Last Thursday, Senator John McCain announced on The Daily Show that he would like Dwight Schrute of The Office to be his running mate. So when we ran into Rainn Wilson at the Lucky Club upfronts gift lounge at the Ritz-Carlton yesterday, we asked whether he thought a McCain-Schrute ticket would be successful. "I think it would be more than successful. I think it would be almost unfair," Wilson said. "But if I know Dwight, I don't think he would accept it unless there were certain conditions met. For instance, he'd be put in charge of the security detail." Dwight has a huge arsenal of weapons on the show. Does that make him something of a Republican? "I think Dwight defies all political characterization, but I think in gun laws, he'd go way right, I think further right than anyone, even the John Birch Society. I think he'd demand that guns be built into babies robotically at birth." Expect to hear soon from the McCain camp on where the candidate stands on the crucial robot-gun transgenic-baby issue. —Mina Hochberg

Nobody wants an actors' strike, right? As this week's tepid, meager TV upfronts are proving — ABC only has two new shows next fall, one of them a reality game show! — Hollywood will be reeling from the 100-day writers' strike for years to come. Web royalties are great and all, but so are the paychecks from TV and film gigs. If SAG starts picketing on July 1, don't blame George Clooney and Ellen Pompeo — blame the wannabes cleaning their pools and dishing out eggs Benedict at the Ivy. So say many message-board posters in Hollywood, anyway, and The Office's Kate Flannery seems to agree. "I really hope we don't strike again," said gainfully employed actress Flannery. At last night's epic Entertainment Weekly upfronts party at the Bowery Hotel, she said she's "hearing things" about a strike going down. "I know none of us want to. I know we have to stand up for our rights, [but] I don't want the inmates to run the asylum." The inmates? "Sometimes I feel like the actors who don't work on a regular basis … don't have the same perspective. I wish them the best, but it makes things very weird sometimes." Flannery and the Office crew already lost nine episodes, a solid sense of continuity, and considerable income because of the writers' strike. "It's easy for people to strike if they're not working on a regular basis," she said. "They already have a restaurant job, they already have another life. That's just the case of our union. Most people in it don't work regularly." —Justin Ravitz

See more stars from The Office, 30 Rock, and Gossip Girl at our complete coverage of the TV upfronts.

At the after-party for the opening of "Who's Afraid of Jasper Johns," an exhibit at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery curated by Swiss artist Urs Fischer and gallerist Gavin Brown, two strippers dressed as cops wheeled out an enormous Guernica-decorated cake to laughter and applause. The puckish subtext of the exhibit, after all, was the notorious 1974 incident in which Shafrazi, then a 30-year-old artist, spray-painted the words "Kill Lies All" onto Picasso's Guernica. Photos of Shafrazi being led out of MoMA in handcuffs graced a table near the front door of the head-spinning exhibition, which features pieces by Keith Haring, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and others displayed against a backdrop of life-size photographs Fischer took of a previous show at the gallery, creating a trompe l'oeil effect of one show superimposed on another.

On Friday night, we put on our best suit of chain-mail armor, grabbed our sword, and journeyed to the Superhero Supply Store in Brooklyn, using our arcane Elvish tracking abilities to locate the secret door (hidden behind a bookcase) leading to the back-room dungeon which played home to Dungeons & Dragons (With Girls!), 826NYC's latest charity fund-raiser. Since Dave Eggers co-founded 826NYC — which aims to help New York's schoolchildren improve their creative-writing skills — their events have typically featured a dazzling array of the hip stars that decorate the McSweeney's constellation (think Karen O, Sarah Vowell, Jon Stewart, and Amy Sedaris), all trying to absorb each other's mojo.

But, by the light of our glowing magic swords, the only stars to be seen were the real live girls (!), who were unhappily absent during all of late-night hours we spent rolling twelve-sided die in our youth. As we explored the dungeon, we saw that there were even more changes to the rule book we used in our parents' basements; for starters, there were adult beverages to go along the usual provisions of Doritos, Oreos, and pizza, which helped the grown-up geeks muster the fortitude and nonchalance to conquer the normal host of monsters and social anxieties. Also, magic items both useful and hilarious (we had the argyle socks of levitation and the magic lock-picking hamster) were purchased with real money. And once the adventurers started to encounter the malevolent oozes, talking baboons, and demonic lab assistants scattered around the dungeon, you could pay the Dungeon Master $10 to resurrect your fallen hero, and, more exciting, pay a dollar to reroll any of the dice that might've provided you with a face full of dragon breath earlier in the evening.

Robert Downey Jr. has been having a hell of a week. Iron Man opened last Friday, and the 43-year-old unlikely action star's well-earned "victory lap" ended last night with a visit to the Time 100 gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he was more than happy to gloat to the crowd. "I'm actually the only convicted felon in history — I’m not exactly sure, ask around, do a background check — who has rung the bell of the New York Stock Exchange within the last two weeks." But the real reason he’d come that night, he told us later, was to honor his father, Robert Downey Sr. “When will I ever have the format to tell my dad that I’m grateful and he’s a hell of a guy and I’m living proof? It’s American-dream stuff for me, is the truth.” And though we’d already heard six speakers that night, including John McCain, Downey Jr.’s speech was the only one that truly moved us. So we transcribed the entire thing.

