Ads: they're everywhere! How many times must we repeat that pithy, insightful line? But it's true! Ads are on set-top box menus and the outsides of subway cars and inside your computer and strapped onto girls who are following you around. And every month or so ads appear in some new place and we think, "This, I fear, is the absolute pinnacle of psycho ad creep into every inappropriate nook of our lives." Well that was before teachers started selling advertising on their tests:

It looks like no executive perk is off-limits as an ailing Citigroup slashes costs, lays off employees, and tries to beef up its balance sheet. The banking giant has put two of its corporate jets on the market in recent weeks via a Maryland-based airplane broker called AvPro, we've learned. Both are Dassult Falcon 900 jets (click here for a larger pic) and are owned by Citigroup Corp Aviation in White Plans. Naturally, both also come with top-of-the-line everything, including mahogany woodwork, luxurious leather seating, gold accents, and very spacious bathrooms. Citi's airplane broker didn't put a price tag on either jet—the model begins at $35 million if purchased new—but we're guessing Citi won't be driving a hard bargain. (The full specs are below, just in case you're in the market for a new plane.) And don't feel bad for the likes of Bob Rubin and Vikram Pandit. Citi has several other planes in its fleet, and those have yet to be put up for sale (as far as we can tell) so there's no need to fear that senior execs will be forced to fly commercial in the near future.

♦ Natalie Portman has closed on the sale of her three-bedroom condo at 165 Charles Street for $6.55 million, two months after it was first reported that the apartment had gone into contract. The buyer is listed in property records at Monkway Properties Inc. [Cityfile]
♦ Alex Rodriguez has lowered the price of his Trump Park Avenue condo for the second time since first listing it for $14 million back in September. The 4,600-square-foot spread can now be yours for the bargain basement price of $10 million. [Page Six, Modlin Group]
♦ Philip Morris vice president Charles Wall paid $4.42 million for a 10th-floor apartment at 170 East End Avenue, the same building where art dealer Dominique Lévy picked up an eighth-floor spread in October. [Cityfile]

If you thought your persistent lack of joie de vivre was due to the fact that you hate your job, are addicted to one or several substances, or your parents didn't love you enough, you'll be relieved to hear everything is probably your bra's fault. (If you're a woman, that is, otherwise, still one/all of the above apply.) Not that there can be many women left in the Western world unaware that they're wearing the wrong size bra, but just in case, a journalist has followed in the footsteps of many before her to visit a lingerie store, where needless to say she's scolded by a motherly saleslady with a tape measure who informs her—of course!—that she's a 32E, not a 36C. And a good thing too, as there's so much more than perkiness and cleavage depth at stake here.

Erin Callan has had a tumultuous year, hasn't she? The former star at Lehman Bros can sit back and relax today. Not only has she landed on her feet (unlike so many of her former colleagues), it's also her 43rd birthday. Others celebrating: Stone Phillips is 54. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is turning 69. Real estate marketing queen Louise Sunshine is 68. Nelly Furtado is 30. Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters is 40. Monica Seles is turning 35. Lucy Liu is 40. And Ms. Britney Spears—you've heard of her, haven't you?—is celebrating her 27th birthday today.

• Bryan Adams is so famous entire families are stalking him. It's nice when parents want their children to follow in their professional footsteps! [Sun]

♦ Madonna and A-Rod are reportedly shopping for "love nests" on the Upper East Side. They're looking for something between Fifth and Park, from 60th Street through the 80s, in case you have any suggestions. Oh, and they're looking for retreats in Hamptons, too. [P6]
♦ The blame game begins: Ivana's friends say her split with Rossano Rubicondi was his fault because he's been dating a model. Rossano, meanwhile, says Ivana is to blame because she's been dating a model. [R&M]
♦ Robert and Blaine Trump are scheduled to make their first appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court this morning as the couple looks to end their 25-year marriage. Prepare for things to get "exceptionally ugly." [NYP]
♦ Uma Thurman's parents unknowingly hired one of the bookers from Ashley Dupre's escort agency to run their upstate yoga center. [NYP]

"If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor." [Michael Wolff]

Madonna and Alex Rodriguez want us to know they're lovers without having to quite come out and say it. The pop singer famously denied sleeping with A-Rod during the Yankees slugger's messy divorce, in which his wife accused him of infidelity. But a paparazzo somehow got a shot of the couple coming off a private jet in Miami, where Rodriguez was to spend Thanksgiving with his ex-wife and children; Rodriguez allowed himself to be photographed at a Madonna concert there (left picture above); and reporters discovered both celebrities traveled to Mexico City the following weekend. In case we didn't get the message about what's going on between the pair, they let their money do the talking, in the Post:

The ignoble end of Michael Phelps as a national treasure has already been sketched out for us by Page Six. If the gossip sheet's sources are to be believed, the 14-Olympic-gold-medal-having athlete's weakness is gambling, garnished with drinking and womanizing. Combine this with his 10,000-calorie diet, and it's not hard to envision the sad future that awaits should the monumental pressure of being the top Olympian of all time push the young man over the edge: Phelps as a pudgy, wannabe card shark, bitterly ignoring the "didn't you used to be..." questions at low-stakes poker tables in Vegas casinos. The scene last weekend:

