A precocious high school student: upset, and writing into the Times! On college tours of schools like Harvard and Dartmouth, she heard comparisons to Harry Potter's magical school, Hogwarts. And she didn't like it. And people don't like her. Muggles!

Here, the latest masterwork (suggested by you) from pancake painter-to-the-stars Dan Lacey: a horrific apocalyptic tableau of talking heads and politicians doing who knows what. He expounds on his vision, below.

Artist Clare Strand has created videos in which a certain act is repeated infinitely on video. Sleight of hand? Video trickery? It doesn't matter, it makes for entrancing video.

Tom Cruise! He is so crazy, what with the Scientology madness. It's been so long since we heard examples of his craziness. Thank god there is a new tell-all book! In which Tom Cruise controls inanimate objects, with brainwaves.

When you think "Esquire's Greatest Achievements in Its 70+ Years of Design Innovation," you think "Hidden ads on the cover" and "That other weird flashing electronic cover gadget." Until this new doohickey!

This "The Internet" thing is nice, but we often think: What it really needs is a self-proclaimed arbiter of its cultural relevance to undertake the preposterously impossible ambitious task of explaining the entire internet. In a book. Hello, Virginia Heffernan!

A Seattle woman has accused magician David Copperfield of luring her to his remote private island in the Caribbean, raping her repeatedly, and threatening to kill her if she told anyone. Her complaint reads like a horrifying pulp novel.

[Britney puts on an impromptu magic show while hanging out yesterday with her kids by the pool in Marina Del Ray. Image via Flynet]

The New York Daily News tried to say it broke the news of Farrah Fawcett's death online before it even happened. Time stamp proof:

Magazine ad revenues are tanking, and many magazines are now selling ads on their covers, despite the fact that it's "not allowed." Seems like a clear-cut case of economics trumping ethics. But what happens when the cover ads are magic??

Yesterday we (and others) pointed out that "magician" David Blaine is a big fat cheater, because his current death-defying stunt—hanging upside-down in Central Park for 60 hours—involves hourly ten-minute breaks. As one commenter put it, "I'm going to eat a thousand hard-boiled eggs, but I'm only going to eat one a day for a thousand days, because otherwise I might get sick." Yes, that about sums it up. Blaine's flack said there was never any claim he would hang for 60 consecutive hours. Really? You couldn't tell that from his fawning media coverage: Today, the half-ass nature of Blaine's stunt is being pointed out across the UK, in India, and domestically. But did America's prestigious media outlets bother to point out the very germane fact of Blaine's hourly breaks when they initially reported on his stunt? Let's see: The AP (no mention of breaks):

More info, photos, and a statement from David Blaine's flack have been added to our earlier post about Blaine's cheating ways.

Is David Blaine a big cheater or what? The droopy-eyed "magician" is currently engaged in his latest stunt, hanging upside down for 60 hours in Central Park. Except that ever since he started yesterday afternoon, we've been getting emails from bystanders saying that he wasn't hanging upside down—instead, he was resting by standing on a platform, only to be hoisted up several minutes later. We don't know the official explanation, but whatever it is, this sure is a crappy stunt. Here's photographic evidence:
6:45 p.m. yesterday:

"All the Sad, Young Literary Men has too many men, none of whom is particularly sad, literary or, for that matter, interesting." That's The L Magazine's Jonny Diamond on N+1 editor Keith Gessen's first novel. The interesting bit is how Gawker, you dear commenters, and the scribblers of Magical Brooklynism fit into the equation. "Gessen has rightly and eloquently lamented the impoverishment of intellectual discourse in 21st-century America, particularly in a New York literary scene that prefers whimsy to gravitas, adolescence to adulthood and typography to teleology." (Yeah, Gessen and his privileged band of bores are the answer. Okay, I'll stop.) "And if lit journal-cum-publishing house McSweeney's has come to stand (albeit unfairly so) as shorthand for this particular style of whimsy-sotted, Brooklyn-born preciousness, then online media gossip Gawker has served as its natural enemy, employing snark and irony to interrupt the daydreams of thousands of Michel Gondrys and Miranda Julys." Sounds good. But it isn't!

Don't you wish there was a magic pill you could take when you go to bed that would make you wake up on time, feeling refreshed, without an alarm clock? Well according to medical science, there is no such thing. Sorry. But according to 37 year-old mom of three Cathy Beggan from New Jersey, her special time-release blend of herbs and vitamins can do just that. And a Daily News reporter says they really work, science be damned!

Magicgays Siegfried and Roy love their majestic animals-the way Norman Bates loved his mother. "[Roy] had shelves of urns lined up in his bedroom, each containing the ashes of his dogs and big cats," writes the duo's former security Chief, Jim Mydlach in his upcoming tattle-tale, The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy. But cremation ovens are not very big, and tigers, on the other hand, are. What to do? Bust out the chainsaws!

So magician David Copperfield is under investigation by the FBI for raping a woman in the Bahamas, where he owns a couple islands (one of which has the fountain of youth!). In the last week or so, lots of creepy details about his typical methods of "seduction" have come to light. He or his people would mark the scantily clad girls to come on stage during the show, he'd ask them to meet him backstage, then he'd ask if they like the Bahamas—and who doesn't! So as someone rapidly developing a reputation as an all-around creep who might be a bit rapey, it's time Copperfield got serious. Like by hiring Mike Sitrick! Sitrick, who repped Paris Hilton after the jail thing, has long done great work for sketchy dudes, like supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and "Girls Gone Wild" king and America's BFF Joe Francis. So Copperfield's in good company!

So the Washington State-based FBI investigation of MAGIC MAN David Copperfield apparently stems from the claim of a Seattle woman that he raped her in the Bahamas. Hope you're all enjoying your Arrested Development jokes now guys! Copperfield bought four Bahamanian Islands last year (would you maybe like to stay on one of them? No?), and then claimed one of them held the Fountain of Youth. "I've discovered a true phenomenon," he said in '06. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again.... Bugs or insects that are near death, come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting." Here's a tip from us: when master illusionist David Copperfield invites you to drink from his magic pond, politely refuse. THEN TELL AN ADULT. [Fox]

The FBI dealt a stunning blow to the power of magic late Wednesday night with a bizarre raid of illusionist David Copperfield's Las Vegas house, presumably performed in a frenetic, jump cut-heavy style as a classic rock song played. They made off with $2 million in cash, a hard drive, and his camera's memory stick, as related by E! and a detached Robert DeNiro voiceover. The FBI refuses to say what it's all about, except that it involves "an on-going investigation" that began in Washington (State!). Then the FBI stopped by the MGM-Grand, where Copperfield is scheduled to be in residence for two weeks in November. And Joe Pesci suffered some sort of violent death. Copperfield's vast collection of "perception-deceiving devices" was untouched, thankfully. But yeah, what the hell is this about? Are the feds finally busting up the magic racket? Can they indict Criss Angel? Please? [E! via Yahoo!]