The other day we were getting a pedicure—we'll leave it up to you to figure out which of us we're talking about—and were idly flipping through a copy of the November Marie Claire, the one with Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover. ("Gellar grows up! And she's even more fab!" Ew.) Now, a couple things: We generally do not read Marie Claire, because it is often boring, but we'd been hearing all this stuff about EIC Joanna Coles' "new" MC and wanted to check it out, despite the fact that we find Sarah Michelle Gellar a rather, shall we say, uninspired cover choice. (And by "uninspired," we mean, remind us why we should care about her, exactly? She played a vampire slayer on a TV show years ago and she's married to a B-list actor. Yawn.)

• NBC News layoffs: Dateline, Today hardest hit. Ann Curry still there, unfortunately. [LAT]
  

• Nikki Finke reveals the missing money quote from the War of the Worlds: Viacom Vs. Cruise edition. [Deadline Hollywood]
• William H Macy wants to can Lindsay Lohan, probably because she dated Jared Leto briefly in '05. [Celebrity Week]
• The themes are: Incest, drug addiction, and promiscuous sex. Hmmm must be a Marie Claire party. [FWD]
• This couple from the m nage a laptop story real do get around [Salon]
• Video of 6'7" Jewish Rapper with dreadlocks. Nuff said, no? [ANIMAL]
• Katrina Anniversary Concert: featuring The Roots, Moby, Rosie Perez, Julia Stules and more. [Beyond Katrina]

• Gee, where did the Forbes article by Michael Noer — the asswipe who advises against marrying a woman who has goals that extend beyond wiping up baby poop — go? Suddenly it's not online! (Ironically enough, we hear that Noer himself is currently away at a wedding, of all things.) Perhaps one of Noer's female bosses realized it'd be best not to publish work by a reactionary douchebag. Who, we might add, is NOT that attractive. Yep, we're going low. Mwa. [Forbes]
• Bonus: nine perfectly good reasons you should marry a power whore. [Hipster Pit]
• In order to promote her new album, Paris Hilton hacks her way into Lindsay Lohan's voicemail. Really, we don't believe she's smart enough to pull off something like this, but her PR team is certainly smart enough to organize a campaign accusing her of such. [TMZ]
• TMZ reports that Horatio Sanz and Will Forte are out at Saturday Night Live; FishbowlNY says it's Sanz and Chris Parnell. Either way, we're getting rid of Sanz, thank God. Maybe they'll hire someone who can keep a straight face and stay in character for more than 23 seconds?
• Rupert Murdoch and Bill Clinton's friendship makes for great UK tabloid contests. [Daily Politics]
• New Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles is no Tina Brown, mostly because she's the editor of Marie Claire. [NYSun]

Last night we took another trip to the newsstand to fetch more of the beastly September fashion glossies, but this time things were toned down a notch. Rather than haul another 9.5 pounds of aspirational crap, we went more towards the featherweights. Next round, we'll suck it up and grab the heavyweights like InStyle or the 650-page Vogue. And when we're all done? Just you wait. We're going to take all these fuckers and build ourselves a coffee table.

Joanna Coles, newly installed editor of Marie Claire, is making some changes. According to the NYT, the mag's new direction will more mature and highbrow, or, as Kit Seelye puts it: "No girly goo, no teeny-bopper covers, no blind obedience to the traditional rules of the road." The magazine's cover in particular will demonstrate Coles' fresh approach; after the jump, we provide you with an early look at the book's revitalization.

• Hey, Pinch, there's an upside to keeping your stock in the toilet: It's your chance to take the Times Co. private again. Who to fund the deal? Your buddy Steve Rattner, of course! [NYO]
• Did Jann Wenner try to finagle a discounted rate from the Strokes for the RS 1,000th issue party?? Or did the Strokes try to extort more money from Jann? Eh, who cares. [WWD]
• Bill Keller thinks Bushies are out to intimidate the press. You think? [NJ]
• More changes expected at Marie Clarie — which, somehow, the Post makes at least partially Bonnie Fuller's fault. [NYP]
• Because there's nothing this woman can't do, here's dating advice from Bonnie Fuller. [AMNY]
• Oh, sure, Primedia is a disaster of a company. But why does that mean it shouldn't spend $250k to help cover the cost of its CEO's apartment? [Footnoted]

We received a tip this morning that the staff of Marie Claire was gathered in Times Square, clad only in bathing suits. A Hearst spokeswoman confirms this is true — the bathing beauties were doing a fundraiser for the Skin Cancer Foundation, she explained — but won't release any photos. (Apparently they want to save their pictures for their own magazine. Crazy!) This, then, is where we turn to you. Someone out there must have happened past and caught this with a cameraphone or something. A little help?

WWD's Jeff Bercovici is reporting that Hearst Magazines is installing Joanna Coles as editor of Marie Claire. She replaces Lesley Jane Seymour, who has edited the magazine since 2001 and will now leave the company. Coles was previously executive editor of More, Meredith's magazine for baby-boomer women.

A reader relays the following adventure in irritating mundacity, in which we learn about the secret, inner-workings of fashion magazines: