In these dreary times of belt-tightening and austerity, you'd be forgiven for not keeping track of which ridiculously expensive champagne is currently de rigueur among rappers and jet setters. But it is our solemn duty to report that since Jay-Z's famous boycott of Cristal—which was triggered by the company's dismay over the hip hop community's association with the brand and led to a decline in sales—the bubbly that seems to have taken its place, Armand de Brignac, is doing better than ever.

Today we have a young chanteuse getting slightly odd plastic surgery, a celebrity mommy who goes skiing way too often, and a big time star trying to come back down to Earth.

• It looks like Madonna's search for the perfect home in Manhattan is over. She's reportedly gone into contract on a 13-bedroom, four-floor, Georgian-style townhouse at 152 East 81st Street for $40 million. The manse features a 3,000-square-foot garden, wine cellar, nine fireplaces, elevator, 14 bathrooms, and two-car garage, which should come in handy when it comes to avoiding the pack of photographers gathered outside her front door. A floorplan of the home is below. [NYP, Sotheby's]
• Edwin Cohen, the founder of Carlin Ventures, has lowered the price of his three-bedroom apartment at 101 CPW for the third time since first listing it for $15 million last February. It's now priced at $10.75 million. [Cityfile, BHS]
• Comedian Chris Elliott has put his 7,667-square-foot home in Ridgefield, Conn., on the market for $1.689 million. [Real Estalker]

Adrien Brody turns 36 today. Makeup queen Bobbi Brown is 52. Sarah Michelle Gellar is turning 32. Disgraced baseball great Pete Rose is 68. Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett is turning 49. Abigail Breslin is turning 13. Actress Julie Christie is 68. Anthony Michael Hall of Weird Science and Breakfast Club fame is 41. Shawntae Harris, the rapper better known as Da Brat, turns 35. And country music legend Loretta Lynn celebrates her 74th birthday today.

• You didn't think Eliot Spitzer was planning to stay out of the spotlight forever, did you? Rumor has it the disgraced ex-governor is hoping to get his old job back as attorney general once Andrew Cuomo runs for governor in 2010. [P6]
• Mel Gibson and his wife Robyn have filed for divorce after 28 years of marriage, reportedly because Mel has been involved with a Russian singer named Oksana Kolesnikova. [NYP, OK!]
• Madonna's PR offensive continues: Not only is she hoping to win hearts and minds in Malawi by releasing pics of herself holding baby Mercy in her arms, she also has had her former nanny talking up her parenting skills to any reporter willing to listen. [DM, MSNBC]
• Uh oh! Rumor has it Gwyneth Paltrow is planning to spawn again. [Sun]

"I don't know how to break this to you," Michael Bloomberg told CNN's Wolf Blitzer yesterday, "but people that go out and murder people don't read The Wall Street Journal." Needless to say, that isn't true. Plenty of people who worked in finance (and read the paper daily) have been convicted of murder. But we couldn't think of a better tag line for a future Wall Street Journal ad campaign:

• Stocks dropped at the opening bell this morning following the Commerce Department's report that retail sales fell 1.1 percent last month. [WSJ]
• The SEC is looking into whether Bank of America broke the law by not telling shareholders about Merrill Lynch's plan to pay out billions in bonuses. [FT]
• President Obama is expected to tap Fannie Mae chief Herb Allison to head up the government's $700 billion financial rescue program. [WSJ]
• From Dick Fuld to Tim Geithner, Steve Rattner to former AIG chief Bob Willumstad, the big guns of finance have a friend in Michael Bloomberg. [NYT]
• Lehman Brothers "is sitting on enough uranium cake to make a nuclear bomb as it waits for prices of the commodity to rebound." No, this is not a joke. [BN]

If you haven't done your taxes yet, Andy Spade would like you to know that he has a CPA who will take care of them for free, in the window of his new store, from 12 to 8pm today. If you haven't been playing by the rules, you may not want to have Steve Stojowski work on your taxes in plain view. And judging by the first line in red above, you may not want to have Spade's graphic designer handle any copy editing either.

We don't know what happened after Julia Allison reportedly left a Chicago nightclub with Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. But we do know the fameball was "standing between his thighs, touching them" before she left.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are each swearing off tattoo parlors; Neal Boulton is swearing off booze and Jessica Simpson is swearing off everything John Mayer ever told her.

It was one thing for John McCain to ignore Sarah Palin when he rattled off a list of Republican rising stars — "governors who are young and dynamic" — on the Tonight Show.

"Park Slope Parents," the Brooklyn listserv, is in the midst of a civil war between yuppie parents and list moderators. One combatant finally just snapped, and she's shared her rant with us.

He said Matt Drudge and Karl Rove held the key to the presidency. His last book was embarrassingly wrong. Barack Obama won by studiously ignoring his advice. Someone put Mark Halperin in pictures!

On second thought, WHDH decided it might not go out of business if it airs Jay Leno's show at 10 pm, so the station reversed a short-lived effort to reject Leno's whatever-the-hell-it's-going-to-be at 10 p.m.

Today in his Huffington Post column, Alec Baldwin delivered an important lecture about how to practice good, proper journalism. First lesson: Don't mess with Alec Baldwin.

Following his conviction on second-degree murder charges in a Los Angeles court, music producer Phil Spector was immediately taken into custody. TMZ obtained his mug shot; click through for a larger version.

Condoleeza Rice's first column for the Daily Beast isn't about international relations. That stuff's presumably better placed in Foreign Affairs. No, Condi waxed schoolgirlish about Tiger Woods, who she totally practically dated once.

• The model-centric cover of the May issue of Vogue—timed to coincide with the model-centric Costume Institute Gala, of course—has been revealed. And for the third month in a row, a black woman (Liya Kebede) makes an appearance. [Style.com, The Cut]
• Oscar de la Renta appeared on The View today to try and dig himself out of the giant PR hole that followed his not-so-sweet comments about Michelle Obama in recent weeks. [Jezebel]
• Speaking of the First Lady, she's added a full-time makeup artist to her traveling entourage, just in case you happen to be keeping tabs on the White House payroll. [NYP]

Want to see what a chop shop looks like? How about a money laundering front? Ever wonder what it's like to have "young men congregating on corners" stare at you "evilly as if you could be their ATM"? You're in luck! Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa has introduced just such an expedition to the South Bronx, which he's calling "The Underbelly Tour." For a taste of what Sliwa is now offering to "business groups" for $5,000 a pop, you can have a look at his insane introductory video here. [Gothamist]

After gay-themed titles disappeared from Amazon.com's search results this weekend, everyone looked for someone to blame. One hacker took credit. Some faulted an Amazon engineer in France. One source thinks it was the Conficker worm.