When Carter first announced that it would bring its usual Oscar party back this year, he said they were going to aim for a guest list of 650 instead of the customary 1,000-plus names. The move to pare down invites made sense given the recessionary times and the recent not-so-opulent mood at Conde Nast. But deciding who would get cut from the list — which, while full of celebrities, also includes more than a few advertisers who are currently being begged to buy ad pages — would have been a mighty chore.

This is the first year Vanity Fair is throwing the bash at the Sunset Tower Hotel (last year's party was cancelled amidst the writers strike; before that it was thrown for fourteen years at the restaurant Morton's). It's the same place where the magazine has thrown its Golden Globes party, so the party planners are familiar with the space. Morton's had a parking lot where they could set up a tent. But having spent some time at the Sunset Tower, it's difficult to imagine 1,000 people cramming into the hotel's lounge, bar and pool area all at once.

It was editor-in-chief Graydon Carter himself who called in the orders to screw shut the fudge spigots that would have turned Morton's into a living, breathing Chocolate Rainforest, replete with edible gummy macaques and a live musical performance by Tay Zonday. We bring good news, however: The Vanity Fair party is indeed on this year, albeit relocated to the far more intimate Sunset Tower Bar, in keeping with the current climate of corporate thriftiness. What's more, the magazine has secured the sponsorship of three blue-chip advertisers to fuel their week of Oscar starfuckery. From wwd.com:

The series of pre-Oscar events, christened "Campaign Hollywood" and cosponsored by advertisers BMW, Dior and Bally, begins Monday with VF portraits of Oscar-nominated and -winning actors being unveiled in the windows of Rodeo Drive boutiques...

On Feb. 20, daytime festivities include a test-drive of the new BMW 7 Series beginning at Griffith Park Observatory and ending with lunch at the John Lautner-designed Garcia Home.

That night's festivities include Bally's Hollywood Domino party on the rooftop of the new Andaz West Hollywood hotel, hosted by Bally creative director Brian Atwood and Kate Bosworth to benefit the Art of Elysium.

Finally, the magazine's famed post-Oscar party returns this year in a new location, the Sunset Tower hotel, which boasts a killer view but much less space than Morton's. Already several regular invitees have noticed the scale back, quietly asking one another, "I didn't get my invite this year, did you?"

If you're a regular on the guest list and have yet to receive yours, don't panic. In a cost-cutting measure, they've decided to forgo stamped invites, in favor of tagging potential guests in a Facebook note from Carter asking for "25 Facts About You Proving Your Worth To Our Fabulous A-list Party." Failing that, there's always the last-ditch, Sean Young approach: big sunglasses, black Reeboks, and hauling tail like your career depends upon it.

• Vanity Fair's Oscar Comeback... [WWDMEDIA]

A faint scar runs across Tina Fey’s left cheek, the result of a violent cutting attack by a stranger when Fey was five. Her husband [Jeff Richmond] says, “It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen.” [...]

“That scar was fascinating to me,” Richmond recalls. “This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

Fey herself rarely mentions the episode. “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” she says.

Too true. Still, we feel for Fey — it's a terrible thing to have had happen (and certainly, it can't help that fully half of Maureen Dowd's VF article obsesses over Fey's appearance in some way). Almost as bad? Nancy Franklin's weirdly cruel, inaccurate 30 Rock writeup in the current New Yorker, which slams Fey and every other cast member but one in a piece that really should be retitled, "I Wanna Nail Alec Baldwin; Here is Why." Don't worry, Nance — that Eva Longoria profile offer should be yours before you even know it!

• What Tina Wants [Vanity Fair]

The svelte five-time-Oscar-nominee isn't having it: "Kate is furious at suggestions that her body has been airbrushed," her rep tells PEOPLE exclusively.

..."She is in terrific shape and what you see is how she looks or she would never have agreed to pose for those shots," adds her rep.

We're inclined to believe Winslet, if only because we'd like to subscribe to the exercise regimen she espouses in Vanity Fair: “Everyone can commit to 20 minutes [of working out], especially if there’s a glass of Chardonnay afterwards.” Does 15 minutes of Wii Fit and a couple of Akbar-poured highballs count, too?

[Photo Credit: Steven Meisel/Vanity Fair]

• Kate Winslet 'Furious' Over Body Airbrush Claims [People]

2% socialite, 0% blogger!

One writer, one photographer, one rapper. Three designers. Seven royals (one of whom is Kate Middleton).

The list:

Ivanka Trump
Michelle Obama
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
Kate Middleton
Sarah Jessica Parker
Diana Taylor
Julia Koch
Tilda Swinton
H.R.H Crown Princess Mathilde of Belgium
Evelyn Lauder
Zac Goldsmith
Daniel Craig
Matt Lauer
David Beckham
Lapo Elkann
H.S.H. Prince Heinrich von und zu Fürstenberg
Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca
Kanye West
Morley Safer
Bryan Lourd
Sisters Alexandra Kotur and Fiona Kotur Marin
Brothers Rafael, Duke of Feria, and Don Luis Medina
Brothers Andrea and Pietro Clemente
Iris Apfel
Karl Lagerfeld
Julian Schnabel
Sydney and Charles Finch
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer
Christy Turlington Burns
Carine Roitfeld
Katherine Ross
Stacey Bendet
Fran Lebowitz
H.R.H. Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece
Jonathan Becker

No, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham was not named. Nor was Scarlett Johansson or Heidi Klum. Glaring omissions? Please advise.

The International Best-Dressed List [Vanity Fair]

“I'm not as disciplined about it was I once was, but I hope to find my way back as I get older and a little less selfish...I'm ashamed to say that I've just got very lazy about it. I satisfy my vices instead of fighting them.”

And this is certainly not the first time Hollywood Public Enemy Heigl has spoken out about her “support” of the Church. A colorful collection of quotes she’s given throughout the years on the Mormon religion, after the jump:

On Her Mostly Mormon Friends:
USA Today, 2007:

"I haven't [practiced] since I was about 19 or 20, when I moved to L.A. and was working a lot. I couldn't find a ward I was comfortable in. It kind of petered out mostly because of that. My good friends are Mormon, some of the best people I know."

On Raising Her Kids Mormon:
Glamour, 2007:

"I’m having a glass of white wine right now; that’s not exactly being a good Mormon! But I am really supportive of the Mormon church and so profoundly grateful for the childhood I had. It’s hard work to grow and change and be honest with yourself about your mistakes, and I think the Mormons handle that beautifully. The faith I grew up with has influenced every decision I’ve made in my life — well, except for the bad ones! I haven’t decided yet. I’ve always thought I would raise [my children] Mormon because I had such a wonderful childhood."

On The Church's Influence On Her Childhood:
Vanity Fair, 2008:

"A couple of Mormon families were a great comfort [after the death of her brother when Heigl was seven years old]. Both my parents felt a great desire for answers, and they found an answer in the Mormon church. Everything was kind of a mess for a while. It wasn’t like Ordinary People, where it destroyed that family so badly that there was never finding any joy or loving or appreciating being alive again. But I give my parents unbelievable credit for pulling it together, and I give the Mormon church a lot of credit for helping them to do that.”

[Photo credit: Wireimage]

• KATHERINE HEIGL WANTS TO GO MORMON AGAIN [Star]

In the span of two days, Nylon magazine released photos from their August cover star missing various amounts of clothing, while Candies-ad girl Hayden just posed for some provocative (for an 18-year old, at least) pics in order to promote her upcoming pop album. Yes, that sweet sweaty smell of exploitation filling your nostrils? Once again, thank Lindsay Lohan. A closer look at all four naughty girls and their dirty pictures, after the jump:

Though the Nylon spread is admittedly gorgeous, the uncanny resemblance between these topless shots and Lindsay's myriad "artful" topless, backless, panty-less photos is pretty clear. Even Gwyneth caught on to the secret backbone-baring method towards stardom back in her call girl days.

And as for Hayden, who's already learned what a little cheerleader's uniform can do for her growing group of male fans, decides to go one step further and just pull a Miley by showing her tummy off to all interested parties. Counting down the seconds until either a bare back or, more likely, the highly effective full-frontal appears in a glossy. And yes, it's probably a matter of seconds.

[Photo credits: Nylon, Daily Mail]

• OOH LA LA! MISCHA EXPOSED [Nylonmag.com]
• HEROES STAR HAYDEN PANETTIERE VAMPS UP TO LAUNCH HER POP CAREER [Daily Mail]

Over the weekend, an entrepreneurial online hacker going by the telling name of "Trainreq" posted the two photos of Miley playing dress-up with her iPhone and picking up on that whole wet t-shirt trend to the right and, according to alleged time stamps, they were taken in October 2007, meaning Miley had yet to blow out her 15th birthday candle. Adding an exclamation point to this latest Cyrus Photo Scandal is the hacker's claim that he has "worse pictures" than these. So where oh where could such an underage girl get the inspiration for "artfully" done point-and-zoom collections? Oh, right.

