BACHELOR PARTY: What's the bigger honor: being a member of the Time 100, the newsweekly's annual roster of most influential thinkers, politicians and performers, or being named Cosmopolitan's Fun Fearless Male of the Year? John Mayer earned both honors within the past 12 months, and thought hard about which gave him more pride before going for the brains over the brawn: "Time," he said, although he recognized the two events gathered a different set of peers. "One of them is a little younger, more hip and fun, and the other one is like me standing next to Malcolm Gladwell and a guy who made an alarm clock that runs on steak." Cosmo celebrated this year's Fun Fearless Male Awards at a lunch Monday at Cipriani 42nd Street. Other honorees included Chris Brown, Common, Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace (where fun and fearless twentysomethings oversharing personal details have put their employment at risk since 2003); Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (who spoke fearlessly about his relationship with Jessica Simpson as a handler nervously stood nearby); comedian Dane Cook, and "The Office"'s John Krasinski, who said the most unabashed thing he's done for an audition was to tell the executive producer of "The Office" the show wouldn't work because the American version would screw up the brilliant British version. "Telling him to his face that the show wasn't going to work was a stupid thing to do. Not fearless. Stupid." — Stephanie D. Smith

APAX ON THE PROWL, AGAIN: There's never a dull moment at Apax Partners, which is now said to be eyeballing Reed Business Information (RBI), the Reed Elsevier division that puts out Variety, Publishers Weekly and Broadcasting & Cable, among others. According to a report in the British tabloid Sunday Express, Apax has retained Deutsche Bank to advise it on a potential deal. The bank was the same one that advised Apax on its $2 billion purchase of Emap's B2B arm with Guardian Media Group last year. An Apax spokesman said the company does not comment on rumors, but an industry source in London confirmed Apax was indeed looking at RBI, although a bid was not a certainty. Other potential bidders include the European private equity firms Cinven and Candover, and the Rhode Island-based Providence Equity. As reported, Condé Nast Publications, which also owns WWD, said it was not interested in bidding for the division. (For more on Apax, see page 21.) —Samantha Conti