"New [White House Hannukah] invites went out yesterday with a menorah on them and a note saying, 'Please accept our apologies.'" [Page Six, Previously]

Oh, heavens: Barack Obama's been elected, the economy imploded and suddenly it' s no longer chic to be a superficial consumerist idiot! But how to cope if that's all you've ever known?? We were going on three decades of nearly uninterrupted insane boomtime for the rich, after all, and change is difficult. Fake it hard, advises the kept lady's favorite well-connected fashiongay, Barney's creative director Simon Doonan, in this morning's Observer:

♦ Detroit's Big Three automakers presented new turnaround plans (and their request for $34 billion) to Congress yesterday. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ Merrill Lynch plans to cut year-end bonuses in half. [Bloomberg]
♦ Now that it's turned itself into a commercial bank, Goldman Sachs is thinking about starting an online banking operation, too. [DB]
♦ Goldman is tapping Gerald Corrigan, a former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to serve as chairman of its bank holding company. [FT]
♦ Billionaire financier face-off: One of Carl Icahn's companies is suing a firm owned by Leon Black. [NYT, NYP]
♦ Ramius Capital, the struggling hedge fund operated by Peter Cohen, is closing four of its funds. [WSJ]

Everyone's been talking about David Gregory moderating Meet the Press all week, even stretching the very definition of journalism to report on it. And yet the NBC News chief White House correspondent hasn't even taken the job yet, according to the Times, and all the leaks might even ruin his chances! But probably not, because it sounds like one of his competitors for the job spilled the beans:

Eric Burns, NOT pictured, plays dreamy police officers on soap operas like All My Children and As The World Turns. To unwind, he sometimes likes to spend some time relaxing at a club — say, after a few cognacs and four shots of vodka, as was apparently the case one night in August at Club Mansion. Then, around 4:50 am (!), some real cops came along and things took a decidedly unsexy turn, police told the Times:

Chatter about big layoffs at Viacom and its MTV unit have been in the air for weeks, with firings at the latter recently expected Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Hell, the bloodletting may already have begun. But the latest gossip says the worst is yet to come: A gobsmacking 300 people coast to coast let go by the end of the week, one tipster claims. Higher level staff supposedly get their briefings Wednesday. It will be interesting to hear whether the company takes this opportunity to visit vengeance on the mistreated permalancers who embarrassed the company so badly last winter. We're ready to listen!

Televised child-groper Saxby Chambliss soundly defeated his rival for a Georgia senate seat, with a 15-point margin of victory over Democrat Jim Martin with 96 percent of precincts reporting. This was expected, but still: This is the guy whose advertisement questioning the patriotism of his triple-amputee war-hero opponent was called "reprehensible" by eventual supporter John McCain. Though the Democrats were never going to win 60 senate seats, and if they had they weren't going to be truly filibuster-proof, Chambliss' victory will make the senate all the more fun and interesting, giving the media something to cover other than the president's screaming matches with his secretary of state. Also, with Al Franken still in a Minnesota recount, this election is STILL not over. Jesus.

A nasty little internet troll may recently have sent you an email with the subject line, " 'Jews Have Ruined Our Country.'" But the message didn't come from an anti-semite; it came from the Anti-Defamation League, which is trying to prevent Jews from being blamed for the financial crisis, by spreading blame for the financial crisis to Jews. The idea, of course, is to drum up preemptive outrage among recipients of the mass email by quoting some bigots. Trouble is, the inflammatory subject line is pretty much all they got.

Sean Avery has long relished his role as the National Hockey League's miscreant-in-chief, but the Dallas Stars forward's internship at Vogue seems to have sharpened his instincts for provocation to razor precision. Avery was just suspended indefinitely by the NHL for talking smack about two ex-girlfriends, actress Elisha Cuthbert and model Rachel Hunter, who ended up in the arms of other players. His own team said it would have suspended him had the league not done likewise. The truly insane part of the whole incident is that Avery sought out TV cameras so he could broadcast his self-destructive diss. (UPDATE: Video after the jump.)

· The NHL certainly has had its share of enfants terribles in its day, but none quite as inscrutably fascinating as Vogue sample-closet re-organizer Sean Avery. He made some comments up in Calgary this morning regarding hockey hag ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert's newest Flame (that would be defenseman Dion Phaneuf) that got him banned from the league indefinitely. Hilarious.
· The only thing cuter than Gary Coleman showing up to his bowling alley disorderly conduct hearing is Gary Coleman showing up to his bowling alley disorderly conduct hearing dressed up as Howdy Doody!
· World's awesomest celebrity baby Matilda Ledger gives us some indication of what Heath might have done with the lead in Where the Wild Things Are.
· "Kids are invited to get creative by decorating an ornament, button, holiday cookie, or David Archuleta at the Ralphs Decoration Station." Fun!
· Sixth Hives member Shootin' Filip Sprängporten, aka Phil Spector, proudly wore his America's New First Family pin to court today. We're sure Michelle was thrilled!
· That piece of shit digital billboard above Spaceland has every right to be there, apparently. Feel free to aim your rocket-launcher at it. Fuck you, billboard.

We're not sure if this amounts to its own chapter in the End of Ideas canon or is actually a visionary effort deserving a new appellation altogether, but one thing appears to be certain: The Z-list thriller-in-the-making Reality Horror Night will not be for the faint of heart.

Poor Harvey Weinstein just can't catch a break for The Reader! So far, his pushy campaign to ready the film for awards glory has resulted in the loss of both Scott Rudin and a million-dollar bet, and now his efforts have resulted in further ignominy: Kate Winslet's very naked performance was denied a spot on Mr. Skin's Top Celebrity Nude Scenes of 2008. Could this be an Oscar precursor? Let's hope not, considering who came in first:

· Make it a huger than huge night of music with Smashing Pumpkins at the Gibson Amphitheater or Sisters of Mercy at the Music Box. Or, for true, ear-splitting torment, Celine Dion will be at the Staples Center.
· Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson perform in Nora Ephron's one-night-only staging of You Can't Take It With You, a UCLA School of Theater, Film and TV gala benefit at Royce Hall.
· Pay profane, oversexed homage to the late Rudy Ray Moore with a twin bill featuring Dolemite and its sequel, The Human Tornado, at the New Beverly.

By George: Here at Defamer, we've made it no secret that we didn't really care for Frost/Nixon (in the crowded cinematic genre that is "movies that employ a titular blackslash," we still have a soft spot for Face/Off). But could our opinions have been swayed by the suavest, most-mustachioed actor/director around, George Clooney? Writer Peter Morgan says Clooney made a full-court press for the helming gig: "(Clooney) said things like, 'We are really going to kick ass with this!' Not going with him was a complete fucking agony because he suggested doing some script work at his house by Lake Como - at which point my wife was just shaking her head." We can see it now: noted Clooney wingman Mark Wahlberg as Richard Nixon. "Hey there, Frostie. Say hi to your mother for me!" [Daily Express]

Now that Britney is back and Joaquin is some sort of fake rapper, it's time to reinvent yourself. The various intelligence networks (Discovery, NatGeo) have a lot to offer tonight in the way of autodidactic pleasures, from realizing that your recent weight gain might be directly related to that dude you met at Ye Rustic to a former View co-host talking about weed. Or you can watch women who are staunchly in favor of Cocoa Puffs trash a rented house.

Sure, Tracy Morgan might barely be the fourth-tier mascot for plugging 30 Rock, but put yourself in NBC's shoes while watching his haphazard run through reader-submitted questions at the network's Web site: If Tina Fey is teetering at the cusp of overexposure, Alec Baldwin is flaking on the Washington Post's own readers, and Jane Krakowski remains shellshocked from her time in Rosie O'Donnell's product-placement infantry, then who else is there? "President Obama of the Crayons" just wouldn't sound the same from Jack McBrayer. Or maybe it's just that there is such a thing as a stupid question. Find out either/or/both after the jump.

Last night at the Sunset Blvd. staple Book Soup, autism-unfriendly comedian Denis Leary was signing copies of his book, Why We Suck, when he was approached by two very curious fans. One of them tentatively asked whether Leary endorsed the idea of a reinvestigation into the events of 9/11, which Leary said would actually be a plotline in the upcoming season of Rescue Me. Then, a second fan asked him a more specific question about conspiracy theories surrounding Building 7's collapse. After a pause, Leary began, "You don't want to get into that with me, because several of the guys who I know really well were helping to hold that building up," upon which the fan, who was recording the incident, was swarmed by Book Soup security (they even blocked his camera). What do they know?! Video, after the jump:

Ok, guys, let's stop with the "working out with Obama" stories. It was already creepy when the insane German woman worked out next to him and slobbered all over our president-elect ("he didn't sweat at all!" "toned arms and a strong back" "WHAT A MAN!"). Now, Philadelphia "musical director and choregorapher" Stepp Stewart breathlessly describes working out next to Barack Obama for NBC Philadelphia, and this one is somehow even worse. Stepp's amazing tale (all emphasis his), below:

Conde Nast boss Si Newhouse will have you know that that rumor going around about him going to Europe to work out the details of replacingVogue editor Anna Wintour with her French counterpart is utter hogwash! "This is the silliest rumor I ever heard," Condé Nast's Si Newhouse told us via flack (first quoted in the Wall Street Journal). "There is no truth to it." Si finally sent in his denial from Europe, where he is, ah, not talking to anybody about any magazine jobs. [Pic: NYO]

Down Under Over the Moon: Variety's panic piece yesterday about Australia's underachievement at home drew a typically polite letter of dissent from an Aussie exhibitor. "I just wanted to say that as a regional independent with three prints of Australia between our two locations, we're over the moon with the results on the film," wrote It's comfortably the largest opening week numbers we've seen in several years outside of school holiday periods, and word of mouth is stellar," said cinema proprietor Peter Howard. OK, great! Can we pleeeeease have our sad ending now, Fox? [Variety]