When one sends an email off to a vast, semi-faceless organization, one expects a certain sort of a response (to the very limited extent one even bothers to expect a response at all). From some places — oh, say, us — you wouldn't be astonished to receive a raunchy and expletive-laden reply. From most organizations, though, you'd expect something fairly tame. And the Oxford dictionary folks seem to fall squarely into the latter camp.

While we were trawling for a high-powered sugar mama perusing yesterday's THR list of the industry's most powerful women, we found ourselves wishing, nay craving a fictionalized examination of the Entourage-worthy shenanigans of Hollywood's Sex and the City-equivalent wild girls, preferably with a title accessible enough to suggest the fluffiest of Malibu beach reading while simultaneously explaining the concept in three words or less. Courtesy of the Publisher's Lunch book deal e-mail round-up, relief:

• Will Michael Cooke's NYDN departure cause problems for Bravo reality show about the paper? Even worse: What about Hud Morgan's departure? [NYP]
• Jon Friedman thinks ABC fucked up its anchor decision. [MW]
• Even so, ABC's changes give a glimpse at CBS's future. [NYO]
• How did Us get the Nick-and-Jessica scoop? Through Dan Klores, the publicist the mag and the couple share, according to Access Hollywood. [MIN]
• Maureen may be everywhere these days, but the books she's flogging is "a glib, d j vu compendium of every Newsweek-style pop-science zeitgeist piece of the last 15 years." [VV]
• NYT Co. announces ad hikes, a $40M cost for layoffs. And says it won't give any earnings guidance for 2006, which can't be a good sign. [NYT]
• The Source is evicted from its offices. Which can't be a good sign. [NYP]

This thoroughly nauseating news — of interest, we're sure, only to a handful of people in the most rarefied Manhattan ZIP codes — was carried in last night's weekly Publishers Lunch deal roundup:

Times trendmonger Jennifer 8. Lee has sold her first book, the Observer reports today:

• Oh, now we understand: Lindsay Lohan missed her appearance on Regis & Kelly because her head got eaten by Kong. Right. Thankfully, that's not so serious as to keep her off of TRL right about now. [Popsugar & OAN]
• Christopher Hitchens predicts the death of the journalist protagonist in modern fiction, suggesting that, god forbid, such characters are replaced with bloggers — a development which could really just be the death of modern fiction altogether. [Guardian]
• Fake David Cross is alive, well, and banned from a bar for being a total boozehound. [Felber Frolics]
• How to do your holiday shopping, with helpful, implicitly violent tips from the Gap. [You Can't Make It Up]
• In a piece on "suspected" firefighting sex fiend Peter Braunstein, Dateline interviews blogger Steve Huff as an "expert" on the case. Hey, if New York's Vanessa Grigoriadis counts, we suppose a blogger can, too. [B&C Beat]
• Now you can pay the very supplies AP staffers have been stealing for years. [AP Essentials]
• It's a tourist's dream: Getting wasted in Manhattan, but not lost. [NY on Tap]
• iPorn for your iPod isn't novel, but A-list Playboy porn ups the ante just a bit. But can you get it in braille? [MDN]

• It's the next, inevitable step in his path to righteousness: Blackface Jesus has a MySpace page. [MySpace]
• Virgin's Sir Richard Branson aims to make a television, internet and telephone empire, ultimately to take on Rupert Murdoch. Can a white knight topple the evil Aussie darklord? [Telegraph]
• The new face of fear looks like an email from Lexi Lehman. [The Three-Toed Sloth]
• We don't care WHAT you see on the cover of GQ; Jennifer Aniston's breasts are not for public consumption. [TSG]
• Mapping your failure on the Table of Contents. [Encyclopedia Hanasania]

Sometimes, we think we ought to start compensating Intern Alexis with something other than stale biscuits. After all, the poor dear actually dragged her ass through EIGHTY PAGES of the latest Times Book Review, just so we could all read her report and act as if we were literate. For such hard work, she deserves better. Maybe this year we'll stop making her act as like a human Hanukkah candle. Maybe.

