Breaking up with someone on Valentine's Day is a pretty cold-blooded idea, unless of course the no good p.o.s. has it coming. But you know what's even worse than getting dumped on V-Day? Being a publicist who has to flog a Valentine's Day "angle" for every trash-bound press release sent between now and mid-February. These things are currently flooding in at a rate of 25 per hour, like a fire hydrant spraying sickly pink champagne all over our cringing faces. But occasionally one pitch stands out from the herd, such as this beaut—pasted below verbatim—with the subject "Where to Dump Someone on Valentine's Day": more ›

Entertainment Weekly’s #1 “smartest” Hollywood player, Judd Apatow, says “it doesn’t look good” for an end to the writers’ strike any time soon. The well-connected catalyst behind hits like Knocked Up has told the Toronto Star that the studios and producers are prepared to dig in and crush the union’s demand for payment for Internet downloads and movie streaming, “which are expected to become a big part of the industry in the coming years.”

It would cost very little money to end the strike and (the producers) are basically trying to create a way of paying people so that when the Internet explodes, they’ll wind up paying less than they do now to writers. And I don’t think they’re going to get away with it. The writers really failed to stand up for themselves with the DVD (in a previous contract dispute) and they feel terrible about it, and enough of them will not give up that it will have to be resolved in a reasonably fair manner.

DJ Star, who was fired from Power 105 after some remarks about a rival's child, will be coming back to radio stations. While publicists for the DJ, born Troi Torain, would not disclose where he'll be headed (not before tomorrow press conference, at least), the Daily News reports that it will probably be WNYZ, which is 87.7FM: "Its current format is Russian popular music, but with the hiring of Star, it will reportedly switch to... more ›

You may or may not have noticed that it's Fashion Week -- either way, style is saturating the city right now more than ever, and we've asked Faran Krentcil to help us figure the whole thing out. She who holds down the fort at Fashionista.com fills us in on The Tents, the trends and the tricks. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars “freestyle” Latin restaurant Rayuela on the LES. Says, “it’s a beautiful, fascinating, frustrating place, its cosmetic showiness echoed by dishes that are also all over the map, in terms of their appeal as well as their geographic and ethnic tethers.” He loves the tuna relleno, the arraz con pollo, and the lobster ceviche, and also the cocktails and the house-made bread. more ›

Film Forum more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a carjacking on 130th St. and 15th Ave. in Queens, an overturned auto on Spring St. and West Broadway in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Caton Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Remember when Paris Hilton forgot that she'd left her Tinkerbell with her grandma and papered her neighborhood with Lost Dog flyers? New Yorkers hire private detectives and publicists to get the job done right. A tiny dauchsund is missing.
• New York Magazine re-examines the "conceptual-Marxist street-art supervillain" daubed "The Splasher."
• We're no "law-talking guy", but find the Times' account of a police officer posing as a legitimate news outlet's reporter to lure a protester to an arrest fairly alarming.
• Roller skaters continue to boogie down in Central Park just north of the Sheep Meadow every weekend, and have been doing so since 1977. If you have never seen this in person, you must.
• A bolt out of the Jet Blue struck a plane flying into JFK yesterday and the passenger jet carrying 140 people made an emergency landing. There was no fire or injuries, but the passenger cabin was filled with the smell of ozone.
• The Daily News continues its report on Building Boondoggles, setting its sight today on disasters in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
• On Memorial Day, The New York Times examines the efforts of praiseworthy volunteers to identify and re-mark more than a thousand graves of New Yorkers who were killed during the Civil War and are now buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetary.

Has the Tribeca Film Festival been using 9/11 as way to garner publicity and interest in their event? NYMag reports that an anonymous emailer sent out a press release today "accusing the Tribeca Film Festival of lying when they claim that Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro, and Craig Hatkoff founded the festival in response to the 9/11 attacks." more ›

To accompany an Oscar-themed story about celebrities' publicists working to make sure their clients don't run into exes, there's a NY Times Styles section about real people's strategies not to run into exes. Certainly the prospect of running into an ex can make the heart race and forehead sweat, but it can happen, especially if you date people in your neighborhood. One broken-up couple decided to literally divide Manhattan at Fifth Avenue. Christian Shraga explained, “We couldn’t cross Fifth Avenue above 14th Street during the day, nor could we cross Fifth Avenue below 14th Street at night.” more ›

