Walk by a newsstand today and it's nothing but Barack Obama and his family. As we said, treacly Obama worship will save magazines (this quarter)! But whatever Barack Obama said earlier about keeping his daughters out of the limelight seems to have given way to the American public's (and therefore magazine editors') interest in the most adorable family without a baby named Shiloh. In July, explaining why he regretted letting Access Hollywood do a brief interview with the girls, Daddy Obama said, "Generally what makes them so charming is the fact that they're not spending a lot of time worrying about TV cameras or politics."And since then, Obama has begged the press to back off while trick-or-treating and declined an invitation from Miley Cyrus for the daughters to appear on Hannah Montana. But unless the Obamas are trying to play it both ways (a well-worn gambit when it comes to politicians and their kids) then they might want to keep Sasha and Malia off magazine covers, too.

Not surprisingly at all, there are serious media layoffs today. TV Guide is laying off "up to 33 people," or 3% of its total staff. Also, Forbes—which cut chunks of its online staff last week—is laying off dozens of staffers as it merges its print and online operations into one. Read the full memo at Valleywag.

♦ Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Karolina Kurkova were just a few of the models who took to the stage in Miami this weekend for the Victoria's Secret show where the company unveiled its latest publicity stunt at the celeb-packed event, the $5 million Black Diamond Fantasy Miracle Bra by jeweler Martin Katz. [Vogue UK, E!, ABC]
♦ Prada is gamely adapting to the economy by launching a new line of purses that are all—gasp—under $1,000. [Nylon]
♦ As if today's tiny fashion victims don't have enough to choose from, Jean Paul Gaultier has inked a licensing deal to make children's clothes. [WWD]
♦ Vanity Fair's fashion department tried to go on a $150,000 shopping spree à la Sarah Palin and discovered it's actually kind of hard to blow that kind of cash. [VF]

Last week we jumped on the news that tiresome ladybusiness drama Lipstick Jungle had been canceled. We may have, heh, actually danced on its grave a little. But, it sounds like we were wrong! People from the three-business-ladies-make-sex-with-men-and-drink-and-talk show are now coming out and saying that the show is not over at all. Just ask the series's star, Brooke Shields:

Ending a longstanding internal split that dates back to the days of the first dotcom boom, Forbes Media is merging the staff which puts out the conservative-leaning business magazine and its online component, which run separately and with a ludicrous amount of mutual suspicion and jealousy. (Valleywag had gotten wind of these plans last month.) An internal memo sent by CEO Steve Forbes to staff says that print and online sales and marketing will be immediately integrated, reporting up to an "office of the chairman" which includes Forbes.com publisher Jim Spanfeller, whom rumors had previously pegged as the head of the combined operation. Integration of the Web and print editorial staff won't happen until early 2009. Translation: No one in the newsroom will know what's happening to their job until next year. Here's the memo:

This past weekend, a hip hop blog called Nah Right posted a YouTube interview with ?uestlove, a member of hip hop live band supergroup The Roots. And he said that The Roots were retiring from touring in order to become the house band for Jimmy Fallon when he takes over Conan O'Brien's late night show next year. But that video was quickly pulled, so everyone has been scrambling to find out whether this apocalyptic... thing is actually true. NBC has no official comment, but we hear that it probably is. Essaywhuman?!!!??! This is one of those things that proves you're getting old. I've never had a group that I actually like go the late night house band route. Springsteen fans saw Max Weinberg take his act to Conan's show; and I'm sure there were some jazz heads who were flabbergasted to see their main man Kevin Eubanks signing up with Jay Leno. But The Roots? The Illadelph generals opening up for that stuttering mop-headed ball of suck, Jimmy Fallon? It's kind of tragic. On one hand, we'll get to see The Roots on TV every night; on the other hand, Black Thought opening for Jimmy Fallon every night is the cultural equivalent of Miles Davis playing his horn on the subway platform to back up a semi-trained dancing spider monkey. To the extend that The Roots are a hip hop group, it's pretty fucking shocking. To the extent that The Roots are a hipster group, that's the end of that. They still give one of the best live shows anywhere, and the thought that the only way to see them live any more will be in the middle of the afternoon in a Midtown studio between periods of Jimmy Fallon snickering at his own cue cards is just an atrocious thing. But they're old and so are we, so everyone is tired. Now I will go and cut myself repeatedly.

