Times fashion writer Eric Wilson originally sparked our ire when, at the end of the transit strike, he let his asshole write a piece on how New Yorkers dressed crappily for their 63-block hikes to work in the freezing cold. This week, however, we'll put our hate on hold, as he's behind an article looking at the season's unending, PR-infused crop of Best-Dressed lists. The lists have become so predictable and beige that they've virtually lost all meaning, thus prompting Vanity Fair to hold off on publishing its 2006 list until it can "regain an element of surprise."

• Go forth, little mischief makers, and make your own subway sign — just because you can. [Subway Fun]
• If you read that Times article about a month ago about the magically irritating converted schoolhouse shared by a bunch of creatives in Bushwick and thought, "Hey, that's neat," now's your chance to move in. You're an idiot, but, hey, we're not judging. [Craigslist via Lindsayism]
• How she gets the scoops: Daily News gossip girl Jo Piazza is a kissing bandit. [NYO]
• Three of the top seven most emailed Times articles pertain to macaroni and cheese, and yet we wonder why America is the land of the obese. [NYT]
• Only the brave should listen to the new Kevin Federline track. We, as we've noted before, are total pussies. Knock yourselves out, though, and tell us how it goes. [Yahoo! Music]
• Whether or not author JT Leroy is real, at least the experience of figuring him out is decidedly surreal. [Guardian]

• James Risen's State of War — the impending publication of which forced the Times to finally publish the domestic-spying story — also makes Judy Miller's WMD excuses fall apart. [NYO]
• Still, the domestic-spying articles were better than the book is, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Lunatic talking head Bill O'Reilly promises to "get into the lives" of Bill Keller and Frank Rich if (perhaps imagined) Times attacks on him continue. We really hope he does, because Keller would be so much sexier if he were a little less earnest. [Media Matters]
• Yesterday was CBS's first day as its own company. Well, except for all those all days as its own company. [WP]
• New Oxygen show features middle-aged women partying with college guys. We're pretty sure we saw that same show on Cinemax once. [NYT]
• Not-quite-victorious — but still really good — GMA staffers get cheesy commemorative trinkets. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman is clearly smoking crack, as proved by (among other things) his prediction that MSNBC will beat CNN and Fox News in 2006. [MW]
• Latest Q-ratings study shows Katie Couric isn't as popular as she used to be. Clearly not in the polling sample: Les Moonves. [WWD]

• The reports from New Year's in Miami are predictable: Lohan hospitalized, Mischa Barton and Cisco Adler fight over Mr. Bongjangles, Vin Diesel acts hetero, and Nicole Richie awkwardly poses for "promotional purposes" with ex-fiancé DJ AM. What, exactly, were they promoting? The dangers of celebrity engagements? [Page Six]
• Enrique Iglesias spent New Year's entertaining the sons of Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy, but the feds were too busy tapping your phone line to notice. [R&M]
• Cutbacks at the Times leads to the close of the nurse's office. Alas, no more Snoopy band-aids for Punch. [Page Six]
• After calling in Kabbalah ghostbusters to cleanse her "haunted" London home, Gwyneth Paltrow is diagnosed as officially retarded. [Scoop]
• Amanda Peet flips off a smiley fan in the East Village. Just like any native New Yorker would, really. [Lowdown]

It must suck when your company announces several hundred layoffs over the last few months. It must suck when your company cancels its discount-stock-purchase program. It must suck when your expense accounts are tightened, when hiring freezes are instituted, and when you learn you'll be getting a smaller bonus than you'd hoped. And it must really suck the most when these things have happened and then you wake up one morning, as New York Times employees did today, to learn from the Observer that your company nevertheless handed out a few million bucks' worth of stock to a half-dozen or so top corporate managers.

This is — how do you say? — a big fucking fuck-up. And for once, it's not even the Times' fault.

• Oh, bad job, Keller and Sulzberger. Finally public editor Barney Calame grows a pair and decides to write about something interesting and relevant — why you chose to hold the domestic-spying store for a year — and you guys promptly snip them off. Now he'll never work up the nerve again, alas. [NYT]
• The Elizabeth-and-Bob show starts at ABC News tonight, and we're pretty sure the senior citizens who still watch the evening newscasts are aquiver with excitement. That, or Parkinson's. One of the two. [USAT]
• Last week Forbes said WashPostCo would be the Journal. Now Jim Cramer says Murdoch will. [NYM]
• Joel Stein and Maureen Dowd are feuding. God knows who to root for. [LAT]
• 2005 was, essentially, Vanity Fair's very bestest year ever. [WWD]
• Rumor has it the Underneath the Robes dude is set to become the new Wonkette. Hmm. Interesting. [WSJ; NYO]
• NYT lurves NY1. [NYT]
• Chung and Povitch have a new show and think they're Hepburn and Tracey. Which is sort of cute, in a deluded way. [NYM]

Click to enlarge.

The Observer's Choire Sicha holds his breath and climbs to the top of NYT's Critical Shopper columnist Alex Kuczynski's $25,000 Pyramid. I bet it smells real nice up there. [Daily Transom]
Most outrageous statements in media of 2005, excluding Alex Kuczynski's American Express bill [Media Matters]
The Corsair Pirate Awards, Part Deux [The Corsair]
Write a limerick, win a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ticket. Tell your grandkids about it one day. [Joe MF Brown]
Oh, THAT "Jew Rapist" [Google News]
Someone requested a Jake Gyllenhaal gay rumor. I can't oblige but how about some naughty butt-talk? [MSNBC]
Dudes, I'm sorry! Please love me and welcome me back! The barrage of email is harder to keep track of than you'd think. [TheSpunker]
UCB-attending ninjas save lives on the streets of NYC [cab drivers tell me i'm pretty]
William Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week magazine, talks about the stories you may have missed this year while you were standing in a check-out line reading Star magazine [NYT]
A reader asks: "Is it really that hard for the New York Times to find something to write about that they have to profile the SAME museum with the SAME exhibits twice in less than 3 months?" We reply: "It's Philly, who cares?" October 2005 and Today [NYT]

Slate's Jack Shafer has so much sympathy for New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller that he's returning to the well once again to shed more tears into a bucket and defend his honor. If you haven't been paying attention, this is the story of how the Times sat on a Carvel whale-sized scoop that the Bush Administration was tapping phone calls without a court order.

Campbell Robertson boldly sums up the year and drops a Rafael Palmiero steroid reference within spitting distance of Martha Stewart. Great job, even if he was forced to rhyme Katrina and Angelina. An excerpt:

Yesterday we proved that Alessandra Stanley is the wrongest of all Times cultural critics, at least in 2005. Today we're bringing you a collection of her greatest corrections hits from the year.

That little bout of "truthiness" bitchiness this morning reminded us that it'd be a good time to look back at Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley's correctability in 2005. Our good pal Nexis tells us that Stanley notched 20 corrections on 137 articles this year, which means that a full 15 percent of her dispatches required correcting.*

Sunday's Week in Review, in an attempt to get all magazine-year-end-issue-y, devoted page 3 to "2005: In a Word," a zeitgeisty look at the new words (actually, in most cases, phrases) that bubbled into the vernacular this year. Only eight words merited their own essays, and only 14 more made the runner-up list. So it must have been particularly gratifying for the paper's lead television critic that she identified one of the eight big words — Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" — as significant back in October, right when it was introduced.

Today's Times has a piece about Amazon Connect, which allows authors to blog on their Amazon.com retail pages. Meg Wolitzer is prominently featured as an author utilizing her Amazon blog — she serves as the story's lede and primary example, plus there's a nice photograph.

Our early morning surfing:

We actually chose not to mention this yesterday, as we're currently filled with the spirit of giving. The Times corrections column, however, has no such compunction:

It's the most beautiful NYTimes.com headline we've ever seen.

Never before had a Times headline made us quite so happy.

With no fewer than 10 reporters on just one strike story today, the mind can't even fathom how many will be necessary for tomorrow's coverage. If only for the sake of the Metro desk, please, Roger Toussaint, end this madness now.