That was the Post a couple of days ago. Here's the News today:

We started to tell you about Andrea Peyser's visit to Whitney Houston's court-ordered clearance sale — the one we got you all jazzed for a couple of weeks ago, remember? — and we just didn't know where to begin. Andrea did, though:

In the last couple days, we've asked you to come up with some ways of rewriting ledes so they'd be more Post appropriate, and you responded, in droves. But sometimes a lede is so perfect, in and of itself, that there's really no need to rewrite it. Take, for instance, this story from the Brooklyn Papers, about an upcoming cruise on the Queen Mary 2 with 3,000 gays and lesbians as passengers that's being billed as the "first-ever, full-ship chartered gay cruise." (We'll take their word for it.) You've probably already thought of your own, overly clever lede. But really, why not just go with what the Brooklyn Paper thought of all by themselves:

Today's Britney haircolor has the concerned citizens at the Post, well, concerned-er: they don't even recognize the "bloated" "pop tart" anymore, and they wonder how she can get back into "the nubile shape of her glory days." Luckily, LA expert-for-rent Robert R. Butterworth, Ph.D. is here with some answers. "Other than a brain operation, I think she's going to have to get a personal trainer and work as hard as Madonna does," he tells the Post. Ahh, yes, the old "brain operation" — our psychologist suggests that all the time. Anyway, another of Butterworth's resonant insights is that even aging ex-Catwoman Julie Newmar is looking less haggard than Britney these days: "At 70, this woman looks better than Britney at 25!" We trusted Butterworth's expertise on the brain operation front, but this assertion seemed more specious. So we looked into it.

An article on Sunday about some of the more captivating events in the New York region in 2006 referred incorrectly to a federal investigation of Jared Paul Stern, a former contributor to the Page Six section of The New York Post whom Ronald W. Burkle, the supermarket magnate, has accused of an extortion attempt. The investigation came to light when it was reported by The Post; it was not announced by federal authorities. In addition, allegations that Mr. Stern had been caught on video demanding a $100,000 payment, as well as monthly stipends, for keeping negative accounts of Mr. Burkle from the press were made by Mr. Burkle, not by federal authorities.

Scribes of dead-tree media, beware! Your days of carelessly printing alleged falsehoods about vestigial celebrities are over. Now, the unfairly maligned can strike back with that mighty tool known as MySpace. Kendra Wilkinson, the "Young Dumb One" from The Girls Next Door (the cringefest where wizened mummy Hugh Hefner oversees his trio of nubile concubines), got a brief mention in a recent Page Six. The small bit simply mentioned a tipster who confirmed the worst-kept secret in Hefnerdom, i.e. that his sweet young things might live in his mansion as part of some commercial arrangement. Today, Kendra respondeth:

We promise not to make a regular feature out of this, but some days it's going to be impossible to resist: Today's Post piece on a suit filed by service employees against Equinox Gym just cries out for the rewrite treatment. The Post's version:

As far as we're concerned, one of history's all-time greatest ledes comes from the pen of Edna Buchanan. Calvin Trillin described it in a 1986 New Yorker profile of the then-Miami Herald reporter:

How was your New Years? If you're anything like Britney Spears, you got so wasted that you had to have your people carry you out of the club again. And if you're anything like the New York Post, you got so wasted that you're currently so hungover that you couldn't even be bothered to reconcile the two conflicting accounts of Spears' collapse on your website. Which is it, 'BOOZY' BRITNEY FAINTS or the AP's contradictory 'Spears Falls Asleep At Vegas Nightclub'? The latter has the maligned Spears "finally . . . acting like a new mom" by dozing off after leading the New Year's Eve countdown at Pure, and quotes manager Larry Rudolph as saying that Spears "was not drunk." The Post's own take is closer to the Daily News's, citing reports from "witnesses" who saw Spears "talking with one of her male dancers on a tented cabana bed when she said she wanted to leave, stood up and "she went into a dead faint and just fell right to the floor."

Walk into any electronics store in New York and they'll take your picture, type a phony birthdate and social security number on a card, laminate the whole works together, then hand it to you no questions asked. Marianne Garvey of the New York Post thinks this is the sort of ID underaged patrons are using to gain admission to city bars and clubs. If Marianne Garvey really believes this, she may be one of the most naive human beings on the planet. She also thinks you are just as stupid as she is.

The idea is to serve, protect, and not round off the corners of your head or the edges of your beard. Payot intact, the newest member of the NYPD, a dyed-in-the-wool Hasid from Williamsburg named Joel Witriol, will be "on the job" starting New Year's Eve, keeping the city's transit system free of goyim-induced danger as you scurry off to shul. No word yet on whether he'll be riding the Hanukkah caravan in Union Square next holiday season, but given recent events, we're thrilled to see a touch more diversity on the force.

On the year's slowest - SLOWEST - news/tips/anything day, the best the outerboroughs have to offer is a demonstration of what happens when Guidos are charged with protecting the collection box in a Catholic Church. We can only imagine what must've happened when the thieves were confronted: shirts came off, obscenities were lobbed and baseball bats were immediately drawn. Of course, when the getaway car circled back around the block, the Guidos quickly retreated into the church and hid behind the Monsignor.

Those of us who commute into Manhattan from the wilds of Long Island - and Brooklyn and Queens - are all too cognizant of the fact that there's only one thing that can make a packed-to-the-gills LIRR car tolerable: the willingness of the MTA to let us get hammered on the train for all these years. Down a couple of Bud talls and the fat fuck sitting next to you will be your compadre-for-life by the time you reach Jamaica.

It's not exactly an adventure in contextual advertising, but we've still got to imagine that the folks at Food Emporium aren't exactly thrilled by the placement of this ad on page 26 of today's Post. Although we are experiencing an odd craving for chocolate right now.

That's right: the three-year battle over massive Brooklyn development project Atlantic Yards is over. Forest City Ratner's $4 billion project was approved yesterday by a state oversight board, clearing the way for groundbreaking this January. Construction on the Nets arena, the main "it'll bring jobs and revitalization to Downtown Brooklyn" centerpiece of the developers' plan, will culminate in Fall 2009. The Post's rah-rah article quotes ACORN executive director Bertha Lewis as saying that "The Atlantic Yards project represents a historic 50/50 comittment to affordable housing," — uh, not quite. While the number of planned market-rate rentals and and "affordable" rentals is equal, there are also 1,730 market-rate condos planned — and only 200 "affordable" condos. The entire project is slated for completion in 2017. We don't know about you, but for us, that coincides with the period of our life when we thought we'd be throwing in the towel on being cool and succumbing to Bugaboo-trundling through tree-lined brownstone streets. Guess we'll be trundling our Bugaboo through Portland or something.

State Approves Major Complex for Brooklyn [NYT]
The Nets Win [NYPost]
Here Come The Nets [NYDN]

As we mentioned yesterday, the whole 'Trump threatens to fire, then pardons Miss USA' story is basically the definition of week-before-Xmas filler, but we don't mind stooping to cover it. And neither, thank god, does Andrea Peyser. The Post's resident moral authority is always at her best when a young, attractive, "fire-breathing slut" needs to be run out of town, and boozy Tara inspired what we think is some of her finest work ever:

Today, an article in the Post indicated that marijuana procured from the crime syndicate headed up by recently nabbed (jeez, "nabbed"? We need to go on a Post diet) "diamond-studded, bling-wearing" kingpin Orlando Torres was the most costly ever at $560 per ounce. Hmm. We're too high on schwag to figure out whether this is actually true, but we figure that someone out there reading this is a big pothead who likes the fancy stuff (you know, maybe). So let us know. If it turns out that the Post is wrong about something, we give up on the whole Santa = real thing too.
Update: Omg, the Post was wrong!

Being huge dorks of Project Runway, we'd grown fond of young Miss USA, Tara Conner, even though she is famous ("famous")* for winning the pageant that's the "Bite-Size Frosted Wheat" to Miss America's "Frosted Mini-Wheats." We liked how good of a sport she was on the show, and also how she got fake-accented Malan Breton (who, it's been observed, watches Miss Saigon while twirling a baton) kicked off for, basically, saying that his dress looked like literal poo (it did). Anyway, news comes by way of TMZ that the speculation can end: Tara is officially being asked to step down as Miss USA, since she's been deemed guilty of all too vague "inappropriate behavior." The Post quotes a source as saying that her clubbing at spots like Stereo with people like VJ-jay Damien Fahey (wha? we take the nice stuff back) "makes Paris Hilton look like a baby." Uh, isn't that a good thing when you're famous for looking hot in a bikini? Well, whatever. We still want more details, so we're putting it to you:

The weird story of Yoko Ono's extortionist driver Koral Karson gets even weirder today, as more details about the contents of the photos and tapes he was blackmailing her with are revealed. In the Times, we learn that one of the tapes featured Sean Lennon describing his dead father "with an obscene anatomical term." (Guesses?) And from the Post, we learned that Karsan claimed to be Ono's lover, and that the photo in question featured Ono in a "revealing nightgown." We also learned about disappointment.

Well, everything we thought we knew about gender has been completely turned on its ear. According to this article in the Post, though most women are only interested in shopping, Manolos, and gabbing about relationships, there are a few women who prefer the company of men. But not for expensive dinners followed by cuddle-sex and handholding! No, these women — led by renegade gender bender Jessica Steinberg, pictured — prefer the company of large groups of men, in whose purely platonic company they watch sports and, yes, play poker. And apparently, Steinberg is living "the new 'it' lifestyle" — not one but two new filmic portrayals of women in similar circumstances are due to debut soon. We can't wait! Maybe a movie and a tv show will help us figure out the riddle of why Steinberg "doesn't really know her guy friends' significant others."

Going Men-tal [NYP]