MSNBC just aired video of a man with a pistol strapped to his leg waiting for Barack Obama to arrive at a townhall in New Hampshire.

The Way We Live Now: Splendidly! Assuming we're in one of the right fields: Wall Street trading, administration of 501(c)3 canine charity groups, or lottery ticket buying. Everyone else: buzz off, brokies. That means you, Jesus!

Maybe he should have stuck with hockey. Tim Barakett, the founder of Atticus Capital and possibly the only hedge funder in history to turn down an opportunity to play professional hockey to go Harvard Business School, announced today that he's shutting down his flagship fund and handing $3 billion back to his investors. "After 15 years of being singularly focused on building and managing Atticus, I believe it is time to reassess my future," Barakett said in a letter to investors. On a more positive note, you can rest assured Steve Cohen's hockey rink will see a lot more action over the coming months. [WSJ]

John Hughes has already gotten a film deal for some young filmmakers, so maybe some added attention can sell the famous contemporary abode from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which has been on the market since May.

FriendFeed grew out of Google's casual engineer culture, and the team didn't bother dressing up to sell the social aggregator to Facebook for $50 million, either. This picture does indeed speak volumes.

And we're not talking RBIs here, sports fans, we're talking inches. The gossip dowager is telling everyone what kind of bat Alex Rodriguez is playing with. Yes, we mean his penis!

Jill Abramson is technically the managing editor of the New York Times for "news," but in response to this wild modern media age, she has been transferred to the "puppies are cute" beat, full time.

Say hello to a new member of the Hamptons social set: Vince Shlomi, the man better known as the Vince the ShamWow guy, who, much to the surprise of those in attendance, put in an appearance at the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge at Blue Star Jets Field this past weekend. Shlomi says he's here in New York because "branching out from infomercials" with some sort of "movie project," and he also plans to design "some swimwear lines" with his new business partner, model Courtney Bingham.

In solidarity with the suffering American people, Nancy Pelosi has graciously agreed to limit her taxpayer-financed private jet fix to four brand-new aircraft totaling $220 million, as opposed to the $500 million worth of new jets she so richly deserved.

[Rehabilitated Mischa Barton does her best Cinderella while filming for her new show A Beautiful Life. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

Self-serving scumbag New York State Senate gridlock-promoter Pedro Espada's son just got a newly-created $120K/year state "intergovernmental relations" job, which, his spokesman confirms, is "not a case of political nepotism." Shut up, whores. [NYP]

Scarlett Johansson walking to the gym with her trainer ... Alessandra Ambrosio having lunch at Bar Pitti and later eating ice cream on the sidewalk ... Ed Westwick and Taylor Momsen shooting a scene for Gossip Girl ... Drew Barrymore walking with a friend ... Mischa Barton filming scenes for The Beautiful Life in front of the New York State Supreme Court ... Jay-Z leaving dinner at Cipriani in SoHo ... Kate Gosselin arriving at her hotel, and later shopping at FAO Schwarz ... and Jennifer Aniston leaving her trailer on the set of The Bounty.

Today is all about the ladies who love the ladies. First up, a cable show fosters a secret lesbian relationship, a starlet poses as bi, and a (straight, sorry) rock star takes his daughter-in-law on dates to appear hip.

Why didn't the SEC catch Bernie Madoff's humongous decades-long superscam earlier? Because they were too dazzled with his fancy offices, allegedly. You can see why!

Why didn't the authorities catch Bernie Madoff sooner than they did? According to Andrew Kirtzman, the author of the book, Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff, it was Bernie's taste for fine design that kept regulators from noticing giant Ponzi scheme staring them in the face:

Perhaps it was his over-entitled LA Lakers fandom that caused Alex von Furstenberg, heir to Barry Diller's fortune, to think that (attempted) public shaming was the best reaction to a basketball star pursuing his fiancee. That, or stupidity. Same thing.

Not only did Mayor Bloomberg use Twitter for the first time this morning, he had to show off and do it in two languages, too. [NYM/Daily Intel]

So much for Bank of America's sweetheart settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At a hearing yesterday, Judge Jed Rakoff declined to approve the deal that the bank struck with the SEC a few weeks ago, allowing it to pay a mere $33 million to settle charges that it had failed to disclose Merrill Lynch's plans to pay out billions of dollars in bonuses on the eve of their merger.

Nude photos of Ashley Greene hit the net, Oprah eats Manhattan, Lilo and Samro get back together, Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper vacation in Spain together, Leighton Meester and Sebastian Stan are in love and Kate Moss is aging rapidly.