You're invited, space permitting, to a memorial service this evening for the beloved New York magazine founding editor Clay Felker. It's at the New York Society for Ethical Culture and starts at six. Tom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem and Lesley Stahl will pay tribute to the man who taught a city to talk about itself at a celebration organized by New York and Gail Sheehy, the writer and widow of the late editor. Felker's legacy, which Wolfe in July described as nothing less than the restoration of vitality to a bloodless, disconnected New York media, is also honored less directly today in New York's excellent issue on the Great Shakeout.

I cannot say I expected a blog best beloved for its breathless Gossip Girl recaps* would be the blog whose archives I spent the most time raiding to read up on the collapse of capitalism. But this crisis has been full of surprises and one of them is that reading New York magazine's Daily Intel blog could have saved investors a shit ton of money, because they have been paying superclose attention to the saga of America's Crapital Structure and they take very good notes. They reeled me into their archived coverage of what they call the "White Men With Money" beat when they ingeniously dubbed Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein the "Lila Fowler of Wall Street" after the moneyed alpha girl of the Sweet Valley High series. It wasn't a connection I'd think to make, but maybe that's because I'm not as savvy at parsing rumors…1. For instance, they totally rejected the worthless albeit true rumor about Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain's bad toupee and embraced the ex Goldman banker wholeheartedly. He looked like Clark Kent, therefore he would save his company with magical superpowers and common decency and it was really as simple as that. 2. Conversely, they did not like Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld. Did not trust his eyebrows. And seized an early opportunity in June to lambaste him for being a style nazi. He was superficial! And people like that are always way too concerned about what other people think, and they overlook what's inside. Korean Development Bank was no more likely to save him from his deluded sense of reality than Elizabeth Wakefield was Bruce Patman. 3. Early into their shift steering the John Thain love train, they hired a prominent astrologer to see what was in his stars for the year. Just to make sure their instincts were correct. WERE THEY EVER.

• NBC says 211 million Americans tuned in to the Beijing Olympics, making it the most widely-viewed Games in television history. And merchandise sales were way up, too. [TV Decoder, TV Week]

New York magazine should know that it's setting itself up by sponsoring an event called a "Highbrow BBQ." I mean, really. The cookout yesterday offered the public food from Top Chef contestant CJ Jacobson, along with a concert, for $25. And for that price, one could at least expect a big piece of chicken. But a disgruntled tipster tells us that all she got out of the experience was a bit of watermelon, some nasty taco sauce soup, and an apology from a bourbon-swilling CJ. Overblown ripoff, or just a griping, overly entitled guest? You be the judge! The full report:

So the "really angry" e-mail sent out to New York magazine's freelancers and others—warning them to stop using their New York associations to get into events—wasn't so mean after all. It's just that "at least one party crasher and one overly ambitious editor" have been getting, well, a bit overly ambitious! Click for the memo. Update: we think we know who the party crasher is!

• People's $14 million purchase of the Brangelina pics worked out nicely in the end. The issue sold 2.6 million copies, making it the mag's best-selling issue in seven years. [WWD]

From a tipster: "Jada Yuan sent out a really angry email to New York magazine freelancers yesterday saying from now on, she wouldn't be sending out party info over email because too many people on her list were crashing events and saying they were NY mag reporters when really they're just freelancers who want free(lance) drinks." Hey, does anybody have a copy of this e-mail? We'll keep you anonymous.

• Addiction sells: now in its fifth season, Intervention is A&E's highest rated show. [NYT]

Anonymous sources can usually put some faith in the journalistic principle, that the anonymity of a source is a sacred thing, to be protected even at the risk of jail. But they should have less faith in a reporter's competence. Last week, a New York Times reporter withheld the name of a critic of the Chinese government but gave him away accidentally by mentioning the restaurant he owned. And there's an equally moronic slip in this week's cover story on plastic surgery in New York magazine.

