be writing in-depth features for the magazine on matters such as breast milk and bjorns, reasoning that "parenting is hot right now." Yeah? Tell that to our Ortho Tri-Cyclen, crazy lady. [NYO]
• A glimpse into Jared Paul Stern's future at Page Six: "Insiders say that Walter Ripley, currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering, has been slowly moving in on the cigarette and pornography concession previously run by kidnapper George 'Two Thumbs' Theophilus." [McSweeney's]
• More on Ron Burkle's power in Democratic party. [Kausfiles]
• And even The Onion weighs in. [The Onion]
• MySpace is so dangerous, they've hired former federal prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to keep the kiddies safe from internet predators. [NYT]
• The only Ann Coulter movie we'd ever see. [Towleroad]
• "JT Leroy" continues to write, albeit for something called Lemon. [FishbowlNY]
• Smirnoff will teach Brooklynites "how to do graffiti." Brooklynites, in return, will teach Smirnoff how to fuck off and die like the corporate whores they are. [Consumerist]

It's a big week for New York magazine — they've actually acknowledged that there are working-class people in this world! Or, at least, they're acknowledging their readership's domestic servants by featuring Michelle Mills, a nanny who cares for 3-year-old Lily of Bleecker Street. Michelle also works part time at Magnolia Bakery and is originally from Vermont, where she grew up in the woods (we suppose this makes her slightly feral).