Tourists and teenagers outside the Time Warner Center last night clutched digital cameras, all hoping to get their very own photograph of John Mayer or America Ferrara as they arrived to celebrate the Time 100—the Most Influential People in the World! (One assumed that crowd was less interested in arrivals such as Dr. Henry Kissinger.) Inside, the scene was more of the same: dozens of professional photographers jockeying for position, a crowd of onlookers. It seemed appropriate that the Time Warner Center is just a big mall. The scene could have been one that gets played out in Tallahassee and Des Moines and Houston every time Miss USA comes to town. We took tourist-photos too, with Nikola Tamindzic, who has even more.

Have you mastered the art of self-praise disguised as self-deprecation? Do old people think you're a god to young people? Can you churn out the kind irrelevant blather that makes Andy Borowitz look like S.J. Perelman? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you might want to take a crack at the LA Times's Be Joel Stein! competition. That's right: If you can put together 700 words in the style of Stein, but with some humor added in, the paper may run your column alongside Stein's! Imagine the glory. Actually, even if you answered "no" to all those questions up there, give it a shot. How hard could it be?

Yesterday's article by Mike Penner—the Los Angeles Times sportswriter who is undergoing gender reassignment—was a bonanza. By last night, it had got half a million page views, becoming one of the most requested pages on LATimes.com over the last year (can you hear the NYT snickering?), and 1000+ comments on the site's message boards. Today, LAT editor Jim O'Shea announced that his columnist Joel Stein would undergo a series of operations that would helpfully turn him funny. "For many years," said O'Shea, "Joel has secretly felt that his brain has been wired for humor. Hopefully, these surgical procedures will at last allow that part of his persona to emerge." O'Shea additionally called for twenty-five newsroom staffers to similarly change gender—and chronicle their passage in both the paper and on the web—or face "voluntary separation" from their jobs.

The new issue of Time (the one that offsets the Imus Imus Imus coverage with a big "Black people: Why don't they play baseball anymore?" package) is probably worth your while—there's a really good James Poniewozik thinkpiece on, uh, Imus—but you will particularly enjoy the Joel Stein profile of Adam Brody, especially if you're one of those people in their twenties and thirties who think Joel Stein is "a god." (Richard Stengel, you so have your finger on the pulse!)

• The Onion, it turns out, has been nursing a master plan for domination for untold years. Either that or it's April 1 on Sunday. But we're pretty sure they're serious. Also, The Onion News Network is all about the communist-daycare style YouTube clip-sharing. Why? Because they are not idiots. [Variety]
  

We're hearing that LA Times columnist, VH1 talking head, and general shanda-for-the-Jews Joel Stein will be doing a little bit of freelancing for Jane magazine. The story makes sense, in that Stein and Jane ed Brandon Holley once toiled together in the trenches of Time Out. Loathe though we are to see Stein's cut-rate Dave Barryisms in yet another publication, we can see one possible upside. Perhaps Brandon will mate him with the mag's professional virgin Sarah DiMuro, which would keep at least that corner of the gene pool quarantined.

• Tabloidism is allegedly the most radical change in the New York Observer's history. [NYO]
  

When we saw a link on Romenesko alerting us that "LAT's [Joel] Stein believes hate is Gawker's way of showing love," we admit, our interest was piqued—since the last time we checked, we still thought he was kind of a douchebag for that column about how he didn't want to hear from readers. Anyway, we followed Romenesko's link and came upon a transcript of a little chat Joel did last week on the LA Times website. Someone asked him, "why does gawker hate you?" We eagerly awaited his cutting analysis, or perhaps an epistolary on why, in fact, we find him to be douchey. Instead, we got this:

Or maybe he's just articulating what every other journalist wishes they could say, but don't because their editors think this "citizen journalism" thing is here to stay, and also insist that they respond to every inane reader email they get:

• Joel Stein calls Sesame Street's Elmo "an annoying tool." You see where we're going with this one. [LAT]
• Attention PR people: You have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull the wool over Rachel Sklar's eyes. (Here's a hint: mention "vaginas.") [PRWeek]
• Graydon Carter exposes the great fire hydrant fraud. [Young Manhattanite]
• Whatever Conde Nast is paying to get all this coverage for forthcoming money mag Portfolio, it's probably worth it. RELATED: Does anyone know the HTML code for that weird "f" they're using on the cover? [WWD]

• Uber-indie couple and overly cutesy NYC fixtures Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal are engaged and expecting a little bundle of diaper-shitting joy. We're praying they'll name the baby something like Jaane or Briaan. [AP]
• Child and family services pays a visit to Britney Spears and baby Sean Federline. You are not in any way surprised by this. [TMZ]
• Having finally crystallized his theory that Katie Couric is a robot, Simon Dumenco imagines CBS executives' plans for reprogramming the perky machine. [AdAge]
• While Page Sixers revel in freebies, Rush and Molloy just say no. [Deadline Hollywood]
• You didn't expect the Page Six scandal to pass without Joel Stein throwing in his two cents, did you? Of course not. And he's going to shake down the president of pomegranate juice while he's at it. [LAT]

• The Onion Diet: Move to New York, eat sushi, slim down. [NYT]
• Sez Dumenco: Magazines will soon start to die, too, and Anna Wintour will lose her Town Car, and it's all Lucky's fault. Of course, he says it with words like "transactionality." [Ad Age]
• WSJ discovers people. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer says newspapers better give him what he wants, or else they're just gonna wither and die. [Slate]
• Joel Stein, says Jon Friedman, is just like Oprah Winfrey. But, you know, poorer and whiter and Jewier. [MW]
• Journo types who drink tab: David Edelstein, Steve Brill, David Bradley, and Danny Goldberg. Now you know. [New Yorker]
• Layoffs at Blender. [WWD (second item)]
• Journalism needs to more money and time from owners, more facts, more international coverage, and more tough questions, says Dan Rather. Also, it would very much like a pony for its birthday. [LAT]
• If CW — the WB-UPN amalgam — works, a CNN-CBS News merger could finally happen. [Mediaweek]

After a crippling childhood bout of Joel Stein Disease left her permanently retarded, we're happy to report that Michelle Malkin has finally made a little progress. Before long, she'll able to eat paste without assistance.

• Oh, bad job, Keller and Sulzberger. Finally public editor Barney Calame grows a pair and decides to write about something interesting and relevant — why you chose to hold the domestic-spying store for a year — and you guys promptly snip them off. Now he'll never work up the nerve again, alas. [NYT]
• The Elizabeth-and-Bob show starts at ABC News tonight, and we're pretty sure the senior citizens who still watch the evening newscasts are aquiver with excitement. That, or Parkinson's. One of the two. [USAT]
• Last week Forbes said WashPostCo would be the Journal. Now Jim Cramer says Murdoch will. [NYM]
• Joel Stein and Maureen Dowd are feuding. God knows who to root for. [LAT]
• 2005 was, essentially, Vanity Fair's very bestest year ever. [WWD]
• Rumor has it the Underneath the Robes dude is set to become the new Wonkette. Hmm. Interesting. [WSJ; NYO]
• NYT lurves NY1. [NYT]
• Chung and Povitch have a new show and think they're Hepburn and Tracey. Which is sort of cute, in a deluded way. [NYM]

It's time for the latest edition of The Black Table's Rock and a Hard Place, A.J. Daulerio's notoriously disgusting column devoted to offending journalists as best he can (which is probably what prompted his recent adoption into our perverse family as editor of Oddjack). Today Daulerio takes on Time graduate, talking head, and LA Times scribe Joel Stein. Things, as they often do, turned to the topic of LA Weekly's resident fury, Nikki Finke, who would likely roast Stein on a spit if she had the chance.