• The latest magland roman a clef is by Jane Pratt's former assistant. But this time this boss is the heroine — and her boss is the bad guy. What an interesting twist. [NYP]
• Maureen Dowd says the Times is over the Judy Miller fiasco and now "everything's fantastic." She also says the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes, and that U.S. forces have turned the corner there. [Texas Monthly]
• It's not just Maxim; Housewife Nicollette Sheridan will appear on any magazine that'll have her. [Folio: (second item)]
• Blogger book deals continue apace: Dan Radosh's Rapture Ready! TK in 2008. (Yeah, we know he does a lot more than only blog, but why let facts get in the way of a good generalization?) [Radosh.net]

We were reading the official HarperCollins press release on the PR-director tumult over at Regan Media earlier this week, and we had to read this unexpected testimonial — from Regan, about new PR director Justin Loeber — twice:

Salon smartypants Rebecca Traister takes a look at the Amazon.com reviews for Times columnist Maureen Dowd and finds the worst possible scenario: a big bucket of misogynistic scariness. Writes John F. Ross of St. Louis, MO (Amherst Class of '79):

In the latest incarnation of the Times Book Review, Intern Alexis finds Stones fans writing about the Beatles, old friends turned bitchslapping reviewers, and a healthy dose of cartoon haterade dumped, apropos nothing, really, on lit-crit Dale Peck. Not very bookish, mind you, but it's the sort of thin, slapdash issue you'd expect after Thanksgiving, but Alexis knows a little Googling makes things a lot more interesting. After the jump, her review of the review.

More than any other single skill, the ability to read — and read well — allows a child to succeed in school, learn about the world, function in society, and someday have good job options.
—from the National Children's Literacy Website

In her latest review of the New York Times Book Review, Intern Alexis finally gets that which she's been waiting for: an appropriate opportunity to give cranky reviewer Joe Queenan a swift kick in his unfunny pants. She also champions the underdog, reminding Review readers of the artistry of Us Weekly insta-book writers Mara Reinstein and Joey Bartolomeo, all the while questioning the necessity of vomit omelets. After the jump, Alexis fights for your right to a decent Review.

After reading and re-reading reality television star Nicole Richie's debut novel The Truth About Diamonds five or six times (yes, it's THAT fanfuckingtastic, and the National Book Award Foundation totally blew it this year), we're increasingly convinced that there was no way on earth Richie herself wrote the book. Not only do we suspect she lacks the necessary writing skill, but everyone knows hungry people can't think straight enough to focus on large projects.

We spent a healthy chunk of our weekend ruminating on 50 Cent, as we often do, and his new publishing imprint — but that can only occupy us for so long. 50 is interesting, but let's talk about the man behind the man: what about his agent, Marc Gerald?

Poor Kate Lee. By all rights, he should have been hers. When David Lat, the male federal prosecutor who'd masqueraded as a female corporate lawyer on Underneath Their Robes, a deliciously gossipy blog about the federal judiciary, allowed himself to be outed as the blog's author in last Monday's New Yorker Talk of the Town, it seemed obligatory that a book deal would soon be in the offing. And who better to rep him than Talk of the Town-certified agent-to-the-blogstars Kate Lee?

We understand that Nicole Richie is very pretty and well-spoken and stick-thin, but we just don't buy that she penned her first novel, The Truth About Diamonds, all by her lonesome. Phrases such as "clandestine rendezvous" are, simply, not in Richie's vocabulary. We have our suspicions as to the identity of her secret ghostwriter, but we also wear tinfoil hats and smoke oregano out of a corncob pipe. As such, we turn to the wisdom of the masses:

The spelling-bee news reporter earlier apparently moved a reader to conduct some Alex Kuczynski reseach today. How, he wondered, has her career as an author fared?

• Bob Woodward's in truh-ble. [NYT]
• WP's Walter Pincus set to go the way of Judith Miller in the Wen Ho Lee case. Except without the everyone-hates-him-at-the-end part. [WP]
• Need your dose of softcore porn more frequently than once a month? It's looking like Keith Blanchard's prototype for a weekly lad book might see life at Bauer. And thank God for that. [WWD]
• William T. Vollman, Joan Didion win National Book Awards. [USAT]
• Hotshot founders of Penguin's Riverhead imprint bolt for Random's Doubleday Broadway group and a new, yet-to-be-named imprint. [NYP]
• The lucky winner of that fundraising lunch with Rupert Murdoch? Learning Annex chief Bill Zanker. Be you're even happier now that you overpaid for that mediocre lecture. [Guardian]
• HBO still confident it owns Sunday night, Lisa Kudrow's dreadful Comeback notwithstanding. [NYT]
• Speaking at the University of Texas, Maureen Dowd — who, apparently, has a new book out — speculates that Judy Miller will end up with a Fox News talkshow. [Daily Texan]
• Bad things often happen to Time Persons of the Year. [The Media Mob/NYO]