[Michelle Trachtenberg and Taylor Momsen from "Gossip Girl" holding shoes; image via WENN]

Is there any particular reason that Time magazine has a story (?) on its website right now with the byline "By Ashley Alexandra Dupre"? The entire content of the story is a big picture of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, and the words "I'm sorry for your pain." Either the Spitzer hooker has been hired on to write Zen koans, or something seriously strange is going on in Time's internet department. (Now Time tells us this was supposed to be a "Quote of the Day" that was accidentally converted into an article page. Crazy!) Click through for a big picture of the screen, in case it gets pulled. [Time]

Clare Boothe Luce, the witty and charming author and congresswoman, was also the wife of fantastically wealthy, terribly influential far-right crackpot Time and Life publisher Henry Luce. Back in 1936 Clare Boothe Luce wrote The Women, a wonderful play about how women are all undermining backstabby gossipy bitches, because Luce hated women. So naturally the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute exists now to promote and support leading conservative women in politics. Anyway! Their annual pinup calendar is out! Would you like to see perpetually enraged blogger Michelle Malkin and predictably enraging author Ann Coulter decked out like extras in a dinner theater production of Dinner at Eight? Sure you would. Click through.

For those early viewers still nursing lukewarm responses to Australia, Baz Luhrmann has a note making the rounds that hints your projectionist might be to blame. While it's hardly uncommon for anal directors to personally attend to details of test screenings and premieres, a tipster has passed along something you don't see every day: Luhrmann's personal directions to theater managers on how not to screw up his epic when it opens Nov. 26:

Sooner or later we need to slam shut the door on technical have-nots. Pew Research found that nearly half of adults surveyed need help setting up computers and cell phones. Ars Technica notes what follows: Kids are always fixing their parents' PCs. But they don't take these insights to the logical conclusion: It's time to fire the IT support team.Imagine how much progress we could make as a society if we just dropped those who just can't merge onto the Information Superhighway. I will never get back those lost weekends I spent formatting my mom's Filemaker forms or troubleshooting my aunt's wireless router via cell phone. But I can spare my kids from ever having to face the same fate. The same goes at work, where the bosses have headcount to trim. They can no longer afford to pretend that it's okay that you don't understand Excel, since they have to pay to have someone on site who can explain it to you. Every dollar spent paying an IT guy is a dollar not spent doing whatever it is that makes the company money. That's why it's time companies everywhere get out of the handholding business. Oh, sure, that means more people out on the street. But they can — and should — get reemployed making systems that are so solid they don't require tech-support calls. There's an unpleasant converse: Desk jockeys will have to face the fact that part of their job is to understand the tools they're being paid to use. People will never take responsibility for learning about their computers as long as it's easier to pick up a phone and whine to someone.

Truly Madly Icky: Alan Rickman is well-known for decades' worth of on-screen misdeeds, but the sex scenes in his new film Nobel Son appear to be the first for which the actor has actually felt remorse. "You show up at nine in the morning and you shake the poor woman's hand: 'Hi, nice to meet you,' and then you get at it on the desk," said Rickman, who portrays a college professor with a weakness for nubile grad-student flesh. "It's such a bizarre thing to do. You just move on as quickly as possible. I felt sorry for those women in the sex scenes." The denizens of Century City, meanwhile, are still awaiting his apology for that whole blowing-the-shit-out-of-Fox-Tower thing in Die Hard. At least the Nobel girls had a choice. [WENN]

The Morgans Hotel Group has no plans to stand idly by as the economy crumbles and overpriced, miniature hotel rooms go unsold! The boutique hotel conglomerate launched a new ad campaign, the super-simple tagline for which is on your left. The company started up a new website, too, recessison.com, which, it turns out, is not a reflection on the grammatical abilities of Morgans' marketing staff, but because it stands for "Recess Is On"—or please, please book rooms at our dimly-lit, Philippe Starck-designed hotels and put it to your credit card, even if means you won't be able to pay your AmEx bill at the end of the month. After the jump, two of the videos Morgans uploaded to YouTube to get the silly marketing campaign off the ground.

As Lewis Black harangued about last night on The Daily Show, there is some seriously silly newly-minted Barack Obama merchandise. Like those horribly cheesy collectible plates, and all the newspapers in the land that have become "November 5th Edition" souvenir stores. And now, from beautifully blue Michigan, come the tiniest and perhaps most "really reaching here, guys" of Obama-associated products. They're called Nanobamas and they're each smaller than a grain of sand. And, OK, they're not technically for sale, but they're still weird! A mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan created the minuscule Obama portraits "to raise awareness of nanotechnology and science." Yes, there needs to be more awareness of science! Like about what science is and why it can be used, for some reason, to make wee portraits of our newest president-elect. The coolest part of the whole project, though? How cool everyone who worked on them is:

Ashley Dupre won't be the only person in Eliot Spitzer's life making headlines tomorrow. Hours before her primetime debut, Eliot's 84-year-old father Bernard Spitzer will be making an appearance of his own when he turns up in court to testify in his own defense in connection with charges he fired four men from one of his apartment buildings because they're African-American. (Interestingly, Spitzer family nemesis Roger Stone is advising the four men for free.) We're going to go ahead and assume Silda won't be watching the action unfold at either event.

We admit to having been somewhat flabbergasted to learn that holiday-album-pimping anti-Christ Kathie Lee Gifford had scored a plum gig hosting the new, completely essential fourth hour of The Today Show alongside Hoda Kotb. Credit where it's due, however—Gifford provides near-constant entertainment, mostly because she is vocally and visibly miserable 98% of the time. There was a classic moment on this year's Halloween episode, when she came out in a Big Bad Wolf costume that must have taken hours to put on. Noticing the younger, prettier Today girls were dressed as princesses, she launched into an angry tirade right in 30 Rock plaza, pointing to her and Meredith Vieira's horrifying Pinocchio costumes as proof that the show was "ageist and sexist." It was loud, awkward...and kind of spot-on.Today's hour provided so many awesome grumpy Kathie Lee moments, we were inspired to compile them into one misanthropic montage—edited by our video intern Daniel Caron. Within the span of one hour, she implies that the show is going to suck, complains about having to be PC about the holidays, suggests her husband is deaf, catches Cheyenne Jackson calling her a bitch, and makes a reference to "drying out" that suggests alcoholism or something much more gross. This is so awesome. We're firmly Team Kathie Lee. [Today]

More on yesterday's gutting of Time's European bureau: threats are involved! We hear that Time Inc. stuffed suits told the Time London office "that if news and details of the layoffs were leaked, they might have their severance reduced." Whoever made that threat is an asshole, and one whose threat failed to accomplish its purpose. So there. We also hear the company is "axing the London art, imaging, and copy-editing departments," and firing two staffers in the photo department. And all of this is causing staffers to be pissed—predictably—at Time editor Richard Stengel [UPDATE: and more clarity on the layoffs below]: A tipster writes:

If your office cut its holiday day party budget, don't despair! There's still ample opportunity to make out with that coworker from the 3rd floor — on someone else's dime. iWidgets is launching version 2 of its social syndication platform at Project One from 6-9 p.m. WorkIt.com's annual Silicon Valley Mixer for startup types is at Techmart from 6-9 p.m. Salesforce.com is hosting a technology social networking night with food, games, and swag at the Four Seasons from 6-8 p.m. And for something low-key, Avangate is having casual drinks with software publishers at the Tied House in Mountain View from 6-8 p.m. Drink on! (Photo by Rick)

President Bush went to the G20 Summit and no one wanted to shake his hand. :( [Videogum]

No wonder the Trump kids seem so screwed up: When asked by Portfolio about some of their childhood memories, Donny Jr. and Eric tell a story about how their dad repeatedly reminded them to "never trust anyone," something Eric says he started hearing on a daily basis beginning at the age of four. (Trump insisted that the rule applied to the boys' own father, too, which come to think of it, was actually pretty solid advice.) Listen to the sad childhood story for yourself after the jump.

