Nine people have been laid off at American Lawyer Media (now called Incisive Media). The cuts are all in the company's real estate group—about 15% of the total staff—including both editorial and sales positions. The company already laid off 42 people earlier this year.

Today on The View, Whoopi Goldberg (dressed as a Navajo jewelry saleswoman from Tuba City, Arizona) continued to press the topic that has quickly proved to be the show's brand-new, post-election argument starter: same-sex marriage.Very little has changed in the hosts' positions (and Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd continue to advance the idea that gay marriage means that churches will be sued, dismantled, and rebuilt into Abercrombie & Fitch superstores), but at least Goldberg was kind enough to start things off on a new level of inanity by confessing that this "suffrage" thing that people have wanted throughout history? She's not really sure what that is! Maybe it's about suffering? Kinda sounds like it! "I guess it's when black people had to, you know, they didn't want to die for being black," Shepherd offers. Yeah, it's either that or the right to vote. You know, whichevs!

It's the best blog-to-book news yet. Remember the self-explanatory blog Hot Chicks with Douchebags, which was turned into a photo book (with commentary)? First, three of the hot chicks in question sued, and now one of the douchebags is suing the author and publisher, the Smoking Gun reports. "The plaintiff has been, and continues to be, the object of ridicule in that he... continues to be called a Douchebag by friends, acquaintances, coworkers, employers, and strangers alike." And here's his photo after the jump, as shown in the book. You be the judge.

Looking for an excuse to head down to Yahoo? Get the update on Jerry Yang at the Yahoo User Interface and BrowserPlus Launch Party from 2-6 p.m. To find out what gadgets are on the chopping block, head to the Churchill Club's "What's Hot and What's Not in Personal Technology." The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and AllThingsD's Kara Swisher are headlining the annual gadget show-and-tell at Cabana in Palo Alto from 6-9 p.m. And SF New Tech is taking over Mighty for demos and drinks. Get your networking fix from 6:30-11 p.m. (Photo by Brian Solis)

Fans of big old sweeping historical, romance, adventure epics (like us) are mostly pretty excited for Australia, Baz Luhrmann's (Romeo + Juliet!, Moulin Rouge!!) new 1940's set ode to his home country, starring native son and daughter Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. It's the most expensive movie ever made in Australia, and is the Great White hope for its tourism industry. Well, it finally premiered last night in Sydney and sooo how is it? According to early critics, it's pretty good! Stirring and exciting enough, romantic enough, not as treacly as its big, grand trailer (above) may make it seem. We'll give a little digest of the reviews below. Megan Lehmann for The Hollywood Reporter:

Remember Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of Prozac Nation who went back to law school, landed a job at David Boies' powerhouse firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and soon found herself smack-dab in the middle of the messy sale of Wachovia to Wells Fargo? Well, it turns out Wurtzel didn't pass the bar exam last summer. (That might explain why she describes herself as a "part-time" employee at Boies' firm, and why it doesn't include her in its staff directory.) But Wurtzel appears pretty non-plussed about the fuss: "I guess when I should have been studying, I was kind of having a good time." [NYO]

The fun thing about George Bush was that he was stupid, so very stupid, and so we could all complain all the time about how stupid all the people who voted for him were. Americans are fat, lazy morons who watch Two-and-a-Half Men. But now? Now 53% of voters chose our guy! So it would sure be dumb for the Republicans who spent eight years complaining about how liberal elitists have no respect for the gut wisdom and heartland values of Real Americans to now accuse the majority of people who voted for Barack Obama of being complete idiots, right? Not so much, if you're former talk show host John Ziegler! He has a fun new website about how Obama voters can't "correctly" answer loaded, misleading trivia questions about the candidates, which proves that they're stupid, and he has some data from pollster John Zogby to back him up! The site is called "How Obama Won," and it will surely be the "Fuck the South" of the YouTube Generation, except that "Fuck the South" was at least funny, and this is just dumb. Ziegler "randomly selected" 12 Obama voters and proved conclusively that they are all dumb idiots because they didn't know various Republican talking points but they did have vague recollection of bad things said about Republicans. Media bias! Here are the questions Zogby asked of 512 Obama voters:

We honestly wish there was some way we could dress up NBC rock star Ben Silverman's appearance on Charlie Rose last night as something more than two talking heads—albeit enviably bone-structured heads—covering the nuts and bolts of programming strategy in a 21st century, multi-platform TV jungle. Unfortunately, there isn't. So we're instead going to do the next best thing: Write some Ben on Charlie fanfic. It's after the jump!When Ben Met Charlie Chapter One: First Impressions Charlie sat in his dressing room, staring into his mirror with a paper-towel bib tucked into his shirt collar, as Joy the makeup girl dabbed concealer beneath his eyes. "No point, Joy," he said. "Couldn't hide those puffy things with cement and a trowel." "Oh Charlie," she laughed. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You're as handsome as ever." Why was he so self-conscious? He was a broadcast icon. He had interviewed heads of state, captains of industry, sports heroes and movie stars. Yet none of them disarmed him the way today's guest did—a young, handsome and charismatic network TV president whose swift rise to power he had admired from afar. A knock at the door shook Charlie back into the moment. "Come in," he said. The first thing he saw were the brows—strong and angular, and peaked towards the ends. Then he wandered slightly downward, to the nose. It was a powerful nose—a hit-sniffing nose if he had ever seen one. For a split second, he migrated up to the eyes—mesmerizing!—but quickly landed on his visitor's full, cranberry lips. They opened to speak. "Charlie—" "Ben!" Charlie said leaping up, pulling his bib out of his shirt as he threw out a hand. Ben took it in his. It felt strong, Charlie thought, and large. New, yet familiar. It was comforting. Suddenly feeling extraneous, Joy used the moment to slink out of the room. "I just wanted to say hello before the interview." "Of course, of course—please, come in. Have a—" he looked around nervously for a chair, and spotted one leaning against a shelf filled with hardcover books, most only barely thumbed through. "Have a seat! Are you a scotch man?" "Tequila, usually, but scotch will do in a pinch," Ben replied, smiling. A knock at the door alerted both men they were needed on set. Next: Chapter 2: A Game of Wits And Footsie

The nifty technology of TiVo is killing the advertisers that subsidize free television, which is why TiVos are so widely used by greedy socialists such as yourself. The friendly Domino's Pizza corporation, however, has figured out a way to work with TiVo to both enrich themselves and serve you, the lazy American consumer. Aren't you tired of having to push buttons on a telephone to summon a pizza to your doorstep? Well there's no need to exercise your pudgy fingers any more! Because now when you try to skip over a Domino's ad, it will automatically give you the option of ordering a pizza through your TiVo. This is a breakthrough in ease of service to our nation's cheese-laden bellies:

Here's a surefire way to delight guests at your upcoming holiday party, assuming you're still having one, that is. You can hire a Top Chef contestant to come and do the cooking. A company called Play Concierge promises it can add some "sizzle" and "celebrity excitement" to your next event with its "Top Chefs to Order" package. The press release claims you can pick "any or all" of your favorite contestants to come to your home, although the names listed on the release are limited to the likes of Casey Thompson, CJ Jacobsen, Brian Malarkey, Dale Levitski and Richard Blais, and don't feature any actual winners. Might that have something to do with the fact that most Top Chef winners have real cooking gig and aren't all that interested in putting on a demonstration of "Extreme Cuisine: Cooking combined with adventure sports" for Aunt Sally's 50th birthday party? The full press release is after the jump.

Now that you're just rich instead of super-rich, you're gonna find out if your mistress really loves you. Will she stick around even if you can't keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed? The WSJ cited a new survey [of 191 people worth over $20 mil] in which "more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances... only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons." The survey also showed that rich ladies are less likely to cut back or drop their lovers than rich men, even when they're losing money. This is another example of What It Really Means In America As Told To Some Narrow Niche Of Society.

[ZOMG, it's Robert Pattinson who plays the sexy vampire person in that sexy vampire movie "Twilight" that everyone is totally going to seeeeeeeeeeee; image via INF] TedSez's new line beats the original, If He Were A Real Vampire, He'd Be Signing Blank Pieces Of Paper. And, Um, This 'Open Caption' Would Be Blank, Too.

A cultural state of emergency was declared last night in Westwood, where those bulging queues outside the Mann Village became a full-blown tween riot commemorating Twilight's world premiere. Braver souls than we ventured into the shrieking maw of the beast, passing along word of a vampire-romance circus, black market and — God help us — an unofficial sequel announcement from the carpet. The whole bloody recap, after the jump:· The hundreds of Twilight freaks awaiting Monday's premiere became 2,500 by early evening, when studio reps at Summit Entertainment began shuffling ticketholders into the Village and the Bruin Theater down the street. The cops on the scene cited controlled but respectful chaos between hails of rubber bullets and urgent calls for bourbon reinforcements. · Meanwhile, last-minute ticket procural became a full-contact sport around town, reported THR:

