♦ Hayashi Ya on the Upper West Side is implementing a 3 percent tax on diners who don't finish their food. Really. [CBS2]
♦ The Vesuvio bakery in Soho is up for sale. [Eater]
♦ A look inside Emma Hearst's Sorella, the northern Italian wine bar which just opened in Chinatown. [GS]
♦ Braeburn gets two stars out of six from Danyelle Freeman. [NYDN]
♦ A list of the strangest restaurant names of 2008. [Metromix]
♦ Possibly the strangest concept to come to NYC in a long time: At La Cave des Fondus, which opens tomorrow, wine and beer will be served in baby bottles. It's the thing to do in Paris, just so you know. [NYT]

Macmillan, the publishing giant that's been around since 1843 and includes imprints like Farrar, Strauss & Giroux (home to Thomas Friedman), Picador (Naomi Klein) and St. Martin's (South Beach Diet), gave its employees what passes as a Christmas bonus this year: he didn't lay off anyone but did announce a pay freeze for 2009 "for everyone making over $50,000." That's not as bad as getting laid off, however, which is what happened at Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, and maybe Random House. Lovely! Full memo after the jump.

If you're working for a client-service business that's facing serious uncertainty because of the crumbling economy, the last thing you want is a stressed-out CEO. So you'd be grateful for a boss like Kevin Roberts, the CEO of massive global ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, who's written a long blog post about his recent refreshing five-day luxury vacation at Elizabeth Hurley's favorite Thai spa. The Classic Cleansing diet and daily massages really helped him get some perspective on his employees' crumbling 401(k) plans:

In anticipation of the pop culture nuclear winter to come, actor/writer/comic/former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry has begun stockpiling episodes of his new web series Children's Hospital, and lining them like cans of government-issue creamed corn on the shelves of the fallout bunker known as TheWB.com. The first ten episodes of the Grey's Anatomy parody premiered yesterday, and more than delivered on all the taboo-buggering promise of the trailer. Against his handlers' frantic protests, Rob agreed to chat with Defamer, answering all our probing questions about his Daily Show legacy, what it's like being directed by Oliver Stone, and who in the Grey's cast he thinks is a total cunt.

The Washington Post grumbles today about male actors kissing each other in movies. Not that they think that it's wrong, just that in every fucking press interview ever the only question anyone really wants the unfortunate straight actor to answer is "so was it gross and weird to make out with another dude?" It's a tiring line of questioning that can start to feel really offensive and gross—in that way that it indicates some sort of insidious bedrock masculine patriarchy in our society, and other bullshit college phrases—though some actors, like Milk star James Franco, handle the questioning maturely enough. Really what the whole Issue tells us is something pretty simple. We need more openly gay actors.

Many refer to stripping, escorting, and other naked-girl jobs as "recession proof," but that couldn't be further from the truth: when one's disposable income dries up, your weekly allowance for Candi and her insatiable taste for Champagne (which she gets a kickback on) over at the Hustler Club will be the first thing to cut back on. Today, however, the New York Times learns about the flesh trade and the fact that, like all industries, the financial crisis magically affects it, too! They lead with Prague, one of the capitals of sex tourism.

Who's going to profiit from the recession? Here's a start: Layoff consultants, discount department stores, fast food chains, restructuring experts, the financial news media, and meth dealers: "All the big swinging dicks on Wall Street were cokeheads, because coke is a money drug. Now that people are poor, it's all about the Tina, baby. It's the perfect drug for this new American era: cheap, powerful, and terrifying." [Gawker]

Ever since Don Rickles appeared in the middle of the most painfully awkward Emmy ceremony ever and brought the house down by making fun of it, we've looked forward to the day when he would bring those same powers of incisive cruelty to The View. Today was that day.

Let us not, at this crucial moment, forget how much shit the Tribune Co. is in. Executives at the Tribune Co. are quite literally wading to work today through rivers of bad news—deep, deep rivers. Yesterday they freaking went bankrupt. Today they find themselves smack dab in the middle of Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH's outrageous corruption scandal—because gnomish asshole Tribune CEO Sam Zell allegedly agreed in principle to fire a troublesome editorial page editor in exchange for $100 million in state money. Obvious question: Did Blago's corrupt scheme help drive Tribune into bankruptcy? We examine THE FACTS for you below!

The Plaza has been hit with lots of bad press in recent days. (Like here and here.) But the fabled landmark has a plan to redeem its rep! Book three nights through the end of the year (at rates of $875 per night and up) and they'll give you an extra night free! Plus they'll throw in a couple of free tickets to Radio City's "Christmas Spectacular" show, too. Just don't mind the shoddy construction work and fake marble in the bathrooms, please! [WSJ via TRD]

The criminal complaint against impressively corrupt and stupid Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich makes a half-assed effort to hide the identities of everyone not accused of wrongdoing, but with redactions like "President-elect" it is pretty easy to figure out the identities of the people involved. The most interesting unnamed individuals are, of course, Senate Candidates 1-6. Some of them are easy to identify, some less so. The Smoking Gun named 1, 2, 5 and 6—find out who they are, what they want, and how they're related to President Hopey, below.

