Bloomberg has an article today highlighting the salaries of some of the city's biggest names in arts and culture. One name on the list is your president Lee C. Bollinger, who takes home a "$1.42 million package, which included $911,284 in base pay and $500,610 in benefits."

This puts PrezBo's salary a little under that of Northwestern's President, whose $1.7 million paycheck is the largest among "private, nonprofit educational institutions." Both salaries are just below the average price of a Nussbaum & Wu product.

Gothamist and Daily Intelligencer are reporting that Dean Kathryn Yatrakis' daughter Catherine, and her lovely Greek shipping magnate husband Alastair Economakis, have decided to convert a rent-controlled building on 47 E. 3rd (a building they already own, pictured at right) from $625/month apartments to their personal private 6 bedroom/5 bathroom residence.

While the conversion is perfectly legal, and the Economakis had informed their tenants of the proposed transformation years ago, it's doesn't exactly bode well for the couple's public image. (Or give the impression that council with Associate Urban Studies Professor Yatrakis was sought.) Which is precisely why they've launched a website: to share "the other side" of the story, or so says Alastair in the site's epigraph (in which he quotes himself.) Anyway, the whole sorry, sordid tale is available for parsing on Economakis.com.

The Gossip Girl books are ludicrous preteen-girl fantasies marketed by Alloy, a tween clothing catalog. But who are we to judge quality? We are CW viewers. The TV show spin-off of Gossip Girl is The O.C. creator/executive producer Josh Schwartz's newest foray into the world of teen melodrama. With the onset of The O.C. and Laguna Beach, television has entered a world where money is no concern and high school girls have sex and drink while strutting around in Marc Jacobs heels. Unlike the previous two series, less class-conscious shows, Gossip Girl is set in the front lines of the class struggle between the rich and the super-rich. Bwog trash correspondents Lucy Tang and Dan D'Addario present a round-up of what you've missed so far in the first two episodes.

Most Likely to Receive Financial Aid
The Humprey Family ("I'm not trash. I'm from Brooklyn!"). The Humprey father owns a "crappy" art gallery and the family lives in a loft in Williamsburg, but they're really poor.

Best Personality
Chuck, who, in the first two episodes, has tried to rape two of the show's female leads, engaged in a threesome with two of his father's employees, tried to beat the crap out of Dan "Williamsburg P.O.V." Humphrey, all while wearing a disgusting patchwork scarf.

Least Realistic Aspect of the show
The Humprey's humble abode. First of all, the aerial shots are of DUMBO, not Williamsburg (get your facts right, Josh Schwartz). Second of all, poor people live in Williamsburg lofts now?

Least Realistic Scene
Dan jumping into a cab and telling the driver, "Williamsburg!" It's near to impossible to get a cab to Williamsburg in Manhattan; maybe the scene where Dan is furiously haggling with the cab driver was cut out.