• Restaurants set to open this week: Zak Pelaccio's Upper West Side branch of Fatty Crab; the BBQ joint Dallas Jones; Favela Cubana; and The Local 269, which is opening in the space that once housed Meow Mix. [TONY]
• New York's "Best of New York" food-related picks are now online. [NYM]
• Chef Michael Psilakis appears to have several new projects planned. [TONY]
• A roundup of dining options in Clinton Hill. [NYT]
• Depression dining: How to pick food that is "nutritious and affordable." [NYT]
• Five people were stabbed outside the club Deco over the weekend. [NYDN]
• Not such good news: The population of cockroaches and mice is rising. [NYT]

Holy hell are the Mumbai slums a miserable place. That's the important lesson we learned when we watched the documentary fairy tale Slumdog Millionaire. And now we'd like to fetishize the film's young stars.

Some sort of Play-Doh knockoff begs: "Let the kids build a better world." Hmmm. Is this how we define "better world," more interracial dating by the Klan? Points for edginess, regardless! [Copyranter]

Vicky Ward's article on the Noel family from the April issue of Vanity Fair is now online. Don't expect the piece to change your impressions of disgraced hedge fund manager Walter, his wife Monica, or his five daughters and sons-in-law. (Former friends and neighbors describe the family as "irritating," "shameless," and "outlandish," among other things.) And you won't find the Noels to be any closer to figuring out that they've become personas non grata. The couple continue to turn up at parties—even though no one wants to be seen with them—and they keep "a folder of supportive letters from friends" which they pull out when visitors stop by their Greenwich home. Daughter Marisa Noel Brown seems to be adjusting a bit better, though! As she tells friends, "I've been poor before. I can be poor again." [VF]

In your blizzardy Monday media column: rumored layoffs at Men's Health, David Simon is righteously angry again, Ladies Home Journal's integrity—its most valuable asset, next to yarn—is questioned, and more!

Since Silicon Valley has so few real celebrities, why not go crazy for the ones we have: Dancing With the Stars premieres in one week with Apple co-founder (and Kathy Griffin ex) Steve "Woz" Wozniak.

Dow Below 6,800; Lowest Close Since '97 [NYT]
Dow Falls Below 6800 Amid Broad Retreat [WSJ]
Dow below 7,000 [CNN Money]

Did you know that shameful loser ex-congressman Newt Gingrich is the future of the GOP? It's true! We read it in a Matt Bai piece, so surely Newt will be as successful as Mark Warner.

Well now, here is a crafty postscript to the humongous Yves Saint Laurent auction that saved the art world: a Chinese insurgent says that he patriotically sabotaged the bidding on the most controversial items.

If you've ever seen a photo of Svetlana Pankratova—she holds the Guinness record for "Woman with the Longest Legs," in case the name doesn't ring a bell—you may have wondered just how long it takes her to shave her legs. You didn't? Well, you can find out anyway on Thursday when Pankratova turns up at the Kiehl's store in the East Village for an "in-store shave demonstration" to promote the company's new shaving cream and raise money for the Lower Eastside Girls Club. Details about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity after the jump!

He's called her a "bobble-head" and a "freakazoid," and has accused her of "peddling crack to kids" with her Dunkin' Donuts commercials, but if Anthony Bourdain's comments about Rachael Ray in the past have caused her any psychic pain, she isn't saying so. In an interview with Nightline airing tonight, Ray tells interviewer Cynthia McFadden that she "absolutely loves" Bourdain and has "an enormous amount of respect" for him. We're not convinced the feeling is mutual, but we have a feeling we'll find out for sure soon enough. [ABC News]

Corcoran super-agent Sharon Baum says she's getting rid of the forest green chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce that she's been using to ferry clients around for more than a decade. The reason? Not because Baum can't afford the $3,000-a-month lease, of course, but because she says she's become "deeply uncomfortable" with riding around in such an ostentatious car during difficult times like these. Baum is now thinking of using her other vehicle—an Audi station wagon—to escort clients from appointment to appointment. Pretty disturbing news, right? Next thing you know we'll be hearing that Michael Shvo has traded in his Mercedes 500 limo for a Vespa. [NYT, photo via TRD]

Hey ladies, lock up your vaginas, because Neil "The Game" Strauss—last seen telling you how to pull much vagina—is back, with a new book! It's about how pickup artist-authors can survive hurricanes or something.

Today's Mark Penn "Microtrend": lots of people are out of work! Well, that is just a "trend." The "micro" bit is that the sort of people the famous pollster knows personally are out of work!

Rappers have been dropping brand names in their lyrics for cash for years; it's tasteless, but widespread. But why would you turn a memorial track for your dead friend into a Coogi ad?

[Former pop idol Pete Wentz gets his hair did in Beverly Hills; image via Bauer-Griffin]

• The recession hasn't been all that bad as far as Hollywood is concerned: Ticket sales this year are up 17.5% and attendance is up 16%. [NYT]
• Viacom and CBS chieftain Sumner Redstone will have until the end of next year to sell off assets in order to repay his enormous pile of debt. [WSJ]
• Hearst is looking to charge readers for online access to its newspapers. [WSJ]
• Univision has laid off 300 people, or 6 percent of its workforce. [AP]
• Hachette is planning to reorganize its collection of women's titles. [WSJ]
• The recession has forced food mags to focus on cheap dining options. [NYT]
• Sarah Silverman's Comedy Central show hasn't been renewed yet and now the show's executive producers have threatened to quit the network. [THR]
• Madea Goes to Jail was No. 1 at the box office again this weekend. [NYDN]
• Another Bernie Madoff-related book is in the works. [NYP]

Internet fameball and brand new blogger Jake Lodwick maybe posted a sex picture of himself? Unfortunately we are obligated by fate to bring this to you. Compare and contrast if you want to (don't):

Twitter, a message-blasting site rendered infamous by its downtime, is out of service once more. Who killed it? We're blaming Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg.

One sign that this recession is much more serious than those we've suffered before: Parents are doing the unthinkable and condemning their precious offspring to a free education, thus ruining any chance they might have of growing up to have a decent life. Yes, private school enrollment is declining, since people's straitened finances can no longer accommodate annual tuition fees that can run as high as $30,000.