More cool New York City graf and street artistry from the Global Graphica file, including a new series of images documenting truck graf and fresh work at 11 Spring Street in downtown Manhattan. (Photo courtesy Ivan Corsa / Global Graphica)

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe to Split!
Usher Ogling Lindsay Lohan's Breasts on SNL
NBC Drama "Studio 60" Might Get the Axe
Paris Hilton and Her Hot LAPD Halloween Costume
Bill Maher at Halloween Bash in Steve Irwin Stingray Get-Up

Live from New York ... Borat does SNL. Freaking hilarious, kidz!

Fo' realzzz, yo ... Japanese carmaker Toyota will soon start to sell digital versions of its popular Scion cars in the online community Second Life (SL). The virtual version of hot box-shaped car will sell for $2.00. The plan to sell the cars in SL came as Toyota's ad agency developed its new marketing campaign for the car, which included advertising and giving away digital Scions in SL. The agency soon realized, however, that people in SL would actually pay to own virtual models. The rest is virtual marketing history.

India's massive film industry, Bollywood, has been witnessing a shift in audiences and tastes in recent years. The changing economics and demographics of India's 1 billion population, both in the country and in the overseas diaspora, has led to a "splintering" of the Mumbai-based film business and its creative output. The South Asian giant's economic prosperity and increasingly bigger gaps between urban people and rural, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, has spurred the emergence of sub-genres and labels for movies more precisely targeted to specific audiences than ever before. It has also meant that producing a mass hit popular with all audiences is increasingly difficult if not improbable. Fascinating read.

Just in case the controversy and ever-changing soap opera-like drama surrounding Madonna and her adoption of a Malawian baby was way too much to absor but simultaneously way too important to ignore, the BBC has a handy interactive, multimedia timeline delineating each micro-event in the ongoing Madonna African baby-adoption saga.

South Park has a habit of pissing someone off somewhere at least a couple of times a year. The latest criticism of the popular Comedy Central cartoon stems from "offensive" material in the most recent episode in which the late Australian croc hunter, Steve Irwin, is depicted with a stringray sticking out of his chest as he arrives at a party for the unliving thrown by Satan. Irwin then gets turned away from the Halloween party because -- even though he is dead -- he's not "in costume." Some dude from the organization Mediawatch called it "grossly insensitive." C'mooon, people -- South Park is comedy!

Nicole Richie Enters a "Clinic"
Actress Jessica Alba Getting Hot with Boy Toy in the Sea
Kate Moss Chugs Champagne in Her Underwear
Actress Tara Reid Talks About Her Breasts Issues
Ashlee Simpson Has a Bad Hair Day

Comeuppance is often tinged with irony and there's nothing quite as ironic as one being so famous for simply being famous and iconic that one is mistaken for one of many of one's notorious look-a-likes. That's what happened to Paris Hilton on her recent evening dining at out at the trendy Japanese restaurant Koi in Los Angeles. According to the British tabloid The Sun, a nearby customer at Koi approached Paris (she was supposedly dining with Pamela Anderson) and said she looked liked "Paris Hilton." Snap! We would have loved to have seen the look on Paris's face when she realized tat was being mistaken for her doppelganger. But given the recent conspiracy of silence among various New York and L.A. hotels, bars and clubs to ban her from their premises, the Hilton Hotels heiress should just be happy that she can still go out for a decent sushi dinner. Though it may not be long before restos like Koi shun her at the door, too.

See this what those crazy creative folks who work in interactive media in New York get up to when they're brainstorming ideas or have idle time on their hands.

Now that the legendary CBGB's music club has closed, the New York Times loks at the current landscape of live music clubs in New York City and finds the scene as vibrant as ever. The article comes with a cool multimedia map of some of the city's more popular and newest clubs. Our only problem with this is that the map should be more comprehensive and fails to include some of the most important and influential venues for independent music, such as Tonic, the Knitting Factory, Joe's Pub, Warsaw, Pianos, The Living Room, and Arlene Grocery.

A New York Times Style Magazine article looks at style trends inspired by the fashions of 1993, when the grunge look emerged from the music underground of Seattle. We're not quite sure we see it. But some of the make-up (or, rather, the lack of make-up) and clothing of the grunge era have become a part of the contemporary style kit. We can't see flannel shirts coming back in a big way anytime soon, but Nirvana's "Nevermind" will always be a part of our MP3 collection.

