Digital City

Whether you're looking to get into your wedding dress in a hurry, or worrying that your regular caloric intake will make fasting next Monday for Yom Kippur a real challenge, not to worry -- there's a fad diet out there for you, and you can start today! Maybe you've heard of or even tried some of these, but when a friend posted this history of fad diets from the American Dietetic Association, it made me look.

I wanted to see how many of these I had tried, if any. I came close to trying the infamous maple syrup liquid fast when I saw the results a few different friends got, but then decided that such a drastic caloric reduction might make me unable to operate heavy machinery, or even pick up a spoon. Turns out the only one I actually managed was a non-aggressive form of Atkins.

President Obama has again taken Manhattan, and is causing more gridlock than Godzilla.

In town for a series of events and the annual United Nations General Assembly, the President even did David Letterman. Wait, that doesn't sound right ... I digress. Scheduled to address international topics like the recession, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and poverty abroad, by early this week Mr. Obama had already made a mess of the city's traffic patterns.

This has been a massively depressing week in the world of media. No more so, I suppose, than any other in recent history -- what with deaths, suicides, political gaffes, world hunger, and the like -- but in my home state alone there were two college-related tragedies I can recall.

A body stuffed in a wall at Yale and a student gang-raped at Hofstra University (though now it's said the "victim" made it up -- for shame). Rather than write about that, however, I choose to lead with fart jokes, or at least a new book about those who made them.

Is there a better way to shake off the post-Labor-Day-fall's-coming-haze than a nice, stupefying hour at ten pm, five nights a week, with Jay Leno? I could think of a few, and they don't include him or his co-publicity ploy with Kanye West.

Last night, Leno returned to the air with a "new" hour of interview and skit-driven "comedy". Can you just feel the love and sarcasm? I hope so.

Most people think that summer is the time to worry about one's waistline, given all the bikini-wearing some of us do. But, I respectfully disagree. Labor Day has passed us by, summer's waning, and it's time to try to squeeze into your skinny jeans for fall.

I'm betting some of us can't do it. All those barbecues, sugary cocktails you had when it was warm, and flowy, forgiving dresses didn't help. Worse, for those of you who care, spring fashion week in New York starts today -- another reminder of how so many people are skinnier and taller than we are. Sigh. Need a fall slimming plan? Thought so.

One of the strangest news stories of the week is also the most insulting to the considerable talents of Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old woman whose gender was questioned when she appeared out of nowhere on the international track scene on July 31.

Usually, when athletes are questioned about their prowess, it's because doping is suspected. Not this time. Semenya, whose looks are sinewy and masculine, and who apparently has a deep voice, is under investigation by the South African athletic federation because many are wondering if she's really a woman. I'm not sure which of the various societal evils are at work here -- sexism, racism, or something else entirely -- but something smells bad, and it's not Semenya's arm pits. Someone's just hating because this lady is fast.

Oh Rebecca, how far ye have fallen since your Noxema Girl days when we shared a modeling agent. The Rebecca I'm referring to is Rebecca Gayheart, teen model, sometime-actress and wife to Gray's Anatomy actor Eric Dane -- aka "McSteamy"(both are pictured left, clothed). News of a less exciting sibling of the popular Internet sex tape-type piece with them unclothed, a "nude" tape (ugh), is making its way around the web.

As reported by Gawker, Dane and Gayheart pal around naked and apparently stoned at the home of former Miss Teen USA contestant Kari Ann Peniche.

If you're between the ages of 30 and 40, chances are a John Hughes movie had a seminal affect on your youth, and thus, you today. So must the actors pictured above have -- Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and Molly Ringwald, the stars of several of Hughes' comedies.


Mr. Hughes, who died yesterday at the age of 59 during a walk in Manhattan, was one of the most celebrated directors of comedies I can remember. He made these people famous, and their performances memorable.

When the announcer during Sunday's Buick Open claimed that the tournament "announced like the British open, but better!" I am fairly certain he was referring to the loud fart our country's best golfer emitted during the game, rather than the game itself.

The video of Tiger Woods letting one rip (and view this quickly because the PGA is ripping the vids off YouTube as fast as they are posted) while off camera has created an Internet buzz, with people spreading word and video around far and wide, and the PGA furiously trying to censor the video.

Media mogul Barry Diller has finally jumped on the branded entertainment bandwagon, and business newspapers are lapping up the vague press release as they always do.

Snatching devalued entertainment executive Ben Silverman (a non-corporate kind of guy who was seen as the stinky cheese while last at NBC for 25 months), Diller wants to join the ranks of advertising agencies like Ogilvy's Branded Entertainment group who have had divisions that do this for years now.