As predicted, New York magazine's profile of Joe Scarborough was much like its predecessor in the Times, recounting the MSNBC personality's trip from a scripted right-wing blowhard to a charming, inventive morning show host who even sympathizes with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. But the endorsements! The MSNBC hosts' colleagues are positively effusive. And no doubt the most powerful quote is this one from former Meet The Press anchor Tim Russert, collected two weeks before his death:

• The Knitting Factory will move to the former Luna Lounge space in Williamsburg. [NYT]

Did you enjoy the lengthy "in defense of" Rush Limbaugh profile in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine? Then you'll love the friendly profile of MSNBC token independent conservative Joe Scarborough in Monday's New York Magazine! We haven't read the piece, but we imagine it will explore his crazy trip from Gingrichian Congressional Republican to funny conservative that liberals love, all because he took over Don Imus' TV slot, started doing an entertaining morning show, and basically revealed himself to be totally in the bag for Obama. (As we learned last month in the Times.)

"Menupages, the New York City based online restaurant menu guides site, is being bought out by New York Magazine, we have learned. This is the first such online buy for NYM..." [Paid Content via Silicon Alley Insider]

Billionaire Bruce Wasserstein is under attack from communists! And they're taking the fight to the blogs! SEIU, the service industry union, has been trying to unionize workers at a chain of nursing homes called Atria Senior Living. Atria was recently bought by Lazard Real Estate Partners, which is a little corner of Lazard Ltd., which is the parent company of Wasserstein's investment bank. Since the buyout, SEIU says the nursing homes have raised rents while cutting staff and level of care. You'll find SEUI's tricky pretend financial ads on the sites of the New York Post, the Times, and, yes, Gawker (see attached, or look up). But you probably won't see them over at the homepage of New York Magazine, which is owned by a guy named Bruce Wasserstein. [NYP]

Clay Felker, the founding editor of New York magazine, died today at the age of 80 after an extended illness. The Missouri native got his start in journalism as a magazine writer for titles like LIFE, Time, and Esquire, but he will go down in history as the man who codified a method for chronicling the elite of New York, while providing a platform for the city's best writers. He's responsible for creating the only real glossy city magazine that is also a good magazine on its own merits—unapologetically elitist, but not blinkered. And slick enough to justify it all.

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

Rex Sorgatz arrived in New York six scant months ago, but he's already got it all figured out. After an advanced anthropological study of Internet Microfame, he's published his initial findings in New York Magazine. In explaining the concept, he also instructs the reader on how to become microfamous in three easy steps! "To persevere in the new age of celebrity, you need to return to the well, repeating these steps of creating, oversharing, and responding." Soon you too can dog-sit for Julia Allison. We are all Tay Zonday, Emily Brill, and the Tron Guy now. [NYM]

After we linked to Vanity Fair's blog matrix graphic earlier today, our inbox filled up with links to other, similar grids. Not surprising, since the format has been around for years and has spread widely. New Republic, to take but one example, published a "Bush Apostate Matrix" earlier this week. New York runs them regularly, here's the May 19 "Approval Matrix." Where/when did the first one of these grids crawl out of the primordial media ooze? (At Spy, probably. Of course.) And is anyone keeping track of their numbers in the wild? With Google and the rest of the internet turning everyone into short-attention-span clickmonkeys, it's only a matter of time before these random-access smorgasbords steal the listicle's place in the hearts of magazine editors everywhere. UPDATE: Two possible answers on the origins of magazine grids below!

New York magazine would sweeten up a harmless bit of gossip and make it more cute than it actually was? Say it ain't so! This week, the mag ran an Intelligencer item detailing an encounter between Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Sarah Jessica Parker outside the Bloomberg Building during which Scalia giddily revealed himself to be a giant SATC fan. Sound a little unlike the arch-conservative justice? Indeed.

The print vs. online media war wages on, and the latest skirmish was an internal one. It seems that New York magazine critic David Edelstein, when reviewing Adam Sandler's latest pastiche of things that never existed in the first place You Don't Mess With the Zohan for NPR's Fresh Air, said he took issue with a recent post on NYM's delightful Vulture entertainment blog. But now he's sent an email to the magazine's whole staff, as something of a clarification and an apology.