And in case your fill of Borat was enough, Fox has posted the first four minutes of the new Borat movie "Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" on YouTube. Side-splitting stuff. Can't wait to see the entire movie in the theater next week.

The Borat publicity juggernaut continues with this interview of Borat (as played by Sacha Baron Cohen) by Chuck the movie guy. Borat is a riot, as usual.

In an ongoing campaign to diffuse what it sees the as the tainting of their nation's image at the hands of British actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the government of Kazakhstanhas now officially invited Cohen/Borat to visit the country. Borat, the fictional TV journalist from Kazakhstan as portrayed by Cohen, is an anti-semitic, sexist rube who the Kazakhstan government fears is making their country seem like a backward place full of similarly anti-semitic and sexist people. Whether Cohen/Borat will take up the invitation is yet to be seen.

We've all heard of people selling toast with images of the Virgin Mayry, et. al., on eBay, but now there's an artist creating toast with celebrity images burned into the bread. And he's making a small fortune selling these creations to collectors. Dude, we are in the wrong business. Time to get a new toaster.

Former Backstreet Boy and idle, irrelevent celeb Nick Carter has spoken of that which happens in the grotto, so to speak. Or rather, he's kissing and telling, spilling the beans and dirty dishing on ex-girlfriend Paris Hilton. According to Carter, the Hilton Hotel heiress and celebutante was a herb-burning drunk whose prudish nature in the sack was only overcome with lots of pot and alcohol. Carter has reportedly said that Paris was so addicted to the wacky tobacky that in order to always have it available when traveling overseas, she would stash some in her teddy bear plush toy. And who said she as a total idiot? She may not have class, but she isn't completey stupid.

The recent reappearance of the GEICO caveman in a new commercial (the caveman is gliding along an airport concourse on his way to catch a plane when he spots an insulting GEICO billboard) suggested that there were more 30-second TV spots to come as part of a new series of ads. The latest ad (see above) features the GEICO caveman as a guest on a very Fox News-like TV debate program, where the caveman is one of a pair of guest talking heads verbally tussling with each other and a news anchor. Funny stuff, as usual. Love the caveman.

Leave it to veteran music scribe Aidin Vaziri writing in the San Francisco Chronicle to pen the funniest and best negative review of Paris Hilton's recently released self-titled CD. This is one of the cheekiest and most irreverent pans of an album we've read in a long time. Good one, Aidin.

By now many of us know of Borat, the fictional TV journalist from Kazakhstan portayed by British actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and we are eagerly awaiting the soon to be theatrically released movie "Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The website for movie is a clever little dig at the government of Kazakhstan, which has publicly criticized Cohen for his character and the way it supposedly casts the Central Asian nation in a negative light. The movie's site is designed as the official Kazakhstan government's Ministry of Information website. This should really piss off Kazakhstan even more. Like the character Borat himself, the website is a phony. Upon casual inspection it's an obvious joke. As Borat would say, "Very nice! I like!"

Satrbucks recently opened a new type of coffee shop called Starbucks Salon. We visited the one in SoHo, New York City, recently and it's a big, impressive, and arty two-floor Starbucks space complete with coffee bar and an added professional performance space and stage. The Seattle-based coffee retailer and chain has been putting and out selling CDs for years and recently entered the movie business. This is the subject ofan interesting New Times article about the "Starbuck's aesthetic." Which makes us wonder about the extent that a business like Starbucks can play a role as arbiter of popular cultural tastes and patron to the arts. For many Starbucks plays a unique role in their lives. It's not only a place to buy and consume coffee but it has become for many people an extension of their living room, den, study or library. The very spaces that we often relax and consume culture in their homes.

The past couple of years have witnessed a sharp rise in the number of new perfumes and colognes being brought to market. As Rob Walker explains in his always illuminating "Consumed" column in the New York Times Magazine, many of the news scents are being launched by celebrities or for some celeb's as a line-extension of their existing clothing label. A lot of new parfums fail and for those branded with a famous actor's or pop singer's name the track record is bad or the popularity of the bottled scent is short-lived.

Demetri Martin is one of the funniest young stand-up comedians in America today. He is truly an original comic. His style brings to mind the deadpan, clever one-liner observations of Steven Wright. You may have seen Martin's concert special on Comedy Central in the past year or caught him doing a segment on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he is an occasional guest reporter and "expert." Though Martin has been playing clubs around the country, he's now on a proper comedy concert tour and has a promotional Web site called Clearification.com that has some of his short sketch comedy videos and audio clips of his routine. Great stuff.

(A big domo arigato to Sam. C for the tip.)

Seriously, folks, there's a blog about tuna ... ya' know ... the fish. Well, it's not so much about the fish in and of itself, that is, about the species, but rather about tuna as a food product, and specifically in it's canned form. Tunablog.com is a web site put together by the United States Tuna Foundation (naturally, that's the U.S.T.A. to you and us). The Tuna Blog title is qualified by the tagline "Everything You Need to Know About Canned Tuna in the U.S." We kid you not. (You can't make this stuff up!) Apparently, there's a lot one needs to know about tuna.

There's an exhaustive and fascinating article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell (he of The Tipping Point fame) about efforts to predict which movies will be hits with audiences and which will be flops. A similar endeavor has been underway with predicting pop music hits using computer software programs developed by a couple of companies, one of them a New York City startup called Platinum Blue, which successfully predicted that Gnarls Barkley's hit single "Crazy" would be a major success. Can the same be done with movies.

That's right, homies. Jay Z is taking on another job title, but this time it's for a company of which he owns no part and it's not involved in music, fashion, basketball or vodka. Jay Z, a.k.a. Shaun Carter, is going into advertising and marketing. He's going to become is going to be "co-brand director" for the Budweiser Select beer line at Anheuser-Busch. The company is HQed in St. Louis, which is territory for rapper Nelly and Chingy, so one has to wonder if these guys will feel at all slighted by not being hooked up with one of the great, iconic brands of their hometown, especially 'cause they like it right thurrr.

Yes, children, Wesley Snipes, the actor of "Blade" and "White Man Can't Jump" and "U.S. Marshall's" fame, is wanted by the long arm of the law. There's a Federal warrant out for Snipes arrest on charges of tax fraud and failing to pay his taxes. Ben Franklin once said something about the only things certain in life being death and taxes. Funny that in the "Blade" film series, Snipes played a character who -- presumably -- didn't have to worry about taxes and had appeared to have cheated death. Not so in real life.

Yes, seeing is believing. U.S. Secretary of State Coneleeza Rice is in Japan and has been seen and snapped sporting the 'hawk. See, children, when it comes to style being an arch-conservative policy wonk doesn't mean you can't be "street," too. ;-)

Jeffrey WINS!!! Woo-hoooooooo!!!

It all comes down to four designers showing at Olympus Fashion Week at Bryant Park, New York City. Within the next 15 minutes we'll know who the Project Runway Season 3 winner is. The question is Who will it be: Jeffrey, Michael, Laura, or Ulli. The designers have just shown and are now being critiqued by Heidi Klum and the judges. Some of our thoughts ... So far, we're disappointed with Michael Knight's collection, though there is no doubt he has enormous talent and potential. Ulli's collection was excellent and far more ambitious in terms of her usual range, but it was mostly predictable. Laura's collection is top class and elegant. Jeffrey's clothes are amazing. In terms of originality and craft, we like Laura and Jeffrey for their quality and innovation. We think Laura, Ulli or Jeffrey can win. Michael won't win it, but he's really popular, so who knows. Ulli would sell big -- her style is accessible. Laura is almost too classic and uptown for her own good. Jeffrey is a total original. Our favortie is Jeffrey and we want him to win. Our money is on him. But we're not convinced that he will win. Fingers crossed, kids. Anyway, in the next ten minutes we will know the winner ...

This great 60-second Dove television commercial called "Evolution" is a time-lapse video of a plain model being lit, made-up and styled before a photo shoot, as well as the process of shooting the images and the subsequent and substantial retouching in Photoshop. Eventually we see the image of the model's "distorted beauty" used in a billboard ad. This is awesome to watch over and over again.

There's a building at 11 Spring Street in downtown New York City that has been a mystery to most people, including long-time residents of the Nolita neighborhood where the stucture is situated. The building's exterior is a world-famous spot for street art and graffiti, which the owners in recent decades have left to salutary neglect. The New York Times recently ran an article about the building. The property was recently purchased from Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Rupert of News Corp. and Fox News fame, and as a result a lot of information regarding the building has suddenly become available.

(A domo arigato to Darren for the tip!)

More New York City street art from the Global Graphica file. Heaps of news images, including a new series of paste-up portraits in downtown Manhattan.

Remember back in 2003, homies, when Friendster was all the rage? Since then it has quietly dispappeared from the buzz around social-networking, while copycat and better social-net sites likes MySpace emerged, built up a massive base of registered users and were bought for over half a billion dollars by News Copr. in 2005. Freindster practically pioneered the the social-networking phenomenon as we know it. Within a year of its launch in 2003 it was offered $30 million by Google, which the new start-up turned down. From there it gradually failed to capitalize on its momentum and failed to become a huge moneymaking dotcom success story. So much so that it was recently ranked number 14 in social-networking sites. Oh, how those giant egos at Friendster have fallen.

Though by now it's no surprise, the official last day and final performances at legendary downtown New York City music venue CBGB's have been confirmed. The club is closing after 33 years in business due to the end of its lease. The full cryptic name of the club is CBGB OMFUG, which few seemed to know were initials that stand for "country, bluegrass, blues and other music for uplifting gormandizers." The club has still been a very active venue in the decades since it was the epicenter of the downtown new music scene, the place most associated with the rise to fame in America of bands such as The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television and Patti Smith. Sting and The Police, as well as the Sex Pistol's Sid Vicious, had once played the club on early US tours. And many famous acts have played there early in their careers, including the Beastie Boys and The Strokes. But the most important and relevant venues for New York's underground and emerging music scenes have long since moved to other clubs thoughout downtown Manhattan and, more notably, throughout Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which seems to have more musicians either living, recording, rehearsing or performing in a half mile radius than anywhere else in America. Everyone is mourning the closure of CBGB's, but in a sense it died a long time ago. CBGB's is now a brand that can be found on t-shirts worn in suburban middle America to suburban Tokyo. That owner Hilly Kristal is considering re-opening CBGB's in Las Vegas says everything about the value of the name and its future. Neverthless, the club is a New York institution and an icon of underground music. CBGB's Gallery, an adjacent space, has already shuttered it's doors for the last time. This weekend CBGB's will too, R.I.P.

Here's another funny video of a sketch from the comedy duo of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, otherwise known as Tim & Eric, co-creators of the show Tom Goes to the Mayor on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. This sketch is called "LA Guyz," where Tim and Eric play a pair of douche-bag Hollywood producer types. It's hilarious. The video is part of episode one of the Tim & Aric (video) podcast series, which is available for free on the duo's Web site, timanderic.com, along with tons of other sketch clips. Love 'em.

Yup, it's true. Matt McCallister, a radio DJ in California, has officially set a Guiness record for the most t-shirts worn by a person at one time. That total number of shirts is 154. As the video above documents, that's a helluva lot of cotton tee bulk.

The New York Times travel magazine has one of those celebrity travel-spot articles where some famous person talks about a certain place they love and why and lists all the places they like to go to and hang out in and shop at and so on. This one on Sophia Coppola and her take on Paris is quite good. Maybe we find it interesting because we've spent a lot of time in Paris and love her films. Anyway, full marks to her publicist for getting this article to become a reality -- Coppola has a new movie, "Marie Antoinette," coming out Oct. 20 and it's set in Paris. Coincidence? No.

Actor George Clooney has been an outspoken critic of the paparazzi and gossip press. He recently revealed his idea for messing with the photogs and celebrity-hounding mags. His comments may have been in jest, with tongue firmly in cheek, but the plan is basically for Clooney to intentionally go out of his way to be seen and photographed with a different celebrity date every day for three months. We'd love to see this happen.

It seems like every major Hollywood studio has produced a computer-animated film in the past few years or has one in the works. These movies, inspired by the mega-successes of similar flicks produced by Pixar and Disney in the late 1990's and early 2000's, seemed like guaranteed box office gold for the studios. But many of such movies of the past year have failed to capture the interests of moviegoers. Some have turned into fantastic and very expensive flops. The novelty of computer animation has worn off and the stories, characters and humor of these films seem the same.