We've found the 10 "best" listings this year, as well as their estimated price, terms and conditions, and number of bidders. (And if someone wants to get us that meeting with Harvey, we'll take it!)

David Lynch (Getty Images)

We haven’t been gifted a new David Lynch film since 2006—the director’s moved on to recording albums and shooting cameos on Louie. As he meditates his next cinematic move, Mr. Lynch gets a lovely tribute from the band Silencio as they perform music from his films at Le Poisson Rouge. The auteur’s work has always hinged on deeply creepy music—remember that eerie Twin Peaks theme?—and the six-piece act has made a career of making you feel as though your fellow concertgoers might begin speaking backwards or morph into a demonic villain at any moment.

Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, doors at 7pm, show at 8pm, tickets and information can be found at lepoissonrouge.com.

David Lynch and Emily Stofle Lynch (Getty Images)

We've always felt bad for Jennifer Lynch, the daughter of supremely weird director/artist/musician/Transcendental Meditation devotee David Lynch. Sure, she's achieved some measure of success on her own, with Boxing Helena and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, but how would you like to go around knowing that you were most likely the inspiration for the mutant baby in Eraserhead?

"Yeah, my dad kind of imagined me as a sheep fetus when I was born, but that's never been directly credited," is not something that gets your foot in the door at a lot of Hollywood pitch meetings. (Plus we can't imagine it being great for your self-esteem growing up.)

Now Mr. Lynch, 66, is expecting another daughter with his wife of three years, Emily Stofle.

And just so we're keeping count, that's four children and four wives for the Muholland Drive director, whose latest project involves reading your screenplay if you pay him $8,000.

His other prodigy include Austin Jack Lynch and Riley Lynch, and was married to Peggy Lentz, Mary Fisk, and Mary Sweeney. The visionary auteur was also romantically linked to Isabella Rossellini in the late 80s and early 90s, leading some of us to write very dark fan fiction in college about their relationship during Blue Velvet.

David Lynch's coffee

Look, we like David Lynch. Some of us love David Lynch so much that they have tattoos from his movies. Tattoos. Multiple. And some of us associate David Lynch and coffee so much that one of their tattoos is actually a pot of coffee next to cherry pie, which is meant to represent the entirety of what made Twin Peaks so great.

Some of us have even sipped David Lynch brand coffee over at the IFC Theater on West Fourth, even though who wants to drink coffee during a movie?

Which is all to say that this is coming from a place of love: David Lynch, stop making coffee commercials because this is terrible marketing.

When people think of coffee, they don't want to experience intense feelings of terror made all the more unsettling because the source of the fear is impossible to place. They also don't want to think of Barbie heads. They want to feel like this:

That's the ad! That should be the ad right there!

In conclusion, please go back to making movies, David Lynch. You are starting to scare us. And not in a fun way.

No blue velvet in Mr. West's womenswear line.

As explained in The Observer just a few weeks ago, genius filmmaker David Lynch has stopped making movies in an attempt to become a David Lynch movie. Which is Lynchian! The recent spree of non-Hollywood projects -- Transcendental Meditation, a coffee line, an electronic music album called Crazy Clown Time -- witnessed its Pièce de résistance last month with the opening of Club Silencio, a Paris nighttime spot modeled off a locale in his film Mulloholand Drive. The Lynchian progression for Club Silencio? Well, it would have to become a celeb-heavy destination and -- look at that -- during Paris Fashion Week, it has.

The most high profile of the bashes hosted by Silencio happened last Saturday, when Kanye West celebrated his first womenswear line at Lynch's place. Like at the club's opening, the director's absence was palpable, though perhaps less so given the slew of supermodels who changed out of Mr. West's threads and headed straight to the bash. WWD was there in Paris to take in the scene, and it seems that despite the critical shellacking that occurred in all the fashion papers, the celebrated designers at the party seem to have Mr. West's back.

But is there anything that Lynchian about Kanye West? Not really. Both are compelling in their own right, but Kanye goes bombastic where Mr. Lynch keeps things disarmingly weird and witty.

And speaking of bombast, Mr. West delivered one of his chaotic rants before the crowd. WWD dutifully recorded the thing, and it's repeated below in full.

“Thank you for anybody that didn’t believe, because they motivated us to break our boundaries,” he said.

