• Katie Couric's first week is accompanied by her first blog, a rambling, 10000-word treatment on the importance of being perky, complete with Karen Carpenter lyrics. Congrats, Katie. You're really done something. [Couric & Co.]
• Kazakhastan is now denying that Borat will be a topic during meetings with the U.S. This is just fantastic, isn't it? An international debate on whether or not a fictional character will be discussed at a diplomatic summit. No wonder the terrorists hate us. [The Blotter]
• If JK Rowling has to give up the manuscript for the final Harry Potter book, then the terrorists really have won. [BBC]
• Fashion Week is all about luxurious balls. [Coutorture]
• Lydia Hearst fashion porn: scary, and yet we can't look away. [Bastardly]
• Path to 9/11 producers depict American Airways personnel cheerfully letting Mohammad Atta on the plane; it was actually cheerful US Airways personnel who did so, and it's going to cost ABC some advertising dollars. [Consumerist]
• Jay McInerney has yet to master the art of walking while tipsy. You'd think, but you'd be wrong. [Belle in the Big Apple]
• Sure is hard to make friends in this town. [NYP]
• Watching a blogger get his first death threat is like watching your child take his first steps. He's not our baby, but we're still proud of him. [Goldenfiddle]
• Read the New Yorker and live to be 102. Yay, ancient people! Yay, Conde Nast! [EmDashes]
• Critics still really, RILLY love The Wire. [Test Pattern]
• Drinking = money. No, really. Rejoice! [AP]

Of all of Fashion Week's many miracles (not a single overdose yet!), this may be the most moving: in the still-empty front row before the Costello Tagliapetra show, Vogue editor Anna Wintour turned off her deadly force field, allowing blogger Julie Frederickson to get close enough for a quick interview. And? Wintour didn't snarl once! In fact, she thinks you all are rather uncreative. Granted, Wintour only had to endure the indignity of talking to a nobody for less than a minute before fashion week's master puppeteer, Kelly Cutrone of People's Revolution, saw what was going on and cut that shit short. Nevertheless, a major coup for Frederickson, who now has the responsibility of telling us exactly what Wintour smelled like. We really want to know! Did she have that fancy shampoo scent?

Are the New York Post and the New York Daily News embarrassed about getting scooped by a blogger? Both tabloids splashed Katie Couric's Photoshopped photo across their pages this morning, 24 hours after TVNewser first posted a story about it...But neither paper bothered to mention that the photos first surfaced on this blog. Are they embarrassed to credit a blog?

At first Esquire provoked intrigue over the lady with two vaginas. Then fortune double-thrusted her two-penised soulmate on to the radar. Now it would seem the world can follow, "The life and musings of a single girl with two vaginas" on their own accord, because, like everyone else, SHE HAS A BLOG!

There's no small irony — that's right, you heard us, irony — in a regular column entitled "What's Fresh" turning out stale as a desiccated corn-cob. The very idea of not just one post, but an ongoing series of Gothamist blog posts dedicated to whatever greenmarket item comes to hand is deadly dull enough to make grandma's cat hack up a doily in disgust. But perhaps the column gives us a colorful, intrepid culinary adventurer who hunts down the most exotic and startling ingredients available in this cosmopolitan city? What exciting things have recently been fresh?

It's come to our attention that Glamour's fearless dating blogger Alyssa Shelasky, whose job requires her to navigate the single-girl waters based on the results of reader polls, was offended by some of our earlier posts. Let's be clear: we have no ill will towards Alyssa and think her column pic is kind of cute. If we seem "bitter," it's because we don't know where to buy that grey tube top (seriously, the loose fit is so crucial after had a few beers. Bloated!).

Yesterday, former Us Weekly staffer Alyssa Shelasky started her new gig as the poor dating blogger for Glamour magazine's website. Rather than just blog about her romantic adventures, however, Alyssa is journeying down the path to glossy self-exploitation, wherein readers vote on how she should conduct herself and she agrees to heed their advice. Yesterday, 61% of readers told her to call some flirty guy just to tell him that she liked his friend better; as it only could, this resulted in an awkward voicemail message in which Alyssa no doubt sounded like a bit of a dumbass. Good job, Glamour readers!

Earlier, it was revealed with much excitement that former Us Weekly staffer Alyssa Shelasky would be breathing life back into the Sex and the City genre with her blog for Glamour's website. Called "See Alyssa Date," the blog would detail Shelasky's love life and allow readers to help her decide how to handle her romantic endeavors (so basically, if you vote in a poll that Shelasky should give it up on the first date with Mr. Big — or, in her first post, Mr. Big Talker — she will).

From the mailbag comes this adorable treat: Pierce Mattie PR sent along an invite for a fashion and beauty blogging roundtable, bringing together bloggers and the publicists who pitch them. Remember, kids — co-opting is fun!