♦ Stocks are poised to move higher today after yesterday's bloodbath. [CNN]
♦ Goldman Sachs may report a loss of as much as $5 billion this quarter, the firm's first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. [WSJ]
♦ Credit Suisse and HSBC have announced another round of job cuts. [Reuters]
♦ Highbridge Capital, founded by Glenn Dubin and Henry Swieca and owned by JPMorgan, is the latest hedge to suffer a fall. More than a third of its investors are looking to withdraw cash and the flagship fund is down 25%. [WSJ]
♦ One hedge funder doing fine: John Paulson. His firm has already cleared profits of more than $1 billion this year betting that the housing market would crumble and banks would fail. [Bloomberg]
♦ What does the head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the bailout have to say about Hank Paulson's strategy? That it does appear Paulson has a strategy. [NYT]

Did you know the Observer is subsidized by an illicit slush fund? It shamefully is, according to a lawsuit filed by the former president of one of the Kushner Companies. When developer Charles Kushner bought a $1.8 billion office tower, he routed $18 million back to himself as commission on the mortgage, then allegedly siphoned $5 million off that for son Jared's cash-bleeding weekly newspaper.

The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart.

Harper's was so thoroughly impressed with its clever ironic Christmas party that the monthly officially sent us an invitation. Not so that we could, you know, actually attend, but just so that we, too, might admire the wit behind a "Black Tie & Pizza" gathering, complete with an illustration of precious bow-tied editors and unpaid interns in flowing gowns bought by daddy, all eating — HA! — the Italian pies we've all heard so very much about. Black tie is oh-so-cleverly optional. And you might as well drink up your "Kill Fee" cocktail, because you're probably not getting the paper kind for quite some time! Read all about it after the jump.

· We think we have the perfect actor to play Gordon Gekko in the Wall Street remake: recession-proof market tycoon Josh Brolin.
· So we have an almost complete list of Barbara Walters's 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008: Two scientos, two redneck sex symbols, a Vanity Fair covergirl, a pregnant man, and Frank Langella. Simply...*spoken in an urgent whisper* fascinating.
· Tom Cruise is "building a replica of the LA Lakers’ Staples Centre basketball court in the Beckhams’ garden for the soccer ace and his sons Brooklyn, nine, Romeo, six, and Cruz, three," says unsourced internet report.
· LOL! You've got your cross on upside down! Silly.
· We killed a lot of time playing with this Lego Miniman web app. Enjoy the fruits of our labors here, or make one of your own.
· As Chinese Democracy has shown us, rock criticism is in dire need of a synonym for "banshee."

Union Breakers: As alluded to here by commenters on the town's latest labor strife, SAG president Alan Rosenberg and CSI star Marg Helgenberger have announced their split after 19 years of marriage. "They love and respect each other and remain committed to their family," their spokesman said in statement released over the weekend; the couple have an 18-year-old son named Hugh and are expecting their first strike together some time this winter. [People]

Now that Meryl Streep's career renaissance has been buffeted by a pair of blockbuster chick flicks, the actress has begun feeling her oats, readying Hollywood for a new reign of Meryl (all agents are required to learn at least two foreign accents) and punishing the dissenters. In a new LAT profile, the actress mocks both Universal ("The smart guys banked on Hellboy to carry them throughout the year. The Mamma Mia! wagon is pulling all those movies that didn't have any problem getting made") and Fox head Tom Rothman, whose nasal voice Streep nails. Still, the empowered star's boldest move is perhaps her most terrifying, as Female First reveals:

The Huffington Post reported David Gregory will take over for Tim Russert as permanent moderator of Meet The Press after beating out finalists Andrea Mitchell, Gwen Ifill and Chuck Todd. NBC told Politico, "I don't know where they are getting this," and Gregory's agent would neither confirm nor deny to the Observer. Dark-horse candidate Katie Couric is reportedly not interested. Odd that NBC News would leak to HuffPo, given the network division's apparent long-running feud with publisher Arianna Huffington, but then there have been signs that the bad feelings have perhaps been dropped.

We're not sure which of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief we've hit in our consideration of Beverly Hills Cop 4. Denial and anger seem ages ago, as does bargaining. And a script review appearing online today has us skipping depression altogether for what we suppose is something akin to acceptance — if you call "believing there is actually a studio cynical enough to greenlight this with Brett Ratner behind the camera" acceptance, or if that just throws us back to the beginning again. Help us sort it out, will you?

We'll admit that when Joaquin Phoenix first announced (in an incoherent mumble) that he would be quitting acting, we weren't quite sure whether it was all just an elaborate stunt. Then, we remembered the tale of Greenbo, Phoenix's brain-eating frog, and thought it was simply par for the course with the erratic actor. Still, since the announcement, Phoenix's weird behavior has felt increasingly staged for the cameras — and, in fact, he has his own cameras following him around, "recording his transition from film to music." The final straw came when we found an incriminating set of pictures from Phoenix's first performance, along with this explanation: