Pre-Marketing 9.15.10

* Is BoA no longer considering Merrill Lynch to be the bane of its (once tenuous) existence?

* Peter Kafka: Twitter’s new design is a reluctant admission of having become a media company.

* Michael Kinsley: Baby Boomers are nearing their final act, which should be saving the economy.

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point lowerLondon opens flat, European shares slip on pharma and the Nikkei climbs 2.3% on yen intervention.

An infomercial on how to fix venture capital

* Alex Fangos: Why toilet paper is better than cash

New VC/PE performance data from Cambridge Associates

* Dear parents: Forget the ice cream truck guy. Watch out for the Google engineers.

* Peter Lattman: The Momentive/Hexion merger shows just how far Apollo has come in two short years.

* Today in political rhetoric: Democrat road-tests the phrase Republican TARP, in reference to an extension of Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.

* Tweet of the Day: @goldman Some free PR advice: If tech blogs are speculating that your badass CEO was detained for carrying ninja stars, DO NOT DENY! Even if untrue.

* Is a bidding war coming for ArcSight?

* Lou Whiteman: The bullish case for GM

* The new Term Sheet daily email launches later this morning. Sign up here.

* Venture capitalist Brad Feld makes his “film” debut, as a lowly intern:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMR6_O9iZFg]