Perhaps the critics raving about Grand Theft Auto IV have been too modest in their comparisons of the video game to cultural milestones like The Godfather and The Sopranos — have they forgotten Grünewald's The Isenheim Altarpiece and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon? "I think Grand Theft Auto, the whole series, is the most important artwork of our time," artist Tom Sachs said at the opening of his Hello Kitty–festooned exhibition at the Lever House last night. "It's completely underrated as art in every possible way, from the music to the violence to the automobile culture and architecture and virtual reality. The game play is excellent, and the iconography is really what makes it count and what makes it meaningful. I don't understand why that's not in the Museum of Modern Art."

Sachs, who talked to the makers of GTA for the upcoming issue of Interview magazine, says he hasn't yet played GTA IV because he's been too busy setting up the exhibition and his other show at Sperone Westwater. "I can't play it that well, it takes me a lot of time," he said. "I'll probably hook it up tomorrow or the next day." —Andrew Goldstein

Earlier: Why Critics Want Grand Theft Auto IV to Be the ‘Godfather’ of Video Games

So it's, like, kind of a big deal to be painted by Chuck Close. One of the world's most famous artists spends four months immortalizing your mug on an eight-by-six-foot canvas, which is then viewed by just about everyone in the art world. But artist James Siena, who just got the treatment — again! — from Close, seems pretty laid back about it. "He's a friend of mine. He asked if he could paint a picture of me, I thought it would be rude to say no," he told us at last night's opening of Zhang Huan's "Blessings" at Pace Wildenstein. (In addition to the recently completed one, Siena was also the subject of a 2002 Close portrait.) "Of course I'm honored, but Chuck's a very down-to-earth fellow. I don't really think about how incredibly famous he is," he added. Well then.

Since Close was just across the same room, holding court near the entrance, we asked him whose ginormous head he'd be painting in the future. Zhang's, he said — they've agreed to paint each other and have already exchanged photos. It sounds like a perfect match, given the penchant both artists share for large canvases and painstaking methods: One of the show's main attractions is a 59-by-19-foot Chinese landscape Zhang made by tapping ash off the end of a paintbrush. A key difference, though, is that Zhang has a team of about 100 studio assistants. As for Close: "I'm a schmuck. I've been doing all my own work." —Darrell Hartman

Big names like Dustin Hoffman and Sidney Lumet came out for Tuesday's premiere of the new HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which details the questionable judicial dealings that led to the director's now 30-year exile in France. But the surprise guest of the night was Samantha Geimer, the woman with whom Polanski had "unlawful sexual intercourse" at Jack Nicholson's house when she was 13. (He pleaded guilty and fled the country before his final sentencing.) Geimer had flown in from Hawaii, "a beautiful spot where no one is aware or even cares"; she's now happily married with three children and working as a "personal assistant, accountant, and bookkeeper" for a real-estate developer. Both her husband and her mother, who had taken her to the party where the incident took place, had gotten gussied up with her for the premiere. After all, Geimer's Polanski association usually means having to give uncomfortable interviews about her past — "Nothing as fabulous as this," she says. "We thought this would be really fun. We don't get many chances to come to New York, so I was really happy to come and see the city and do all this fabulous stuff. Got to be back to work on Friday or the boss will fire me."

We have to admit we were a little surprised to see the Roots' Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson at last night's opening party for Bryan Adams' "Hear the World" photography exhibit. "I'm actually a photographer myself, that's why I was drawn to the project" ?uestlove said, before naming as his favorite Bryan Adams song "The Boys of Summer." More excitingly, he also hinted that a certain mercurial-but-brilliant comedian might be considering a sequel to one of his greatest projects. "He wants to redo Block Party," ?uestlove told us when we asked after Dave Chappelle. "I saw Dave the night of Erykah [Badu]'s birthday party in Dallas." And where would a second installation of Dave Chappelle's Block Party occur? L.A.? Illadelph? "Over in Dubai," said ?uestlove. "Except he wants to spice it up a bit and have us perform with a 60-piece orchestra. He’s just like, ‘Promise me you’re going to rhyme over Star Wars, that’s all I want.’" What on earth are you talking about, we tried to ask, but then ?uestlove said, "Oh crap, I gotta go," and off he went. While we're having a little trouble imagining the atmosphere at a Dave Chappelle party on the Arabian peninsula, we bet Sheik Yerbouti would attend. —Randi Eichenbaum

"I want to do a comedy after six tragedies," Ang Lee said when we asked him why his next project would be Taking Woodstock, the story of the real life Greenwich Village–based interior designer and part-time Catskills hotel manager, Elliot Tiber, who was responsible for issuing the permit that allowed the iconic 1969 festival to take place. (That the movie might be a great comedy was suggested this morning, when Variety announced that Demetri Martin would play the lead.) At Wednesday night's benefit honoring Lee's longtime collaborator (and Focus Features boss) James Schamus, as well as Showtime's Matt Blank, at the Museum of the Moving Image, Lee was in good spirits, toasting his buddy Schamus and comparing their working relationship to that of Jenna Jameson and Jay Grdina.

Lee also gave hope to everyone who's ever wished they could deliver their story to a major director without all those irritating agents and managers in the way. "I was promoting Lust, Caution" on a TV show in San Francisco, Lee said, and Elliot Tiber "was behind me promoting his book. While we were waiting, he just pitched me a one-minute pitch. I happened to read the book afterwards, and I thought it was a movie." Rejoice, random dudes pitching your book to art-house legends! Success can be yours! "Usually that doesn't happen," Lee was careful to stress. "Usually I will take the book and throw it away in the nearest garbage can." —Alisa Gould-Simon

Earlier: Demetri Martin Will Make Love, Not War for Ang Lee