Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group has an explanation for that lawsuit by Financial Times which accused the private equity giant of sharing an account login and password to the FT website. A Blackstone employee tells the Observer that it was all the fault of the London office and the work of eight renegade employees, and that the staff in New York had "nothing to with it." (Someone ought to tell this to the FT since it argued in court papers that the culprits "worked for Blackstone within the United States.") Also? Blackstone would like the world to know that it actually has 63 paid subscriptions to the Financial Times, which in Steve Schwarzman's preferred unit of measurement, comes out to 31 stone crabs. [NYO]

Karole Armitage's Armitage Gone! dance company held its annual benefit last night at Capitale. The honorees at the Think Punk! event, Jeff Koons and Earle Mack, celebrated with their wives, Justine and Carole, as well as with attendees like Rufus Wainwright (left), Andre Balazs, Calvin Klein, Fabiola Beracasa, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, Nicole Miller, Lauren duPont, Allison Sarofim, Peter Marino, Mary Boone, David Salle, Michael Musto, Dominique Levy, Sandy Brant, Tom Sachs, Todd Eberle, Francesco Clemente, Michele Zalopany, and Jamie Niven. [PMc, VF, WWD]

When you have the Oscar essentially locked up in your nominated category, you can try many more intriguing gambles with your campaigning. Take Penélope Cruz for NSFW example.

The media frenzy over a Portland sex-and-lies scandal is playing out in such classic fashion, it's easy to forget the protagonists — Mayor Sam Adams and his barely legal paramour, Beau Breedlove — are gay.

In your frostbitten Wednesday media column: Time Warner burns billions, the Daily Beast loses luster, alt-weeklies miraculously manage, and more!

Bank of America announced today it plans to sell three of its corporate jets, as well as a Merrill Lynch helicopter that it inherited when it acquired the brokerage firm. BofA will still have six planes left even after the sale. And still no word on when the bank plans to sell off the carpets in John Thain's old office. [AP]

We hate to admit that we've listened to Christian Bale's tirade in its various forms so many times, it now comes off sounding like perfectly level-headed discourse, oooh goood you fucking little pricks.

New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik tells NYMag.com today that he's "addicted" to Kombucha, a Himalayan drink that "tastes like homemade ginger ale, looks like swamp water, and seems half-alive." It's the "elixir of life" and "warder-off-of-all-ills," Gopnik says. One thing it clearly isn't: a truth serum. Although he tells the mag he's 50, the New York State Board of Elections has him down as 52. Bottoms up! [NYM]

The Jonas Brothers are nothing if not high-concept, making their ambitious plot to recruit down-on-his-luck auteur Baz Luhrmann the kind of cinch everyone can agree on.

Omigod. We thought we were done with remixes of actor Christian Bale's crazy on-set freakout, but this one's too good not to post. It's insane Bill O'Reilly vs. insane Bale. It syncs up perfectly.

[Submit your own Gawker Stalker sightings to stalker@gawker.com] Feb. 4 @ 12:30pm Eating at Trattoria Dell'Arte and in walks Jack Bauer to save the day.

The craziness at the Plaza continues. In September, Russian financier Andrei Vavilov sued the Plaza to get back the $10.7 million deposit he plunked down on two penthouse apartments. Developer El-Ad countersued, and last week the two sides reached a compromise: As part of the deal, Vavilov paid $11 million for the smaller of the two penthouses that he'd originally planned to buy, in lieu of getting his deposit back. But that doesn't mean you'll be seeing Vavilov around the Plaza in the future. He's already re-listed the 2,906-square-foot spread with Brenda Powers and Elizabeth Lee Sample of Brown Harris Stevens for $12.5 million. [NYO, BHS]

An Annie Leibovitz Hollywood Portfolio graces VanityFair.com—a drab series of portraits depicting directors and their muses that's mostly forgettable, save for one that ickily superimposes Heath Ledger into a frame with Christopher Nolan.

Did you know that acclaimed pancake-head artist Dan Lacey is also an erotic cartoonist? It's true! But now his eBay-ing rights are under attack from a dreaded conservative blogger.

A sharp-eyed tipster caught an addition to Google executive Marissa Mayer's wardrobe for Tuesday's Today Show appearance: an engagement ring.

1/31 — Was at the Bar Marmont and saw JASON SEGEL, he looked like he was on a date with an unidentified cute blonde. They sat cuddling in a corner, he seemed very interested in the conversation they were having, and even more interested in downing drinks. He seemed friendly as fans came up to him and asked for pictures. Isn't he supposed to be dating Drew Barrymore? Guess not! [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

Obama was a hope-mongering starry-eyed radical centrist socialist realist bipartisan FDR 2. At least in the fantasy worlds of his supporters! But it's hard to reconcile everyone's contradictory hopes, once they're invested in you.

At last, everyone is hearing Cassandra out. The doomed prophet has taken modern shape in Harry Markopolos, the Boston accountant who blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff. The SEC ignored him. Now Congress listens.

Page Six reported today that billionaire financier (and New York owner) Bruce Wasserstein celebrated his fourth marriage a couple of weeks ago when he tied the knot with a "much younger Asian woman." So who is the "mystery bride"? We hear from a reliable source she's Angela Chao, the younger sister of Elaine Chao, who served as Labor Secretary in the Bush administration. Chao is 35, which makes her a bit young for Bruce. (He's 26 years her senior.) But she's clearly very smart—she graduated Harvard in three years and attended Harvard Business School—and probably very financially savvy, too: Chao worked in Smith Barney's investment banking division before joining her father's Foremost Group, which has interests in shipping, international trade and finance. The only downside we can think of: Unlike Bruce, she's a registered Republican.

· Al Pacino will star in a movie of King Lear. If they get DeNiro for Cordelia, this could turn out to be the electrifying Heat re-teaming that Righteous Kill never quite mustered. [Variety]