HuffPo: I Miss You Mom!

Gawker: Out Comes The Hatchet At Hachette

NYPost: Elle of a Trend

FishbowlLA: FBLA Confirms Ryan Seacrest Is In Talks To Replace Larry King

Cablevision builds a new Wi-Fi network for OptOnline customers, RealNetworks plans to spin off its casual games division and and CurrentTV says Buonjourno to Italy. Here's Julie Ann Sageer with today's Daily Angle.

So like we said, the Time 100 Gala last night was packed with celebs and media folk alike. In fact, we took the elevator up with a very chic looking Martha Stewart only to find ourselves in line behind Harvey Weinstein and young wife Georgina Chapman as they walked the gauntlet of paparazzi (who were strangely uninterested in us, go figure).

After the dinner guests were treated to performances by Herbie Hancock and Mariah Carey (those of us in the Atrium could only hear Mariah...rumor had it she a)wouldn't allow any video b)didn't want to be filmed from her left side). A number of the honorees made toasts, including a late arriving Robert Downey Jr. who stole the scene when in the midst of thanking his father, who was sitting next to him, he paused to choke back tears. His father's response (to much laughter): "I'm not your father."

More pictures and highlights after the jump:

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Because the world needs another festival, former ABC News producer Tracy Day and her author/physicist hubby Brian Greene have founded the World Science Festival, hitting the streets of New York from May 29th through June 1st.

Oliver Sachs, Richard Leakey and Doug Liman provide the star power, while a bunch for really smart dudes and dudettes supply the brains. Alan Alda will also make an appearance. We're not sure what category he falls under.

Despite our attitude, we have to admit that some of the events (Science of Disney Imagineering and Seeds, Survival, Stalin) actually sound interesting. At the very least, it's better than watching a craptastic movie.

More deets after the jump.

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More on the Time 100 shortly, meanwhile it seems that while we were snapping surreptitious photos of Rupert Murdoch, John Koblin over at the Observer was asking him actual questions.

When asked about his assertion that a Newsday deal was imminent, Rupe admitted that "yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty...I was telling the truth, but you don't know until ..."

Hmm, we think we see the future of New York media in that "..."

As to whether the Wall Street Journal has improved since Rupe took it over a year ago, he said ""Yes...But it's got a long way to go." Starting we imagine with a managing editor, who Rupe says will be hired in a number of weeks.

*Caught in the act: That's Koblin on the far left chatting it up with Rupe, Martha Stewart and Charlie Rose.

There's at least one person in America who's undeterred by Miley Cyrus's controversial Vanity Fair spread: Hugh Hefner. The longtime playboy of Playboy said that he'd be happy to welcome the fifteen year old Disney star to his pages...once she's of legal age, that is.

According to Hef the whole thing was a big to-do over nothing: "[it] is a reflection on how schizophrenic America is about sexuality."

Remember that Danish newspaper editor who received death threats after publishing those cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and is now facing criminal charges for commissioning them? Turns out he's not so impressed with the American Press for refusing to run the cartoons in their pages.

It reads on the top of the New York Times, 'All the News That's Fit to Print,' but it's very hard to argue that this was not news on February 1, 2006.

He also suggests that had the US papers got on board with the story there would have been less of a fuss "because by doing so you would have drawn a clear line." And that he was disappointed at the lack of coverage since the Washington Post, New York Times and the New Yorker publish "offensive" cartoons all the time. This also happens to be the closest he got to calling anyone chicken.

We scored a sneak peek at Rob Sheffield's first "Station-to-Station" column debuting in June's Blender. Sheffield, who followed Joe Levy from Rolling Stone, writes about his enduring love affair with Madonna, hence the nightmare-inducing image of the Material Girl.

Image aside, it's an enjoyable read on a Friday afternoon. It takes a big man to write "she was the first woman who ever told me I can dance (I can't)," and a bigger one to admit "some of her songs are so beautiful it hurts to feel them pierce my body, making me too sad to listen to them." He also compares Madonna to Greg Maddux, which although ridiculous, works.

Full column. Jump. Do it.

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Over at wowOwow Vanity Fair writer Judy Bachrach has discovered why the media hates Hillary Clinton so much: it's because she reminds them too much of themselves!

It seems that once upon a time Bacharch was dumped by her boyfriend and in the aftermath made a complete fool of herself discovered that she was a human being.

I couldn't...let go of a guy who exchanged me for a moron...the memory of my mortifying, excruciating almost erotic attachment to stone-cold failure haunts me to this day.

And now, just when she thought she'd pushed these "mortifying" memories to the back of her mind, never to be suffered again, Hillary Clinton's candidacy is bringing the whole distressing experience back to life.

I was, in other words, simply a younger version of Hillary Rodham Clinton. I simply could not get out of the race, even though, let's face it, the race was over...Everything I hate about myself I see in Hillary

Later we discover that what really bugs Bacharach is how Hillary deals with "powerful men" (somehow how powerful men deal with Hillary is not a problem).

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Maybe it's because we're hungover from the Laurel Touby-sponsored drinks last night, but this story from the BBC struck a chord with us this morning. According to a poll conducted by the Norwich Union Healthcare, "41 percent of people working in media and creative jobs said they had been to work while still drunk — four times the average." (Also, terrifyingly, 24 percent of construction workers admit to being drunk at work.)

Cary Cooper, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University, told the BBC, "It's no surprise there is a lot of drinking in the media; it's part of the culture to unwind with a drink. This is not about social drinking. This is about the long-hours culture we have in this country."

We knew it wasn't our fault. So Boddington's for lunch?

The Time 100 Gala was last night and despite a late no-show by George Clooney, the night was a big success, in fact, the room was packed with so many celebrities we started to feel like we'd had too much sugar.

John McCain was the star of the night — blue state, whatever, everyone wanted to shake the Senator's hand and boy does that man like a crowd and a camera (also, who knew the Secret Service could be so good-looking). Rupert Murdoch was holding court when we arrived, accompanied by his lovely wife Wendi Deng (more than one person was tempted to ask him to borrow a quarter). Martha Stewart took the elevator up with us and later we kept bumping into her directing her own camera person (Martha blogs too!). There was Charlie Rose standing next to everyone's girl crush Samantha Power, Harvey Weinstein and wife Georgina Chapman, Paul Wolfowitz, Matt Lauer, money maven Suze Orman, Swampland alum Joe Klein and Michael Scherer; Jared Kushner, Ray Kelly, Anjelica Huston, Chris Rock, Brian Williams, Bill O'Reilly (taall), Lance Armstrong (not so much), a late arriving Robert Downey Jr. and an even later arriving Mariah Carey (at least that's what we heard — we couldn't actually see her).

We know we're forgetting a whole lot of people, as in most of the cast of Saturday Night Live and BJ Novak from The Office. Never fear! Lot's of pictures and more highlights to follow throughout the day.

NYTs: MTV Plans to Increase Its Blending of Ads and Shows

E&P: Maureen Dowd Proposed Obama Over Hillary -- More than Two Years Ago

HuffPo: SNL Launches "SNL Politics"

AdAge: Adults Spend Slightly More Than Half Their Media Hours With TV

Once again we'll be twittering our partying ways tonight at the Time 100 Gala. There promises to be plenty of bold faces and we assume bold dresses and we hope to answer the always burning question: is George Clooney really as tall as he appears on screen?

All this and more, in seven words or less! As usual keep your eyes tuned to the right hand side of this page or follow us here: http://twitter.com/FishbowlNY

Rupert Murdoch announced yesterday that he intends to double the price of the NYPost beginning May 19, perhaps concluding that with the reportedly imminent purchase of Newsday the money is bound to find a way to his pockets one way or another.

The Post experienced a similar price hike last year, one which was quickly reversed in the face of rapidly dropping sales. This time it looks like the hike may stick. While Rupe says the extra quarter is all about stemming the Post's estimated annual loss of $50 million, Jeff Bercovici over at Portfolio suspects Murdoch has "his sights set on a higher target...a Post-Newsday tag team might eliminate the News from the picture altogether."

According to Rupe, we might not have to wait that long to find out; E&P is reporting that Murdoch has "signaled that he will be the owner of Newsday as early as next week," and that we should all "just be patient a couple of days."