Conde Nast's website for Glamour relaunched this month, bringing with it a bunch of corporate-approved, newfangled blogs on fashion, beauty, and — oh yes — sex. Specifically, the sex life of former Us Weekly reporter Alyssa Shelasky, who will do her best Carrie Bradshaw impression with her own Glamour.com blog, "See Alyssa Date." According to Eat the Press, Shelasky will be "sharing the details of her various dating adventures with her readers," who will respond with their comments and, somewhat horrifyingly, an online poll to decide how Alyssa should conduct her love life. Worst of all, Glamour EIC Cindi Leive says that poor Shelasky will have to "take [readers'] counsel seriously."

Our comment policy is fairly simple: Comment privileges are only open to those who have been invited, either by us or by a friend. (And, of course, the lucky unwashed who sneak in during our infrequent amnesties.) Still, that doesn't stop the clueless hordes from filling our inbox with requests for admission, the majority of which go immediately to the trash folder.

• Young people like iPods, social networking, the internet. Reading newspapers? Not so much. You're shocked, right? Who keeps putting up the money to fund these studies? [Guardian]
• Wait, young people! If you promise to watch the news, Brian Williams will read your e-mails and Katie Couric will blog for you! Not curmudgeonly uncle Charlie Gibson, though. He just wants you to sit down, shut up, and listen to what he's saying. [NYP]
• We would pay good money to see a bare-knuckle fight between Bill Cosby and Len Downie. Seriously. [Romenesko]

Just your brief, weekly reminder that your online diary is always worth a small advance, courtesy of Publisher's Lunch:

If it's Monday, it's time for a Wall Street Journal trend piece on a trend several weeks past its expiration date. We're talking about those MySpace pages that are very very thinly veiled advertisements, but which still allow one to become "friends" with the product in question (such as the movie World Trade Center). Dead trend piece aside, the WSJ article nevertheless contains a raft of quotable gems, unflinchingly shared after the jump.

Screw that Web 2.0 crap, it's time for Blog Bubble 19.0. According to the New York Post, the Huffington Post has scored a $5 million investment package from a group led by endearingly named venture capital firm SoftBank. Also in the mix is tech-media VC daddy Alan Patricof, shown at right while chillin' in the Hamptons in 2002 (no idea about that creepy guy behind him, but let's just say the least objectionable other person we cropped out was Inside the Actors' Studio lizard James Lipton). Patricof is on something of a blogspending spree, since his Greycroft Partners also threw money at PaidContent back in June. In addition to our standard IncestWatch note that Patricof was a founder and chairman at New York magazine, it's worth noting that Patricof is himself a HuffPo contributor of relatively recent vintage. Way to monetize the bloggers, Arianna. Now you just need to latch on to some of that sweet Bono money.

AdMashup is a cute adblog encouraging creative types to turn in very lightly altered versions of existing ad campaigns. It's not as nuts as a Worth100 contest — most entries simply change a logo or ad copy, retargeting the ad for a new and yet somehow appropriate product. For example, the above bruised eye was originally made to pimp Windex (i.e. the window was so clear, the dude bumped his face). After the jump, observe the tweaked version.

Give us $100 and approximately 24,000 more links by December 31, and we'll give you $1,400 back. That's the game identified by Blogebrity, i.e. a new racket of betting on what blog will inaugurate 2007 at the #1 spot on Technorati's Top 100 list of the most-linked blogs. Gawker's currently at #20, and the bookies are giving us +1500 odds. Of course, that puts us well behind such worthies as a nonexistent NPR page (#4) and various nerds, but c'mon, who's the prettiest pony you ever saw? Someone at least join up and tell us how our action looks.

Font obsessive Ironic Sans mines new minerals from the vein of Gothamist blog parody humor, even though we do a little secret cutting every time we read the phrase "istaverse." Observe the various logos created for Ist titles covering fictional cities. If there really was a Bedrockist, perhaps we could thrill to posts like "What's Fresh: Mammoth."

In this inaugural edition of Gawker Crimebusters — and in our continuing effort to prove that we're not nearly as mean as you think we are — join us in locating blogger eminence Joshua Micah Marshall's missing vehicle. Grand theft auto'd right out of a Central Parking garage yesterday morning, the hot Volvo may even now cruise the streets of New York, unaware that our spies and eyes are everywhere. Details of the subject:

OCD dreams can come true: blogger Emdashes has managed to score herself the top two cardigan-wearing New Yorker librarians, Jon Michaud and Erin Overbey, to write her new column, Ask the Librarians (see, this is what happens when your gilded publishing house can't get its online ass in gear — the employees give the content to blogs). When we first heard about this, we were under the impression that it was to be an Ask the New Yorker feature, so we had inquisitive readers come up with some pressing issues deserving of an answer. While librarians aren't quite as exciting as le Gopnik, we're sure they can nonetheless entertain. Right?