Google has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a competitor on the scene: They say it "validates their space." What does it say, then, that Lively is gone? It means that Second Life, the best known of these unreal universes, is doomed, too.The notion of a metaverse has long fascinated geeks. The idea of "avatars" — three-dimensional representations of the self rendered in pixels, often fantastical or surreal in nature — wandering through a computer-generated environment has been explored in the science-fiction novels of Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, among others. The Matrix trilogy introduced the idea at multiplexes from coast to coast. And yet unreal worlds have never taken off in actual reality. Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, once showed me screens at the headquarters of his company, Linden Lab, which monitored in real time the number of people logging in. They peaked at 50,000, the maximum simultaneous capacity of its servers. That's not a virtual world; that's a midsized town. Anecdotally, many of Second Life's users are there for virtual sex. (The company has banned gambling, so there's little other reason to go there.) The PG-rated Lively, censored by Google, did not even have that; its only draw was innocuous chat, with the occasional subversive attempt by users at raciness. No wonder that news organizations, drawn by the visual appeal of the service's 3D graphics, aren't writing stories about Second Life anymore. Reuters, at the height of the frenzy, opened up a bureau; its Second Life correspondent stopped filing copy since September, having left to write for a blog, and the wire service has not replaced him. The most recent noise to come out of Second Life has been an uproar over price hikes. Second Life users periodically hold colorful protests in the virtual world — probably the most entertaining thing that ever happens there — over this new rule or that new rule. They are likely to become more frequent, as Linden Lab, to survive, focuses on squeezing more revenue out of its existing customers, who pay the company "taxes" on their virtual real estate and convert real money into the company's imaginary currency, Linden dollars. Online 3D environments are not a fad; millions inhabit them for hours, sometimes days at a time. But they do so in networked videogames like World of Warcraft, where there's a clear purpose to being there — even if it's just having fun and wasting time. Second Life, Lively, and virtual worlds like them amount to glorified chat rooms, and while chatting is a fundamental human activity, it's hard for anyoen to make money on it.

While promoting her upcoming variety show Rosie Live yesterday, Rosie O'Donnell shocked exactly no one by dishing dirt on her former View cohosts. “[Barbara Walters] wanted everyone to believe and think and act as if we get along and are really good friends and happy and hang out together, and, you know, that’s just not the reality," O'Donnell said. “I’m not saying they loathe each other, but the fact of the matter is, there was not a lot of camaraderie off camera.” We've heard similar stories, but O'Donnell's comments at least compelled the co-hosts to summon some on-screen camaraderie today in order to denounce both Rosie and intermittent Barbara-basher Star Jones. Sadly, we fear that their ridiculously transparent "The Former Co-hosts Who Must Not Be Named" shtick will only open the door for a publicity-hungry Debbie Matenopolous to attempt an unsolicited, aggrieved rebuttal in the pages of Life & Style.

The recount in the Minnesota Senate race between asshole comedian Al Franken and regular asshole Norm Coleman is underway! And the campaigns have lawyers standing by to challenge every vote. So Drudge has had this image up all day, with the headline "DRAMA: Franken Is Challenging This Ballot." Yes, bullshit, obviously. The voter intent is clear. On the other hand, the Coleman campaign is challenging this ballot, this ballot, and this ballot. The whole recount system is obviously broken, the well-intentioned voter intent laws are being manipulated by the campaigns, and this nonsense will not be over with by the end of the year. Or, you know, Al Franken is stealing the election, whichever one you want to believe. [MPR via Wonkette]

Yesterday we all heard about how a plane to London had to make an emergency landing because trouble-finding actress Winona Ryder had mysteriously fallen ill. Today, all the Brit tabloids are elaborating: she overdosed on Xanax and/or "tranquillisers." Anyway, if you're going to abuse downers, we've already endorsed Klonopin (to a stream of hate mail against advocating drug use!) Seriously, though: feels great, less filling! (Remember, they found unprescribed pills on her when she was popped for her 2001 clothes-stealing run.) She's probably better at getting scripts now. Wino is just like us!Haven't we all taken a little too much Xanax on the plane before? Or taken the Xanax and forgot that you took it and then had a glass of complimentary wine on an international flight, and then the flight attendant had to rouse you once everybody left the plane? Winona was said to have collapsed twice—Xannie does affect balance, and seriously, everybody who takes too much of it is such a stumblebum. Not just like us: our overdoses don't usually call for the "priority landing" of a plane. The Sun also reported she had her stomach pumped (how would they know?) but that's a definite treatment for a Xanax overdose, so there you go. The fact that an experienced pill-popper like Ryder wouldn't know the basic rules of benzo-taking is perhaps the most troubling component of this story.

DaisyPushingWatch. ABC's Wednesday night lineup reached series lows. The close-to-flatlining Pushing Daisies was down 27% since its last airing opposite The Barack Obama Show, and Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money didn't fare much better, down 15% each. On a more positive note, Gary Unmarried is up 29%! [THR]

How bad is the situation at Citigroup today? Really, really bad. Citi executives are now frantically lobbying Washington to crack down on short-sellers, something that both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers tried to do. (And you know how that turned out.) Meanwhile, Dealbreaker reports that the bank has removed the company's ticker symbol from the screens in the lobby, lest employees start to panic at the sight of Citi shares hovering below $4.