Low-ceiling'd smokehut the Beatrice Inn, a hip downtown bar frequented by society types and New York celebrities alike, has been padlocked. Some say it's because of all the druggery and smoking, others because of overcrowding.

Filmmaker and Transcendental Meditation enthusiast David Lynch brought Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr together for the first time in years as part of the Change Begins Within benefit at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night. A slew of celebrity performers and guests were on hand for the occasion, including Sheryl Crow, Laura Dern, and Ben Harper (with Ringo, left), as well as Jerry Seinfeld, Yoko Ono, John McEnroe, Martin Scorsese, Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky, Matthew Broderick, Moby, Jennifer Aniston, Desiree Gruber and Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, David Arquette, Michael J. Fox, Robin Quivers, Eddie Vedder, Jason Bateman, Barbara Bach, Bettye LaVette, and Mike Love. [Wireimage, Getty, VF, NYO]

J. Ezra Merkin, the financier who handed more than $2 billion of his clients' money over to Bernie Madoff, has been sued by the New York attorney general. The New York Times employs Merkin's sister...

New memory-tinkering research can only mean another wave of Philip K. Dick-inspired movies.

["Gossip Girl" actress Taylor Momsen walking home from church with her mother yesterday; image via Splash]

Reports of Gabriel García Márquez's retirement have been greatly exaggerated, the ancient Colombian magical realist is complaining. Though his agent said he was done, García Márquez claims that he's always writing. Just not publishing.

Stocks are down this morning, on concerns about the health of the financial sector. But the foreclosure business is booming, on optimism of more and more and more foreclosures!

Facebook will be so over one of these days, and Vanessa Grigoriadis, New York's scribe of the self, is ready to quit. She's totally done with Mark Zuckerberg's creation. Just one more status update, promise!

The return of Freddy Krueger. The sad remaining of Chace Crawford. Christina Ricci books a porn movie, The Hangover goes out on the town again, and The Game hopes to keep playing.

• The New York Times Co. says it will shut down the Boston Globe within a month unless the paper's unions agree to $20 million in concessions. [BN]
• Fox News gossip columnist Roger Friedman got axed after he reviewed a pirated version of Fox's new X-Men movie, Wolverine. [DHD, NYT]
• Vanity Fair is scrapping its annual "green issue." [Independent]
• Michelle Obama may be beloved by the media world, but she isn't a sure thing when it comes to selling magazines on newsstands, apparently. [AdAge]
• Playboy's former fashion director is suing the mag for discrimination. [NYP]
• Hearst's Country Living is launching a line of products. [MW]
• Michael Crichton died last November, but two more novels by the best-selling author will be published over the next year and a half. [NYT]
• Eliot Spitzer was on the Today show this morn, in case you missed it. [Jossip]
• Fast & Furious was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. [THR]

Jake Tapper is a whiny blowhard and a useless hack with no abilities or principles beyond "getting Jake Tapper attention" and so now the conservatives are suddenly into him.

What sort of fucker is Vanity Fair's George Washingtonesque editor Graydon Carter? An amazing one, according to a man who once stayed in a hotel room directly under his, listening:

The image of Russia's rich elite has come so far: They're no longer regarded by the rest of the world as hopelessly ostentatious and flashy, thanks in large part to Dasha Zhukova's stylish ambassadorship and Russian Vogue editor Aliona Doletskaya's announcement that "full-on extravagance, the red lipstick, the diamonds, the furs—all that is passé." Even the new magazine Snob, whose title implies an ironic self-awareness, has helped rehabilitate the spendy, blinged-out stereotype. How sad, then, that Russian Marie Claire's editor Olga Zaretskaya has wrecked everything with one thoughtless comment!

Everyone really likes cars. But especially when they're blowing up and/or full of guns and hot people. Also, people like both monsters and aliens, but not curly-haired soul-searchers who work at amusement parks.

If you watch this closely, you'll catch a glimpse of Rachel Sklar's ear-wiggling record. Breathtaking.

Harvey Weinstein's gracious-in-defeat couldn't last long. After paying off NBC to take his Project Runway to Lifetime, the mogul had "personally" congratulated the network. Now, he's calling NBC chairman Ben Silverman a big naked-arm-wrestling homo.

It's shaping up to be a particularly bad day for Ezra Merkin. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued the money manager this morning for steering more than $2 billion to Bernie Madoff. Now real estate mogul/Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman is suing for fraud, too, over the $25 million he handed to Merkin as part of his charitable trust as well as another $15 million he says he invested personally. [Bloomberg]

I wonder if the New York Post's secret sex beast columnist Andrea Peyser has found some sexy pornography to write about today? She has! "I must have your honey milk," it says, in part:

Do you like irony? Sure, we all do! Here is a statement Sarah Palin's flack gave to People regarding the recent Tyra appearance by campaign prop and real-life boy Levi Johnston.

Rudy Giuliani's consulting business isn't the moneymaker it once was. The ex-mayor's firm, Giuliani Partners, has lost a number of clients and top execs in recent months, and now has about half the number of employees it had at its peak a couple of years ago. Some suggest the decline can be attributed to the recession, or perhaps all the time he spends out of the office making public appearances and tending to his law firm, Bracewell and Giuliani. (Or maybe his golf obsession has returned?) But leave it to Giuliani boosters to find a way to spin it into a positive: "Some said not having a raft of new clients could be helpful should he run for statewide office—since his business dealings become fodder for opposition research during the presidential run." [NYP]