You may recall that knife-wielding madman Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff, has a dad named Benjamin who used to be an Israeli terrorist! Back in the 1940s Benjamin was in a militant Zionist group that massacred some Arabs and did various other freedom-promoting actions. These things can be a little sensitive, so uh, hey Rahm, whatever you do, don't let your dad go giving racist quotes about Arabs to Israeli newspapers. Okay? Oh hell, it's too late: So Benjamin, will Rahm influence the White House to more pro-Israel?

I don't hate people. I love people. But people kind of suck. Take a look at the anonymously voted priorities for America's still-unnamed chief technologist at Obama CTO: "Ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral" beats "repeal the Patriot Act" by a much bigger margin than Obama pulled over McCain. Repealing the Patriot Act isn't something Obama's CTO could do, but everyone knows "net neutrality" is code for "stop Comcast from slowing my BitTorrent porn." Here's a better idea: Government jobs for Owen and me.

There's a new entry on the list of New York's most expensive apartments. A 78th-floor penthouse at the Time Warner Center hit the market today for $65 million, reports Max Abelson. The 8,300-square-foot pad comes with everything you'd expect for that kind of cash—screening room, gym, 360-degree views—but it also comes with $29,693 in monthly maintenance fees and taxes, which means it'll cost $356,316 a year to live in the apartment, even after you've plunked down the $65 million, which works out to a nutty $7,831 per square foot. Photos and floorplan after the jump.

Now that Russell Brand's been virtually blacklisted from British television, he's made a return to America to ply his wares (yes, that sound you heard was Jordin Sparks stomping an Ugg boot in frustration). Appearing on Letterman last night to promote his upcoming Adam Sandler movie, Brand bewitched the talk show host with the thicket of hair whipped up over his head like a haphazardly thrown-together bird's nest.Though we'd figured the layers of locks held some sort of Samson-like ability for the British lothario, Brand explained that really, his intent is to get closer to God — or serve as a calling tower for extraterrestrials, should they exist. Still, the powerfully hypnotic effect of his hairstyle on Letterman ought to give Brand hope: perhaps a simple question of "Do I have something in my hair?" to his crush, Helen Mirren, could result in another red two-piece hanging off his bedpost.

The financiapocalypse? So 2008. The economy may start growing again in the second half of next year. July? That's practically next month. Too bad about your job, though: Unemployment is expected to peak at 7.7 percent in December 2009. [WSJ]

The Dark Knight came up lame in the first stretch of this year's Oscar marathon, hobbled by the Academy music branch's disqualification of its big, haunting, lugubrious Bat-score. At issue: Credited composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard wrote "more than 60%, but less than 70%" of the music, according to documentation sent the Academy's way. This throws our awards-seasons handicapping into complete disarray, but as Variety points out, it might be our own fault for not seeing it coming.Add it to the Dark Knight curse, we suppose: The same scenario torpedoed Batman Begins' Best Original Score hopes in 2005, when Zimmer and Howard were last DQ'd. Yet the duo once again leaned too heavily on collaborations for the Academy's taste, bringing on a third composer, the film's music editor and an "ambient music designer" whose achievement in melodifying Heath Ledger's scenery-gobbling will likely go forever unrecognized beyond the controversial five-person credit list — a/k/a the "cue sheet":

The Anti-Advertising Agency's Steve Lambert, a co-conspirator in yesterday's Fake New York Times, tells us where the idea for this year-in-the-making work of agitprop got started: "like all great ideas, in a bar."

This is no coincidence, folks. Nick Denton soft-shutters our site and boom, we're added to Guy Kawasaki's "online magazine rack" Alltop within 24 hours. Guy's not afraid to play hockey with us anymore. Slapshot to the face! Guy, I'm a French-Canadian goalie. You'll be surprised how many of those I can take.

The art world is suffering from diminished expectations for the obvious reasons. At last night's Christie's auction, their much-vaunted Francis Bacon work "Study for Self-Portrait"—estimated to go for $40 mil—didn't sell. In fact, nobody even bid, the NYT reported. It was like an Ebay auction from hell! (Last May, a Bacon sold for a $86 mil.) Thank goodness for Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and his precious Basquiat. His painting, Untitled (Boxer) sold for $13.5 million to a mysterious phone bidder. The New York Observer pointed out last week that Ulrich wanted to sell it for between $12 and $16 mil and didn't even ask for a guarantee; the painting was "bought in 1999 for just a couple million dollars." Oh, and Lehman CEO Dick Fuld didn't get as much as he wanted for the sale of his drawings collection. Tough luck—try Ebay.http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6242240&page=1

♦ Alex Raij, the former chef at Tia Pol (left), is opening her 28-seat tapas bar named Txikito (pronounced chee-KEE-toe) tonight. [GS]
♦ A play-by-play of what went down at Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz's $1,500-per-person dinner at Per Se on Tuesday night. [NYT, NYT]
♦ Another look inside David Chang's forthcoming Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar, which is set to open on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. [Eater]

NewTeeVee Live, the online-video blog's conference, runs today in Mission Bay. VoiceCon and ISPCon continue. Tonight: a meetup of San Francisco Flickr users at Crossroads Cafe in South Beach. More on the calendar:

The annual War Against Christmas is starting again! This is the time of year when secular humanists and other assorted anti-American forces do various things to undermine Jesus, such as asking for the term "Holiday party" to be substituted for "Christmas party," and requesting that Jews, Muslims, and members of other blasphemous religions be "included" in things. But this year it's even worse, because some atheists have started a public ad campaign designed to destroy God! Fox News is taking this threat very seriously:

The New York Times fraternity of gay political reporters is losing a member, Patrick Healy, to (where else?) the Broadway beat, Portfolio reports. Healy becomes the latest campaign reporter to get as far away from politics as possible following an election. And we now have to wonder now if he was the source of this quote in Out's unveiling of the gays covering the campaign:"'I think that the theater of politics is of real interest to political reporters,' says one of them. 'And a lot of gay reporters are theater junkies as well.'"With his November 4th campaign wrap-up, including his feud with the Hillary Clinton campaign over access, behind him, Healy follows in the footsteps of cantankerous Times reporter Frank Bruni, who went from covering the 2000 election to wild run as the paper's food critic. Healy recently reviewed the off-Broadway political play Farragut North, and he recently filed a textured, measure report about the rape scene in the Soho Rep production of Blasted. Our favorite moment from the Broadway-bound journalist was when he was recently asked, "Do you miss covering the Clinton presidential campaign?" He responded, "LOL." Jump From Political Beat [Portfolio]

When it comes to satisfying their children's tween dreams, Barack and Michelle Obama have been fairly generous, arranging a Jonas Brothers meet-and-greet on the set of Ellen that found Joe practicing his phone breakup techniques on Malia and left Sasha, weirdly, with a purity ring on her left thumb. Still, there's one place that even the Obamas deem too frightening for their girls: the set of Hannah Montana! After Billy Ray Cyrus issued an invitation for the younger Obamas to make an appearance on the show that was greeted with a firm "Uh...," Miley's father attempted a retraction tinged with some unexpected advice:

You really have to sympathize with The View's braintrust, whose knowledge of topics like arts and science, current events, and the general shape of the planet is mostly limited to whatever producers can fit on a 5x8 cue card. Watching them try to argue the fundamental issues behind the Prop 8 firestorm is about as productive as watching four black-crested macaques change a spare tire—you know they'll get there eventually, but you're looking at many grueling hours of mutual nit-picking before they do.So when the group's impotent disciplinarian Barbara Walters returned from a recent interview with the World Famous Pregnant Man™ bearing the earth-shattering scoop that HE IS PREGNANT AGAIN, one can only imagine how quickly things devolved. The bombshell sucked the show into a Bermuda Triangle vortex of shock and confusion, tethered at each corner by the hosts' tenuous yet deeply passionate takes on hot topics like marriage, gender, and multiple-abortion-having. Words like "floored," "What the Hell Wednesday," and "woooowwwww" are soon lobbed about, until Elisabeth Hasselbeck—go figure!—is the one to finally rein in her wits, boring straight to the crux of this 21st century metaphysical mystery by observing: "Having another baby 10 months from now? That is hard work. 15 months apart? That's the hardest thing yet!" So true, so very true. [The View]

While New York women hoping to bag themselves an investment banker have seen the pool of potentials tragically dry up, take a moment to spare a thought for the girls in Tokyo—at least the ones whose lives revolved around dating Wall Streeters who'd been transferred to work in the city's Roppongi Hills complex. Now, as 25-year-old Haruna Hiraki gloomily says to her friend at a bar that had once been a prime spot: "I told you this place was finished. Lehman, Goldman: They've all been sacked or gone back to America."

John Battelle has his own plan for riding out the holiday ad-buying slump. The founder of online-advertising network Federated Media, which brokers ads for sites like Boing Boing, GigaOm, and Dooce, can't fire writers, but he can cut the price of their ads. John, be careful. Your inbred network is made up of bloggers who are also endorsers, who also shill their own products. Your list of clients is months out of date — it includes Digg and Fark, who long ago dropped Federated. Cut ad rates too carelessly and your Rube Goldberg business model may backfire. I mean this as the highest compliment: If anyone can lay himself off by accident, that someone is John Battelle. Here's the spam that Federated sent to bloggers this morning:

The View is the strangest show ever. This morning old Barbara Walters joined Elisabeth, Sherri, and Whoopi for a chat about Thomas Beatie, that sorta fame-hungry female-to-male transsexual who gave birth to a child five months ago. And she gushingly revealed that the fellow is pregnant again! Watch as Sherri Shepherd's mind is blown to the four corners of this flat Earth of ours. Squirm as Elisabeth Hasselbeck tries to act as with-it and progressive as possible while all she clearly wants to do is throw up and weepily call her bestie Sarah Palin on the phone to tell her what freaks weirdos can be. And then feel bad for everyone because the whole stunned affair just reeks of circus side show and, as jarring (yes, I admit it) as the whole story is, the man and his family deserve far better. Clip is above.

Sony yesterday released the new teaser for the apocalyptic epic 2012, sort of a Groundhog Day meets The Day After Tomorrow in which Earth's inhabitants wake up one morning to find director Roland Emmerich once again destroying everything in sight. There's little on hand to illuminate the plot that star John Cusack so vigorously protected earlier this year in a chat with Defamer, but here's what we can suss from a couple viewings so far:1. Emmerich's campy, well-fortified London townhouse? Saved. 2. Tibet? Gone. 3. Killer-tidal wave CGI technology has not advanced especially far in the five years since Day After Tomorrow. 4. Emmerich is returning to the political satire at which he acquitted himself so expertly before stumbling over historical comedy with 10,000 B.C. 5. If you look really, really close, we think you can spot Cusack boogieboarding into the doomed monastery. BONUS: If you're especially determined to get something out of this, amuse yourself and your coworkers by reading the intertitles in your best Don LaFontaine voice. It's fun!

Ever watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and wonder if you were watching a rerun? You weren't. But given Olbermann's tendency to use the same phrases over and over again, you're officially excused for thinking so! [Jossip]