• Ryan Sutton offers up his list of the year's best meals and deals. [Bloomberg]
• Archipelago, which shut down last week, is now planning a relaunch. [Eater]
• The EV pizza place Artichoke Basille is looking to open 5 new locations. [NYP]
• Billy's Bakery in Chelsea has a satellite store in the works. [GS]
• NYC's spiciest cocktails, if you're into that sort of thing. [Metromix]
• A long list of Christmas Day dining options around town. [Zagat]

· MadoffGate continues to rock Hollywood: the "$50 billion Ponzi scheme"—pause for smelling salts—that roped Mort Zuckerman, Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation, and God knows who else. Please, please, please let the Olsen Twins's fortune be intact! [Variety]

Ahh, Rex Sorgatz and Neal Boulton! We've teased microfame expert Rexie for "forgetting his Internet safeword" while we flogged him a while back, and the endearing pansexual Genre editor Boulton for being a pussy/publicity hound.

More than a month after the box-office immolation of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the shellshock is finally wearing off for Kevin Smith. The self-pity, though? Not so much.

This past summer we asked if famed photographer Annie Leibovitz was a deadbeat. Now we have an answer. She owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, two lawsuits claim.

The Huffington Post announced just weeks ago that it had landed $25 million in new investments. Now, their traffic is (predictably) plunging. Arianna Huffington's dealmaking abilities are awesome.

Surely, everyone remembers when Bob Hope passed the Emancipation Proclamation, ensuring that even women would have the right to vote at the Oscars. Well, now you dames have gone and upset the LAT's Tom O'Neil!

What do Bernie Madoff and Tony Soprano have in common (besides their fondness for lives of crime)? It turns out that Bernie's son, Andrew Madoff, sold his previous apartment on East 66th Street to none other than Sopranos creator David Chase in 2005. Ominous foreshadowing? Complete coincidence? We have no idea, but this does suggest who the front-runner is when the time comes to turn the tawdry Madoff family tale into a film or movie of the week. (And if Tony Sirico can shed the Italian accent and trade in the polyester outfit for a suit from Syms, he may have the looks to play Bernie.) The official record of the sale is below.

"So me and a friend had a bourbon date at the 4100 Bar last night. Place was pretty empty, but who should materialize before us, like some Christmas tree-tackling holiday angel, but KIEFER SUTHERLAND himself."

We have good news and bad news from the Obama transition team. The cutest Clintonite of all is on board, but perhaps not for long.

First, it was packs of wild dogs roaming Moscow, then the Shiba puppycam, and now... wild boars have invaded Berlin, reports the WSJ. They're causing problems... unless they're wild-boar babies, in which case they're adorable!

It's little things like the recognition of Kate Hudson and Mary-Kate Olsen that keep the status-quo from suffocating us in the thick of Oscar season.

The $50 billion Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme claimed lots of big-name victims. Now, a few days into the investigation, the Hollywood connections are coming out. Fun!

No, really. Schneller says he was able to buy cut-rate advertising time for FoxwoodFiends.com through Google's experimental TV-advertising auction. He spent $500 to reach 330,000 Dish Network subscribers tuned in to the Oxygen, ESPN2, or WPT channels.

You thought Governor Paterson's proposed tax on non-diet drinks was silly? It gets better. As part of his new $121 billion budget, Paterson is also proposing an "iPod tax," which would assess state and local sales taxes on "digitally delivered entertainment services." [NYDN]

Ridiculously braided Guns "N" Roses frontman Axl Rose is destroying our national economy this holiday season through sloth and anger. And, even more, by not selling any freakin records:

Australia is SO MAD at Nicole Kidman right now. And it isn't because she honored her home continent with an eponymous bomb, or even because of her proximity to Fergie's labia.

Just the news you were waiting for: The Aura, Motorola's brand new $2,000 cell phone, went on sale today. Three tungsten-carbon-carbide-coated main gears! A scratch-resistant, 62-carat, grade 1 sapphire crystal display! Say no more! [NYT]

We're not really sure why this is happening (other than these people being weird), but Mamma Mia! is huuuge in the UK. Like, top-grossing film of all time. Beats Titanic, even.

12/15 — JC CHASEZ just walked in to the Equinox on The Strip in West Hollywood wearing a powder blue track suit that MUST be an early Christmas gift from Lance Bass. Otherwise, why? [Anyone? Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]