• Jesus lives and saves us all: Star Jones is reportedly announcing her departure from The View, preferring instead to continue her rapid shrinking in the privacy of her own home. If we're lucky, her on-air farewell will be the exact opposite of Katie Couric's: hilarious and laced with blood. [Access Hollywood]
• Producer Dallas Austin has now been in a Dubai prison for one month for trying to bring drugs into the country for Naomi Campbell's birthday party; Campbell has yet to forgive him for ruining her big day. [MTV]
• A sneak peek at a former Playboy Bunny's tell-all, plus her requisite cleavage. [Hollywood Interrupted]
• Best Week Ever comedian Sherrod Small slams the John Mayer report, insists that the musician's use of the n-word was funny. [BWE]
• Extremely loud and incredibly derivative. [The Velvet Blog]
• One block of 103rd Street is renamed Humphrey Bogart Place in honor of the actor's childhood home. Not that it makes the locale any more appealing. [Cinematical]
• Unintentional hilarity: Laura Ingraham as the next Jon Stewart? It's a pilot we'd gleefully kill to get our hands on. [TV Newser]
• Overheard in NY gets its own stalker map. [Overplot]
• Kudos to the generous Daily News editors who allowed Ben Widdicombe to out both Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith in one fell swoop. [Gatecrasher]
• Hipster Swiss Army knives, crafted especially for Bedford Avenue stabbings. [Consumerist]
• Does Us Weekly have a problem with Britney Spears? Is People coddling her? And at what point will we all collectively agree to just look the fuck away? [Media Orchard]

Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore who was caught plagiarizing her highly-publicized, studio-optioned debut novel, has wisely disappeared into relative obscurity since her little kerfuffle. But just because she destroyed her "writing" career and can no longer make a dime on her name doesn't mean that someone can't make a profit off of the whole thing:

20 volumes of perpetually fucked rocker Pete Doherty's incoherent ramblings will be bound into a single, hardcover volume and marketed as poetry in March 2007. Surprisingly, Doherty actually won a poetry competition when he was in his teens, but we're not buying that as proper justification for killing more trees. Doherty was expected to make the announcement himself yesterday, but was unable to make it due to a last-minute smack delivery. Instead, Orion editor Ian Preece was forced to rationalize on the young poet's behalf:

We'd have to call this the most interesting bit of news in this week's Publishers Lunch weekly deal wrapup:

The Times Book Review gets its sticky, intellectual fingers all over former public editor Dan Okrent's book and promptly passes it off to Sir Harold Evans (whose wife, if you recall, is so over New York), who puzzlingly gives it a few, punishing slaps and then goes on to declare Okrent the best thing to happen to journalism since alcohol. Gee, hate fuck much? That, plus poetic praise for David Orr, in Intern Alexis' weekly literati cheat-sheet. Let her give herself to you, after the jump.

• People mag has a major opportunity for you, cash-throwing advertiser — placement of your ad space near Shiloh. Dodge takes the bait. Is there anything that baby can't sell? [LeftLane]
• Without Pete Doherty, would the British press simply cease to exist? Every single day, the crackhead inspires a new, stupid story. Today, he's found Jesus. Tomorrow, he'll have found another rusty syringe. [FF]
• Just another reason to loathe Bill O'Reilly, courtesy of his 10-room Manhasset estate. [Cryptome]
• A Suicide Girl attempts to spend 7 days straight in the Fifth Avenue Apple Store (open 24 hours). If David Blaine had any thunder, this might steal some of it. [SuicideGirls]
• It's kind of sad when construction workers would rather read the WSJ than ogle your ass. [Things That Make You Go Hmmm]
• Marc Jacobs dumps his boyfriend; not even the twink's Marc Jacobs tattoo could lube the relationship. [Towleroad]
• Way up at 158th Street rests Safety City, "a special place to how to cross streets, drive bicycles, and ride in cars safely." [Amish in the City]
• An extra to-do for you tonight: John Mayer will be testing his skills at the Comedy Cellar at 11 PM. His comedy skills, that is. Panty-throwing still appropriate. [BWE]
• Eva Longoria is determined to prove that she can be just as annoying through the written word, thus her forthcoming erotic novel, to be ghostwritten by the editors of Maxim. [BookStandard]
• In their defense, only porn is going to distract Katrina victims from their problems. [CNN]
• From the creators of the Greg Gutfeld Show comes Keira Knightley's Jaw, a blog documenting exactly that. Better than Keira Knightley's Pout, which just makes you want to punch things. [Keira Knightley's Jaw]

Maybe it's summertime laziness kicking in, but this week's edition of the Times Book Review was kind of "eh." Reviewer Tom Bissell lovingly gives Rory Stewart a handjob; Garrison Keillor gives a book report about Harper Lee; letter-writers don't like reading about food. Dammit, it's summer — where are the bikini waxing books? The trashy romance novels? The moving melanoma stories? Please, just a little joy. That's all we ask.