Wendi Deng's 40th birthday party took place last night at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Pianist Lang Lang performed, and Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Billy Joel, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg supposedly made appearances. One person who wasn't there: Rupert's 99-year-old mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, who doesn't appear to be the biggest fan of her daughter-in-law. In an interview with The Age over the weekend, she described her reaction to the news that her son was planning to split up with his second wife:

Though we can hardly wrap our brains around the fact that after the jump, a video exists of Tom Cruise giving wedding advice to Spencer Pratt, we have to admit it makes a certain amount of cosmic sense. After all, both the actor and the Hills villain found glassy-eyes brides who were willing to make themselves over for their man. Sure, in Katie Holmes's case, the transformation made her into an unlikely fashion plate, while in Heidi Montag's, it turned her into a demented aerobicizer with large hard hats stapled to her breastplate, but no matter! Wait, where were we? Ah, yes: Tom Cruise. Spencer Pratt. Brother to brother. NSFL (Not Safe For Life).

In the world of startups, there's fraud — and then there's fraud. It's one thing for entrepreneurs to bilk venture capitalists with a sketchy PowerPoint. But using money meant to buy baseball bats and uniforms to fund your company? Despicable.

Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff, the famous political enforcer Rahm Emaneul, has a very special role in the criminal complaint filed against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich! Emaneul plays a "President-elect Advisor" whom Rod wants to call to shake down for $15 million to start a nonprofit. And, you know, it is unsaid that if Rahm talks to Obama about raising this money, their friend Valerie Jarrett has a good shot at getting that Senate seat. Fun with corruption! But will Rod try to sink Rahm? Is Rahm in trouble? There was a bit of a veiled threat from Rod, just the other day.

[That's Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, who looks like a little English lady ready for a horseback ride, filming their show today; image via Splash]

This holiday season, what do you give the shy, socially awkward single man who has everything but a girlfriend? One publisher is betting he'll crave seduction techniques by 9-year-old Alec Greven, the author of the slim new volume How to Talk to Girls. And beyond that, 20th Century Fox will see Greven's book deal and raise it a movie option. Commence sobbing, all you script-hoarding baristas!

A crowd of nearly 400 made their annual trip to the Bronx last Friday night for the New York Botanical Garden's 10th annual Winter Wonderland Ball. The black-and-white dinner, sponsored by Chanel, featured appearances by the likes of Cristina and Chris Cuomo, Nina Garcia, Marjorie Gubelmann, Byrdie Bell, Poppy Delevingne, Minnie Mortimer Gaghan, Steve and Christine Schwarzman, Dalia Oberlander, Gillian Hearst Simonds, Alex Kramer, Alexandra Lebenthal, Molly Sims, Holly Dunlap, Erin Fetherston, Margherita Missoni, Zani Gugelmann, Coco Rocha, Gillian and Sylvester Miniter, Bronson Van Wyck, Patrick McDonald, Stephen Knoll, Jessica Joffe, Jill Kargman, Lauren Remington Platt, Coralie Charriol Paul, Joe and Nazee Moinian, Kate Schelter, James and Whitney Fairchild, Lydia Fenet, Maggie Betts, Meredith Melling Burke, and Pamela Fiori. [PMc, Style.com, NYSD, The Daily]

Michael Sneed is a local gossip columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. And she's the latest journalist to be steamrolled by Chicago's US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald—the same prosecutor who sent fallen Times reporter Judy Miller to jail! But Sneed won't have to go to court to try to keep her sources secret, because they're named right in the complaint against corrupt governor Rod Blagojevich. You see, Sneed was allegedly the guv's go-to reporter for planting fake rumors designed to help his scheme to extort money in exchange for Obama's replacement in the Senate. Oh, this one is good.

Over at The Corner, Victor Davis Hanson is positive that now that Patrick Fitzgerald has arrested Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich and is looking at Tony Rezko, "Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is just about on the verge on losing his near mythic status among the Washington-New York media." The fact that this hasn't happened yet, and that there is no evidence that this will happen, and the fact that a large number of the "Washington-New York media" (as opposed to liberal bloggers) were outraged at Fitz for trying to get journalists to reveal their sources in the Plamegate case? None of that changes the fact that the elite liberal media will refuse to report on ths thing they're already going nuts over. (Attached: another classic example of the preemptive bias complaint, from your day editor's inbox. It arrived shortly after the second of today's predicted 500 Blago posts ran. Keep 'em coming, America!) [The Corner]