An email we received last night:

It seems like just yesterday that we were mourning the loss of Cargo, but Conde moves along quickly, and there's no time for tears. Given that some believe Vogue editor Anna Wintour may have pushed Cargo a bit closer towards the death knell, lest it become a threat to her babies at Men's Vogue, it's an amusing coincidence that Men's Vogue is possibly taking over Cargo's old space at 4 Times Square. But that's the nature of intra-Conde warfare: divide, conquer, set up new cubicles.

The Observer points out the obvious, then details it at excruciating length: Conde Nast editors are fucking blessed. Their luxurious salaries and shiny towncars are nothing, really, as compared to their mortgages, which range from the high six figures to multimillion dollar sums, all courtesy of Advance Magazine Group. They've lent a hand to virtually every heavyweight at 4 Times Square, from Ariel Foxman's modest West Village cubbyhole to Graydon Carter's Bank Street townhome (which came with a mere $3.851 million mortgage). As for HRH Anna Wintour:

You've just been arrested for allegedly beating the crap out of your housekeeper — your fifth such incident since 1998 — and your Swarovski crystal-encrusted BlackBerry is stained with blood. What's a girl to do? If you're Naomi Campbell, you head down to South Africa to visit Nelson Mandela and talk about UNICEF, of course. While Mandela once considered Campbell his "honorary granddaugher," we're guessning he's now far too scared of the supermodel warlord to cancel their meeting. Campbell, to her credit, knows that Mandela's place is a safe haven for all sorts of troubled models (Kate Moss allegedly blew some rails in his bathroom back in 1998).

Late yesterday afternoon, the brutal lords of Condé Nast pulled the plug on woefully misguided shopping mag Cargo — and the people, well, barely shrugged. In the aftermath, Women's Wear Daily asks today why Condé hadn't given Cargo another shot with a new editor. In the months since publisher Lance Ford's August arrival, word was the Cargo would be perking up:

From yesterday's WWD, a snippet of Vogue editor Anna Wintour's speech at the MPA retailer's conference in Orlando this Monday:

From today's WWD Memo Pad, there's life after Radar:

We got a handy little press release yesterday from the Magazine Publishers of America, whose flacks were certainly hard at work on the holy Oscar Sunday. As we speak, the MPA Retail Conference 2006 is underway, and upwards of "600 members of the magazine and book retail supply chain, from publishers and retailers to suppliers, distributors and wholesalers" have descended upon Orlando, Florida, for a three-day conference ending tomorrow. It's not as exotic as Puerto Rico, but it'll do.

• The Village Voice gets its very own hipster-Blair, in the form of young Nick Sylvester, who fabricated parts of his cover story. Upon being caught, he fainted outside of editor Doug Simmons' office, only to find himself suspended upon regaining consciousness. Meanwhile, freelancers bitch about the possibilty of the story being a stolen pitch and Sylvester loses his indie cred by being asked to resign from his haute music-reviewing gig at Pitchfork.
EXHALE! And in other news:

For the past couple of days, we've been fantasizing about Anna Wintour's country spread as featured in World of Interiors, culminating in a few snapshots of her quasi-Calypso decor and a lush description of her 20 acres of solitude.

We imagine Anna falling back on this bed, content with a productive day of berating the gardeners, and drifting into an early evening slumber (click to enlarge).

We've never heard of the UK decorating magazine World of Interiors, but given that it's "where interior design and fashion meet," we're most certainly putting it on our mag-hunting list. Just look at what's in this month's table of contents:

According to a handy press release we just got from the well-heeled folks at Conde Nast, the March issue of Vogue Espa ol is setting a record as the biggest issue of Vogue ever published in the world, coming in at 1,006 pages. Oh, how the rainforests weep...

• Universal good-time guy Gary Busey is arrested at LAX for assaulting a female police officer. Always prepared, Busey was traveling with his attorney, who tried to take pictures of the arrest and was promptly greeted with an officer's gun. [Jossip]
• Starving dwarf Mary-Kate Olsen wants to make and star in a movie about Kate Moss, believing she has the right amount of "edginess" to play the troubled supermodel. That, and they both share the same dealer. [Contact Music]
• Meanwhile, MK and sister Ashley's new ads for Badgley Mishka make us want to come and play with them forever. [Gilded Moose]
• Rock mag Spin finally looks to have a buyer for somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million, which should almost cover the cost of EIC Sia Michel's stiletto collection. [Folio]
• In a rare fit of good sporting, Vogue stylelord Anna Wintour contemplates throwing a small luncheon for the mag's assistants just prior to the premiere of Devil Wears Prada, complete with Prada gift bags. Too bad the poor slave children will be too afraid to eat or enjoy themselves. [Telegraph]
• Yes, your ass does look big in those jeans. Finally, some closure. [DMALFTP]

After a long Fashion Week, Anna Wintour was hungry and tired.

If you can swallow your pride just long enough to peruse the Fashion Spot message boards ("where the fashion industry meets online," of course), you can learn some interesting things. For instance:

• Kathy Hilton takes a tip from daughter Paris and goes for the midlife-crisis nip-slip. Click to enlarge (NSFW) and shudder. [Jossip]
• Sharp eyes may have noted that Vogue editbeast Anna Wintour's stepson, Samuel Shaffer, was married last Thursday to Kathryn Neale, a freelance writer. Let's hope Ms. Neale freelances enough to finance enough couture to wardrobe a lifetime of dinners with the in-laws. (Also, the wedding was in New Zealand, which explains the shocked emails we got from random Kiwi readers who thought they were hallucinating visions of Chanel tweed.) [NYT]
• And, as long as we're in the Styles section, yes, we too endured the article on teen clubs, featuring barely-legal "promoter" and Grubman PR intern Lexi Lehman. Could she reach media saturation before her 18th birthday? [NYT]
• Everyone's favorite blogging stripper, Mimi in NY, does her thing for the UK Sun. We find her graduation pictures from Cambridge particularly interesting; it's interesting what a blog and a gig at Scores does for to your appearance. [Sun UK]
• Slate hed writers go for the lowest common denominator and ask, "Are teachers who sleep with their students getting off?" Well, for all that trouble, we should hope so. [Slate]
• You'll find a lot of crap on the subway, but only the truly blessed find a bag full of Adderall and condoms. [Craigslist]

• Star Jones scares her publishers into giving her $85K to promote her new book of bariatric affirmations, Shine. The budget is triple that of what was given to Nicole Richie to promote her roman clef, and God knows Richie wrote the better book. [Page Six]
• Anna Wintour is infinitely disappointed in staffer's decision to eat like a human being. [Lowdown (last item)]
• Jay McInerney knows his 11-year-old daughter is a hottie. If you can stop shuddering long enough, you might want to call protective services. [Page Six]
• More edgy analysis on the breakup of Chad Lowe and Hilary Swank: Apparently Lowe didn't like living in the shadow of his Oscar-netting wife. Really? Even if it got him free room and board in their awesome townhouse? [R&M (2nd item)]
• Scarlett Johansson is down for a three-way, so long as it doesn't include Match Point co-star Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who she outs as liking gossip, shoes, and twinks. [Scoop]

• Mort Zuckerman pulls the plug on Radar; hearts are broken, dreams are shattered, and business cards are destroyed.
• The Transit Workers' Union goes on half-strike, which means we'll continue to wait for news on when shit gets really inconveniencing.
• Now that Michael Cooke has ditched the Daily News, editorial director Martin Dunn is so inconvenienced to act as editor-in-chief. Meanwhile, Orla Healy returns from the Post and Lloyd Grove finds himself an innocent, new fluffer.
• There's no time like the holidays for some serious, ass-kicking lay-offs.
• We never thought we'd see the day, but Andrew Krucoff is finally, technically, a man.
• MediaLand continues to celebrate the season with boozy staff parties; New York magazine goes so far as to bring out the Karaoke torture device.
• Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. gets a gentle spanking while Judy Miller hits the high seas.
• PETA continues to cheerfully annoy Anna Wintour.

We provide you with all the important information — Anna Wintour is to lunch at Balthazar today, and the restaurant has found her a shrubbery so as to provide the requisite privacy — and we make a simple request, that one of you snap a quick picture. Our demands weren't tough. We didn't need a Liebovitzian production; there was no need for assistants or glamorous lighting or even makeup artists. Any old cameraphone thing would have done, which, we thought, made the challenge easy enough.