The New Adbuster: Taking his cue from big-box advertisers, artist Hank Willis Thomas hijacks the boardroom and tackles the politics of visual culture.

Talk about brand recognition. Art critics first took note of photographer Hank Willis Thomas in 2006 for his B®ANDED series, which explored the representation of the African American male body in visual culture. Thomas has since continued the interrogation by repurposing -- and altogether re-contextualizing -- ad campaign imagery (in 2004’s Afro-American Express, for example, he is featured as a card-carrying member since 1619, the year indentured Africans were first shipped to America). Stripped of text and digitally manipulated, Thomas’ work unearths the insidious underbelly of marketing, and an industry determined to turn profit at any cost.

From there to here, and now this. Even though I don't dare tread too close to iambic pentameter, I'm sure the broody, apocalyptic villanelles I used to scrawl in notebooks during second period organic chem would make me a far superior poet laureate than Sarah Palin. Sadly, that fact has no weight without the support of luminous literati like Prospect's Julian Gough. His endorsement of Palin as American poet laureate should make the Alaskan governor squeal with glee at a chance for extended relevance, apart from various follies in helping to thwart a Democratic stronghold in the Senate.

If you go out to drink, you're going to consume calories: logic, right? But how many calories are you going to take in? And what could you scarf down instead of the sauce? I don't really trust this counter, posted by a BBC radio station -- not exactly a bastion of health knowledge, we're guessing -- but it's worth it just to look, no? Probably not, but we did it anyway, and you're going to as well. Related: Drinking That Might Not Kill You in the Medium to Long Run, Desperate Drinking in Desperate Times.

Finally, a man Liz Lemon can be proud to call her own. No more closet sexual predators, or jerks who just pick up and move to Cleveland. Later, in this fourth and predictably great season of 30 Rock, Liz will start dating a doctor who lives in her building, and he has the wonderful fortune of looking just like that guy Don Draper from Mad Men. Jon Hamm, who also luckily looks like Don, told USA Today, "I just finished a couple of episodes, and I'll go back in the new year and do another one of those, and then we'll see what happens." What will happen is Liz will dump you for a preposterous reason (she hates happiness), and you'll travel back about 50 years to your cushy job on Madison Avenue selling cigarettes to Americans and pretending to be someone you're not (spoiler alert).

10. Jeremy’s Ale House (Lower Manhattan) - Not the greenest option, but when it comes to price, there’s no arguing with their $4 32-ounce Styrofoam buckets of Coors.
9. Zum Schneider (East Village) - It’s Oktoberfest all-year-round at this frat-tastic joint where the impressive beer selection comes in small 0.3l, regular 0.5l, or large 1.0l glasses.
8. Heidelberg (Upper East Side) - Nothing like drinking two liters of beer out of a glass boot.

Remember that time when we analyzed the effect Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton had on the portrayal of women on television, and we concluded that nothing in the world had changed vis-á-vis gender roles despite the rise of women to political prominence? Well, the same is true for the art world! Sort of! According to this report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, female artists typically earn about $0.75 for every dollar their male counterparts make. Worse yet is the disparity between young artists and older artists -- 18-to-24 year-olds earn about $0.95 on the dollar, while those pushing 50 would be lucky to get above $0.65.

The New Songbird: Raise a toast to Polly Scattergood, as she carves out her own inimitable brand of pink pop alongside Björk and Kate Bush.

If listening to “Nitrogen Pink,” the tinkly, bubble-burst debut single from Polly Scattergood, sounds like stumbling upon some kind of harmonious magical accident, it’s partly because you have. “I don’t really know how I write songs,” says the 21-year-old Londoner. “They just sort of pop out. If I stopped to think about it too much, nothing would ever come out right.” Hailed by the British press as the apparent musical lovechild of Björk and Kate Bush, Scattergood weaves tales that are both strangely beautiful and breathlessly intimate.

It’s been a big week for Louis Vuitton. First the brand made headlines thanks to its head designer, Marc Jacobs, disrobing to promote the brand’s Stephen Sprouse-inspired collection. Now, as we mentioned earlier, images from Steven Meisel’s much-anticipated campaign for the luxury brand featuring Madonna have dropped. And, unlike a certain silent film, they don’t disappoint.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the superstar behind elite New York restaurants Jean Georges, Spice Market, Matsugen, Perry Street, Vong, Mercer Kitchen, JoJo, and Nougatine on passing up coal and engineering for cooking, getting wine for his birthday as a kid, and bringing food back to its origins.

Point of Origin: I'm from Strasbourg, a big city in Alsace. It was a pretty big house, and we were cooking for 20 for dinner, it was a big deal. We had all of our meals at home; my grandmother cooking, my mother cooking. It may have been a one-pot stew, so it gave me a taste for making food for a lot of people. Every morning, I remember the smells around me; when I was eight or ten, I could tell you exactly what day of the week it was by what was on the stove. And I always knew what I wanted to do: cook! In 1957 I got a bottle of wine for my birthday, but by the time I was 16, I had only been to six restaurants in my life and never really knew that somebody could actually make a living by cooking. I started cooking at 16 as an apprentice. I wasn't going to school, but working with a chef. In 1973, I began as an apprentice at the Auberge de l'ιll, which has now been going for 50 years. In 1976, they gave us a test, and I was voted Best Apprentice. I went to Paris for the finals and received the highest score in regional France, but the apprentices competed against each other there, and I finished third.

I’ve avoided the Pink Elephant story that's been developing in the blogosphere because I don’t really like to gossip. I ran into Shawn Kolodny at a meeting, and after we chatted for a few minutes, he asked me if I heard what went down. I said I heard he was now at Kiss & Fly and asked if congratulations were in order. He thanked me, and I asked him if he wanted to comment for this blog, but he told me that until he got the go ahead from his lawyer, he couldn’t speak about the circumstances that had him leave Pink Elephant. He said next week would probably be OK. I got home, kissed the dogs and cats and the little woman, and I got a call from my old pal Rocco Anacarola.