AOL, the failing Time Warner Internet unit, is laying off another 700 employees via emails alerting them to an "important meeting." Even the pink-slipping process is predictable now. And former CEO Steve Case? He's sad.

Last week Rachel Maddow called out failed Clinton consigliere Mark Penn for running an evil PR firm, Burson-Marsteller. The firm is evil, and Penn should just shut up. But he didn't! So he paid:

Olivia Palermo's PR campaign to restore her good name continues! Hot on the heels of her chat with People, Palermo—accompanied by her publicist, naturally—took some time to complain to the LA Times about she's been magically transformed into a villain on MTV's The City. How could such a thing happen? "I'm a much nicer person, much more laid back and relaxed, not serious like they show me," she tells the paper. As for the suggestion she's a flighty young social who spends every evening out on the town, well, if you knew anything about her, you'd understand that's complete nonsense. She's a total homebody:

Front page shocker in today's New York Times: William Shakespeare was a homosexual. Grizzled former war correspondent John F. Burns has unearthed the bombshell in the form of a very gay-looking portrait.

I'm truly disappointed that after all this time, Phish Phans still cannot successfully conceal their stash. Cops confiscated $1.2 million in various drugs at three Phish shows in Virginia last weekend. Hide it, hippies!

Donald Trump can't seem to go a day without running into a financial crisis of some sort. His Chicago condo project has been in trouble for months now; a few weeks ago, his Atlantic City casino empire filed for bankruptcy; and just last week a Trump-branded apartment building in Mexico went bust, leaving buyers who put down deposits out in the cold. Today's news: The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Las Vegas is in trouble, according to the Journal, which says that three-fourths of the buyers in the condo-hotel have failed to close contracts. And there's bad news closer to home today, too: He's now in arrears for failing to pay rent on the site of his planned "catering hall-restaurant" at Jones Beach. Guess we'll have to just hope that Ivanka's jewelry line is doing a bit better so she can support her dad in his old age. [WSJ, Newsday]

In these uncertain times, when the decisions we make have never been more nerve-wracking, and when trust in experts and authorities has been eroded, it's only to be expected that we'll fall back on guidance from the most reliable and rational source: our dreams! Despite the fact that neurologists regard dreams as merely the random firings of our brains, most participants in an international dream study believed that dreams provide both a significant glimpse into our subconscious, and omens of the future.

The deeply wrong Jim Cramer took to the airwaves this morning to defend himself against cruel vaudevillian Jon Stewart, telling the Today Show's Meredith Vieira that sometimes it's OK to be wrong.

Michael J. Fox is working again. As is Rebecca Romijn. Sean Penn and Melissa Leo make post-Oscar plans, and a great stage vet gets a potentially good role.

Last week you people submitted more than 100 fantastical ideas for Pancake Painter of Light and Happiness Dan Lacey. Below are the ten best. Vote now and make one come to life:

Michael Bloomberg has been speaking a lot of Spanish in recent weeks. He now often ends press conferences with a few Spanish phrases and has been been taking questions from Spanish-speaking reporters, too. Unfortunately, despite nearly six years of one-on-one tutoring sessions, Bloomberg still has trouble spitting out a sentence without making a mistake: When he was asked about the recent snowstorm, for example, he pointed out that the "the streets have cleaned" and "it was a lot of windy." With the mayoral election fast approaching—and considering challengers like William Thompson and Anthony Weiner are taking Spanish classes, too—the mayor is going to have to do a lot better if he expects to win over the city's Latino population. And he's going to have to do more than simply chat about the weather; he's going to have to connect with voters on a much more personal level and demonstrate he understands their culture and concerns. To that end, we turned to our in-house translator to put together a few phrases that the mayor might want to memorize as he meets voters over the next few months. ¡Buena suerte, Señor Bloomberg!

Today we have a model who got burnt, a hook-hiring hunk, an actor who is secretly broke, another actor choosing between friends, and two young stars who like to get really, really high together.

Porn porn porn. Cable companies are hoping to "quietly" sell enough pay-per-view porn to make, you know, a profit. Ad Age wrote a whole story about it just so it could use this quote:

Zoinks! Kelly Killoren Bensimon, the newest edition to the Real Housewives of New York City has been charged with thrashing her pretty young fiance about the face. Poor Nick Stefanov received a right Housewife beating.

Your jobs are gone. Your money is gone. But America's iconic brands will never leave you! (Until the rest of your money is gone). Advertising is the last optimistic thing around. And it's faking it.

If you're the kind of person who can't help but yap on your cell phone as you drive, tomorrow would be a good day to resist the temptation. The NYPD is planning a crackdown on drivers who talk and drive at the same time: "Officers on all kinds of routine patrol, across the city, will pay extra attention to the issue for a 24-hour period. Those caught using a hand-held cellphone will face a fine of $120." On a positive note, any cab ride you happen to take tomorrow will probably be a whole lot quieter. [NYT]

As long as human beings exist, we'll be searching for ways to be less fat without the bothersome obstacles of expending physical effort or enduring feelings of hunger, hence the continual stream of weird products that promise to help us in this quest, such as the breed of weight-loss pills that, instead of suppressing your appetite with a stimulant-type ingredient, simply swell up in your stomach to mimic fullness. If that sounds disgusting and/or potentially fatal, well, that's probably because it is, as Elle's April Long discovers.

She may be nearly six feet tall and have a very square, masculine jaw, but we're pretty sure that Kelly Killoren Bensimon is a woman. But that's not what cops at the Fifth Precinct marked down when the "Real Housewife" turned herself in after allegedly pummeling her 30-year-old boyfriend, Nick Stefanov. She was listed as a male. (She's also 145 pounds, apparently.) While you wait for Bensimon's lawyer to jump all over this case of shoddy police work and have the charges against her dismissed on a technicality, you can review the complete criminal docket for yourself after the jump.

• Russian financier Andrei Vavilov has already lowered the price of his notorious three-bedroom penthouse at Plaza (left). Just a month after putting it on the market for $12.5 million, it has now been reduced to $9.95 million. [Cityfile, BHS]
• Now that they're Washington-bound, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his wife Carole have put their five-bedroom home in Larchmont on the market for $1.635 million. [NYP, CB]
• Gilt Groupe men's director John Auerbach and Andrew Black, an editor-at-large at Quest magazine, have paid $1.9 million for a fourth-floor apartment at 255 East 74th Street. [Cityfile]

Several hundred people are expected to turn up at the MoMa at noon today to pay tribute to Eli Broad, the billionaire philanthropist who is being honored with the David Rockefeller Award. What will all the financiers (Steve Cohen), dealers (Larry Gagosian), and socialites (Mercedes Bass) be chatting about at the reception? Vanity Fair has a few ideas. [VF]