Today's brisk morning found New York's fashion set SoHo-bound, but instead of queuing for yet another sample sale, they sidled into Prada's artistically palatial store on Prince Street for the unveiling of their newest creative fare - -the Prada book. Just what we need, another fashion book telling us what to wear, when to wear it, what to pair it with and flashing papparazzi pics of all sorts of celebs wearing it before. Thankfully, there's none of that in the new take-away tome simply entitled Prada. Arguably the most desired geometric shape in the world, the inverted triangle is worth very little by itself; that is until P-R-A-D-A is stamped inside, giving it a life -- and subsequent price tag -- worthy of a legacy.

Dismal weather brings out the cook in me. There’s nothing like cozying in your kitchen and whipping up a warm, satisfying dish on a hot stove. It’s also carb season, and what better way to fuel up than a tangled pile of spaghetti? And I’m not talking your childhood sauce-n-glop. No sir. We found a recipe for designer pasta that’ll knock the stockings off your most well-heeled dinner guests: Isaac Mizrahi’s Mushroom Truffle Spaghetti, published this month in Assouline’s CFDA American Fashion Cookbook. Mizrahi’s dishy dish is just one of dozens of stylish entrée, appetizer, dessert, and drink recipes from a roster of fashion’s finest. Hungry? Try Zac Posen’s great-grandma’s butterscotch wafers, or Diane von Furstenberg’s chicken, or Bill Blass’ prune whip.

Guides to dinner parties tend toward the dowdy and the sanctimonious. They suggest dated social rituals, perhaps witnessed in footed pajamas from the top of a staircase. Their advice to fledgling cooks tends to not be of the “stir like a mofo” variety. Not so Forking Fantastic!, which sets out to “put the party back in dinner party.” Authors Zora O’Neill and Tamara Reynolds met when they worked at Prune. They discovered they shared a neighborhood, Astoria, and an affinity for adventuring with food. From that commonality, Sunday Night Dinners were born. Friends, friends of friends, and eventually more or less random strangers were added to the mix. O’Neill and Reynolds share wisdom accumulated over years of feasting, walking readers through stocking kitchen and cabinets, a “baby-step dinner party,” and on to full-blown blowouts.

Are you not working today on account of some government-sanctioned holiday that today celebrates its 75th year of being a federal holiday and otherwise only existed in some make-believe land called "Colorado" before 1934? It commemorates a day when some dude from Europe stuck a flag on what would later be American soil and declared it "discovered." That is, despite the existence of indigenous tribes before he and his band of small pox-carriers infected America with his plight of in-breeding, poor animal husbandry, and genocide. Since then though, America's evolved into a post-racial paradise, where its denizens, wrought with liberal guilt, remain unable to properly reflect back on the scourge of Columbus-inspired racism as it continues to rear its hydra-licious heads in our contemporary culture. So here's an abbreviated recap.

Jean-Luc Naret, director of the world-famous Michelin Guides, released the fifth edition of the New York Michelin guide Monday, and yesterday, the books hit stands around the city. As with any upper echelon foodie-endeavor, this one was met with some criticism from food-lovers with differing opinions. Nonetheless, to talk about the long road before the list is finalized and printed, we sat down with Naret to get the backstory of the Michelin Guides and what it takes to secure a much-coveted three stars.

James Ellroy has some advice. This is it: “Observe the civil contract. Don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. Address everyone as Mr. and Mrs. I’ll pay you to have your tattoos removed. Don’t say dumb shit like ‘like, it’s like, whatever.’ Don’t read movie reviews. Go see the movie and decide for yourself. Be respectful. The quickest way to sound like a dipshit is to call a respected filmmaker you don’t personally know Marty.” This was just one of the marvelously frank and dead-on pieces of wisdom imparted by the self-identified “demon dog of American literature” at a reading and interview held last night at the New York Public Library and hosted by the Young Lions.

Maybe the presence of Dementors in Harry Potter hit too close to home with that last dude before Obama who would sometimes shamble into the Oval Office to shuffle Uno cards or play Text Twist. Like gazing into a mirror. Or maybe it was how chillingly cruel, yet spot-on, their depiction of the villainous Dolores Umbridge was -- almost like an intelligible, flesh-and-blood version of Sarah Palin. How dare they hit at out at a lipstick-donning pit bull so defiantly! But in any event, it seems the Bush administration decided against handing Rowling any medals for the fact that she got people the world over to re-embrace the lost art of scanning words on a page and learning new ways of looking at the world.

Yesterday, all our troubles seemed so far away. Well, somewhere within 120,726 square-mile surface area of Poland, really. We pontificated on whether Roman Polanski deserved whatever was coming to him by way of duplicitous Polish benefactors. And today, we raise the stakes just enough to ask what sins humanity is currently atoning for that Sarah Palin's 400-page tome will be scanned by eyeballs. In the form of Going Rogue, a ghost-written tell-all about Palin's hard-boiled drive to achieve her own American Dream. Six out of ten birthers will love Going Rogue and subsequently find it to be a thrilling companion piece to Ann Coulter's Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. As for the other four. Well, they just can't read. Woe!

Gee, golly, and wow. This week, we really sunk to a world record of cultural nadirs (ugh, ugh, and ugh), didn't we? Well, the weekend is upon us, as is the most opportune moment to redeem our love for the letters. As it turns out, Ryan Adams and Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker are going to have an intimate chat about poetry and fiction. And you're invited to eavesdrop.

The title of Skira and Vogue's new release, Extreme Beauty in Vogue, is a bit vague given the book's content. Simply put, it's a compendium Vogue's most iconic fashion images. The list of photographers included is staggering: among them Edward Steichen, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Steven Klein, just to name a few. Not to mention Jean Nouvel came on board as art director for the project. Essentially, this a finely packaged collection of gorgeous images, although don't expect any serious envelope-pushing here (e.g. cross-dressing or "dogging" spreads) as American Vogue's fashion images are synonymous with beauty, not provocation.