Morning, readers. So the other night I attended the dailycaller.com launch party, where I saw both Mike Riggs and Scooter Libby. (Thus disproving the “why have I never seen Mike Riggs and Scooter Libby in the same place at the same time?” conspiracy theory.) It was also at this party that I learned, somewhat belatedly, of Libby’s mid-’90s foray into Japanese Erotica. While I have not yet read The Apprentice, nor have any prospect of doing so in the near future, I think we can all glean something from the poesy of the following lines:

He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him and her lower leg came against his. He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.

…which is about the only sex scene we can excerpt, in good conscience, on a family blog. (The rest involve underage females and, apparently, deer.)

*Michael Billington on Antonia Fraser‘s memoir about her marriage with Harold Pinter: “The most intimate portrait of a contemporary dramatist I have ever read.”

*Candide turns 250.

*Does the Burj Khalifa rip off Frank Lloyd Wright‘s design for ‘Mile-High Illinois’? Pretty much, yes.

*Jimmy Kimmel wears fake chin; Tonight Show feud boosts NBC ratings.

*RJD2 gets kinda cocky with the AV Club.

*Discuss: Whose reaction to the Port au Prince earthquake is more tasteless: Pat “Haiti Had a Pact With the Devil” Robertson or Rush “Light-Skinned and Dark-Skinned Black Community” Limbaugh?

*In this week’s paper, hitting streets today: Reviews of OK Go, Felt Letters, The Lovely Bones, and Police, Adjective. Plus, an interactive hard copy of the Vampire Weekend Drinking Game.