“We don’t know what the reviews will be, we don’t know what they will say, but I got a chance to go to Italy and feel those fabrics. I begged Louis Vuitton to let me do more shoes after my shoes sold out in two weeks, and they did not. I begged Nike, I begged this company to let me do it. And I took out motherf---ing loans to get the best models, to get the best designers, to get the best venue. I gave you everything that I had.

“This is my first collection. Please be easy. Please give me a chance to grow. This is not some celebrity s---. I don’t f--- with celebrities. I f--- with the creatives in this room, the amazing people who spend every day of their life trying to make the world a more beautiful place.

“The amount of people that tried to get me a celebrity f---ing deal. They said, ‘You need to do boot-cut jeans, or you won’t sell.’ Shut the f--- up ! Or Hedi Slimane in the motherf---ing Mercer, sitting with me, saying, ‘Stop giving them your ideas, Kanye. Do your own thing.’ Hedi Slimane! To feel so frustrated. And I thank anybody who came to this party, everybody who supported, everybody who believed, because people thought it was a joke, and maybe people still do, but I can only grow from this point,” he concluded.

Well then. Show in New York next season, Kayne!

What Twitter Taught Us: Snooki's Going Down With the Dropping Ball

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

1. Ukranian Billionaire Selects Art-Prize Nominees
Victor Punchuk's PinchukArtCentre announced the nominees for his $100,000 Generation Art Prize. He funds the award, which goes to an emerging artist up to age 35. Whitney Biennial exhibitor (2008) Ruben Ochoa is the only American on the short list.

Our take: We're so glad the oligarchs are back. And points for a diverse group—the 21 finalists hail from 18 different countries and include 13 men and 8 women.

2. BP Corporate Art Sponsorship Backlash
In the UK, debate rages over BP's sponsorship of British cultural institutions. Vigilante groups have staged protests at partner museums-one group filled the Tate's grand hall with dead fish hanging from black balloons. Bloggers take their corners: Culturegrrl argues that museums shouldn't reject the money, while Edward Winkelman feels the BP backlash is too little, too late.

Our take: Why get angry at cultural institutions supported by BP when you could get angry at BP itself?
[The Guardian, Artnet, Culturegrrl, Edward Winkelman]

3. Louis Vuitton Demands Removal of Copycat Sculptures
Louis Vuitton demanded the removal of nine sculptures of locusts made out of fake designer purses that were on view at the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan. The fashion house argued that the sculptures endorsed the illegal trade of counterfeit goods.

Our take: Murakami can install an entire LV boutique in the Brooklyn Museum, but artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto can't even use the designer's logo. Who's really getting ripped off here?
[Pinktentakle]

4. Yale Finds Velazquez Painting in Basement
In what may be Yale's most exciting basement cleaning session ever, University art gallery employees happened upon a painting of the Virgin Mary that they have officially attributed to Velazquez after years of research.

Our take: We were cynical, but it looks like the real deal. All we find when we clean out our basements are yellowed family photos and old boxes of Pringles.
[Bloomberg]

5. Charles Saatchi to Donate Collection and Gallery to Britain
Gallery impresario Charles Saatchi announced over the weekend that he would donate his collection, valued (very conservatively) at more than $37.5 million, and his London gallery to the nation of Britain upon his retirement. The Guardian isn't too impressed.

Our take: Looks like the Tate didn't schmooze over its contentious relationship with Saatchi in time to cash in.
[The Guardian]

6. Marilyn Manson and David Lynch Exhibition Opens
What do you get when you combine Marilyn Manson, David Lynch, watercolors, and a short film titled "The Amputee"? The Manson/Lynch exhibition "Geneaologies of Pain," which opened in Vienna on June 30. According to a press release, "Marilyn Manson's career as an artist started in 1999 when he produced conceptual five-minute watercolors which he sold to drug dealers."

Our take: "Pain" gives a new and unwelcome meaning to "cutting-edge art."

7. Guggenheim Expansion Provokes Protest
The Guggenheim Foundation announced interest in building a museum in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, 25 miles from Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Bilbao. The regional Basque government and many local people fiercely oppose the expansion, arguing it will irreparably damage the nature reserve.  

Our take: If authorities in the Basque regional government were given more of a voice in the proceedings, the two parties might be able to make this happen.
[The Guardian]

8. Artist Gao Yu to Design Bottle for Absolut Vodka  
This week in corporate artist partnerships: Absolut Vodka has commissioned Chinese Pop artist Gao Yu to design a limited-edition bottle in honor of this year's Shanghai Expo.

Our take: Andy Warhol designed a bottle for Absolut 25 years ago. Is there any corporate collaboration that man didn't do first?

9. Sarah Palin is Rendered in Porn
British artist Jonathan Yeo's latest exhibition includes a portrait of Sarah Palin made entirely from clippings from pornography magazines. (All the better, the image has been placed in a furry moose head frame.) Other celebrities given Yeo's pornographic treatment include Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, and Paris Hilton, whose portrait-in-porn was bought by Damien Hirst.

Our take: When a politician headlines a controversy dubbed "Boobgate," isn't it only a matter of time until Playboy gets involved?
[Artinfo]
 
10. Art Market Heats Up for Summer
Artnet rounds up results from the summer's hottest sales, which include the highly anticipated Impressionist and modern auctions as well as contemporary art sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. In June, about 230 artists achieved record sale prices above $100,000 (up from 120 for the same price bracket in May).

Our take: We'll take any signs of recovery we can get, but we know deep down it's not all coming up records and roses.
[Artnet, Transom, ArtObserved]

“It is an ocean of infinite intelligence. Creativity. Happiness known as bliss. Infinite universal love. Energy. Dynamic peace,” mused the 63-year-old filmmaker, dressed in a black suit and a yellow tie that was brighter than his signature silver pompadour, at the beginning of a star-studded concert he had organized at the famed venue. “When a human being, any human being, dives within and experiences this ocean, swims in this ocean, life gets better and better and better.”

Ohmmm!

He was referring to Transcendental Meditation, also known as TM, the trademarked meditation technique developed in the 1960s by Indian spiritual guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and which Mr. Lynch, himself a meditator of 35 years, plans to teach to 1 million "at-risk youth" via his namesake foundation. The concert was a benefit for this initiative.

His co-host for the evening was Laura Dern, one of Mr. Lynch’s favorite actresses, whose head-to-toe black ensemble accentuated her shiny blonde locks and bright red lipstick.

“It’s pure bliss to be on a film with you because it’s boundary-less,” said Ms. Dern (we’re noticing a “bliss” theme here!), standing next to Mr. Lynch at stage right, “and I’m just curious if the boundary-less-ness that you bring to all of us comes from your connection to meditation.”

“You better believe it!” he replied.

If Tom Cruise is the celebrity face of Scientology, and Madonna is the celebrity face of Kabbalah, Mr. Lynch has become that for TM, which has a less cultish, although not entirely uncontroversial, reputation. And as was evidenced by Saturday’s concert--the highlight of which was a rare performance by surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr--he is but one on a long list of bold-faced names that use or endorse the practice. Jennifer Aniston, Yoko Ono, John McEnroe, Martin Scorsese, Kyle MacLachlin, Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick and Jason Bateman, though not necessarily all meditators themselves, were among the attendees.

“I’ve been meditating for 37 years,” said Jerry Seinfeld, who made a surprise appearance midway through the concert, before launching into a series of jokes about bathroom stalls and taxis.

Soon afterward, fellow comedian and 38-year TM practitioner Howard Stern took the stage.

“Mike Love of the legendary Beach Boys saw me backstage and he said to me, ‘Howard, you prove that you do not have to be a pussy to meditate!’” he said.

Other TM-ers to perform included Angelo Badalamente (to The Daily Transom’s utter excitement, he opened the concert with a flawless recital of the Twin Peaks theme song), Ben Harper (did you know he was married to Ms. Dern?), Donovan, Moby, Betty Lavette, Sheryl Crow and Eddie Vedder, who was looking very 1992 with his unbuttoned flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, wavy shoulder-length hair and scruffy goatee. Hip Hop mogul and philanthropist Russell Simmons addressed the audience via a taped video message, but he had appeared in person the previous afternoon at a pre-concert press conference in Radio City’s lobby.

“I operate most days from my meditation,” he said. “It gives me the ability to function in a world that is full of stress.”

The concept of TM as a celebrity cause isn’t entirely new. In fact, The Beatles were largely responsible for importing TM to the West after studying under the Maharishi in 1968 at his ashram in Rishikesh, India. The technique involves repeating a mantra with one’s eyes closed twice a day for 20 minutes.

“It was a great gift the Maharishi gave to us,” said Mr. McCartney, standing next to Mr. Starr at the press conference, and looking quite hip for his age. “It came at a time when we were looking for something to stabilize us toward the end of the crazy ‘60s. And it is a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time.”

Of course, to describe TM as a “gift” in 2009 is somewhat misleading; it costs $2,000 for an adult, or $1,000 for a full-time student, to learn the technique—not exactly the most recession-friendly investment—hence the need to raise so much money so the kids can learn it for free. (The pricey Radio City benefit generated an estimated $3 million, according to The David Lynch Foundation.)

Perhaps that's why critics have accused the TM crowd of being a bit cultish. Even Moby, a more recent TM convert, couldn’t resist making a wisecrack about it.

“Growing up, anything associated with TM and hippies scared the shit out of me,” he joked. “I thought it involved ritual animal sacrifice and moving to some country and renouncing wealth and materialism and eating bugs.”

But in the end, TM’s “simplicity” won him over.

“One of the things that makes TM so effective is that you don’t really have to do all that much,” he said,  “and as a profoundly lazy person, I appreciate that.”

On Networks may be the rigth place for him. The Austin-based company bills itself as a "digital media innovator leading the change in how digital TV programs are created, distributed, consumed and sponsored." It recently made a distribution deal and has an amazing new show "Smart Girls at the Party" from Amy Poehler premiering on Nov. 17.

But what will Mr. Lynch do for On Networks? Fellow 02 writer Joe Pompeo sat down with Mr. Lynch in May when he was visiting New York. The guy likes his egg salad sandwiches. Will he have his own sandwich-making webisode? Maybe he's the next online chef star!

Probably not.

But we do know that he'll have many other "little children" to chose from after working on this new online venture. From the Observer article:

Shark Week, which has become increasingly hype-worthy over the past few years, began in 1987 and has accumulated some 100 hours of programming over its more than two-decade run on primetime. “It’s a summertime ritual,” Discovery president John Ford recently told USA Today. “People are endlessly fascinated by sharks. There's a lot of variety, they’re fascinating creatures and also they scare us.” Indeed, seeing close-up footage of some guy getting his leg nearly ripped off, as was shown on one classic Shark Week special, makes watching Jaws seem like a trip to the petting zoo.

If you missed Sunday’s premiere, you can catch up tonight at 9 with Surviving Sharks, in which Survivorman Les Stroud travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test out some shark attack survival strategies. At 10, stayed tuned for Day of the Shark to find out whether your chances of getting eaten alive are more likely under sun or moon. On Tuesday at 9 p.m., Dirty Jobs travels to Greenland to assist arctic shark scientists with their research, followed by the self-explanatory How Not to Become Shark Bait at 10. And on Thursday at 9 p.m., Mysteries of the Shark Coast investigates why sharks are disappearing from the waters of northeastern Australia. Throughout the week the Discovery Channel will be airing plenty of shark-related shows from past years, so you’ll have until Saturday to get your fix. But if sharks aren’t your thing…

MONDAY

At 9 p.m., HBO follows a Louisiana Army recruiter and four of the young men and women he is able to enlist despite the increasing unpopularity of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, tonights’s new episode of Intervention (9 p.m., A&E) is a real doozy:

Also, Samantha Brown goes to China to prepare you for your Olympic travel plans (Travel Channel, 8 p.m.) and prehistoric monsters are revealed at 9 p.m. on the History Channel.

TUESDAY

Get serious tonight with PBS: On Wide Angle at 9, hear the stories of three Ugandan children who escaped from a rebel military group that kidnaps young boys and girls, forcing them to become soldiers and sex slaves. And at 10, P.O.V. chronicles local Japanese politics.

WEDNESDAY

The wave of Beijing Olympics tie-ins continues tonight with Made in China: The People’s Republic of Profits, a CNBC report on China’s ongoing adaptation to capitalism (9 p.m.). But really, Wednesdays are for Project Runway. Sandra Bernhard guest-judges tonight’s competition, in which the designers look for inspiration amid New York's sights and sounds.

THURSDAY

At 9 p.m., National Geographic Channel gives viewers a behind the scenes look at Beijing’s National Aquatic Center, Kathy Griffin does a publicity stunt to boost her comedy CD (Bravo, 10 p.m.), and you relive your childhood with The Neverending Story on Ion at 8 p.m.

FRIDAY

If you are among the unfortunate people who haven’t seen every single episode of the best-TV-show ever, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, DO NOT turn on IFC at 8:30 p.m. to watch the series’ prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It will totally ruin the mystery for you! You need to watch the show first. Fortunately, the complete series box set has been out for almost a year now, so add that goodness to your Netflix queue. In the meantime, see what David Lynch had to say about Twin Peaks when the Observer caught up with him back in May.