White House Pool Reporters Not Having Fun In Russia [FishbowlDC]
Houston Chronicle's Julie Mason: "Pool sat in vans outside the dinner at Peterhof for more than four hours. No sign of Bush. Entire movement, during which nothing was seen nor said, and bathrooms and sustenance were unavailable, was more than six hours." FishbowlNY: Bush's "shit" slip gives media editors pause, the New York Times a watershed moment.

Israel Forbids Live Pictures Of Rocket Attacks On TV [TVNewser]
Have you wondered why the crews in northern Israel don't pan their cameras to show viewers the rockets as they fly by? CNN's Paula Hancocks explained why on CNN this morning: "It's a censorship issue ... [The Israelis] don't want the live pictures to be shown of rockets incoming and then landing in a particular area of Haifa, because then whoever is firing these rockets will know exactly if they direct their rocket launcher in that particular area where it will hit."

Video: Conan O'Brien Delivers Stuyvesant High School Commencement [FishbowlNY]
NBC Late Night host Conan O'Brien — whose commencement speech at Harvard in 2000 became one of the most forwarded pieces of comedy in the history of the Web — delivered the keynote speech at Stuyvesant High School's graduation late last month: "Ladies, you might be tempted to get a lower back tattoo, and I just wanna say ... that's totally awesome!"

James Woods: Movies Are Corporate, But 'TV is Like a Wild Teenager' [FishbowlLA]
"There's not as much imagination in movies anymore," the actor tells TV Guide. "They're getting more and more corporate, but television is like a wild teenager."

Clemson University Dept. To Study Packaging Design [UnBeige]
Sonoco Products, a company based in South Carolina, has donated two and a half million dollars to the small Clemson University, also in S.C., to found the nation's first university department dedicated to the study of packaging design.

The New York Times Book Review Welcomes You to 2006! [GalleyCat]
Not to harp on that whole thing about the NYTBR delivering "news about the culture" when it's already history again, but is there anybody out there who thought Benjamin Kunkel's thoughts about James Frey and JT LeRoy were worth waiting six months for?

Giant Magazine Redesigns — Again [FishbowlNY]
Giant — the local-laddie-and-music-and-pop-culture-and-whatever-else magazine that could — has redesigned. Again. As you'll recall, publisher Jamie Hooper's Giant has gone through a myriad of edit staff and aesthetic changes since its inception, most recently adding Smokey Fontaine as its editor.

Million Dollar Homepage Spawns Bookish Clone [MBToolbox]
Finally! A variation on the Million Dollar Homepage called, naturally, ANovelMillion: "People buy words which I will host on my website. The words written by any given purchaser will be easy to differentiate by color blocks, and can also provide a direct link to that persons [sic] own website if desired. The words will also contribute to an ever growing story, not to mention a one-off fingerprint of color signifying the way this story has evolved."