• The art gallery Plane Space has taken $1 million off the price of its townhouse at 102 Charles Street (left). The 5,760-square-foot space is now listed at $9.6 million. [Cityfile, PDE] (Update: This item originally listed the owner as Andrea Soros Colombel, the philanthropist daughter of George Soros. A rep for Ms. Soros tells us she no longer owns the townhouse, having sold it to Plane Space several years ago.)
• The longtime home of Baroness Jacqueline de Gunzburg, who passed away in September, has hit the market. The five-bedroom apartment at 960 Park Avenue has an asking price of $10.95 million. [Cityfile, Stribling]
• Wanna live in the same building as Jamie Dimon? Furniture designer Vladimir Kagan and his wife Erica Wilson have put their 3,840-square-foot co-op at 1185 Park Avenue on the market for $8.75 million. [NYP, Corcoran]

Just because Raffaello Follieri is sitting in a prison cell doesn't mean his legal troubles are over. Yesterday five former employees told a judge that the fraudster cheated them out of $1 million in wages that were promised to them back when Follieri's firm was "working with" the Vatican on "real estate deals." Anne Hathaway's ex wasn't in the courtroom to respond to the allegations; he participated via video hookup from Pennsylvania's minimum-security Loretto Federal Prison Camp. The worst part: the former Prada aficionado had to wear a green prison uniform for his TV appearance. Sounds miserable, doesn't it? If you're beginning to feel sorry for Raffi—or you happen to have some extra time on your hands today—perhaps you'd be interested in cheering him up with a belated holiday card? Be our guest! Raffaello's contact info is below.

Everyone is trying calm down before the weekend. Courtenay Semel totally made up for setting Casey Johnson's head on fire. Madonna tried to not be a demanding, terrible ball-buster constantly.

The documentary about Anna Wintour and Vogue, The September issue, which is showing at Sundance this weekend, sounds like it will be a nostalgic look at a golden era when advertisers had huge budgets, readers had disposable income, and print media still had a reasonably healthy pulse: Based on footage gathered during the months before the publication of the September '07 issue, Vogue's biggest-ever, the film goes behind the scenes at the fashion bible and exposes the creatives processes of its inner circle like Grace Coddington (who filmmaker R.J. Cutler said was "unhappy" about the presence of his cameras), as well as delves into Wintour's personal life.

John Catsimatidis is the billionaire owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain. He was also seriously considering a bid for mayor, at least when it looked like he wouldn't have to go head-to-head with Michael Bloomberg. Oh, how Catsimatidis's fortunes have changed since then. In September, a federal judge ruled that his company had violated federal and state laws by failing to pay overtime to hundreds of supermarket employees. Then Bloomberg successfully pushed for a change in term limit laws, which cleared the way for him to run for a third term and also foiled Catsimatidis' plan to be New York's second billionaire mayor. And now he suffered yet another embarrassing legal defeat.

Not all newspaper journalists are getting hammered by the simultaneous implosion of their industry and the economy: The embattled Times just raised Web staff salaries by an average 12 percent. Yay unions?

It took close to a year, but John Leguizamo and his wife Justine have finally unloaded their four-bedroom apartment at 45 Gramercy Park North. The 11th-floor spread, which the couple purchased in 2004 and first listed in January 2008 for $5.85 million, was sold for $3.65 million to Samuel and Elizabeth White. Photos of the apartment and a floorplan after the jump!

Oprah Winfrey famously can't control her weight. She recently overate until she was 200 pounds. So why is her 17-year diet-and-exercise manager a bestselling author?

Anna Wintour has given filmmaker R.J. Cutler an extraordinary gift: Not only did she allow his cameras into the Vogue offices and her family, the editor also revealed her (remaining) human side.

There's a new Madoff-related scandal! It turns out that Bernie's wife, Ruth Madoff, who published a cookbook in 1996 with the unoriginal title The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher: Over 175 Recipes From America's Greatest Restaurants, didn't actually write the book herself. She paid someone else to do it: "Mrs. Madoff was interested in having her name on something that would allow for some sort of fun." We're as stunned as you are, we're sure. [NYT]

It's been a rough few months for designer Rachel Roy what with her husband Damon Dash's money troubles, but today she really does have a reason to break open the Cristal. It's her 35th birthday. Others blowing out birthday candles today: Actor Chad Lowe is 41. David Zaslav, the CEO of Discovery Communications, is 49. Advertising bigshot Linda Kaplan Thaler is turning 58. And nutty British royal Princess Michael of Kent turns 64 today.

• JPMorgan Chase posted a 76% drop in profits in the fourth quarter, results that chief Jamie Dimon eloquently described as "very disappointing." [WSJ]
• Washington is close to finalizing a deal to give Bank of America billions in extra cash to help it "digest" the purchase of Merrill Lynch. [Reuters]
• What's Morgan Stanley doing with its bailout cash? It's buying an oil supertanker, which is what we'd do, too, if someone gave us $10 billion. [BN]
• An exec at Blackstone has been charged with insider trading. [CNN]
• Carl Icahn is suing fellow activist investor Warren Lichtenstein. [DB]
• The Dow dropped 248 points yesterday with Citigroup taking a particular beating, shedding 23 percent. But that doesn't mean Vikram Pandit isn't doing his best to keep morale up. [NYP, WSJ]

Two of the hottest 2008 presidential campaign scoops belonged to the Huffington Post's Off the Bus. Arianna Huffington let the citizen journalism project stagnate, then gave it to her godson.

• Naomi Campbell has settled a lawsuit by a former maid who alleged the world's most temperamental supermodel threw her phone at her head after she failed to find a pair of misplaced jeans back in 2006. [NYDN]
• Casey Johnson and Courtenay Semel appear to have made up following their violent brawl. They're heading to Sundance together. [P6]
• Guy Ritchie spent time at Madonna's apartment on Tuesday. Not because they're reconciling, but because Madonna's daughter Lourdes insisted on it. [NYDN]
• George Soros has a new "friend," a model 50 years his junior named Kate Gibbs. This is what she looks like, just in case you're curious. [P6]
• Book agent and man-about-town Luke Janklow and his wife, Sweetiepie owner Julie Janklow, appear to be headed for divorce. [P6]

We hear Village Voice Media has bought a controlling interest in social networking site LikeMe.net. But we can't imagine why.

Was it the sad news of Steve Jobs's ailments? Or just bad fish-oil capsules? Something was off in the Twittersphere today.

First New York bloggers were incensed by Rex Sorartz's caddish self-promotion in the New York Observer; now fellow Midwesterners are raising questions about the life story he floated in the paper.

It wasn't a joke: Gwyneth Paltrow really is planning to open a gym with her personal trainer, Tracy Anderson, the same woman responsible for Madonna's freakishly muscular arms. Paltrow's publicist tells the Daily News that the gym will be located in Tribeca. But don't expect to see Gwynnie in person when it eventually opens: When she went on Oprah last fall with Anderson, she said her "favorite gym in the world" was the one located in her own home. [NYDN]

There's a reason why CNBC viewers get shortchanged on their tech coverage: Jim Goldman, the network's Silicon Valley bureau chief, is not very tall. It's the kind of thing polite people don't talk about here.

My fellow Americans (and other fellow travelers of cyberspace), it occurs to me that we stand at the threshold of an historic transition: This will be the last Gawker live blog of the Dubya era. (Heckuva job, Clownie!) When next we meet, a presidential upgrade will have been completed. This got me thinking — is there nothing We The People can't improve on, if we just set our minds to it? I say: No there isn't. What about lame reality-show catchphrases — can we improve on those? I say: Yes we can!