It's hard with all that sixth-order navel-gazing and water-cooler fellatio and gripping boardroom oratory on the weekdays to keep up with what's actually going on at Media Level Zero. You know, like on TV and stuff. Thus, TiVo Theosophy, in which our special correspondent Daniel Luxemburg, who may or may not own a television, momentarily steps out of the geist-glow to tell us what it all means. And why to go on anyway. Or not. Consider him a First Life avatar.

"I will not be able to work there," said Ely Yulman, a tax auditor for the New York State Departmentportationion and Finance, which lost 40 employees in the World Trade Center.

We're going to go for one more bite of the apple on that 9/11 photo story. It's been previously established that Thomas Hoepker took a photo of Brooklyn hipsters acting in a potentially douchebaggy way on the day of the terrorist attacks. Frank Rich weighed in at the NYT, saying that they weren't callous, just American. David Plotz of Slate disagreed, declaring them not douchebags but citizens engaged in discussion. One of the photo subjects, a Brooklyn artist, popped up to say that, yeah, that's exactly what they were doing, and had Hoepker looked a little more closely, he would have realized that. Now Hoepker himself emerges, rather articulately discussing the ambiguity of the photo itself. At this point we're inclined to believe that the person who comes off the worst in this scenario is Frank Rich, who used the image to promote his political agenda, but our view may change when Slate publishes the next few installments in the series ("I Published That 9/11 Photo," "I Wrote That New York Times Column," "I Flew That Plane Into The Tower," etc.). We'll keep you posted.

Yesterday we asked you whether the young hipsters in the "taboo" 9/11 photo above were callous douchebags or concerned citizens; a slight majority of you opted for douchebags. As it turns out, one of the subjects got in touch with Slate. Walter Sipser, a Brooklyn artist (because, you know, of course) disputes both the "callous" characterization and the accusation of youth (dude's 45). You can read his statement here and decide for yourself; we're just going to say that, looking at those frames, we've decided that our original dichotomy may have unnecessarily suggested that the two options were mutually exclusive.

The story so far:

It turns out our watery eyes and scratchy throats must have come from something else. Like industrial toxins.

First of all, isn't covering September 11 so much better when it's a day late? We're remembering the remembering. Top that, sappy docudramas.

The first words spoken on "The Path to 9/11" are at check-in at Logan Airport at 7:13 a.m. "O.K., Mr. Atta," an American Airlines agent says over the clickety-clack of computer keys. "One way, nonstop to Los Angeles, no return."

• The true heroes of September the 11th: those brave souls who manufacture and sell us ridiculous collectibles. [Zulkey]
• Oliver Stone considers a second 9/11 movie. Awesome, because we need more of that great shit. [The Reeler]
• The Taliban celebrates, making Anderson Cooper run a little more than he's comfortable with. [You Tube]
• Adding to the Road to 9/11 docudrama controversy: those bastards didn't even film in the U-S-of-A. [Swanky Beast]

Look, everyone grieves in their own way.

From the mailbag, the header from the one and only 9/11 press release we've received today:

Congratulations to former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman and former Rep. Jim Courter, who cemented political ties this weekend when their son and daughter were married. Apparently there was a bit of a scare during the cocktail hour, when it appeared that the salmon puffs contained bad fish, but Christie assured everyone that things were fine and later said it was all the responsibility of the catering company anyway.

In a seamlessly perfect melding of 9/11 paranoia and Fashion Week zeitgeist, may we present this slideshow in Vogue Italia. Entitled "State of Emergency," the Steven Meisel pictorial mostly features models getting harshly abused by uniformed security thugs. Each shot is more jaw-dropping than the last (be sure to note the nicely animated boot crushing the larynx of the lady in red). Scans may be viewed here if you can't see the slideshow. Sure, there are a few pics of the models (now indoctrinated?) undergoing weapons training, but really. At least now you'll know all the hottest couture for getting reamed across the hood of a police cruiser.

• Is it possible to feel pity for Anna Nicole Smith? Maybe, considering her 20-year-old son mysteriously died in the Bahamas on Sunday, just three days after the birth of Anna Nicole's baby girl. Now the poor woman is grieving, locked in a dark room and listening to Lightning Crashes on repeat. [CNN]
• If you hire Paris Hilton for a movie, you should probably be prepared to deal with unprofessional behavior, considering the bitch doesn't have a freaking profession to begin with. [Page Six]
• Keisha Knight Pulliam — aka Rudy from The Cosby Show — has a totally unconfirmed cocaine habit. Whatever keeps the weight off, girlfriend! [Bossip]
• Martha Stewart predicts that Trump will fire everyone until he's left cold and alone. [M&C]
• For what it's worth, Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa was in Milan on 9/11, and feels that a lot has happened in five years, particularly his departure from Gucci. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Clothes-whoring socialite Tory Burch will survive as well. Good to know. [Lowdown]
• Brad Pitt loves Daniel Libeskind. Happy 9/11! [National Post]

From the photo slideshow accompanying New York mag's Hottie Index, a survey of 100 Fashion Week models.

Speaking of 9/11 (har): a commuting correspondent reports that there's no LIRR service into the city, forcing him to take the subway into Manhattan from Jamaica. A track fire around 5 AM was reported at Penn Station; the requisite "suspicious package" was then sighted, completing this morning's cycle of anniversary terror and paranoia. According to the AP wire, all is well and service in and out of Penn Station is running slightly behind — but the vigilant authorities at the Jamaica station are telling commuters to take the subway. Says our correspondent: "The conductor could not have been less concerned. He was like, 'Yeah, bomb threat.'" And really, that's what today is all about: healing with a shrug.

At Ground Zero yesterday, President Bush reached deep within himself to remind us, "It's hard not to think about the people who lost their lives on September the 11th, 2001." Of course it's hard — the media's sweepingly soundtracked, widow-pandering coverage is holding your eyelids open with toothpicks. We were considering A Very Special Already Over: 9/11*, but the coverage speaks for itself, from the Times special section and Deborah Sontag's aching rewrite of what New York mag did months ago, to Ann Curry looking like she's trying to make herself cry on air, to the "understated" front page of the Daily News. It's so bad out there, the Post strikes us restrained. THE POST, people.

We've always said that the huge delays in rebuilding the area around Ground Zero could be traced to the fact that all of the players involved are trying to prove who has the biggest dick. Congratulations to the AP's Dima Gavrysh, who has captured that sentiment in one glorious image.

Copyranter's Mark Duffy notes the sheer idiocy of the second wave of ads for the World Trade Center Memorial. We're not sure what this says about us, but the first thing we thought when seeing this was, Wow, why would you need to advertise gay sex? It sells itself!

We've always assumed Alessandra Stanley got the TV critic sinecure as a consolation prize for not rising farther at the Times; you'd figure as a former foreign correspondent, she'd at least be able to bring some of that reportorial skill to her review of The Path to 9/11, the controversial ABC mini-series suggesting that Bill Clinton and Osama Bin Laden planned the attack on the World Trade Center together one boozy night at the Viper Room. Well, as Think Progress notes, not so much: