Nominees for the 51st Grammy Awards were announced. Big winners: Coldplay (seven nominations), Lil Wayne (eight nominations, white nerds are gonna flip), Jazmine Sullivan (new R&B singers gets five noms) and M.I.A., nominated for record of the year (Idolator: "!!!!!!!!"). For the latter, stock up on cave-aged gruyere for the dressing room and prepare the cameras for an ultra-close-up during any self-undermining comments from the singer about how she has so not sold out the struggle (and performance too plz?). Robbed:

♦ Layoff announcements, grim unemployment data, and dismal retail sales figures should lead to another nasty trading session on Wall Street. [CNN]
♦ A group of managers and senior execs from Neuberger Berman won the auction to take over Lehman's money management business. [NYT]
♦ Credit Suisse is laying off 5,300 people. [Reuters]
♦ Citigroup's top execs like Vikram Pandit and Bob Rubin say they're willing to forgo annual bonuses. How generous of them! [FT]
♦ Thomas H. Lee may shut down two hedge funds it launched recently. [WSJ]
♦ Poor Steve Schwarzman is "knocking on more doors and pressing more flesh than ever" to get business done these days. [NYP]
♦ Fortress Investment Group is falling apart fast. [NYT]
♦ Carlyle Group LLC is cutting 10 percent of its staff. [WSJ]

• RealNetworks and Viacom subsidiary MTV closed down the entire New York office of their joint Rhapsody America online music venture, a tipster tells us, sending the roughly 25 staffers packing, albeit with severance. A lone Rhapsody staffer transferred to RealNetworks' New York office. The service will continue operating, via Real's west coast offices.

Nearly 200 people died in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but amid economic chaos and a presidential transition, the story is bound to soon fall off the front pages of American newspapers. How to keep readers interested? By helping them somehow relate to a despicable band of terrorists born in a foreign land and fervently devoted to an unfamiliar religion. Preferably in a way that simultaneously makes the perpetrators seem even more crazed an awful. Enter wild allegations of cocaine and LSD use, via the British press!

Arianna Huffington had some good advice for aspiring bloggers on the Daily Show tonight — blog your passion, go with your first impression — but her most important technique was communicated only implicitly, by way of example: Promote the hell out of yourself. From a brief guest stint on the Comedy Central show, Huffington gleaned exclusive backstage video for her own site, negotiations to have host Jon Stewart blog for her exclusively, a big plug for her "Complete Guide To Blogging" book and a televised recruiting call for free writers for her "blogging the meltdown" project.

It took less than 24 hours for Sean Avery to apologize for saying yesterday that his National Hockey League opponents "fall in love with my sloppy seconds." In fact, he's already flown to New York to grovel before the league commissioner. Although Avery is famous for picking these kinds of fights, it appears the recent Vogue intern's media instincts pushed him way over the line:

FiveThirtyEight.com: "'We think when it's all said and done Martin will lose by around 10 points." Kaus: "The actual margin is looking more like 14 points."

Meet Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an inept Republican politician on the order of, say a Katherine Harris. The Congresswoman hung up on Barack Obama twice today, and then put out a press release about it, and THEN mis-spelled "Barak's" name (and the name of his chief of staff) in the press release. Surely what's going on here is that Ros-Lehtinen, the longest-serving woman in Congress and no stranger to embarrassment, has learned all too well the apparent lesson of Sarah Palin's crank call from fake Nicolas Sarkozy: Dense politicians should not attempt to talk to famous strangers on the phone. But she's still incredibly stupid, as revealed by the hilarious chronology of events she published today:

· There are no words. [via BWE.tv]
· The LAT reviews the second phase of L.A. Live: "It actively discourages any of the activities we traditionally associate with the use of collective space in a city: talking, reading, sitting under a tree, even pausing with a friend for a cup of coffee. Anybody who tried to do any of those things in the L.A. Live plaza, which is filled with both yelping video displays and security guards, would look not just out of place but foolish." Quick! Run to the parking structure before we go blind or are forced to interact!
· No one knows the double indemnity facing "macho, non-metro actors" who take on gay roles better than Sean Penn.
· Natalie Portman's vegan shoe empire crumbles.
· Yo—Emily chick, with the bangs and the cats and the little black tunic? You're busted. [via BoingBoing]
· We see ET finally had the decency to drop the "In The Head"-part from their exclusive headline. Stay classy, guys.
· Only three more days to get your sleighpass for LASantacon.
· Which reminds us—it's time to pick up this year's Christmas Tree!

