• Following a brief makeover, Café Boulud has reopened its doors. [W&D]
• Donatella Arpaia's Mia Dona, however, is now closed for renovations. [GS]
• Despite the recession, food festivals remain a hot ticket. [WSJ]
• High-end sushi, however, is totally over. Make a note of it. [GS]
• Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin has jumped on the wine club bandwagon. [Eater]
• Incoming Times food critic Sam Sifton has an uphill battle ahead of him, clearly. He was immediately spotted when he walked into Daniel last week. [P6]

Who says you can't protect yourself from swine flu and look stylish at the same time? A Japanese company is now selling a suit that supposedly protects its wearers from coming down with the illness, since the fabric is coated with titanium dioxide, a substance that kills off viruses. The $580 item doesn't cover your nose and mouth, though, so if you decide to make the journey, you may want to pick up an equally fashionable mask while you're there. [The Cut]

• It's been two days since Condé Nast announced plans to shut down four of its magazines, but the bad news continues to trickle in. According to some number-crunching by Newsweek, the magazine giant could see ad revenue drop by $1 billion in 2009; rumor has it additional layoffs went down today; and the decision to shutter Gourmet is still generating controversy.
• CBS execs must be breathing a sigh of relief. Despite the insane media attention focused on David Letterman's sex scandal over the past week, Late Show advertisers appear to be sticking by him. [NYT]
• TV news: NBC has canceled the cop drama Southland. And ABC is picking up three show for the full season: Modern Family, Cougar Town, and The Middle.
• A Project Runway videogame is coming to the Wii next spring. [Variety]

Oh oh oh, merry Christmas, it's a semi-credulous story in the New York Times about Harvard students and deprivation. Our nation's greatest treasures (Harvard students) are quite literally going to die, from poverty!

Robert Mueller promises to keep vigilantly fighting internet scammers. The FBI chief also promises not to be so gullible himself, online, which should be easy, since his wife just banned him from internet banking, for being a huge idiot.

After a 47-year career in city government, Nick Scoppetta has announced that he'll step down as New York City's fire commissioner at the end of the year to take up teaching. [NYDN]

[Leigh Lezark has a hard time making friends in the front row at the John Galliano show in Paris when Bria Valente, Prince, Sidney Toledano, Alexis Roche, Katy Perry and Russell Brand all turn away from her. Image via Getty]

Tracy Morgan joined Twitter. Like, mere hours ago. The microblogging service is the perfect forum for a man known for his entertainingly insane 30 Rock non-sequiturs. Plus, there's already a thriving Twitter sub-culture devoted to Morgan sightings. They are gifts.

Amy Holmes, the affable former speechwriter for GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist who tried to represent a reasonably conservative point-of-view for CNN, has left the network and is filling in as an anchor for ABC News' unwatched digital channel.

One of this week's Conde Nast layoff victims has emailed us with a harrowing inside look at the human cost of magazine death. She seems ready to snap. Her email, in full, below:

Here, the victims of the Great Magazine Die-Off of 2008-2009. We did this once in March, and then again in April. Good lord. It keeps getting bigger. [Pic by Anna Edwards. Click to enlarge.]

President Obama's graying hair has been covered since the very early days of his administration. But Paul Bedard of US News & World Report is now suggesting he's getting even grayer now that "successes haven't been as easy to grab," and he's had to deal with so much angst over the situation in Afghanistan and the battle over healthcare reform:

Chinese men are very, very interested in finding out more about a mythical secret of town Swedish lesbian lumberjacks have reportedly "crippled" the nation's data networks with a flood of search requests. And they're inundating the poor Swedes, as well.

Keith Olbermann's hour-long, uninterrupted, endless "Special Comment" last night was actually called "The Fight Against Death." You will lose that fight, Keith. We all will.

The trial of Brooke Astor's son, who was charged with defrauding her because he's a greedy old prick: that was still going on, this whole time! Until now, because the verdict's in.

You know the tide has turned on Roman Polanski's campaign for child rape forgiveness when even the French have defected from the director's camp. But just who the hell were these friends of child rape to begin with?

That is the only explanation for why, on today's episode of The View the Late Show band leader can't tell the difference between Star Jones and a thin, attractive Latin woman.

Brace yourselves. The nation's airlines and airports are about to get even more dysfunctional. The downturn in the economy has forced airlines to slash their flight schedules and swap out larger planes with smaller ones, which means you can now look forward to longer delays and even more crowded flights this fall. The silver lining: Bathrooms on planes still exist for the time being, even though at least one airline has figured out that it can save a few bucks if it gets you to do your business before you get on board. [WSJ, NYDN]

In your thrashed Thursday media column: More Conde layoff rumors, Martha Stewart's evil company gets sued, media hair racism persists, and Choire Sicha declaims on the current technomedia foofaraw.

Newsweek makes an educated guesstimate that Condé Nast's 2009 revenue will shrink by $1 billion.