Alexandra Penney was a wealthy UES sex book author and editor who lost everything in the Bernie Madoff swindle. The only winners: us, because she's now the most delightfully un-self-aware ex-rich blogger evah!

It's just as you've always suspected: Acting like a jerk is actually good for your career. According to a new study, "agreeable" people earn less. And as for all those claims that women are condemned for bitchy behavior in the office whereas men get away with it: It's all true! Neuroticism, defined as being "tense, anxious or moody," has a negative influence on women's earnings, but has no such effect on men's. So go ahead and start off the year the right way: Avoid being pleasant to anyone, and if you're male, take inspiration from some of the masters and give free reign to your most temperamental inpulses.

It began with a bearded Canadian gentleman playing a guitar, but that was last night's episode of The City's only resemblance to Rust Never Sleeps.

All those layoffs at the Village Voice must be getting to Michael Musto. The usually-cheerful columnist appears to be having a meltdown! "I HATE when people say "Happy new year," he wrote on his blog. "What does it mean anyway? That some arbitrary calendar system devised way before I was born suggests that we are now starting some ridiculous new cycle or other? So fucking what? I'd have more respect if people said something like Happy Life Day." If you pass Michael in the hallway today, a simple "Hi" will probably do just fine. [Village Voice]

Skeletal oddity Ann Coulter was "BANNED BY NBC," but now she's making the rounds of the fair networks to bleat about her own victimhood:

Today we have an ass-evaluating rapper, a supermodel doing blow, a movie actress getting cheated on, and two wastrel young starlets. So, pretty original!

First Ladybot Laura Bush sold her memoirs yesterday, and the speculation was that she'd get more than Hillary Clinton's $8 million advance, because of...inflation? But apparently she got way less.

• 50 Cent has dropped the price of his 19-bedroom, 51,000-square-foot Farmington, Conn., mansion by $4 million. It's now $14.5 million, just in case you've been looking for a home with a subterranean nightclub. [Daily Star, KWR]
• Barlas Baylar, the founder of Hudson Furniture, paid $3 million for a three-bedroom pad at 133 West 17th Street. [Cityfile]
• Texas-based banking CEO Kenneth Dubuque paid $3.5 million for a seventh-floor pied-à-terre at 124 East 84th Street. [Cityfile]
• Two apartments at the Plaza are now available for substantially less than their original purchase prices. [Real Deal, Halstead, Warburg]
• Fitness guru Lydia Bach has sold her Victorian-style home in Southampton for $6.5 million. [Newsday]

Winter vacation is over (for most people, at least), but if the holidays left you with a depressing spare tire around your midsection and you need a reminder that nature doesn't discriminate—and plastic surgeons aren't miracle workers—the third picture from the left should boost your spirits. The identities of the four designers after the jump.

• A judge has yet to decide whether Bernie Madoff can stay at home or if he'll have to report to prison for violating the terms of his bail by handing over $1 million jewelry to his sons on Christmas Eve. [NYT]
• The trustee liquidating Madoff's firm has found $830 million in assets. [BN]
• Merrill brokerage chief Bob McCann is leaving the firm now that the sale of Merrill to Bank of America is complete. [WSJ]
• Rumor has it Wesley Edens is exploring the possibility of taking his beleaguered hedge fund/private equity shop private. [FT]
• Who will replace Morgan Stanley chief John Mack? The bank's board is now exploring the options in preparation for Mack's retirement in 2010. [WSJ]
• Flailing billionaire Ron Perelman is hoping to squeeze more cash out of Morgan Stanley as part of a 10-year-old legal dispute. [NYP]

A new poll indicates support for Caroline Kennedy has plummeted the last few weeks. Some 44 percent of voters say their opinion of Kennedy has gotten worse since she started, you now, "campaigning." To make matters worse, Andrew Cuomo has become the more popular choice among Democrats, leading Kennedy 54 to 34 percent. [NBC]

Legendary financier Henry Kravis turns 65 today. This means he can now begin collecting full social security benefits, which he may very well need at the rate he's going. Also celebrating: Julie Chen, the Early Show co-anchor and wife of CBS chief Les Moonves, is 39. Director John Singleton is turning 41. British food critic/TV host Nigella Lawson is 49. Novelist E.L. Doctorow is 78. Trudie Styler, the wife of Sting, is 55. Actress Joey Lauren Adams is turning 41. And volleyball star-turned-model Gabrielle Reece is 39.

In 2001, Barack Obama taped an episode of public TV restaurant-review show "Check Please." He admitted to pigging out on Johnny cakes, adorably, but then hogged the roundtable discussion. Arrogant.

The holidays apparently sucked for romance, because many people are breaking up, including no-longer-engaged Jennifer Love Hewitt, fresh-minted divorcee Patricia Arquette and maybe perpetually platonic A-Rod.

• Madonna's interest in Alex Rodriguez appears may have waned (she's been spotted with a young Brazilian model in recent weeks), but there's another rich, older, equally Kaballah-obsessed woman happy to take her place. At a New Year's party in Parrot Cay last week, Donna Karan seemed smitten with the slugger, although A-Rod "refused Karan's advances" since he's "still hung up on Madonna." [P6]
• Not only are most people on Mustique happy the Noel family stayed off the island this year, but a bar even created a "No Noel" cocktail to celebrate. [P6]
• Lindsay Lohan says on her MySpace blog that she and Samantha Ronson have not broken up, just in case you've been up all night worrying. [People]
• Officials in the Bahamas have completed an autopsy on John Travolta's son, Jett, and claim the death was caused by a seizure. [CBS, NYP]

We all have to cut costs these days and clearly Ron Perelman is no exception: He's in the process of selling his yacht for $67 million. The 190-foot Ultima III comes with eight bedrooms and a Jacuzzi and is where, according to the Guardian, the billionaire financier has "entertained" Gina Gershon and director Penny Marshall on the "yacht's lengthy sun deck in recent years." We can't imagine serving up drinks to an aged Penny Marshall will go down as Perelman's most memorable moment at sea, but you're welcome to chalk up Gershon's presence as further evidence of her questionable taste in men. Assuming the thought of Perelman and Gershon romping around in the hot tub doesn't put you off—and you have the aforementioned $67 million to spare—you'll find the full brochure here.

Hard-partying Episcopal Priest Gregory Malia was popular in New York nightclubs, what with his $17,000 tips and all. In Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — they have a nightclub! — he was just weird.

It was inevitable from the moment Gwyneth Paltrow named her website "Goop" that it would come to this: advice from the movie star on bowel movements. Stop reading now.

Following an autopsy, the official story is now that John Travolta's son died from a seizure. Travolta's story is that his son had Kawasaki disease. It's quite possible neither is right.

The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.