As you've probably heard, the real estate market has softened and developers and apartment owners are getting increasingly desperate as they try to unload condos and co-ops. Real estate scion/Observer owner Jared Kushner has a few tips on navigating the market: "There is nothing too obnoxious you can ask for right now," he advises. "For the first time in a long time, brokers have to earn their commissions." Video of his remarks is to your left. [The Real Deal]

Though Wanda Sykes has taped PSAs asking us to never again use the phrase, "That's so gay," we hope she'll make an exception in this case, because you know what's so gay? Wanda Sykes! The comedian has been a constant presence at the anti-Prop 8 marches in Los Angeles over the last week and a half, but on Saturday, she popped up at a Las Vegas rally and officially came out as a lesbian. What's more, she revealed that she went ahead and married a woman in October — and it wasn't Julia Louis-Dreyfus! Yes, we just made a joke about a New Adventures of Old Christine plotline. We're sure that five of you are very pleased. After the jump, relive the biggest hint Sykes ever gave us — her riff on gay marriage from the stand-up special Sick and Tired:

Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this! Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit. At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly. So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to slash the city's budget will require cuts at all local agencies. It also means he's going to have to cut 23 people from his own staff if he expects to comply with his own order on "maximum allowable headcounts." If you work at City Hall and the mayor asks you to step out of the bullpen and into his glass conference room, well, don't say we didn't warn you! [NYP]

In yesterday's New York Times profile of playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, an executive producer for Gossip Girl, the teen soap that Shawn is guesting on for a spate of episodes, said that the diminutive chrome-dome brings to the series a level of smarts and sophistication that "that was way beyond [the writers].” He's referring, we guess, to Shawn's artsy intellectual pedigree—he's the celebrated writer and star of plays and films like My Dinner With Andre and the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn. And we agree! Seeing Shawn on the occasionally sharp but mostly silly series is like a breath of fresh Bordeaux-scented air. It got us thinking about some other ways that Gossip Girl can fancy itself up, which we'll list after the jump.

The first real trailer for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot emerged in theaters last Friday, spilling a dark, sprawling shadow over the Bond film that followed it and confirming our suspicions that about .003% of its rumored $200 million budget went to anything resembling a screenplay. Like we care: Our audience tuned out every platitude and ultimatum that followed the introduction of young troublemaker James Tiberius Kirk, lapsing into an effects coma from which we're only beginning to emerge this morning. Paramount will have an official HD trailer online later today, but in the meantime, bask in the bootlegged bombast available now: Monsters! Sex! Simon Pegg! And a pissed-off Spock who puts those uncanny Katie Holmes comparisons to rest in seconds flat, thank God. [YouTube]

It looks like the Yellowstone isn't the only members-only club having a hard time making ends meet in these precarious economic times. Founding members of the Core Club, the VIP hangout on East 55th Street founded by Jennie Saunders, have been warned that they may not get back the $100,000 they invested in the club when it first opened in 2005.

Obama's plan to have a cabinet full of politico-celebrity superstars is turning out to be the least successful Obama plan ever. Already, Al Gore and Colin Powell have taken themselves out of consideration. That was a major emotional blow, because they are both known to get the party started right. And now former Time Warner chief Dick Parsons, one of the most successful black men in corporate America (by some standards), has taken himself out of consideration too. And he wasn't even asked!

The SEC has filed charges against Dallas Mavericks owner and dot-com billionaire Mark Cuban. The Wall Street Journal, which disgraced Cuban with a stipple portrait this morning, sums up the paperwork thusly:

Today's Chronicle mourns the three victims of an angry coworker at SiPort, the previously obscure vendor of radio chips in Santa Clara. No surprise that CEO Sid Agrawal is remembered as a "Renaissance man," and VP of operations Brian Pugh as a "brilliant engineer." But most touching to me is the story of 67-year-old Marilyn Lewis, the HR manager gunned down by 47-year-old engineer and father of three Jing Hua Wu, because she had handled his firing that morning.Human resources is one of the most disrespected jobs in tech. Yet Lewis's two daughters told the Chron that a few years ago, their mom told them she wanted to take a Hawaiian cruise with them. Taking a week off was so out of character for Lewis that her children feared she'd been diagnosed with a fatal disease. That's how much Marilyn Lewis loved her job. In HR. At a tech company. My kind of lady. Is there anything good we can pull out of this bloody mess? I guess it's: Take the cruise.

