Semi-anonymous street art legend Banksy reportedly collaborated with a sign-painting company on this mural, which went up last weekend in Soho, NYC. He likes us—he really likes us! At least the rats among us. [via Gothamist]

Click to viewBoomp3.com To shake off the rust in their pick up game, Jude Law and his wing man practiced spitting their game at a Manhattan area construction site on Wednesday afternoon. A few of the construction workers laughed at Law and his amigo’s attempts at catcalling women. One of the construction workers said, “You British guys are too nice. If a broad is working with a nice pair of whomp bompers, then just fucking say it. Don’t pussyfoot around.” Another Teamster added that they could get away with being forward since their accents are vocal panty removers. [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Poster Boy is like gentrification: he doesn't stop, you just get used to him. NYC's premier subway ad poster art-vandal continues to implore hipsters to free their minds using little more than an X-acto knife and some glue. And all the cool bloggers still love him. Five of the anonymous kid's latest, greatest works, below:

Are you one of those horrible thoughtless New Yorkers who no one can stand to be around and yet you believe everyone else is the problem? Are you a woman? And single and looking for some free meals? Craigslist to the rescue again! It seems that the poster is fed up with his sister's mega-douche boyfriend and is seeking a female version of the obnoxious bounder so that his beloved sis can see for herself what it's like to have a sibling swallowed up by the black hole of a shit relationship. "Candidates should be painful to be around, obnoxious, thoughtless and immature. She should use terms like, 'tragic,' 'as if' and various internet terms like 'omg,' 'lol,' 'jk,' etc." Click through for more qualifications and a bigger pic.

Click to viewBoomp3.com Doting stage husband Tom Cruise was on pins and needles as he watched his ladylove, Katie Holmes, go through her final dress rehearsal of All My Sons. Cruise admitted that his nerves got the best of him during the performance tonight. “It was just so moving and profound," he said. "It felt like I was giving birth. My water may have broke right before the second act. It was that beautiful.” Cruise went to give Holmes her traditional post-performance hug and a firm handshake, but Holmes opted for the firm handshake instead. [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Click to viewBoomp3.com On her way to the Ugly Betty premiere party, Lindsay Lohan threw up a preemptive elbow to ward off any unruly and pushy photographers. Lohan said, “I didn’t want to use my bag the other night and I don’t want to use this tonight. I haven’t used any lotion in a few days on purpose, and now my elbow is rough like sand paper.” The political blogger hoped that she could reach a peace accord with the photographers, but only time will tell. Lohan said, “I sincerely hope we can be cool with each other, just like a bunch of Fonzies.” [Photo Credit: INF Daily] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Money is burning in New York! The economy is crumbling in the heartland! It's not just the poor bankers who are going broke now; it's the cities where they live. And the cities where they don't live, which were broke to begin with. Michigan towns are already reduced to selling ads on their school buses. Could any municipality possibly be more desperate than that? Yes, New York City could:

Entourage star Jeremy Piven spent a good portion of his lunch yesterday wondering why he didn't have any company. Piven asked his waitress at a New York City eatery if she thought that season premiere of his HBO laffer wasn't quite up to snuff. The waitress remarked, "Eh, I missed it. I was watching Mad Men on Sunday night and sort of flipping back and forth between the VMAs." Piven then asked her if she was planning on watching it On Demand, but the waitress shook her head "no", then excused herself by explaining that she needed to get Diet Coke refills over to Table 12.

Entourage star Jeremy Piven bucked the established order of the fashion world by sporting a pair of white pants after Labor Day in New York City on Tuesday. When asked why he dared to commit a fashion crime this heinous, Piven claimed that his pants weren't white, they were actually vanilla. Piven said, "They're vanilla bean colored — that's what my glam squad told me. Check the catalog."

King Leonidas, aka Gerard Butler, appeared to be more enthralled by the women of New York City in their summer clothes than the latest and hottest script from Hollywood. Butler said, "I'm sorry, but that girl in the sun dress and that girl with the rolled up Juicy sweatpants that are way more compelling than William Monahan's stab at a romantic comedy." Butler pulled out another script from his messenger bag, but once again became distracted when a group of women exited a nearby Crunch. Butler threw the script back into his bag and promptly left the restaurant. Butler muttered under his breath, "Where does a man have to go to get some reading done in peace? The library? That place smells and it's full of nerds!"

Jazz musician/actor Jeff Goldblum was spotted prowling the urban jungle of Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon. At first, it appeared that the Goldblum had trouble readjusting to the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. According to onlookers, Goldblum looked pensive while trying to enjoy a cappuccino at a café. The witness said, "It seemed like he was really missing L.A." After leaving the café, however, his frown turned upside down when he began chatting up a young filly. According to another onlooker, Goldblum did not appear to be as pensive as before, adding, "It looked like he was using the old 'I'm new to town' routine and I think it worked."

I never thought the day would come when I might feel sympathy for Jared Paul Stern. When he was busted for trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Ron "I'm a billionaire, baby" Burkle back in '06, I wrote a dismissive piece about how Stern was such a scumbag in a scumbag industry that nobody should really be surprised. I would sum up my appraisal of him at the time with this word: "Scumbag." But times change! Stern's dogged pursuit of doomed lawsuits against the chuckling billionaire and a painful sex scandal have softened my heart. I may have been too harsh on poor JPS, after all. Consider the man's history. Starting out as nothing more than a dude with a ridiculous hat, he worked his way up through the gossip muck to the top ranks of the New York Post. He had his own column called "Nightcrawler" for a time, and was a regular contributor to Page Six. He was living the life that the young man who first put on the stupid hat dreamed of living. Then, of course, he tried to extort Burkle, and got publicly scandalized and tossed aside by the Post. He's quietly made his way back into the media with various projects, but nothing as high-profile since. And then last week some random guy decided to publicly release a (purported) tape of him having sex with JPS' wife. Damn. People can bounce back from most scandals. In time, even the "Payola Six" affair-sensational though it was-would have receded into history. But JPS has never been able to bounce back, because his ongoing lawsuits and, now, alleged cuckolding cause the original damage to his reputation to keep getting rehashed. So here's our gentle advice, JPS: the sympathy of the world has now, excruciatingly, returned to your side. Use it. Drop all of your various lawsuits against everyone involved in the Burkle mess-they'll ultimately do nothing but drain your bank account. Hold your head high, admit some wrongdoing in the past, and forge ahead. Disgrace is almost a foreign concept in the gossip world; schadenfreude does not run deep enough for people to say you deserved all of this. With an extended moment of grotesquely poor judgment and a run of very, very bad luck, most anyone in the New York media could be in your shoes right now. So get out there and make it, JPS-for all of us!

Are you familiar with the phenomenon that is Jared Seligman, wunderkind realtor to the downtown stars? If not, wake up and smell the $40 million in billings! Seligman sold that much property for the Corcoran Group last year at the tender age of 21, to real estate connoisseurs like the Olsen twins. And though he's already been profiled by W magazine and is a running meme at Curbed, He doesn't "really have time to pay attention to the press." The hectic life of a now-drinking-age condo king! Seligman started in the real estate game at 18, and he's already a millionaire. Cool kids love him!

Professional swashbuckler Orlando Bloom attempted to do a fellow New Yorker a solid by standing guard over a motorcycle. The biker had to make a quick stop at a nearby Duane Reade and Bloom gladly offered his watching services. As soon as the man disappeared into the pharmacy, Bloom hopped on the machine and mimed the sounds of speeding away as he pretended that his girlfriend was clutching him around his waist. As Bloom began to shake the bike back and forth, he accidentally caused the kickstand to break, which sent the mean machine crashing to the ground. Bloom quickly ran down the street and into the nearest subway station.

Tongues were wagging on the set of Ugly Betty on Thursday morning when bystanders were asked to answer the age-old question: Was that a pick or a scratch? A fistfight nearly broke out at the craft service table between two crew members with differing opinions, but fortunately a makeup artist intervened and restored order to the chaotic situation. The makeup artist said, "Tony, you're right. It's a scratch, but we don't have to knock the hummus over because of it."

While the New York Times spent hundreds of thousands of dollars sending dozens of reporters to Beijing for the Olympics, NBC spent hundreds of millions of dollars for broadcasting rights, only to leave a bunch of its announcers in cubicles in New York City. The Times (meta) reports that 13 different Olympic sports were deemed unimportant enough by NBC to have them called by announcers lounging around in jeans in an old Saturday Night Live studio, watching the action on TV. Oh, the glory of the Olympiad!

As you may have heard, a faux-grizzled Mississippi boy named Brett Favre has brought his quarterbacking services to the New York Jets, the sad and mopey second-tier football team in a second-tier football town. This is quite big news, since Favre is a revered football icon, an unpredictable head case, and could easily win a Super Bowl or have one of the worst seasons in professional football history. Favre's arrival has created a frenzy amongst the bloodthirsty NYC sports media. Which has itself created a separate frenzy of analysis about why this particular segment of the media is such a schizophrenic mob. All of which has circled back into a scrum of grown men fighting over this simple question: Is New York City the pinnacle of sports media; or the most hellacious sports reporting town in America? New York City boasts a tabloid-led sports media machine that is unrivaled anywhere in America. But to outside observers, this can seem like the worst possible setup. Here's what Gregg Doyle, a columnist for CBS Sportsline, had to say on Howard Kurtz's CNN show yesterday:

John "Junior" Gotti-son of the late Gambino family crime boss John Sr. and brother to Growing Up Gotti star Victoria-was arrested this morning on murder conspiracy charges, reportedly "in connection with a drug smuggling ring and 3 prior mob-hits." Gotti was tried twice before for the 1992 attempted murder of talk show host Curtis Sliwa, but got off both times, and had seemed to be poised for a quiet retirement in his Long Island home. Junior's only previous stint in prison-from 1999 to 2005-came after he was convicted of shaking down Scores, the favorite strip club of New York's celebrity and media elite:

Belmar, NJ mayor Kenneth Pringle pissed off all of Staten Island a couple weeks ago when he called its residents—in a good-natured way—a bunch of stupid guidos. Now Pringle is paying the price. In order to avoid an all-out boycott of the Jersey town by belligerent, tight-shirted, spiky-haired clubgoers, Pringle has to go on a "Discover Staten Island" tour tomorrow. And pretend like he likes it. Haha, man, we feel for you, Kenneth. Harsh. [Previously]

All ads suck! Unless they involve hidden camera pranks that hilariously mock average people through the use of monetary technicalities. OfficeMax is advertising some cheapo back-to-school sale with an ad campaign consisting of a guy going around New York and paying for all types of things with pennies-and his escapades are all caught on tape! Despite our annoying "too-cool-for-school Brooklyn hipster" pose around here, we have to admit this is the funniest ad campaign we've seen since Gary Busey started giving out free advice. Still, don't shop at OfficeMax or else you're a total pawn of the machine. Click through to see two of the spots: dude attempts to buy deli food with pennies, and dude attempts to buy used car with pennies. Chuckle at the rage of the working class!: