Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Happy Birthday | The most terrifying woman on cable news, Nancy Grace, turns 50 today. Director Sam Raimi and "Weird Al" Yankovic are both turning 50 today, too. Actor Ryan Reynolds is 33. Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is 55. Writer Augusten Burroughs is turning 44. ABC News correspondent Brian Ross turns 61. Jessica Stroup of 90210 is 23. Retired soccer legend Pelé is turning 69. Andy Warhol muse Jane Holzer is 69. And Meghan McCain turns 25 today. A list of people celebrating their birthdays this weekend is below.More

• As expected, ratings for Jay Leno's new show are falling fast. [THR]
• Bloomberg LP appears to now be in the lead to buy BusinessWeek. [NYP]
• Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sold 1 million copies its first day. [NYT]
• Don't try to talk to Vogue publisher Tom Florio about what changes are in store for the mag now that those McKinsey consultants have finished their review. (He's not talking about it.) Meantime, McKinsey's final report will be handed over to Condé Nast's management next week. [NYO, WWD]
• Fox News boss Roger Ailes collected $24 million in compensation last year, which is $2 million more than his boss, Rupert Murdoch, took home. [BW]
• Jay-Z has his 11th No. 1 album. That puts him ahead of Elvis Presley as the solo artist with the most chart-toppers. But he's still behind the Beatles. [LAT]More

• Ted Kennedy's death late last night sent the media into a predictable scramble. Some newspapers stopped the presses in the wee hours to change out the front page; every news network has been busy mobilizing its troops and planning various TV specials; Time announced plans to publish a commemorative edition; and the publication date of Kennedy's forthcoming memoir has been moved up to September 14 from early October.
• Some people watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's shows because they think it makes them look cool, according to a new research report. [NYT]
• The premiere of True Blood on Sunday night reeled in more than 5.3 million viewers and generated HBO its biggest audience in years. [MCN]
• Because The View is determined to provide a home to the most insufferable women on earth, Kate Gosselin has signed on to guest host the show next month, joining the likes of Meghan McCain and LaToya Jackson. [E!] More

• Get ready to see commercials appear inside magazines. CBS is embedding tiny screens in an upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, which will play a clip promoting the network's fall season. What will it look like? Like this. [WSJ]
• Poor Rupert: The billionaire chairman of News Corp. only collected a compensation package of $18 million for the most recent fiscal year, which is down from $30 million, or 40 percent, from a year earlier. [AP]
• David Letterman continues to beat Conan O'Brien in the ratings. [NYT]
• Did Glenn Beck get yanked off the air after stirring up so much controversy recently, or is he on a regularly scheduled vacation? It's a mystery! [Politico]
• 60 Minutes is planning to air a tribute to Don Hewitt this Sunday. [NYT]
• Meghan McCain is returning to The View as a guest host. How thrilling. [NYP]
• Reader's Digest is one step closer to officially filing for bankruptcy. [NYT]
• What is Jayson Blair, the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter, up to these days? He's a "certified life coach" for a mental health facility. [Gawker, AP]

• Lindsay Lohan will officially celebrate her birthday tomorrow. But it looks like she'll have some extra spending money in her pocket if she decides to buy herself a present. Lohan collected $70,000 to appear at an all-day birthday party in her honor at the MGM Grand last Saturday. [P6]
• A semi-private funeral was held yesterday for Farrah Fawcett. The public wasn't permitted to attend, but a gaggle of photographers was more than welcome. [Us]
• Day 6 of the Michael Jackson mess: No one seems to know who really gave birth to Jackson's kids, no one is totally sure about the final funeral arrangements, and it still isn't clear what drugs he was taking exactly, or who gave them to him. And so on it goes. [Mirror, Sun, TMZ, Us, TMZ]
• On a more positive note, David Gest says Jackson was just another "manly man" who loved women, chowing down at McDonalds, and pursuing his "passion for classic literature." That's nice to hear, isn't it? [Sun] More

• Brooke Shields can't seem to make up her mind about who's to blame for the Kiefer Sutherland-Jack McCollough incident last week. A few days ago, her reps denied she'd been pushed by Jack. But now she says he did bump into her, and that Kiefer "has always been a gentleman" with her. Go figure. [TMZ, NYDN]
• Madonna took her kids to a Mets game on Mother's Day, which was all part of a plan to make Alex Rodriguez jealous, apparently. Also, the singer/diehard baseball fan sat in Jerry Seinfeld's seats and hung out with the Anderson Cooper the whole time, just so you know. [P6]
• More topless photos of Carrie Prejean have surfaced online. [TMZ]
• Barbara Walters wore the same dress to the Time 100 gala and the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The horror! [TMZ]
• Maya Rudolph and PT Anderson are expecting their second child. [People]More

• Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant will meet in Greenwich divorce court for the first time today. Expect some fireworks: Brant has already filed a motion demanding Seymour "undergo drug and alcohol testing"; for her part, Seymour is accusing Brant of "hostile, threatening and intimidating behavior." [NYP]
• Now that he's split from his wife, Sean Penn is supposedly dating Natalie Portman (again), since she "stimulates him in ways no other person has." [Star]
• Rumor has it Madonna and Jesus Luz are planning some sort of commitment ceremony at the Kabbalah Center sometime soon. [NYDN]
• Luke Russert was either the "It" boy at the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday night, or has been a major disappointment for MSNBC, depending on who you talk to. [NYDN, P6]
• Speaking of nepotism, Meghan McCain reportedly "lost it" and acted like an "insolent child" when a guard told her she couldn't bring two friends into the Correspondents dinner on Saturday. [NYDN]More

So are publishing houses sensibly dealing with their beleaguered state by paying modest advances to talented, seasoned authors, rather than throwing huge sums of money at writing neophytes with famous last names in the (likely vain) hope that the ensuing cheap publicity will render whatever crap is stuck between the covers irrelevant? Don't be silly! Meghan McCain has just signed a deal in the "high six figures" with Hyperion, reports Leon Neyfakh, for a book about—well, it's not yet clear what it's about, probably because Meghan's agent Flip Brophy knew that having her client actually write anything wouldn't exactly help with the pitch. None of which is to imply, of course, that the collated thoughts of a 24-year-old spotlight-loving Republican—whose literary disquisitions to date include her noble acceptance of being a size 8 and what a bummer it is trying to date when your dad has lost the election—isn't exactly what the world needs.

• Say it isn't so! Although she's introducing her own spray-tan line, Sevin Nyne, Lindsay Lohan has been spotted using the services of a mobile spray-tan company called Fake Bake "on the sly." [NYDN]
• Related: LiLo would like to reiterate that she and Sam Ronson have not broken up. For now. [E!]
• The indignity! Jay-Z had to wait 20 minutes for a table at Babbo. [P6]
• Chelsea Clinton's rep says the former first daughter is not getting married after all. Too bad! [Us]
• Paris Hilton's little brother Barron says he's "giving up the party life" to pursue a career as an "international singer-songwriter." A family just chock full of talent, clearly. [P6]More

Meghan McCain, the 24-year-old daughter of John and Cindy, turned up on Fox News yesterday to promote her illustrated children's book, which was published last month because she felt it would be instructive for the kids of America to learn about her father's life story, not because she's, like, looking to cash in on her dad's presidential bid or anything. Naturally, Meghan was in gentle hands with anchor Neil Cavuto, although he did ask her at one point why it was that voters her age were overwhelmingly lining up behind Obama in November and not her supporting her dad. Meghan's answer? Younger voters aren't leaning towards Obama—that's just the liberal media telling everyone that! And she should know because, like, she has a blog, which tons and tons of young people visit every single day. So it's settled. The youth vote is a toss-up!