Multitalented — that's one of many qualities I like about the crowd that gathers here each Wednesday night to comment on Top Chef (starting at 10 Eastern.) They can drink. They can tell jokes. They can … presumably do something for a living. And many can cook! And cook fancy stuff, even! So tonight, my "highlights from last week" involve the culinary feats performed not by "cheftestants," but by my fellow commenters. The fact that it was Thanksgiving Eve likely played a role, but everyone seemed to be cooking something special while they were live-blogging last week. Here's a sampling:

Attacked By the Photoshop Monster: Lost producers today unveiled their second, more elaborate cast photo for season five, suggesting that the castaways will have all moved into an overgrown (yet rent-controlled!) Williamsburg loft. To judge from the empty Dharma beers and kicked-over TVs, they've just thrown quite a rager! Click through for massively full-size. [E!]

The Teenagers Fuck phenomenon has seen some compelling discussion this week, a desperately needed change from the fanged chastity that so overwhelmed us during the build-up to Twilight's tween windfall last month. And while a new essay in The Guardian suggests young men in particular are a more sophisticated lot since the days of Porky's, another critic of one upcoming film has a different phrase for that: Child pornography.

· Some musical offerings: French electro artist Sebastien Tellier is at the Henry Fonda, and Jonathan Richman at the El Rey.
· Postmodern dancer/choreographer David Gordon recreates his 1982 work, Trying Times (Remembered), based on overheard subway conversations and the music of Stravinsky. That's him hiding behind a metal folding chair. At REDCAT.
· Charity Water raises funds to bring safe drinking water to areas of Africa that have none. Progressive social network Ladies Lotto is holding a benefit for them tonight at Royal/T.

Can you smell that in the air? No, it's not Leela Thai's dumpster, it's the backlash to the backlash to the end of Pushing Daisies. In the coming month, we'll start seeing articles arguing that Pushing Daisies wasn't all that good to begin with and that if high-minded critics were in charge of TV programming, no one would ever make money. We understand that it's a commercial art form, but the realization of Bryan Fuller's vision and a combination of intriguing actors and intelligent writing are unique and deserve consideration. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Gay men used to be known for their powers of artistic discernment, granting a priceless cultural imprimatur on the only trends, films, and iconic women who deserved it. No longer! Now, when even a reality show fourth banana like Audrina Patridge can have gays flinging themselves onto the pavement of Santa Monica Blvd. in a desperate attempt to be her new BFF, the standards for gay adoration have reached a watermark so low that it wouldn't even reach the hem of $220 capri pants. Thus it is that Tori Spelling has seen fit to anoint herself as a modern-day gay icon, an honor that E! talk show host Chelsea Handler tells The Advocate is simply canny marketing:

THR noticed something interesting in today's NBC, mid-season We're Canceling Everything New and Supersizing Anything Else That Isn't Nailed Down press release: The Knight Rider season finale was listed as airing on February 25th. Since when do super-duper, Ben Silverman-championed, beloved 1980s trash-TV remakes supposedly given full pickups end their seasons in winter, you ask?

Brad Pitt still has some work to do in New Orleans before he can attend to those areas of America hardest hit by the ravages of UncoolGate. Meanwhile, the woman who started it all—this week's EW covergirl, Jennifer Aniston—emerges a stronger woman, if forever a far less trusting magazine-profile subject:

Supersize This: NBC announced its midseason scheduling moves today, including not just Celebrity Apprentice news but an ER mercy kill on March 12 (the new drama Kings will take over ER's longtime Thursday night berth). And which show gets the plum post-Super Bowl slot? That would be The Office, which is — you guessed it — supersizing to an hour for the occasion. Sorry, Rainn! [THR]

Eliot Spitzer has a new job! John Koblin reports that starting tomorrow, the scandalized ex-guv is going to be writing a column for Slate called "The Best Policy." It will be about "the financial crisis and fixing financial markets and the economy generally," and will almost certainly be very informative (Spitzer was once a populist hero, remember!) and very boring. Because really, do you think Spitzer's going to run down his hooker stories (which is what everyone actually wants to hear) in Slate? He's saving that for the book. They should have gone after Ashley Dupre as a columnist instead. "THE SEX POLICY." It's a win-win. [NYO]

The Sundance Film Festival this afternoon unveiled the competition lineup for its 2009 incarnation (a/k/a the One You're Boycotting), and it's a sharp crop of international cinema that will no doubt be met with accolades and not just a few bounced checks from cash-strapped indie distributors. Follow the jump for our quick, dirty, reductive and completely arbitrary survey of the fest's hottest titles and trends.