♦ A bruising day in the markets is expected to follow the scary job news this morning: Employers slashed 533,000 jobs last month, making it the most jobs lost in a single month since December of 1974. [CNN]
♦ Merrill Lynch shareholders will vote on the bank's merger with Bank of America today. [DB]
♦ Things are getting worse for hedge fund king Ken Griffin: His Citadel Investment Group was down another 13% in November. [WSJ]
♦ Neel Kashkari says the TARP is working; he and Hank Paulson may be the only ones. [Bloomberg]
♦ Citi has closed on the sale of its German subsidiary to Credit Mutuel-CIC for $6.6 billion. [MW]

Neal Boulton is reportedly orgasmic. The editor of a magazine for gays and a website for bis signed a book deal (with an agent) and claims to be drowning in reality show offers following a profile in Page Six Magazine. Everyone wants to screw and/or sign the sexual libtertine, supposedly, because of his oh-so-exciting and freewheeling life. But all indications are that his most famous antics were manufactured in the press. Take his alleged macking with Rolling Stone Jann Wenner, for example, Boulton's claim to "pansexual" fame.

Malcolm Gladwell's fellow intellectuals, bloggers and Canadians were the first to turn against the New Yorker essayist's accessible and apparently all-too-convincing ideas; now the various professional classes are, one after another, joining the backlash against his DANGEROUSLY misleading anecdotes. Fearsome reviewer Michiko Kakutani was brutal in the Times ("glib, poorly reasoned and thoroughly unconvincing"); the Malcolm Gladwell of computer programmers rather ironically ripped into him ("utterly lunatic theories"); and now a pilot writing in Salon warns that Gladwell will kill us all! Or at least perpetuate untrue stereotypes, false assumptions and incorrect statistics around commercial airline safety, which is almost as dangerous, if you'll grant us some Gladwellian license here. Take, for example, this exchange:

"A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea." [AP]

The crowd in the top left picture there was gathered tonight in honor of future White House press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "[His] cock may be sore from the hours of blow jobs here but he retains his good humor," Time's Ana Marie Cox wrote from the frenzied mob. That's only half a joke: Gibbs may not be a hottie in the conventional sense (except in a dogfight), but if you're a journalist soon to cover the president-elect — and who isn't, on some level? — you better start the kissing up as soon as possible (preferably three years ago). Luckily for the Obama supplicants, this administration is considerably younger and hotter than the last, and even tops the Clinton administration, with its charming young George Stephanopoulos, the It Boy of his administration.

Chris Matthews made some fabulously entertaining television in May when he schooled a right-wing pundit pretending to know who Neville Chamberlain was and why Barack Obama was just as awful. Then he did it again to Michele Bachmann when the Republican Congresswoman tried to slyly say all liberals and entire certain states were anti-American. Now he's just going all GOTCHA! on everyone, constantly, embarrassing himself in the process, like in the attached clip.

· Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? Rev 5:2
· And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death. Rev 6:8
· And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. Rev 8:1
· And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Rev 13:17
· Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. Rev 2:10
· How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Rev 18:7

The Internet has numbed us all to insults. That's what's so scandalous about the news that J.P. Weichel, a 40-year-old Colorado man, could land in prison for calling his ex-girlfriend a whore.

We get a lot of mail every day at Defamer HQ, some utterly essential, some a little more on the expendable side. But on a day packed with layoffs, Grammy Hell, Hamlin/Rinna reality shows, Paris Hilton's slimy bologna, remake overload, pseudo Doomsday Babies and strip-joint fires, it seems natural — and more than a little spooky — that the Defamer mailbag tested positive for unusually high levels of armageddon. After the jump, join us in winding down Apocalypse Watch '08 with a run through the apocalyptic subject lines that were, and in mourning the vibrant pop culture that was.

Snow Job: After announcing the 2009 lineup, Sundance organizers are now speaking out about adjustments they've made in the wake of threatened, Prop 8-related boycotts. Fest director Geoff Gilmore told the NY Times that Sundance "will make certain that no film is screened only in the Holiday Village theater in Park City, operated by Cinemark, a chain whose chief executive, Alan Stock, donated to Proposition 8’s backers in the November election. The idea is to give anyone who has qualms about Cinemark the opportunity to see a movie somewhere else." [NY Times]

On a day that has seen its fair share of horrors, the suddenly, comparatively innocuous couple of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes couldn't have picked a better day for news of their upcoming dual cover story for the NY Times magazine to leak out. After we've witnessed Satan himself emerge onto Sunset Blvd. to announce a series/collagen installment plan for Lisa Rinna, what damage can be done a creepy story like Cruise's revelation that he bought Holmes an engagement ring after their first date? With the black smoke coursing through our city, who can choke out a laugh at Holmes's insistence that she hasn't become a Stepford wife? Oh wait, we can:

People editor Larry Hackett sent out a memo late today indicating the celebrity magazine got rid of 18 editorial staff, per the goal it set in early November. The communique, reprinted after the jump, gave no indication of whether the voluntary buyouts the Time Inc. title sought had to be supplemented with involuntary firings. Nor did it specify which staffers were leaving, or which bureaus were most heavily affected. But then it was written by the same guy who let his magazine slide into the common tabloid muck it was once a cut above, only to rationalize and narrowly deny the whole scandal, so what do you expect, forthright, expansive honesty?

ET has been pumping its first look of Terminator: Salvation this Tuesday, to be presided over by none other than the world's most recognizably uni-named pop-spectacle-overseer himself, McG. (Eat his dust, Tarsem.) Today, however, we bring you the promo to the promo. It's as fitting an exclusive as we are likely to find for you on this, Pop Culture Doomsday: A fourth sequel to a picked-over Schwarzenegger franchise about a battle for human survival after a nuclear annihilation. Doesn't get any more apocalypto than that!

More bloodshed from the Doomsday trenches: Nikki Finke has word that "as much as half of the Hollywood Reporter staff" faces downsizing today, with TV writers Barry Garron and Kimberly Nordyke already pink-slipped alongside editors Harley Lond and Randee Cohen. And a tipster just sent a memo confirming that People Magazine has upheld its bicoastal execution orders issued a month ago, concluding 18 buyouts and/or "staff reductions" right on schedule with the pop-culture apocalypse. Nice. The memo follows the jump.

If that photo isn't straight from the Book of Revelation, we suppose a shot of Dane Cook could be appended to complete the unholy triumvirate. Our apocalypse rations are ready (Franzia, tuna, batteries, The Rock Criterion Collection DVD) and the car is gassed up, so we're just going to strap in and wait for the Last Judgment. The Lord will reserve his harshest punishments for those with full DVRs.

So much for Silicon Valley's latest get-rich-quick scheme. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cancelled a plan to let employees cash out their shares early.

When Hollywood's best and brightest finally look for signs leading up to today's stripper-consuming, Dark Lord-producing Pop Cultural Doomsday, we have a feeling they'll find a trail of dark psychic energy leading all the way back to the day before Thanksgiving, when NBC aired a televised ritual of evil incantations known as Rosie Live! It was here that the stage was no doubt set for our destruction, and accordingly, comedienne Kathy Griffin adopted a "what the hell" attitude and attempted to mend fences with longtime foil Clay Aiken backstage. Sadly, even the impending end of the world couldn't produce warm feelings from Aiken:

You know what happens when puppies reach eight weeks old, don't you? That's when they're able to leave their family and join a human family. (That's when our family always purchased our pups: at eight weeks old.) "Now, 8 weeks, they are ready to venture out into the real world (and off line). Some of the puppies will be leaving this weekend," reports the Sun Sentinel, who has a heartwarming slideshow of their growth, complete with treacly music. They're looking more and more like dogs. They're barking like crazy right now for their food. Dry food! Awww. I suppose we always knew this day was coming. Farewell, dear hearts.

"Hey, why should Gawker be the only ones to use inappropriate and suggestive headlines? We can do it, too!" [WWD]

Mountain Men: The Sundance Film Festival broke out its non-competition selections for 2009 this afternoon, a starrier, funkier twist on yesterday's slate of barbershop docs and Pierce Brosnan weepies. At the top is Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor's gay prison romance I Love You Philip Morris, which we've been anticipating since first spying Carrey's frolicsome South Beach sojourn. Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke and Don Cheadle will be around for the cop drama Brooklyn's Finest, while Billy Bob Thornton is bringing two films — the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers (also with Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke — stay off the slopes, guys!) and the crap-salesman comedy Manure. Robin Williams, Uma Thurman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Spacey, Zooey Deschanel and Kristen Stewart bring up the rear; here's hoping Winona leaves them their gift bags. [SFF]