The heady rush of access can cloud a reporter's brain. Nicholas Carlson, late of Valleywag, now at Silicon Alley Insider, had stalked his prey inside New York's Natural History Museum: Randy Falco, the CEO of AOL. After Falco made a presentation to media buyers, Carlson buttonholed him and got his scoop: Falco is of the opinion that, with Jerry Yang out as CEO, President Sue Decker will swiftly follow. But he missed the real story.The real story: Falco freely admits he knows nothing. "I don't know anything," he told Carlson. Who's Yahoo's next CEO? "I don't have any idea." Falco, the boss of a fallen company that is nonetheless one of the largest sellers of advertising on the Web, is out of the loop, clueless, unplugged. He has no bits of gossip to trade one one of his biggest competitors, no spin to offer. Why should he? Time Warner has plainly put AOL up for sale behind Falco's back; Falco is just punching the clock as he presides over AOL's disassembly.

The economy is worse off than we thought: It seems some Wall Streeters have been turned to drug dealing. A sting operation on Craigslist uncovered a rather unlikely culprit: "A Citigroup vice president, Mark Rayner, attracted police attention after posting an ad offering Ecstasy, ketamine, cocaine and crystal meth. An undercover cop arrested him after he tried to sell 50 Ecstasy pills and 7 grams of cocaine." But at least Rayner has a new career lined up—unlike the vast majority of the 50,000 Citi employees who were laid off yesterday. [NYDN]

Hey, Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto hangs out in porn stores, just like us! A tattletale used our tipline (646-214-8138! We're waiting for your call!) to tell us Michael Musto was in a "sex-video booth cruising area" in an Eighth Avenue porn emporium. But! "He did seem to have a pad and pen out." Ain't no shame in that game.(Update: he's "working on a story," the Village Voice vaguely responds! Click for the audio.

We all have Facebook status updates we'd like to take back or 3am emails we shouldn't have sent, but for Courtney Love, the bar for internet humiliation is considerably higher. Luckily, our girl Court is nothing if not ambitious on the self-immolation front, and over the weekend, she topped her "Yay for Proposition 8!" fiasco with around 40 blog posts on her Myspace page that hinted at suicidal feelings and a love of clothes. In other words: nothing new, but oh, the frequency! Now, Love has posted a Perez Hilton-directed epilogue in which she renounces blogging and blames the bad reception to her Myspacepalooza on a whisper campaign started by Madonna:

There's nothing easier than hating on dumb young telemarketers and their annoying sales pitches. Though it is possible to summon some sympathy for the unfortunate Bloomberg sales caller who mistakenly thought that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin was a Vanity Fair PR person. Outrageous! Doesn't this anonymous business services salesman read Seth Mnookin's stories? Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:

♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦ Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦ ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦ Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦ Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts." [HuffPo]
♦ Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]

It is one of the most heartwarming narratives of Silicon Valley — the founder is abused and evicted by the suits and then returns triumphant. But that's not how it worked out for Jerry Yang, ousted as Yahoo's CEO Monday by a suddenly restive board. Until yesterday, Yang was never much abused by Yahoo's suits; if anything, he was coddled for more than a decade, granted the honorific of "Chief Yahoo" and allowed a say in the Internet portal's strategy. He held a seat on the company's board, and played a role in courting executives like former CEO Terry Semel; but until last year, he never had to operate a business.Experience is underrated in Silicon Valley. Novices are thought to do better than old hands. But the truth is that the intensity of actually running a startup — raising money, hiring people, assembling desks by hand — is better training than that provided by most business schools. Looked at that way, Yang gave up way too early, hiring a professional CEO when the company only had five employees. A graduate-school dropout, Yang had no management experience, and no predilection for the task. He is still, to this day, famously indecisive and fatally nice. Steve Jobs has rarely spoken about the heartbreaking experience of being cast out of Apple, the company he cofounded. In June 2005, though, he gave a commencement speech at Stanford University and openly discussed it. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he said. "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." Yang's exit, like his entrance, is far too soft. He will remain CEO until the board finds a replacement; he will remain Chief Yahoo after that. Such kid-gloves treatment does him no favors. For his own good, Yahoo should exile Yang, as Apple did with Jobs, and give him a chance, at last, to prove himself. His golf score may suffer; his nights may prove sleepless. But they say tough economic times are when the best companies are born. Perhaps he'll correct the mistakes he made at Yahoo with his next company. And maybe — if there's still a Yahoo left to welcome him back, if it hasn't been swallowed up by Microsoft or News Corp. or AT&T — he'll return to his first company a conquering hero. And prove that Silicon Valley's tale of the prodigal founder isn't so mythical.