The US is still engaged, supposedly, in the occupation of an unfriendly middle eastern nation, called "Iraq." We remind you of this because you won't learn about it on the television. It's expensive!
• More cuts at Condé Nast could come when Si Newhouse returns from his European vacation next week. Among the possible victims: Domino, Details, and staffers in the company's web division. [NYP]
• Berkley Books has cancelled plans to publish Angel at the Fence, a Holocaust memoir that the author admitted contains fabrications. [NYT]
• NBC is producing more webisodes to make up for programming gaps. [NYT]
• Ad spending in '09 is expected to drop to its lowest point since '03. [AdAge]
• CNBC's Conversations with Michael Eisner is no more. [NYP]
• An interview with CNN prez Jon Klein, who scored big ratings this year with AC360 and Campbell Brown's new show, but will also go down as the genius responsible for giving D.L. Hughley his own cable news program. [HuffPo]
Steve Cohen's Greenwich estate might be expanding, but things aren't looking quite as rosy for most residents of the tony suburb. According to a new report, the number of foreclosures increased by 42 percent between January and the end of November. Not that the greatest economic decline since the Great Depression is sinking in much: Local real estate agents claim "there was little empirical evidence to show a direct link between Wall Street's woes and new mortgage defaults." [Greenwich Time]
Today we have a secret political scion, a humping prince, a "celebutard" sex scandal, and a secretly gay sham couple about to come out.
As far as luxuries go, it's not exactly up there with designer clothes and vacations in the Caribbean, but now it seems that even vitamins that supposedly help fight off colds have fallen victim to recessionary scrimping. But that's a good thing, according to killjoy doctors who point out that once you've caught a cold, nothing's going to make much difference. Much better, they say, to focus on prevention, which means adopting a Howard Hughes-ish policy of not touching people and obsessively hand-washing: "When people cough, they cover their mouths with their hands. Then you shake hands with them." We also think that it's about time germ masks became socially acceptable street wear.
• Michael Waldorf, who works for one of the very few hedge funds that will actually record gains for 2008—he's a senior vice president at John Paulson's Paulson & Co.—has closed on an apartment at Riverhouse (left), the new development in Battery Park City. Waldorf and his wife, Julie, paid $6.175 million for a 28th floor apartment in the building also known as 1 River Terrace. [Cityfile]
• Fashion designer Domenico Vacca has dropped the price of his condo at the Museum Tower. Vacca and his wife paid $6.15 million for the unit in February and first listed the apartment for $9.5 million this summer. It's now been reduced to $8.9 million. [WSJ]
• Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Thani of Qatar has listed his three-bedroom apartment at Trump Park Avenue for $14 million. Al-Thani paid $6.1 million for the 3,300-square-foot condo in 2005. [WSJ]
One more unanticipated victim of the meltdown on Wall Street: boldly patterned shirts and ties. It seems that wearing a loud, striped shirt and clashing tie isn't quite as popular now that bankers aren't the big swinging dicks they once were (and yesterday's investment bankers are today's commercial bankers). "When money gets tighter, people refer back to basics," a London tailor tells CNN. Don't think, though, that shirt and tiemakers are going to have any difficulty accommodating the sartorial switch-up. Thomas Pink, you'll be happy to hear, now has 19 different varieties of plain white shirts on sale.
• Tom Cruise says he loves flying, hockey, football, skydiving, horse riding, mountain climbing and scuba diving. Oh, and he also says he'd like to have seven more kids with Katie Holmes. [The Sun]
• Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony plan to end their marriage "right after Marc's show at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14," which sounds like excellent timing, if you ask us. [NYDN]
• Is Mariah Carey pregnant? Yes? No? Do you care? [P6, Fox News]
• No one is quite sure if Tom Brady proposed to Gisele last week. [NYDN]
• Whitney Port, you'll be shocked to hear, rarely turns up to her "day job." [P6]
• Heather Mills' former nanny is suing her for having to "blow-dry Mills' hair, work unreasonable hours, and spray-tan a naked Mills." [MSNBC]
• Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend may be slashing staff, but he's still charging the company for private jet flights. [P6]
• Assuming you have access to a very good house cleaning service, the Kardashian residence in LA is now on the market for $3.395 mil. [TMZ]
• Lawyers for Madoff may be planning to mount an insanity defense if the case goes to trial. [NYDN]
• Madoff has until Wednesday to provide a list of all investments, loans, lines of credit, brokerage accounts and other holdings to the SEC. [Bloomberg]
• In the meantime, forensic accountants are looking into whether Madoff sent large sums of money to offshore accounts in places like the Caribbean. [Guardian]
• Not surprisingly, l'affaire Madoff should keep a long list of lawyers very busy for a very long time. [NYP]
• Although Latin Americans are believed to have been big losers in Madoff's scheme, very few have come forward to acknowledge the losses. [WSJ]
• A burglar stole a $10,000 statue from Madoff's Palm Beach estate. [NYP]
• Bernie Madoff's most famous neighbor, Matt Lauer, isn't so thrilled by the reporters camped outside their building on East 64th Street. [P6]
Incredible resources were deployed to figure out if Tom Brady is marrying Gisele Bundchen and to get Condé Nast's Chuck Townsend wherever the hell he wants to go, in style.
Conservative Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz looked like an up-and-coming mogul in the midst of the Bush administration, but now the funder of anti-gay groups is losing his partners.
So much for watching soused Saturday Night Live cast members play Bon Jovi songs Saturday nights at "The Cutting Room," because Chris Noth is shutting his Flatiron district club.
Scientology prince Tom Cruise is supposedly no longer speaking publicly about his membership in the cult, a far cry from the days he used new films as a chance to promote the "church."
