No one even noticed, but the guy who used to be the president, Chimpy McHitler, has disappeared. Is he in heaven? Or jail? No, worse: he is in Canada. George W. Bush will never return to America.

All the pretty, fabulous people were at Lorenzo Martone's birthday party at soon-to-open club Avenue last night, meaning I wasn't there. Luckily a photographer was! The party, thrown by Martone's boyfriend Marc Jacobs, played host to many gliterrati, including Madonna and her maybe-boyfriend, model Jesus Luz. More pictures are here.

You may not have noticed, but England's political system is collapsing right about now under the weight of cinematic scandal. The latest news is that a pair of diabolical billionaire identical twins have succeeded in censoring the blog of a hysterical Minister of Parliament whose political views they oppose.

Nina Devlin was a partner with fancy financial PR firm Brunswick Group—which was great for her husband, who took information about the deals that Nina was working on and used it to help his friends make millions through illegal insider trading. Now Nina has a new job. With Edelman!

The Financial Times reports that "among the biggest backers" of Facebook's new funder is Alisher Usmanov. He might be playing sugar daddy to a freewheeling social network, but the Russian oligarch is also known as a "devourer of websites" that dared to mention certain allegations about his past.

More than 1,000 hedge fund managers gathered at Lincoln Center today for the Ira W. Sohn Investment Research Conference, an event that raises money for charity as well as gives other members of the industry a chance to gleam investment recommendations from some of the brightest financial geniuses around. (Those who paid the $3,000-per-person fee this year were treated to talks by the likes of Jim Chanos, Mark Kingdon, Stephen Mandel, Peter Schiff, and Peter Thiel.) Last year's conference was a particularly dramatic affair. David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, used the event as an opportunity to explain why Lehman Brothers was headed off a cliff. Those who heeded Einhorn's advice did well for themselves, of course: The bank went bust just four months later. Einhorn spoke at the annual confab once again today, although it's too soon to know if the poker-loving hedge fund manager took aim at another financial firm this time around. In the meantime, though, Einhorn's lawyers seem to have done just that. They've been busy trying to crush the other Greenlight Capital.

Two more New Yorkers with swine flu have died. Why isn't there a fresh round of PANIC? Because it looks like the worst is over. And we're not all dead!

This is an oil painting, by Scottish artist Peter Howson, that a nude Madonna and her now ex-husband Guy Ritchie sat for back in 2005. It is being auctioned off in Glasgow, and is expected to go for some £22,000. Image via Getty.

You try to eat healthy whenever you can, you go the gym every chance you get, and yet you still feel like you're not doing enough to stay fit. Relax! You're fine! According to a new study published in the American Medical Journal—and despite the constant patter of dieting and exercise advice—"physical activity and healthy eating rates are down, while obesity is up." Consider this a fine excuse to skip the gym this evening, if you'd like one. [NYDN]

Well well. If you didn't get enough of Scarlett Johansson's ruinous crooning with her thoroughly unnecessary vanity album of Tom Waits covers, it is your lucky year: she is putting out a musical album, again!

I can't with this show. I really just can't. I mean, these are people? These are people? Last night an alien was murdered while her friends watched, two teenage girls fell off a cliff, and then everyone died. I mean, that's basically what happened.

Good news, gambling addicts with houses in the Hamptons! The Shinnecock Indian Nation is one step closer towards gaining official recognition from the federal government, a designation that would permit the tribe to open a casino. In Southampton. And they've already reached out to Gov. David Paterson to get the ball rolling!

What do we know about Sonia "Maria" Sotomayor, our next Supreme Court activist? She is dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. She is so dumb!

In your woebegone Wednesday media column: Richard Branson's allegedly stalking Playboy, dead mag foto fun, more ominous signs on the NYT's Social Media Editor, and gag outsourcing is the new "let's hope it doesn't turn into real outsourcing":

We'll admit, there were some funny lines in this serenade to Rupert Murdoch at the Wall Street Journal's "D" event. But isn't buttering up the boss at the absolute beginning of your tech conference a little blatant?

• Rumor has it Richard Branson may be interested in buying Playboy. [ChiTrib]
• Two Boston Globe unions have agreed to concessions with the NYT Co. [E&P]
• Why did the Times pick Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to invest in the paper instead of David Geffen? It seems publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was "worried about Geffen's ambition to take over the company." [AllThingsD]
• Mayor Bloomberg plans to introduce legislation in Albany to extend the city's popular—but broke—film/TV tax credit program. [THR]
• Tom McGeveran has been named interim editor of the New York Observer. He'll take over for Peter Kaplan, whose last day will be this Friday. [NYO]

The White House press corps is launching another one of its periodic protests against the practice of "senior administration officials" giving background briefings to reporters on the condition that they not be named, and they've outed yesterday's briefers on the Sotomayor nomination to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz.

Is there a plot to deny Michael Wolff airtime on CNBC? For the second time in the last month, a technical glitch ended up interrupting one of his appearances, although we can't imagine viewers minded the fact that his image disappeared behind a blue screen for a minute or so while he droned on about Jon & Kate Plus 8, a show he explains at the outset he's never even seen before. (That's his shoulder sticking out on the right side of the photo.) The video is here; skip ahead to the 2:45 mark to see Wolff's magical disappearing act in action. [CNBC, previously]

The Way We Live Now: Hungrily. We've been reduced to eating food that we canned ourselves. What did we can? The weeds in the garden. Mmm, minimal sustenance.

Dick Cheney, the least likable humanoid creature both on the planet and deep below its surface, where he came from, wants to write a book. He would like $2 million for it, thank you. It's worth it, though! His last book was totally awesome!