From her Where My Cokepants At? shoot with mother of the century Dina, to enlisting C-listers like Vanessa Minnillo to eat her top off for her, Lindsay Lohan has been a fan of grainy amateur photo shoots for years. Even an occasion as non-momentous as Jeremy Piven's birthday serves as an excuse to put on her best nude-hued bikini and imitate a call girl. So for those of you embarrassingly salivating at Miley and her prematurely dirty mind? Make sure to send a thank-you note to Lindsay and her bountiful assets, without which little girls everywhere wouldn't even know how to mangle their pout into "sexy" mode.

[Photo credits: Egotastic, AOL, Nerve]

• MILEY CYRUS (NOT) NAKED IN THE SHOWER, PLUS A WHOLE NEW SEX SCANDAL [Egotastic]
• MILEY CYRUS NUDE PHOTO [Allies Wireless]

After all, Vanity Fair's position in Hollywood—where the magazine throws the hottest Oscar night party and has its pick of Hollywood stars for cover shoots—is hardly threatened by a one-year-old and troubled business magazine. Vanity Fair and Portfolio are part of the same company, for chrissake; and both deny the story—all be it half-heartedly. But petty infighting at Si Newhouse's publishing group is always plausible.

Ever since Alex Liberman's tenure as editorial director of Condé Nast, the group has been a collection of rival territories managed only by pitting the barons against eachother.

Vogue's Anna Wintour was installed as creative director under Grace Mirabella, the legendary editor to whom she was the anointed successor. Wintour and Vanity Fair's Tina Brown—both kicky English imports—fought for the favor of Liberman and Newhouse, and over stories; Brown wrote up a lunch with Princess Diana that Wintour had arranged as a private affair, and later ran a nasty exposé of her former colleague's businessman boyfriend. And Tina Brown was so put out by when shifted to the New Yorker that she sabotaged her successor, Graydon Carter.

Writes Judy Bachrach in Tina And Harry Come To America: Graydon Carter arrived at Vanity Fair the following week and found—nothing. There was a backlog of stories that had been sitting in a kill pile, articles previously considered by Tina or her editors that were, for one reason or another, deemed unfit for the magazine. But aside from this cache, Carter was left with no immediate resources: there was no indication of what pieces might go into succeeding issues, no drawerful of ideas. Vanity Fair always planned moths ahead, even if those plans never materialized. "Nothing, nothing, nothing," was the description of what had been left behind.

So, yes, Waxman's story—that Graydon Carter has prevailed on Hollywood friends such as Brian Grazer, Jim Wiatt and Brad Grey to keep Portfolio from any big Hollywood gets—is entirely plausible. Portfolio's lead Hollywood correspondent Amy Wallace is “being blacklisted a little bit," a former editor tells Waxman. Wallace declined to comment, which means she probably confirmed the suspicion to her friend Waxman.

Watching the above behind-the-scenes video, we're struck by what a miraculous feat it was, both on the part of the young thespians—who retained relatively convincing smiles through the tumbling moisture—and the VF art directors themselves, who somehow managed to shoo away junior flacks' feable objections of, "But isn't climbing a tree in a the middle of a thunderstorm the last thing you're supposed to do?" Sure, Stone—the most expendable of the bunch—was incinerated by a massive bolt of lightning. But ultimately they got the shot in time, and in the cut-throat world of publishing, that's all that really matters.

• The Class of 2008 [Vanity Fair]
• Previously: 'Vanity Fair' Nominates McLovin As A Rising Star Of Tomorrow [Defamer]

"Since I have a dog and blond hair, that must mean we're alike. It's a dumb thing to say. I don't think that makes us similar," Lively tells the new issue of Seventeen. "I don't know her, but I don't like being compared to anyone by somebody who doesn't know me. I'm my own person. I don't go to clubs, I don't party, I don't dance on tables and I don't like sex tapes."