Attention Americans, it's almost time to travel to your local movie theater to take in Nothing But the Truth, the ironically-titled Hollywood dramatization of the Judy Miller story! Miller, the former NYT correspondent (now with Fox!) who went to jail unnecessarily to protect Scooter Libby's right to plant fake stories with her concerning nonexistent Iraqi WMDs, is reportedly pleased with the film because it captures the "moral ambiguity" of her situation. It did so by casting Kate Beckinsale as (the much older) Miller, then "dramatizing" the story in order to make her a heroic, martyred "devoted mother of a seven-year-old" who "faces starker physical and personal consequences in jail." So, just how Judith Miller sees herself! Click through to watch two clips, exclusively featuring people who are far too attractive to be journalists:

Vanity Fair editor and Spy founder Graydon Carter reviewed a biography of Paris Review editor George Plimpton in the New York Times Book Review this Sunday. ("I could have been a contender [to be a Great Male Author]," Plimpton once said, "If I hadn't done the Paris Review...) Carter revealed both his admiration for "George," as well as the fact that that when casting agents are scouting around for a "patrician type to play an editor ," Plimpton also had him beat—the secretly Canadian Carter was only the third choice for such a character:

♦ Barack Obama's first post-election interview with 60 Minutes (an excerpt is on your left) earned the show its biggest audience in nine years. [THR]
♦ Dan Rather has spent $2 million battling CBS thus far, but it looks like his time and money may finally be paying off. [NYT]
♦ MTV's TRL came to an end yesterday, in case you haven't heard the terribly tragic news. [NYT]
♦ Rupert Murdoch's New York Post appears to have warmed to Barack Obama. "So has Mr. Murdoch gone soft on liberals—or perhaps just reacted pragmatically to Mr. Obama's sizable victory?" [NYT]
♦ The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. The flick generated $70.4 in its first three days. [Reuters]

[Actress Lindsay Lohan outside of a English nightclub called Faces yesterday; image via INF]

Unless you have young sons, you might not be aware that circumcision is on a downward trend, and that the anti-circumcision lobby is gaining ground. Not your problem? Well, it turns out that this issue is suddenly of relevance to everyone: Foreskins are the latest tool in the fight against aging, and we're going to need a constant fresh supply!

Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's useless media critic whose column is the actual physical manifestation of "conventional wisdom," is upset. About Obama! Specifically, about the fact that every newspaper and magazine and TV network has decided that Obama worship is the proper coverage strategy at the moment. The media is engaged in outrageous "mythmaking," Howie Kurtz observes, long after all the worthwhile media critics have analyzed this point to death. Howie's method is to list every example of a media outlet celebrating Obama's victory, then to wrap it all up with a conclusion that you may not have considered yet:

Kelly Ripa jogging in Central Park ... John Mayer pulling up to the Bowery Hotel in his Porsche Cayenne ... Natalie Portman sitting down on the set of her new film ... Leighton Meester on the set of a new ad campaign for Reebok ... Philip Seymour Hoffman walking home after having brunch in SoHo ... Russell Brand leaving the Four Seasons hotel on East 57th Street ... Salma Hayek and daugher Valentina standing on the set of 30 Rock ... Debra Messing walking down Madison Avenue ... Katie Holmes leaving her apartment in the East Village ... Jessica Alba filming scenes for her new movie in the Bronx ... and Justin Timberlake arriving at Dos Caminos for the SNL afterparty, which Jennifer Aniston attended, too.

CNN plans to air a documentary on Diane von Furstenberg the day after tomorrow. But it seems the network is having some trouble finding someone who owns one of her wrap dresses from 30 years ago to gush about it on camera: "If you own a wrap dress from the 1970s, write to CNN and tell them where and when you bought it, and what it means to you. Your quote or photo could then be featured on the show. Email revealed@cnn.com." [DVF]

The TSA Does Not Like Your Luggage [BoingBoing]

We were hoping for an epic pratfall from Page Six mag's newest columnist Liam, 20-year-old stoner son of society photog Patrick McMullan—who replaced dimwitted model/publishing heiress Lydia Hearst after she quit in a backstage drama. Sadly (for us), young Liam's "Scenester Diaries" are slightly more coherent than Lydia's, despite his daily weed intake. He's even a little funn! ("If Obama had the audacity of hope, I don't see why I shouldn't.") Young Liam also managed to get in a classic dig at Alec Baldwin, which is always appreciated: