As the chairman of Madison Square Garden, the company that owns the hapless New York Knicks, James L. Dolan should have already known a lot about losing.

But Dolan, 51, who is also a blues/rock singer, has learned even more about embarrassing defeats during the last few weeks.

Long before David Letterman immortalized the Top 10, publishers figured out that readers love lists.

Magazine cover stories rank the best places to live, the best places to do business, the world’s richest people. The internet, of course, is a bit more creative. A quick Google search for the phrase “top 10″ yields, after Letterman:

· Top 10 naked people on Google Earth
· Top 10 ways to destroy earth
· Top 10 urinals (somebody’s doing some serious SEO here)
· Top 10 strangest Lego creations (ditto)
· Top 10 spammers

There are many ways to meet one’s fate on The Island. ABC’s Losties have perished because of a man-killing smoke monster, gunshot wounds, deadly illnesses and drowning. Add another character-killer to the list: DUI.

In Hawaii, where the series is filmed, several Lost stars have been caught driving under the influence and it seems the punishment for the offense goes beyond the courthouse punishment. All actors who have been arrested in Hawaii during filming have had their characters killed off on the show.

Sunday was a good day for devoted readers of the “Weddings/Celebrations” pages of the New York Times.

There were stories, some brief, some longer, of 41 unions, the coming together of a whole lot of lawyers, some doctors, and at least one freelance hiking and music columnist.

Analysis of the reports indicates that a trend identified in the mid-90s by David Brooks (before he became a Times columnist) is alive and well.

The radio business has been very good to Lowry Mays and Billie Joe “Red” McCombs.

In 1972, they formed the San Antonio Broadcasting Company to buy an FM station for $125,000.

Thirty-five years later, that company is called Clear Channel Communications and it owns more than 1,000 stations. Its shareholders recently approved a $19.5 billion private equity buyout that values Mays’ stock at more than $1.1 billion and McCombs’ shares at about $190 million. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

In early 2000, when Clear Channel shares hit $95, the founders’ stock would have been valued at more than twice as much as now.

The latest chapter in the ongoing Alaska corruption case began yesterday, with the trial of former Alaska state Rep. Vic Kohring.

Kohring is accused of accepting bribes from VECO Corp., an oil-field services company that was bought in August by CH2M Hill. Although he acknowledges accepting money from former VECO CEO Bill Allen, Kohring says he did so as a friend receiving a gift.

Allen and former company VP Rick Smith have pleaded guilty to bribery charges. Another former state legislator, Pete Kott, was convicted in the case last month.

The arrest in New York City Monday of Robert Chambers, 41, on drug charges launched another chapter in what has been a story that just won’t go away.

Chambers, the so-called “Preppie Killer” became a familiar tabloid figure 21 years ago. And the key lawyers involved in his trial have gone on to a kind of stardom themselves.

In 1988, near the end of a sensation-filled trial, Chambers pled guilty to manslaughter for the 1986 murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in Central Park.

He entered the plea as the jury was deliberating a murder charge. He later received a 15-year prison sentence.

The trial had opened a lurid window onto the lives of the privileged children of Manhattan society.

The recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be U.S. attorney general might have passed for a meeting of the Yale Law School alumni association.

Mukasey, class of 1967, was introduced to the committee by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., also Yale Law class of ‘67.

Fans of NBC’s hit comedy series The Office have spent many Thursday nights waiting and hoping for the central star-crossed couple, Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly, to finally start dating.

After sitting through Pam’s engagement to Roy and Jim’s relationship with Karen, Jim and Pam enthusiasts got their wish in the season three finale. Jim turns down a position at Dunder Mifflin’s corporate headquarters in New York, dumps his current paramour, and asks Pam to dinner.

Bad times for newspapers can be good times for newspaper lobbyists.

Major publishers, which often cover K Street as a hotbed of corruption, spend thousands each year to advance and protect their own interests.

Yet one issue that has fueled the Washington media lobby for years may soon disappear. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin has drafted a plan that would abolish rules forbidding companies from owning both a newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same city.