She doesn't like sex tapes? Has journalism really sunk so far that the reporter for Seventeen (which I can now read and get all the references) couldn't bother interjecting to get some clarification on that question? I mean, does she mean that she doesn't like "making" them (which would be a bummer) or "watching" them? Because there's one little fella out there with a sex tape that sure could use the extra cashflow if Lively were to pick up a copy of his work. But sex tape inquiries aside, we feel for Lively, we really do. We have no idea why anyone would confuse an actress who rose to prominence by playing a tall, blonde, sexually promiscuous and often times inebriated socialite would get confused for a tall, blonde, sexually promiscuous and often times inebriated socialite. Here's hoping that movie about a magical pair of elastic-waisted denim pantaloons helps Lively break out of the typecasting rut that Hollywood has pegged her into. It's hard out there for a starlet, it really is.

• I'M NO PARIS [NY Post]

CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE Age: 19. Hometown: West Hills, California. Breakthrough role: "McLovin" in Superbad. Upcoming film: Little Big Man. First "Hollywood" moment? "Well, I'm a Jessica Alba fan, so the first time I met her kind of blew my mind because she was a huge fan of me. I was like, 'Really?' "

Number of shoes in your closet? "Three. My basketball shoes and then my two pair of Vans that I wear. That's all I wear, really. I slip on Vans. I'm lazy." Favorite accessory? "I always have got my iPod on me. It's safety, so when people are yelling 'McLovin' at you, you can't hear them." BlackBerry or iPhone? Verizon Chocolate. What's on your iPod? "Sublime, Incubus, Chili Peppers, Muse, the Killers, Parliament-Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin, the Doors. God, I could keep going." Xbox, Wii, or PlayStation? Xbox 360. Madden or Halo? Call of Duty. Last book you read? "You're going to hate me for this, but I have not read a book in many years. I have just been reading scripts nonstop."

We're going to ignore the scripts-over-books-reading comment, mainly cause 98% of L.A.-based actors are guilty of the same thing, and at least he had the McBalls to admit it. Instead we'll focus on what is likely going to be the saddest thing we'll hear this week. (And this comes after witnessing Corey Haim squelching down Defamer-induced sobs.) We refer, of course, to his admission, "I always have got my iPod on me. It's safety, so when people are yelling 'McLovin' at you, you can't hear them." Why! Oh why, do we build up our adolescent-teen-sex-comedy supporting-dweebs only to tear them back down again? Do you hear us, Grease's Eugene, Meatballs's Spaz, American Pie's The Sherminator, and the entire cast of Revenge of the Nerds? You can't shut us out, no matter how loudly the volume is turned on your personal stereos. We're calling you by your actual names.

Pictured, Hollywood New Wave member Christopher Mintz-Plasse and several fresh-faced starlets, hanging from a high tree limb like some lost simian tribe of crisp-whites-wearing future superstars.

• Bright Young Hollywood [Vanity Fair]

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.

1. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, by Tom King

The Gist: A gay Polish-Ukrainian Jew from Borough Park moves to Hollywood and enters the mail room at the William Morris Agency. After forging a letter suggesting he had a college degree when in fact he did not, Geffen rises through the ranks to become an agent, then leaves WMA and founds Asylum Records and produces albums by Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Asylum is sold to Warner Communications, and Geffen becomes Vice Chairman of Warner film studios. He then retires and un-retires after a minor but erroneous health scare, founds Geffen Records, courts John Lennon and Yoko Ono (see below), produces Cats, Risky Business (see below), co-founds Dreamworks SKG, produces Saving Private Ryan, backs Bill Clinton, gives lots of money to AIDS research, falls out with Bill Clinton over one of the sleazeballs he didn't pardon, and now backs Barack Obama. Along the way Geffen throws many temper tantrums and raises his voice to the point where even Steven Spielberg asks him politely to lower it. He also shows a remarkable ability for betraying the confidences of good friends and business associates in order to charm potential clients he’s just met. The night Lennon was shot, Geffen was in bed with a male prostitute and loves to boast about it.

The Pull-Quote: “’What about my music?’ [Yoko Ono] asked. ‘Well, I’ve never heard any of your records.’ ‘Really,’ Ono said. ‘That doesn’t sound like a very good reason for me to make a deal with you.’ ‘I’m a big fan of John’s, and I have a great deal of respect for the two of you, and we do a very good job. We’re a good record company.’ ‘What do you mean you’re a good record company?’ Ono fired back. ‘You haven’t put out a record yet!’”

The Takeaway: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Be enlightened and progressive on your own time, but cunning and ruthless on corporate time. Respect for others’ privacy won't make you rich and powerful. Endear yourself to those you want to impress by gossiping about people you know behind their backs. It'll smack of such poor judgment that would-be clients will assume you're either crazy or brilliant, and guess what? You are.

2. Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power, by Judy Bachrach

The Gist: Gifted writer Tina Brown makes her fellow students feel small at Oxford, dates a host of famous men (including Auberon Waugh, who washes frantically after sex, Martin Amis, whom she adores, and Dudley Moore, whom she does not), deflects charges of arrivisme, and becomes editor of UK tabloid Tatler at age 25. She meets Harold Evans, then married and famously editing the The Times of London and The Sunday Times, which names her Most Promising Female Journalist. Brown and Evans marry in 1981, then move to New York three years later, whereupon Brown revives the moribund Vanity Fair by turning it into the must-read glossy on celebrity doings and the leisure class. She hires true crime reporter Dominick Dunne, photographer Helmut Newton and inaugurates a new wave of magazine journalism, operating under the assumption that "intellectuals should be read and not seen." Meanwhile, Tina and Harry are now East Coast socialites whose fiercely guarded life together aspires to shape headlines, not become them. (Their best friend is British libel law.) Brown takes over The New Yorker in 1992 and remakes that antiquated smart sheet, too, acquiring Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Lane and David Remnick, who later replaces her as editor-in-chief. On a manuscript submitted by Yiddish Nobel laureate, Brown writes, "Beef it up, Singer," which more or less encapsulates her style of feared-but-respected-or-hated tenure. She founds Talk magazine in 1999, which folds after just two years, an over-sensationalized failure from which this unauthorized biography derives all of its rise-and-fall schadenfraude. (Bachrach is a contributing editor at the new VF, edited by Brown’s archnemesis Graydon Carter.)

The Pull-Quote: "We live in a time when infamy sells.... There is no honor, no reticence, no loyalty." Spoken by Maureen Dowd on Brown's New Yorker reign, and quoted by author to make a clichéd point.

The Takeaway: Develop a nose for future A-listers. Sleep with as many as you can all the while adopting an “amused” air about them. Overpaying the talent means you can bully them into submission, so don't be cowed by easily tossed around phrases like "national institution" or "greatest living writer." Fuck 'em if they can't take a kill-fee. Oh, and marry old men.

3. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young

The Gist: Son of highbrow sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term "meritocracy," Toby Young devotes his life to testing how much strain that already weakened concept can take. He writes for the British Times, gets fired from the British Times. He founds celebrated Modern Review, which traffics in "low culture for highbrows," then shuts it down, much to the dismay of everyone else involved. Young moves to New York in the early 90's, gets hired by Graydon Carter as a contributing editor (read: sinecurist) at Vanity Fair, then proceeds overlong tenure as a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Graydon Carter’s shoe (this is G.C.’s description of him, not ours). Young cracks dud jokes to celebrities, refers to doormen who won't let him into parties he'd end up hating anyway as "clipboard Nazis," does blow while on assignment, asks Nathan Lane if he's gay, gets fired from Vanity Fair. Now back in London (this isn't in the book), Young edits The Spectator, a conservative weekly, and boasts of his "negative charisma," probably as a way to boost paperback sales. HTLFAAP, much like Young himself, has been up and down the wicket of sadomasochistic success. A film adaptation is said to be in post-production, starring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst.

The Pull-Quote: “Cool Britannia was a cry of independence, a howl of protest against the all-enveloping cultural hegemony of the United States, yet, paradoxically, it didn’t really mean anything—it hadn’t really happened—until it was noticed by the American media. That explained the schizophrenic attitude of people like Damien Hirst, Keith Allen and Alex James: they wanted to assert their indifference to the attentions of glossy, New York magazines, and yet they wanted to be photographed striking this insouciant pose in Vanity Fair. Like rebellious schoolchildren, their protest wouldn’t have counted unless it was registered by the authorities. Unfortunately, in this scenario I was cast as the toothless substitute teacher.”

The Takeaway: The memoir is a good object lesson in what not to do if you want to hang onto a job or a masthead listing, or cast the impression that deep down you really had high expectations for the world of glamour-besotted New York media. Also, it pays to be obnoxious in a way that only you find ironic.

4. Spy: The Funny Years, by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

The Gist: In 1986, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen found the future of piss-taking journalism in the form of Spy magazine. Épater le bourgeoisie never had it so good, or so the editors – now all dressed up and fixtures of the very culture they once lampooned – are the first ones to remind you. Spy pioneers satire as a clever agglomeration of facts, and specializes in the infographic, the listicle (just like this one!) and the blurb cloud. It attempts to decipher just who, exactly, is on the New Yorker’s indecipherable masthead. It follows Anthony Haden-Guest into the dank reaches of his own nightlife. It refines hatred of Donald Trump into an art form. Features include the Liz Smith Tote Board, Separated at Birth, and Logrolling in Our Time, without which everything from The Onion to Conan O’Brien’s pre-interview fooling would be unimaginable. The self-conscious prose style is a cocktail of H.L. Mencken, A.J. Liebling and Wolcott Gibbs, and its been swigged by every glossy editor in search of a readership ever since. Once G.C. leaves, it all goes to shit. Like Studio 54, the new owners can’t make it work, ergo the justified hubris of the book’s title.

The Pull-Quote: “How easy is it to steal the sour cream?” – in a chart surveying the various Manhattan cafeteria chains.

The Gist: You need only ask yourself if you read Radar to determine whether there’s any pedagogic value to be mined from Spy.

5. Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

The Gist: Nameless 24 year-old fact-checker for elite New York glossy (a thinly veiled New Yorker) moonlights as an aspiring novelist, or wants us to believe he moonlights as that while he’s busy Hoovering coke by the suitcaseful and partying through the vertiginous 80’s club scene with a yuppie twat called Tad Allagash. Tad calls the narrator, who writes annoyingly in the second person, “Coach.” His mother has recently passed away, so we’re shin-kicked into wondering if a life of artifice and glitz is simply an emollient for real pain. Behind the hatred there lies a plundering desire for love. Or something.

The Pull-Quote: “Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you clean up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

The Takeaway: Once Tina Brown takes over Coach’s magazine, he’s fired. Sort your soul out before you move to the metropolis of infinite distractions, otherwise you, too, will wind up a shiftless anonymity with withdrawal symptoms. (Your apartment can still be a mess, however.)

6. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

The Gist: Recent Brown graduate Andrea Sacks wants to write for the New Yorker (sigh) and blankets the media world with her resume hoping to get a dues-paying job somewhere that will eventually allow her to become Larissa MacFarquhar. Whoops. She gets hired by fashion bible Runway’s bitch supreme Miranda Priestly (Anna Wintour, not even thinly veiled) as her junior personal assistant. Next thing Andrea knows, she’s chasing down lattes at Starbucks and sirloins at Smith and Wollensky instead of learning about ledes and nut grafs. Not what she had in mind but she loves the clothes and even develops a knack for being a second-string slave to a subhuman narcissist. Unlike in the film, Andrea doesn’t quit – she gets fired for saying “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.” Ballsy, sure, but she does get to keep some of the Dolce and even snags an interview for a real writing position at another magazine in the same building. (N.B. Author Weisberger was Wintour’s personal assistant, so this novel is a bildungsroman, which is a word Andrea learned at Brown but seldom got to use after graduation.)

The Pull-Quote: “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.”

The Takeaway: How many bright young girls have come to New York hoping to fill these Cinderella slippers, only to discover that not only is Wintour not hiring, but she’s honed her filter for confessional opportunists more interested in publishing advances than making sure her Apple Fritter is extra flaky. If you want to be a bona fide reporter, save yourself the aggro and dashed hopes and apply for an internship at the New York Sun your junior year. Also, while it’s true that some ball-breaking editors respond well to self-assertiveness, telling your boss “Fuck you” isn’t the wisest career decision.

7. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, by John Gregory Dunne

The Gist: The story of Dunne and wife Joan Didion's attempt to transform the life of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch, who died in a car wreck after more or less proving on air in 1983, during a broadcast of NBC News Digest, that she was a drug addict. Instead of a sadder version of Network, the screenplay transforms into the Disneyfied Up Close and Personal, which makes absolutely no mention of Savitch and which even Robert Redford doesn't remember filming.

The Pull-Quote: “The purpose of such a meet-and-greet is to allow the executive to size up the supplicant. [Disney studio chairman Jeffrey] Katzenberg had not read Golden Girl, but he was aware of the less savory details of Jessica Savitch’s life. He liked the ugly-duckling idea; it was the kind of narrative he wanted, and he was also responsive to the television background against which it would be played. He did have reservations, and here I quote Joan’s notes of that first meeting: ‘Wants to know what is going to happen in this picture that will make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something and good about themselves.’”

The Takeaway: Dunne is witty and disarming, especially when he quotes Jack Warner's definition of screenwriters: "schmucks with Underwoods." Interestingly, the "monster" in question is not the industry or any particular studio executive, but rather the money that governs all, including Dunne.

8. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, by Julia Phillips

The Gist: Scandal-sponge Jewish producer reveals the vast corruption, drugs and sexual indiscretions that motor the movie industry. Phillips gets fired by Steven Spielberg on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, accuses Goldie Hawn of body odor, and, on the night she becomes the first woman to win a "Best Picture" Oscar for The Sting, downs three valiums, one upper, one and a half drinks, two joints and a dash of cocaine. The book is a sprayfire indictment of practically everyone Phillips ever met in Hollywood, and it got her banned from Morton's.

The Pull-Quote: "They were really a rogues' gallery of nerds. Marty [Scorsese] was tiny and asthmatic, Steven [Spielberg] had the soft, flabby look of a typical Twinkies kid, and Brian [De Palma] never took his safari jacket off."

The Takeaway: Sour grapes ferment the best, although it's not as if anyone still believes in some West Coast Arcadia where dazzling moving pictures are made. Still, you'll hardly do better for the brutally honest story of a show biz prodigy that had to burn everything before she flamed out.

9. Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media, by Michael Wolff

The Gist: Following up on Burn-Rate (1998), which was about Wolff’s bust foray into the world of online startups, this is the nasty-minded sequel by the former New York media writer who wants badly to be the next Murdoch but can’t and decides to just insult everybody he ever envied instead—especially Fox News President Roger Ailes. Most of the stuff in here consists of Wolff's recycled columns, but it's all in one place and no true mogul ever wasted his time searching through web archives. Harvey Weinstein is obese and grotesque. The media business is "collapsing” like communism. Some of Wolff's axioms should be true even if they aren’t: “The larger and higher-profile the company, the bigger the nutcase who runs it.”

The Pull-Quote: “This was the meta thing. Meta gave both irony and gravitas to what we did. The delicious incongruity between our superficiality and our importance. The joie de vivre of self-referentialism. The stupendous, intoxicating power of being able to create the world we lived in."

Bonus Pull-Quote: “So, as I arrived for my speech, I was thinking of my relationship to the absent but always present [Fox News head Roger] Ailes. He was the greatest, but the Antichrist too.”

The Takeaway: Still fun. Like Young’s book, AOTM is a serviceable monument to failure dressed up as critical thinking. Though most of the wisdom you could just as easily cull by lunching at Michael's. Wolff went on to try and match-make the sale of his old haunt New York (he's now at Vanity Fair) to Mort Zuckerman, who in the event lost out to hedge fund wizard Bruce Wasserstein. That means more meanness is forthcoming in what promises to be the Dance to the Music of Time of inferiority complexes.

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From Vanity Fair: View the Blogopticon and Read the Article.

Through the innuendo-laden assertion that Ms. Gershon has been "visiting" with President Clinton in California, the Article outrageously insinuates that Ms. Gershon has had an inappropriate sexual relationship with President Clinton. This is absolutely false, My client has the utmost admiration and respect for both President and Senator Clinton, and she is extremely offended by the false and defamatory inference that she engaged in an adulterous relationship with the President. ... We demand publication of a retraction and correction.

After the jump, learn the three times Gershon did hang out with Bill Clinton — not surprisingly, none of them include private jets dubbed "Air Fuck One."

But that infamous plane's owner, Ron Burkle, does make a cameo, as do the Shrivers and even Bono! Who even knew Gershon was this famous?

Ms. Gershon has only been in the same room as President Clinton on three occasions, during which she was always in the presence of anywhere from approximately a dozen people to several hundred or more. Specifically, Ms. Gershon was once one of several hundred or perhaps a thousand guests at a charity event at the White House while President Clinton was in office, which she attended as a guest of the Shrivers. On another occasion, Ms. Gershon attended a dinner in New York honoring Bono, where President Clinton was among the several hundred or more in attendance. On a third occasion, Ms. Gershon was a last-minute addition by one of the other guests who attended a dinner at the California home of Ron Burkle, with 10-15 people in attendance, including President Clinton.

Well, then — that settles it! Their demand for a retraction includes striking the offending passage from Vanity Fair's Web site, to which Gershon's lawyers conveniently link in their correspondence. Read up while you still can!

• Gershon: I Did Not Have Sexual Relations... [TMZ]

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In the continuing fallout from his daughter's recent Vanity Fair scandal, Billy Ray Cyrus decided to change up his image to reflect a more sophisticated lifestyle. Cyrus felt that one of the reasons that Miley was taken advantage by Vanity Fair was their perceived image as yokels. In order to combat this misconception, Cyrus has decided to step up his appearance and quickly has become the smoothest and best dressed man in Tennessee. Cyrus said, "If you look rich, people will think you're rich. And when you're rich, people might think you're smart and hopefully won't persuade your boy crazy daughter to take her clothes off."

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

Paltrow states she isn't trying to court controversy with the new photo, insisting it's just an innocent shot. The mother-of-two says, "I'm not going out without my knickers, and I'm not getting drunk and I'm not on my eighth husband."

While Gwyneth does admittedly look far sexier than we've ever seen her, and sure, a thirtysomething actress posing nude is not as big of a deal as it is when her much younger counterparts like Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus do it, we're still a bit confused by her repeated public attacks on those of us who tend to enjoy a bit of drink now and then: "I think it's gross. I really don't like drunk women...I think they're the idiot people and I'm the normal person." But Gwyneth, aren't we forgetting those two separate occasions when you were not only spotted sipping Grandpa's lemonade, but drinking it while pregnant? You know, glass houses and all.

[Photo credits: GQ, Vanity Fair]

• PALTROW: 'DON'T MAKE NUDE MAGAZINE SHOT MORE THAN IT IS' [ContactMusic]

While in New York, the Cruises had dinner with Jessica Seinfeld, possibly to discuss kid stuff (the third Seinfeld spawn is just about the same age as Suri). And though Katie's offer to star in a Broadway play this fall has allegedly been vetoed by Tom, she was at least allowed to accompany him to the Frances McDormand and Morgan Freeman-starring Country Girl. And as the photos above show, Suri is beginning to resemble Katie more and more with every passing month. Which has us thinking, maybe it's time to put those Rosemary's Baby rumors to rest.

[Photo credits: Splash, Vanity Fair]

• HAVE BABY, WILL TRAVEL: TOM AND KATIE TAKE SURI ON A MANHATTAN MINIBREAK [Daily Mail]

"When her lover...told the newswoman she was the oldest woman he had ever been with, she wanted to say - but never did - 'Oh yeah? Well you are the blackest man I have ever been with.'"

While we await the sordid details surrounding the affair Walters is set to share with Oprah on Tuesday, we do finally hear Walters' real feelings regarding previous co-hosts Star Jones and Rosie O'Donnell. As the NYDN reports, Walters was particularly livid "when Jones refused to admit publicly that she had gastric bypass surgery to lose weight [and] her co-workers were forced to lie for her." And as for Rosie, it seems all that tension across the spotless flower-laden table shared by the ladies was just as real as we suspected. As Walters puts it, "The premise of The View is that of a team working together, but for Rosie it was more like Diana Ross and the Supremes, as little by little she took over." And after learning just how saucy Babs has been in the past, it's clear that there's only room for one diva at the table, even if Walters prefers her trademark white-blonde feathered bob to an enormous afro.

• BARBARA WALTERS: I HAD AN AFFAIR WITH MARRIED SENATOR EDWARD BROOKE [NYDN]
• THE VIEW [ABC]

Within three to five years, Miley will have to face adulthood. Fans grow up, and their youthful interests quickly dissolve. Her challenge will be overcoming the Hannah Montana stereotype. Miley's fans are not thinking about the fact that she will grow up too. As she does, she'll want to change her image, and that change will be met with adversity. It's next to impossible to fight, embrace, use or love your image. Trust me. I've seen this all play out before; it's the same ball game, just different players in a different time.

But Miley has an amazing support team. She seems to have good Christian values, with parents (including dad Billy Ray) teaching her important life lessons. She has management that has seen this phenomenon through before—Jim Morey's company—Jim managed me during my Puppy Love days. I hope Miley enjoys every minute of this brief experience before her inevitable reinvention takes place. It's going to make a fascinating book someday. I'll read it.

You see? "Puppy Love" is the obvious Osmond analogue to "Teenagers fuck," as we declaimed yesterday in waving off the Miley controversy, and Nostradonny's glimpse into his crystal ball saw this reality coming a mile away. Disingenuous apologies aside, Jim Morey's careful management of Cyrus's "inevitable reinvention" is off to a dynamite start, and we, too, look forward to reading her ghostwritten memoir sooner than later — particularly Chapter Eight, simply titled "Annie" and already promised as an excerpt to Vanity Fair in 2010.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Time 100: Miley Cyrus [Time]