The official Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wedding photograph has been released. First thoughts: more ›

1. A girl was shot after a community center Halloween party on Saturday - and there may be a link to the Chicken Noodle rappers
2. From Upper East Side mansion to 7 World Trade Center: The Academy of the Sciences have moves downtown
3. Fun fact: 73% of the city's registered domestic partnerships are for straight couples
4. Alan Hevesi is persona-non-grata the Democrats' Election Day party... politics is so like high school!
5. Buy your own CBGB's chairs on eBay:
6. Le Cirque and Hawaiian Tropic Zone have really good publicists, given the ink they get... and why aren't we surprised that Mets hottie David Wright would be at Hawaiian Tropic Zone?
7. NBC might be a one-show-about-sketch-comedy network, as it could be axing Studio 60
8. The Knicks waive Jalen Rose... it's too early to say anything about season's Knicks team, but they've gotta be better than last season's (maybe they'll just have the second worst season ever)

Different types of people are drawn to different types of restaurant and in a perfect world everyone has a place that feeds them as they like, in a room in which they are comfortable. The truth is that the price of a dish of food in a restaurant includes all the costs involved in running the restaurant. At the base level there is the electricity, gas, rent, insurance and so on, and at another level there are the publicists, consultants, and decorators. The more a restaurateur puts into a place the more the food on the plate will cost. This makes the most special of finds for foodies a place confidently making high caliber food without the added costs of adornment. more ›

Good ol' P.S.1 has been showing works from NY area artists in its Greater New York 2005 show. However, one artist, Mike Bouchet, causing been making a stink. Literally: His work, "Celebrity Hot Tub for Kofi Annan," has been making visitors ill, according to the NY Post. (For your NY Post conspiracy theorists, Rupert hates modern art!) How does Bouchet achieve this powerful audience reaction? The sculpture has a "rotting sausage stewing in a [Jacuzzi] of noxious water." One staffer told the Post, "Sure, it's terrible, everyone complains, someone vomited. It got real bad, we didn't know you had to clean it out. The guards are really mad about this." And other artists in the exhibit aren't that happy either. The best part about this is that Bouchet went back to his new home in Germany when the exhibit opened, and didn't leave instructions on how to maintain the work; the water and sausage were replaced, but the smell was back soon. This is totally like Gothamist's third grade science project, the one we made up the morning it was due - "What will happen to ice when it's left out of the freezer?" Clearly, sausage in a Jacuzzi in a museum would rot. But while Gothamist would like ot claim this is the grossest thing in a public museum/area we can think of, it's not. In San Francisco, there was an exhibit of corpses, which started to leak...and then the Conservatory of Flowers has the world's stinkiest flower. more ›

So maybe the Oscars aren’t actually watched by a “billion” people each year. The audience is still ginormous compared to the Tonys. Even so, the Tonys are as big as it gets for American theater, and this morning the mostly predictable nominations were handed out at the Times Square Marriott Marquis. For play, you’ve got Democracy, Doubt, The Pillowman, and Gem of the Ocean. Musical: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Light in the Piazza, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Spamalot, in the first of its 14 nods. The same musicals are all nominated for best book and best music; best play revival and best musical revival have no surprises either, though Gothamist’s eyebrows were raised a bit at the inclusion of Sweet Charity, which barely opened May 4, which was the cutoff date for Tony nominations. Considering how touchy theater publicists are about having their shows watched and reviewed before official openings (though it did play in, um, Minneapolis before), this honor seems a little hasty, but maybe the Tony organizers just want to make sure Christina Applegate attends and brings some friends who might get a bigger TV audience. more ›

Jerry Seinfeld and his wife are being sued by a real estate broker who claims she's owed over $100,000 in commission for helping them purchase a brownstone. Celebrity Justice got a statement from the Seinfelds' publicists:

Tamara Cohen did not fulfill the basic broker duties required by law. However, the Seinfelds offered her a very generous fee for her time, but not for the sale, because she was not entitled to it. She declined the offer and now she's just trying to take advantage.

So, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are dating. Or "dating." They are "something." Surely, this is an upgrade for Katie, whose former fiance was Chris "Rollerball" Klein and whose alleged recent NYC street smooching partner was Josh "Bedhead" Hartnett, but how much an upgrade, we're not so sure. And who knew that former stars of The WB could travel in such lofty circles? For Cruise, it's almost like he's veering into yucky old man territory: Think Kevin Costner and Don Johnson with their much younger ladies (he may be Tom Cruise, but he's no Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty). Was Katie worried about her post-Dawson's career - like, did her manager fritter away all his money? Did she feel the need to trump Michelle William's pregnancy? Did Tom's manager say, "Next time you date, date an American"? Questions questions questions! Expect this relationship to last at least through the premieres of War of the Worlds and Batman Begins. more ›

Tonight Coolfer (our old weekly music poster) and Repellent join forces to bring you the first Under The Roundtable Happy Hour, for underground media and cultural producers. Everybody's invited, especially writers, publicists, record label folks, musicians, designers, photographers and, of course, bloggers. more ›

Regina Schrambling, Food Writer more ›

Michael Musto, Village Voice more ›

"Borrow My Crew," hosted by Fonzworth Bentley, rents out entourages-to-the-stars to viewers in need. In the first episode, MTV hires Jennifer Lopez's team to help a girl get ready for senior prom. Bentley, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Andre Harrell execexec produce.Oh, wait, Power Girls is not Powerpuff Girls. Our mistake. We guess we'll be seeing car crashes, legal proceedings, and lots of straightened blond hair in Power Girls. But Borrow My Crew seems like it'll be hosted by Bentley, umbrella holder turned men's accessories entrepreneur, which means you had Gothamist at the Real World, MTV. more ›

Scott's review of The Day After Tomorrow begins with "The Day After Tomorrow, a two-hour $125 million disaster � excuse me, I mean disaster � that opens nationwide on Friday..." more ›

Pooling together money for a friend's gift is a great idea. You can do due diligence by asking him/her questions while reading product porn or window shopping, snooping through his/her journal, or calling up his/her parents or significant others. Or make 'em sign up for an Amazon wish list. And hey, you can even buy the Marc Jacobs Stella bag on Amazon. more ›

Love's publicists issued a statement saying they felt Love would be vindicated. But they didn't issue a statement explaining why her album is doing so crappy! more ›

Updated: Photos of Courtney being released from the 9th Precinct. more ›

Organ and tissue donation is important; learn more here. more ›

TMFTML more ›

Clyde Haberman's Times column earlier this week looked at a few reality show ideas for NY, what with The Restaurant and tonight's premiere of The Apprentice. Some are very apt: more ›

The Sun's Victoria Newton grades the various outfits Christina Aguilera wore when hosting the MTV Europe Awards. One of her favorites is when XTina donned a nun's habit and robe. Newton also gives the skinny on the feud between XTina and Pink which put MTV producers and their publicists' nerves to the test, as Pink was overheard saying, �If that bitch mentions my name once I�m not going on stage � and I�m not kidding.� And XTina's wrath extends to Kelly Osbourne, who famously mocked her singing on an episode of the Osbournes. (This was before Kelly's own mockable singing career.) Yet another one of those extremely stupid but ridiculously fascinating celeb beefs that can help one pass away a lazy Sunday morning.
more ›

Author Jonathan Lethem gets the work up: A profile AND Michiko review in the Times today. The reason? His new book, Fortress of Solitude, his first since his National Book Critics Circle-winning, Motherless Brooklyn. Ah, the Doubleday publicists are earning their keep.
more ›

Variety's Timothy Gray tells CNN, ""It's always 'a roller coaster ride' or 'the feel-good movie of the summer.' Sometimes I think, not only have I never heard of these people, but I've never heard of their organization." CNN looks for one critic, Earl Dittman, who "works for a publication company called Wireless Magazines, which maintains no public Web site and has limited distribution." Hmm...maybe Gothamist should try to raise our brand awareness by getting overzealous movie publicists to pick up our quotes ("Seabiscuit...a little bloodless".... "Tomb Raider...nipples retouched out of poster"). more ›