All you journalists who have been wined and dined and subsequently harassed for stories by the super-funded Dutch Tourism Board can rest easy for a minute. NYT’s T Magazine has devoted five pages to underrated Amsterdam. I, for one, visited 95% of the places profiled on a junket, and I bet you did too.

A covering-the-crisis memo apparently has been circulating among media outlets and clearly, New York Mag didn’t receive it. Actually, more likely, James Cramer and Bruce Wasserstein giddily instructed Adam Moss to ignore it. “‘Crash,’ ‘panic,’ ‘pandemonium,’ ‘apocalypse,’ those are the words we’re staying away from,” a Wall Street Journal spokesman told The Times in a story about most media outlets toning down the emotion in an effort to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. Oh well. If there’s a run on the banks, we’ll know exactly who to blame. Thanks, guys!

As thanks for delivering Vogue’s best cover since Jennifer Hudson’s tonsils fronted the magazine, Anna Wintour gave gorgeous Rachel Weisz a grand total of two staged interior pictures (a recycled image from lowly Vogue Living counts only as an insult). That number is downright paltry compared with September cover girl Keira Knightley’s dozen-plus pages, and the slap is sharpened by the complete absence of a cohesive visual story for the Oscar-winning Weisz. Instead, she is treated to two wildly divergent shots that seem only to have an East Village location in common. The effect is slight, weird and sloppy, especially compared with the preceding story: Steven Meisel’s hyper-repetitive 10-page bore showcasing fur coats. Now, Anna darling, if you are going to make such a baldly desperate appeal to advertisers, please, do make it more interesting for the rest of us in future. And in the meantime? Show the MILFy Ms. Weisz some respect.

Allison Sarofim is headed to Japan for Halloween and it ain’t for sushi, harajuku girls or to commit hari kari. Straight from the maw of the heiress’s acupuncturist, the super-secret theme of her o.t.t. costume ball is artist Takashi Murakami, a collaborator of Marc Jacobs. The choice isn’t exactly ahead of the curve, but the guests’ designer-made costumes promise to be eye-popping. So, the question is, how many of Al’s fashion-conscious friends will masquerade as Murakami’s famed Louis Vuitton handbag?