• Ted Turner sells his memoir for $4.5 million; David Carr sells his for $300k. [NYP]
• You shall bow before Katie and Anderson, because they are royalty. [National Journal]
• Brad is Esquire's October cover. Brad doesn't want to talk about whether he cheated on Jen. Did Esquire agree to restrictions? [WWD]

• Madonna signs a deal with H&M, under which she and all of her crew will be outfitted with a complete H&M wardrobe for when they're off-stage. You know, when no one will actually cares what they're wearing. [AP]
• Harry Potter mastermind JK Rowling has been named the greatest living British writer in a UK magazine poll. Huh? We expected this sort of outcome from Americans, but not the Brits. Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan cry into their pillows. [BBC]
• Just in time for summer, surf's up at the Williamsburg waterfront! Don't forget your syringes! [YouTube via Curbed]
• Fader magazine releases its entire issue on podcast. Paper — and reading, for that matter — is so provincial. [Fader]
• The Times' Kate Aurthur flees the coop, joins the LA Times as its new television editor. [LA Observed]
• Microsoft hires Demetri Martin for its upcoming campaign. Poor guy. [SPI via The Apiary]
• Angelina Jolie actually understands latitudes and longitudes. Good for her. [Us Weekly]
• Useful advice on how NOT to get murdered when thrown out of a club. [Clublife]

We mentioned earlier that 4% Famous author Deborah Schoeneman has been doing book signings in DKNY stores nationwide, as reported in USA Today. "For me, it's great exposure," Schoeneman told the paper. Oh, is it? Shortly after that post went up, a New York media type on vacation in Southern California emailed in this anecdote:

USA Today has a mini-article (actually, aren't all of their articles kind of mini?) on the growing trend of book signings being held in retail spaces:

Ever since he published The Game, his inside account of the secret society of pick-up artists, bestselling author Neil Strauss has been spending less time as writer who helps folks like Jenna Jamison and Motley Crue write their biographies. Instead, Strauss has transformed himself into some sort of shiny-headed self-help guru for dateless dudes everywhere, holding seminars in his living room for those lonely souls willing to enroll in his pick-up artist programs. Now he's gone and made himself a YouTube commercial showing just how far he's come as a player.

As the publicity train for Dispatches From the Edge keeps chugging along — and, yes, we recognize we've become a de facto (if, we hope, at least slightly mocking) part of it — his Time Warner colleagues aren't being left at the station. Time Inc. employees yesterday received a special invitation to trudge up to Columbus Circle in two weeks for a chance to meet the man themselves. It's a health benefit, apparently:

There's a certain human need to share stories of life-transforming experiences — Where were you on Sept. 11? — and so, unsurprisingly, readers have been today been emailing in their tales of attending Anderson's reading last night. Above, the photographic submission from one reader of Coopie in action. And here, a city high-school teacher who awards extra-credit points to students who attend readings and report on them sends along one student's take:

Where there is Anderson there must be Gawker. It's a law of physics. So we sent intrepid Intern Neel last night to A-Coop's big reading at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, hoping he'd catch a big enough eyeful of our hero for everyone. Alas, things did not go quite as planned. After the jump, Neel's report.

• Fortune editor to co-write Alan Greenspan's memoir. He's say he's excited, but that might be viewed as irrationally exuberant. [NYT]
• And Ted Turner will likely have a memoir coming, too. [NYP]
• More and more newspaper advertising is shifting to web. Um, duh. [NYT]
• Elizabeth Vargas needed that anchor chair like a fish needs a bicycle. Honest. [Phil. Inq.]

Despite the recently shitty weather, this week's New York Times Book Review had high hopes for summer, bravely going forth regardless of nature with its Summer Reading issue. Alas, the review's idea of summer reading begins and ends with baseball. That's it. Fantasy baseball, baseball statistics, baseball for tykes, and so on. It was a little much for Intern Alexis, who received nary a peanut or a Cracker Jack for her efforts. For all that time exposed to America's pastime, you'd think the Times would at least give its readers a free foam hand or something. After the jump, Alexis' guide to acting like you're literate.

• Valerie Plame's $2.5M book deal with Crown falls through. Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenas Judy Miller and Matt Cooper in attempt to find out why. [NYT]
• CBS reporter injured in Iraq is in critical but stable condition, sedated and breathing with a ventilator, and able to recognize her boyfriend. [AP via NYSun]
• Seventy WPers take early retirement. It's almost like working at Time Inc.! [WP]
• The Atlantic is opposed to flip-flops, tank tops. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Court says fuckin' CBS shouldn't have fuckin' fired Arthur Chi'en from fuckin' Channel 2. Fuck. [NYDN]

So why did HarperCollins give Anderson Cooper $1 million for his not particularly insightful and not particularly well-reviewed memoir? Because last week, the week it was published, at was the bestselling nonfiction hardcover book in the country, moving some 38,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan. Even that number, however, doesn't make Dispatches From the Edge the No. 1 overall book for the week. (It was No. 6.) And the anchor's memoir didn't even summit the nonfiction or biography sublists, both of which saw the paperback of Elie Wiesel's Night, recently Oprah-certfied, triumph. But we suspect Anderson is just fine with that: From what we understand, he prefers not to be on top.

• Several confirmations today: God is dead, the world is nothing more than a cesspool of injustice, the horsemen are en route, and Anna Nicole Smith is pregnant. [R&M]
• Life & Style claims Lindsay Lohan spent $1 million on clothes last year and is now seeing a hypnotist to cure her shopping addiction. As if that addiction were her biggest problem. [Scoop]
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers may face a major lawsuit if Tom Petty decides that the band's first single, Dani California, is as similar to Mary Jane's Last Dance as everyone says it is. [Page Six]
• Uber-manager Benny Medina declares a moratorium on email. If he can make Mariah Carey into a similar taboo, then we'll really be impressed. [Lowdown]
• Les Moonves' wife Julie Chen finally comes clean and acknowledges that she's a robot. [Page Six]
• Eager to make career choices that will help her come out of her divorce looking mature and classy, Denise Richards joins the Pussycat Dolls. [TMZ]
• Kim Basinger files a motion to prevent her ex-husband Alec Baldwin from publishing a book about the ruin of their marriage. Let's take Basinger's side on this one — do we really want to hear any more about the 45-year-long divorce? [IMDb]