All Bernie Madoff coverage [Cityfile]

Certain ladies once spent thousands monthly on "maintenance." But what a difference a global recession makes! The same people who claimed they simply couldn't live without their Botox are now deriding it as an extravagant waste.

Newsday, the little Long Island paper that couldn't, just laid off 100 staffers. And they told the union: On the way out, take your damn holiday "food drive bins" with you. Bah humbug:

Scott Conant and Chris Cannon used to be partners in a pair of highly-rated Italian restaurants, Alto and L'Impero. The two decided to go their separate ways in early 2007 (Conant now oversees the meatpacking district restaurant Scarpetta), and while their split may have appeared amicable at first, things devolved over the summer when Conant directed some tough words at Cannon in the pages of New York Restaurant Insider and even suggested his former partner was incompetent. "Something tells us this won't be the last time hard words come out," New York's Grub Street surmised at the time. You can say that again. Last week Conant filed a suit against Cannon in New York Supreme Court, alleging that Cannon has failed to pay him $104,440.67 in deferred compensation. Cannon, for his part, is now countersuing, arguing that Conant violated the terms of his contract as well as defamed him in the New York Restaurant Insider interview, a violation, he says, of the "non-disparaging remarks" provision in the separation agreement they signed in 2007. After the jump, all the salacious details contained in the suit.

Our supercool, smokin' President-elect has already inspired ironic T-shirts, lawsuits based on those T-shirts, and now a classic "this thing looks like that thing" post, all in one week!

Juicy Couture funds terrorism, indirectly! You knew, deep down. [NYP]

Feeling a little socially overextended over the next couple of weeks? You can always blame your Ambien prescription for accepting that email invitation to your friend's cousin's Christmas party. One woman says that after increasing her dose, she "received a puzzling phone call from a friend who said she was accepting her dinner invitation," one that she couldn't remember extending. The woman's friend then pointed out that she'd sent the invite by e-mail the night before, although she had no recollection of ever sending it. We're thinking this could also work for denying all knowledge of/responsibility for drunk dialing. [ABC]

Los Angeles detectives have officially determined that the death of actor Mark Ruffalo's brother Scott was indeed a homicide. They initially arrested a suspect earlier this month, a friend of Ruffalo's named Shaha Adham, but she was later released. Then she popped up on TMZ and reiterated her innocence. She claims (or claimed at one time) that Ruffalo shot himself while playing a game of Russian roulette. In the back of the head. [People]

Remember Rob Morrison, the WNBC anchor who was fired a few months ago? Yea, well, if you bump into him on the street, it's probably best if you don't ask him what he's doing these days. Just ask him about his kids. Or chat about the weather. He'll be most grateful. [HuffPo]

No reporters left to cover your city, no reporters left to cover your state, and no reporters left to cover Washington, DC. It's the new journalism.

[Jennifer Aniston outside the Letterman show last night; image via INF]

Someone stole $6 from MSNBC's Mika Brzezinkski, outside her fancy Washington DC hotel. It was such a terrible mugging that Joe Scarborough complained about it, to the mayor, on the TV!

It looks like the Greenwich planning commission is giving hedge funder Steve Cohen an early Chrismukkah present: It voted 5-to-0 in favor of his application to add an additional 1,145 square feet to his already-ridiculous 35,084-square-foot house. (Yes, he's the guy with a Rockefeller Center-sized ice rink and Zamboni on his property.) Coming soon to the Cohen residence: A bit more storage space, a "breakfast room," and an expanded "his" dressing room, which he'll undoubtedly fill up with those fleece jackets he's so fond of. [Dealbook]

Today we have an old hound dog of a TV star, a hound dog of a reality TV star, a rehabbing actress, and a miserly athlete. And at Christmas!

As startling as this may sound, when people are worried about whether or not they'll be able to keep paying their mortgages, they generally don't rush to the cosmetic surgeon to have their eyebags removed or their boobs inflated. Oh, but don't just take the New York Times' word for it: J. Kevin Thompson, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, no less, confirms that it "would be a rational decision to put the safety of your home first."

Fox News is famous for its pathologically agressive flackery—hiring the meanest flacks in the business, and smearing reporters, detractors, and competitors. But rival CNBC is learning to be just as bitchy as Fox itself!

• Nearly seven months after it was reported that Christine Wasserstein, the second wife of Bruce Wasserstein, had found a buyer for her apartment at 1030 Fifth Avenue, she's finally closed on the sale, albeit for less than its original $34 million asking price. The 11th-floor co-op, which is still listed in Bruce's name on property records, sold to Blackstone senior managing director Prakash Melwani for $27.5 million. [Cityfile]
• Denise LeFrak Calicchio has paid $2.55 million for a two-bedroom condo at 255 East 74th Street. [Real Deal]
• Is there no one in the world who wants a faux Roman palace? Victoria Gotti has put her Old Westbury mansion on the market for the fifth time in recent years. The manse is now listed at $3.5 million. [Newsday, Laffey]
• Film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori has put his 5,500-square-foot penthouse at the Trump International on the market for $28.5 million. [NYP, PDE]

So nice to see CNBC and Fox Business setting aside their differences and making a special effort to get along this holiday season! Fox Business sent out an amusing Christmas card yesterday depicting CNBC's (ridiculous, unreliable) Jim Cramer as the Grinch and mocking him for recommending Bear Stearns and Wachovia just before both companies tanked. (Click here for a larger pic of the card.) Naturally, CNBC was quick to fire back, telling the Post today that "if Fox Business News sends a card to every viewer, advertiser and individual who has ever seen or even heard of FBN it would be the smallest holiday card print run in history." You wouldn't expect that quote to go unanswered, would you? Replies a Fox insider: "Perhaps the humorless, out of touch folks at CNBC should pull their heads out of Englewood Cliffs and embrace the reality of a viable competitor." Looks like it's your turn, CNBC! In the meantime, we'll take some comfort in knowing that while the financial markets are thoroughly depressing these days, the feuds between financial news networks are as entertaining as ever!

This isn't an easy time for Dan Loeb. (The billionaire hedge funder was forced to start renting his Gulfstream jet by the hour recently.) But hopefully he'll get a chance to enjoy the big day: He turns 47 today. Others celebrating: Katie Holmes is turning 30. Brad Pitt is 45. Steven Spielberg is 62. Christina Aguilera is turning 28. PR guru/filmmaker Dan Klores is 59. Randi Weingarten is 51. Memorial Sloan-Kettering chief (and Nobel Prize winner) Harold Varmus is turning 69. Keith Richards is turning 65. Model agency owner Faith Kates is turning 51. Ray Liotta is 54. Former Miss USA Tara Conner is 23. And troublemaking rapper DMX is turning 38.

Jeremy Piven can't make any more curtain calls because he was poisoned with (ahem) "mercury," people are assualting Bernie Madoff's broker now and tender meat reuintes J.Lo and Mark Anthony.