Please try to contain your surprise at this truly stunning revelation. [NYT]

"An aggressive criminal investigation" has been launched after a random internet message board crank claimed to have put a price on Andrew Cuomo's head.

CNBC is on fire! Just like the economy. After being lambasted for being catastrophically wrong about everything its anchors and reporters are paid to understand, the business network is actually enjoying its notoriety.

[Nikki Reed, Taylor Lautner, and Kristen Stewart (these are all actors we should know, old people) in Vancouver, where they are shooting the new "Twilight" vampire porn movie; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Did you know that the reason talk show hosts don't have sidekicks anymore is because of blogs and Dick Cheney? Alessandra Stanley cracked the code!

• Marty Peretz, former owner of the New Republic, is buying back the mag with a group of investors led by former Lazard exec Laurence Grafstein. [Politico]
• The New York Times Co. has successfully raised $225 million by selling off 21 floors of its Eighth Avenue office building. [NYT]
• "Was last week the worst one in CNBC's 20-year history—or the best?" asks the Times today. Thanks in part to Jon Stewart, we're pretty sure it was its worst, but ratings are up so CNBC execs aren't complaining. [NYT]
• Carl Icahn is stepping up his effort to take control of Lionsgate. [Variety]
• McClatchy, which publishes 30 daily newspapers, says it plans to slash 1,600 jobs, or 15% of its work force, as well as cut salaries across the board. [WSJ]
• Mag covers with Barack Obama have performed well, by and large. [NYP]
• Watchmen was No. 1 at the weekend box office, grossing $55.7 million. [EW]
• The Tribeca Film Festival announced its May lineup today. [THR]

Mondays are best spent piecing together the ruin that followed in the weekend's wake. Recovering the satellites, analyzing the soil samples. And looking at the box office receipts! This week: Disappointment haunted all their dreams.

Hope you weren't relying on the T.G.I. Friday's in the financial district to feed your drug habit. The restaurant was shut down on Friday night after an investigation by the NYPD revealed that a drug dealer had set up shop at the bar where he dispensed goodies to Wall Street traders, brokers and bankers who "liked to spend their nights getting high after the market spent the day going low." Most disconcerting, though, is the revelation that up until he was arrested on Friday, the dealer enjoyed a perk that many bankers have had to do without in recent months: "He would dress up in a natty business suit as if he were a finance man himself—and even took a black, executive-style livery cab home each night." And he probably didn't even have to wait until 10pm either. [NYP]

The Bush administration lawyers who formulated and justified the worst abuses and excesses of the administration's war on terror conduct are having trouble finding work!

Everyone everywhere is mad about Terminator. Ashlee Simpson continues to plague us, as does The View. More film work for Tracy Morgan! And Julia Roberts too.

Just how bad is the Hamptons real estate market right now? Broker Enzo Morabito of Prudential Douglas Elliman says he's putting 15 properties up for auction later this month—at discounts of up to 50 percent—in an effort to "clear out the glut of unsold homes." [NYP]

If you were an art dealer at Armory Week with expensive paintings to sell, you probably went home disappointed, like David Zwirner, whose Bernie Madoff portrait didn't find a buyer. "I went there with low expectations, said Zwirner gloomily "and they were not met." According to New York's Alexandra Peers, the works that sold at the Armory Show and its satellite fairs like Volta and Pulse were cheap (meaning under $25,000) and tended to look "homemade, handmade, self-conscious."

Sean Delonas, America's Favorite Editorial Cartoonist, isn't on the New York Post's Page Six today! WE WON! Or, you know, maybe he picked a weird time for a vacation, he's normally off on Mondays.

Today we have a plastic surgery-riddled pop star, a star who steals everything that's not bolted down, a movie belittled because of its tween status, and and 'Old Hollywood' star who sold LSD.

Also: Britney Spears will scare you, Gossip Girl stars are better than you, Michael Moore will make a fool of you, and Scarlett Johansson will drink with you (if you are an old man).

J. Ezra Merkin, the disgraced money manager who steered more than $2 billion to Bernie Madoff, has a new lawsuit to contend with. NYU filed suit against Merkin last month, accusing him of losing $24 million of the unversity's endowment due to his "deliberate ignorance." Now a pension plan, which says it lost $4 million investing in Merkin's various funds, is taking action, too. The full complaint appears below.

Last week, Henry Kravis's two publicly-traded investment vehicles reported losses of more than 90 percent "after writedowns on takeovers, mortgages and corporate loans." Now vehicles are plowing into his Park Avenue apartment building. Consider it yet another perfect metaphor for the times. [NYSD]

Anna Wintour has set a mythically high bar of imperious bitchitude for other fashion magazine editors to live up to, but no doubt Joanna Coles—the British editor of Marie Claire now familiar to reality TV viewers thanks to Running in Heels—would love to be talked about in the same tones of fear and awe. The quotes in this weekend's Daily Mail profile, therefore, must be music to her ears (if not actually written by her publicist). Coles, who's "said to make Wintour look like a warm-hearted pushover," apparently presides over an office "often in danger of drowning in a tidal wave of tears."

• Richard Fuld's daughter Christine and her husband Aaron Packles, a managing director at Merrill Lynch, have dropped the price of their co-op at 79 East 79th Street by more than $3 million. The five-bedroom, full-floor apartment is now listed for $9.8 million, which is just $50,000 more than they paid for the home in 2007. [NYT, ELC]
• Marc Ecko and his wife Allison—who are currently facing $2.1 million in liens in connection with the Bernardsville, New Jersey castle they've been renovating for close to three years now—are now selling the colonial home next door for $1.229 million. [NYP, CB]
• Former UBS exec Ramesh Singh has sold his 4,225-square-foot co-op at 860 Park Avenue, which he first put on the market for $13.4 million in 2007 and went into contract to sell in December '08, for $7 million. [NYT]
• Writer/director James Toback is putting his late mother's 15th-floor co-op at the Majestic on Central Park West up for auction. The 2,200-square-foot apartment, which first went on the market for $3.75 million in November, will be available for a minimum asking price of $1.999 million. [NYT]

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Fox News host and wife of furniture heir Eric Villency, turns 40 today. ABC News anchor Charles Gibson is 66. Former congressman Vito Fossella is turning 44. Actress Brittany Snow is turning 23. Linda Fiorentino is 51. New York Times tech columnist David Pogue is 46. Neal Shapiro, the former president of NBC News and current president of WNET, is turning 51. Former HBO chief Michael J. Fuchs is 63. Artist Eric Fischl is 61. Bow Wow is turning 22. Chingy is 29. And former child actor Emmanuel Lewis turns 38 today.