· Vin Diesel AbandonedFranchiseWatch: XXX: The Return of Xander Cage will reunite Vin Diesel with director Rob Cohen for another helping of the Xtreme actioner no one remembers or wants! [Variety] · Aaron Eckhart will head his first action movie in Battle: Los Angeles, playing a marine platoon leader fighting an alien invasion of our fair city. Don't use the rubber bullets, Aaron—it'll just be a P.R. disaster for your department when the footage winds up on the news. [THR] · Innovative Artists has "undergone the most significant overhaul in the agency's 26-year history." And what do these sweeping changes entail? Everyone gets a title! Watch out Hollywood: The Vice Associate Director of Scripted Reality Affairs is on line 1, and she sounds angry! [THR] After the jump: Which on-the-cusp-of-It-boy-status actor is partaking of It Boy ritual, "one for them, one for me?"· Twilight star Cam Gigandet and Jena Malone will star in indie drama Five Star Day, which THR celebrates by locating the two worst photos of these two actors ever taken. (Malone fares way worse.) [THR] · The SEC has a few questions for Mark Cuban, who sold 600,000 shares search engine Mamma.com Inc. after receiving a hot insider tip that allowed him to save $750,000 by dumping his stake in the company. Just for fun, we entered "Mark Cuban Insider Trading" in Mamma. Nothing much turned up. Whatchu hiding, Mamma? [Variety]

Between the recession and the weakened state of publishing, nothing good has been predicted both for the industry and holiday book sales. But you'd never know it by the insane advances that celeb books—some submitted to publishers without so much as a proposal—are getting. In the wake of Tina Fey's $6 million advance for a book of humorous essays, Sarah Silverman's $2.5 million dollar advance for the idea of a collection of comedic essays, and a sure-to-be-huge advance for a Jerry Seinfeld book on the horizon (some estimate $7 million, which would put him on par with Tom Wolfe's last advance), many in publishing are railing against huge book advances that Galleycat sensibly points out will never earn out. Dan Strone, however, who is Seinfeld, Silverman, and Tori Spelling's literary agent, tells the Observer today about the celeb-book pissing matches amongst publishers: "I don't make people spend the money." No, but he does happily collect his 15% cut!

When visionaries clash, whose vision do we believe? On newsstands this week, Newsweek's Dan Lyons savages Tesla Motors, the electric-car maker. Tesla was once the brightest hope of Silicon Valley's clean-transportation industry; now on its fourth CEO in less than two years, it's better known for manufacturing boardroom drama than actual vehicles. Lyons writes that Tesla's Roadster is a "classic Silicon Valley product — it's late and over budget, has gone through loads of redesigns, still has bugs and, at $109,000, costs more than originally planned. Company founder Martin Eberhard (left, at bottom) says that lead investor Elon Musk (left, at top), who recently installed himself as the company's fourth CEO, made costly changes to the car's design and is "a terrible CEO." Musk's retort: "Martin is the worst individual I've ever had the displeasure of working with."Eberhard and Musk have long feuded, even before Musk ousted Eberhard as Tesla's CEO. But I'd note that for once, they're not outright contradicting each other here. It's far more common for Musk to have a version of events that conflicts with everyone else's accounting. His history of events at PayPal, the electronic-payments startup he cofounded, seems to be shared only by him. And Musk has been telling everyone who will listen that SpaceX, his rocket startup, has a "Nasa contract to build the Space Shuttle replacement after 2010." If you ask Nasa administrators, they'll say that's more than a stretch of the truth. (In fact, SpaceX is competing for a contract, but it has only hit some of the milestones; Nasa is currently planning to rent out space on Russian rockets to supply the International Space Station, and a future supply contract for SpaceX is a possibility, not a certainty.) So Musk has a tenuous relationship with reality. Is this a handicap in his business? Apple CEO Steve Jobs is famous for his "reality distortion field" — a charisma that leads others to believe the most exaggerated claims, because the vision behind them is so compelling. Of course, Jobs actually has brought his outlandish vision to life four times: With the Apple II, the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. Musk has realized the Roadster, and SpaceX has managed, after several crashes, to launch one lone rocket. He's also got SolarCity, a startup which installs solar panels on roofs. If in 2011, we live in a shiny future where we drive Tesla cars powered with clean electricity from SolarCity panels, and SpaceX's Falcon1 rockets are supplying orbital space stations, then we will be living in a reality of Musk's making — much as Jobs envisioned the iPod in the dark days of October 2001, and then, three years later, saw them everywhere on the New York subway. There's another possibility, however, which would also make Musk like Steve Jobs — the Jobs of two decades ago, who was forced out of Apple by the CEO he hired. Tesla could go under, SpaceX could fail to win the Nasa contract, and SolarCity could get beaten down by rival cleantech startups. And then Musk, driving his Roadster on the lonely roads of Silicon Valley, would find himself facing a reality not constructed in his mind. An unpleasant thought, that. Far easier just to succeed.

Double Happiness: When you look at this picture of Philip Seymour Hoffman, what do you see? Wait, what? That's Omar from The Wire? C'mon, kids — where's your inner film cineaste? If you had the imagination of Todd Solondz, you'd take Omar's portrayer, Michael K. Williams, and cast him in your new Happiness sequel to play the exact same obscene caller Hoffman essayed in the first film. indieWIRE's Peter Knegt was the first to look at the sequel's full synopsis and notice that every character from the first film is returning after a wild, Palindromes-style recast. Paul Reubens is Jon Lovitz. Ciarin Hinds is Dylan Baker. Sadly, Paris Hilton is not Camryn Manheim. [indieWIRE]

Faux-conservative political pundit comedian Stephen Colbert is ending a banner year—what with the election and all—with a folksy little homage to Christmas specials of yesteryear, called A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. Judging from the clips we've seen, it looks really funny and refreshingly not completely about politics, and hey! His old Daily Show boss Jon Stewart even stops by for a song. And Stewart can sing. Who knew? Get a snippet of his vocal chops in the above clip. Listen as Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer marvels!

Arianna Huffington is filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program this evening. Until then, the Huffington Post co-founder has been snooping around Rachel's corner office and getting prepared for the show. Arianna's video tour of Maddow's collection of pantsuits after the jump.

And I'm Barack Obama: The post-election afterglow scored a direct hit last night on 60 Minutes, where the President-elect and wife Michelle's rangy hour-long interview with Steve Kroft drew 24 million viewers. The 6.4 rating is the newsmagazine's highest in nine years, and what did we learn? There will be Republicans in his Cabinet, no new dog would survive the grueling transition process to the White House, and college football needs a playoff system. Also, if you stuck around to the end, Andy Rooney bemoaning frivolous TV news. And here we thought Obama had dispatched all those mavericks. [The Live Feed]

Last week, we told you about the Newsweek reporter searching for sources to answer this question: Did you make love in the name of Obama? Election-night sex resulting in conceiving an actual baby must have been too hot a trend piece to pass up. Even worse, some earnest libs actually did fornicate in the name of Obama. The resulting article is out now, and we'll admit it has a great lede—Obama himself was born "almost nine months to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected."No hard stats here, other than the fact that people under thirty voted for Obama "by a margin of 2 to 1." However!

Rumors have been floating around for the last month that Viacom is planning a big round of layoffs. The latest: we hear that MTV is planning one round of cuts for early December, and another in January. Both would technically miss the holiday, making them appear slightly less Scrooge-like. If you have any details (or denials), email us.

♦ New York's Adam Platt hands out four stars to Drew Nieporent's Corton this week, praising chef Paul Liebrandt's cuisine as "technically complex without being exhibitionist." [NYM]
♦ David Chang's Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar opened on Saturday. Grub Street has rounded up the public reception. [GS]
♦ A handful of spots including Marquee and the Tribeca Grand have been denied permits by the State Liquor Authority to stay open late on New Year's Eve. [NYP]
♦ A detailed history of the epic battle between Da Silvano's Silvano Marchetto and Bar Pitti's Giovanni Tognozzi. [Page Six Magazine]

Our operative on The View has informed us that in an attempt to curb the audience negativity toward Elisabeth Hasselbeck that's built up over the last political season, producers are encouraging her to host fluffier segments (like bargain shopping and makeovers!) and to discuss her family more on-air. Sadly, Hasselbeck's attempt to do the latter on today's edition resulted in husband-directed hysteria pitched at a level where only dogs and William Ayers can hear.While recounting a story about how her husband Tim simply wouldn't brave a long holiday line to buy some $6.99 napkins (But the bargain, Tim! It was so relatable!), Hasselbeck immediately began to flail and rewrite her marriage vows on-air. "Ohhh," moans an attempting-to-sympathize Barbara Walters, while secretly thinking, "You don't have people for that? Why, once I was at a dinner party hosted by Henry Kissinger and Chita Rivera, and I sent this kind cater-waiter out to procure the cannelloni au gratin for me at Sardi's. I tipped him with a signed headshot and a two-dollar bill, as was the custom at the time."

It is unseasonably hot in the Bay Area. Time to lap up your vitamin D and forget about the dismal economic climate. Tonight, reps from high tech, life sciences, and the non-profit world dish about where to place your money and your time for a plausibly successful 2009. To channel the positive energy, head to the the Westin San Francisco Airport from 5:30-9 p.m. The Silicon Valley Engineering Council is having an open house. Geek out about emerging technologies at the SEMI Global Headquarter from 6-9 p.m. And Bambi Francisco, the telegenic business journalist turned cofounder/CEO of the startup social networking site Vator.tv, will be at the November Startup SIG. To find out how Francisco's venture is doing now that she is free from the shackles of journalistic integrity, head to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP from 6:30-9 p.m.

Is Venus in the third house this week? Is your first house still standing? The Southland has been through hell but hopefully better things are in store for the coming week. If today - November 17 - is your birthday: The aging process spares no one and is especially unkind to Hollywood actors. It's time to begin that all-consuming, lifelong project of bizarre health routines and plastic surgery. It may not be natural or healthy, but it shows a high level of ambition. Scorpio (October 24 - November 21): There's no need to constantly run through your impressive resume of producing credits in front of your friends. They'd be your friends even if you weren't successful, as long as you still gave them free coke. More wisdom after the jump!

Damien Hirst isn't the least bit troubled about last week's disappointing art auctions, or that one of his own works, a painting of four skulls called "Beautiful Artemis Thor Neptune Odin Delusional Sapphic Inspirational Hypnosis Painting," found no takers. It's actually a good thing! Hirst now says the art market was overpriced up until recently, and that his painting wasn't worth $3 million anyway: "It was bought from me less than a year ago at half the price. In a way it's good. We are looking at more realistic prices. People who bought things are not going to sell them that day. That is what an artist wants, for people to hang the works on their wall." Perhaps this means that Hirst, who is now reportedly worth more than $350 million, is planning to issue refunds to collectors who bought in at the peak? Not so much! "Art is worth what the next guy is prepared to pay," he says. But he does plan to adjust prices when he unveils his next batch of work. "If I want to sell new work, I'll price it lower."