Can you pick out the ex-husband of the actress, socialite, singer, TV talk show host, political fundraiser, and magazine editor? Click on "More" for the answers.

Last we heard, the typical Bollywood heroine was a coy, traditional woman—not a violent criminal who goes through rich men like party snacks—but apparently that didn't deter producer Shailendra Singh from recruiting Naomi Campbell to sing (in Hindi!) in his new animated film, Jumbo. The scary supermodel will also dance in a promo for the film, which probably won't erase the public's traumatic memories of her own short-lived pop career. [Female First]

Interested in serving in the president-elect's cabinet, or some other high-ranking capacity? Obama has 63 questions he'd like you to answer, quite possibly the most extensive vetting process in White House history. In addition to listing everything embarrassing or controversial that's ever happened to you, which must be pretty standard from administration to administration, or whether anyone in your family owns a gun, there are all sorts of exciting internet-related inquiries. Has anything been written about you, online, ever? You basically have to send all your Google results. Obama's team will also need anything you've ever written online, including fake names (see excerpt above). More exciting demands after the jump!

♦ Tommy Mottola and his wife Thalia have reportedly sold their 12-acre Westchester estate for $15 million. The 15,000-square-foot Aspen-style home in North Salem was first listed in 2006 for $21 million. [NYP]
♦ Hugh Jackman has closed on the triplex apartment at 176 Perry Street he was in negotiations to buy late last month. Jackman paid between $20 and $23 million for the 11,032-square-foot pad, which was previously owned by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. [NYO]
♦ NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein and his wife, Sony exec Nicole Seligman, are about to close on the Sag Harbor home of author Harry Hurt III and his wife, chef Alison Becker. The price is reportedly $2 million. [NYP]

If American Express pleads poverty and gets a multi-billion dollar handout from the government, maybe we should all do the same and just not pay our next AmEx bill? That's Neil Cavuto's suggestion at least, and while we wouldn't necessarily recommend it, if you do decide to toss your statements into the trash and burly collection agents show up on your doorstep, just tell them it was Neil's idea. He can afford to pay both his bill and yours, too.

Chris Noth is 54 today. Fashion publicity powerhouse (and Hills regular) Kelly Cutrone is turning 43. Whoopi Goldberg turns 53. Gerard Butler is 39. Director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride) is turning 74. Former Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde is 45. Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture turns 30. Actor Neil Flynn (Scrubs) is 48. Joe Mantegna is 61. And the least funny late-night host on TV, Jimmy Kimmel, turns 41 today.

"I thought she should leave it on and start a whole new fashion phenom, but she dutifully reversed it." [Michael Musto]

Looks like Christie's is out $6.5 million. At auction last night, Richard and Kathy Fuld's collection of drawings failed to reach the $20 million that Christie's had guaranteed the couple. The sixteen works fetched just $13.5 million, in keeping with the lackluster response to many other lots on the block. (A 1964 self-portrait by Francis Bacon, estimated at $40 million, didn't attract a single bidder.) One of the Fulds' drawings that fetched a decent price was an Arshile Gorky that Matthew Marks paid $2.2 million for, although that still barely hit the low estimate. But just so you know, it wasn't as if there was any connection between Kathy Fuld selling the art and the spectactular downfall of her husband's career. "I've been selling things for the past few years," Kathy told a reporter recently. "But nobody cared until now." [NYT, ABC]

David Shuster, we tried to warn you. "Martin Eisenstadt" is no adviser to John McCain, our own Alex Pareene reported Nov. 4, but rather a talented comedian. Mother Jones did likewise. And yet! On Monday, nearly six days after that warning, you had to go and identify Eisenstadt on MSNBC as a "McCain policy adviser" who spread word that McCain running mate Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. The Times did a big expose, revealing that Eisenstadt is really Eitan Gorlin, who perpetuated the hoax with fellow filmmaker Dan Mirvish. MSNBC retracted the story, and we're left to examine your track record:

♦ Remember last month when Gwyneth Paltrow said she was trying to be supportive of her good friend Madonna during her divorce? It seems Madge was less than moved by the gesture and now she's warning Gwyneth to keep her mouth shut and "say nothing about me or my divorce." [National Enquirer]
♦ Meanwhile, Madonna has supposedly been telling a "close pal" that Alex Rodriguez sends her poetry and "has the heart of a poet trapped inside an insanely gorgeous body." [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are supposedly planning to "officially get engaged" while they're in Paris this week. [The Sun]
♦ Now that she's back from London (where she reportedly brought 20 pieces of luggage on a three-day trip), Mariah Carey is supposedly organizing her holiday vacation to Aspen, where her plans include rolling around in the snow in a red bikini and decorating her bedroom to look like the North Pole. [MSNBC, The Sun, P6]

♦ Dick Parsons is the frontrunner to replace Sir Win Bischoff as chairman of Citigroup. [Reuters]
♦ Steve Rattner is shutting down the Quadrangle Group's hedge fund amid weak performance and investor redemptions. [WSJ]
♦ Phil Falcone, Ken Griffin, John Paulson, Jim Simons and George Soros will appear in front of a House panel today. [DB]
♦ Hank Paulson is taking a beating following the news that the Treasury will now focus on struggling consumers, instead of financial institutions. Paulson has become "a reduced figure, damaged by the financial-market meltdown that happened on his watch and by the government's struggles to respond to it." [WSJ, DB, Bloomberg]

It was kind of an awkward joke to begin with: CNET News.com writer Caroline McCarthy publicly imagining how her fameball buddies David Karp and Charles Forman would be mocked by Perez Hilton if the celebrity blogger worked for Valleywag. Hilton would, of course, call the cuddle-buddies gay, as McCarthy made clear in a mockup posted to her Tumblr Wednesday night. But throw in the fact that McCarthy and Karp very recently, we heard, broke up, and the image takes on an entirely more vicious, passive-aggressive sheen.

It's not that Shep Smith has suddenly had a liberal change of heart. The Fox News Channel anchor was shouting about his ideological independence back in February. It's that Smith seems to have become more vigorous and visible lately about setting himself apart from conservative pundits like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. His Tuesday smackdown of a comedian who said the media was "in the tank" for Barack Obama followed recent defenses of the Democratic president-elect to Ralph Nader and Joe The Plumber, plus cutesy little digs at Hannity and O'Reilly. It's all after the jump.

Right before he was busted on fraud charges, Rafaello Follieri decided to go house shopping with celebrity girlfriend Anne Hathaway. They wanted four stories: the first two controlled by Follieri, for his con-meetings and fancy con-parties, the top two under the charge of Hathaway, the actress told In Touch. But now Follieri is in jail,on his way to prison, far from his dream-home fantasy. There's poo and rats everywhere, and the Italian high-lifer is complaining, via his lawyer. The Smoking Gun has the documents:

It's true, as we reported this morning, that the the liberal prank group The Yes Men was behind today's spoof left-utopian Times. But there were so many more commie pinkos involved in the plot! The cabal sent out a press release tonight, revealing that their ranks include the Yes Men, protest group Code Pink (which disrupted the Republican National Convention and fought Marine Corps recruiting), Improv Everywhere (they did that tear-jerking little league thing), Anti Advertising Agency (the ad-sticker people) and a few others we're less familiar with. They want to make the headlines come true! So cute. After the jump, read the press release and find out which of their claims is being disputed by the Times.

Welcome, reality-TV junk-food junkies! Our commenter live blogs for Project Runway were such a blast, Gawker let us re-plate the whole concept for new season of Top Chef (in New York!), which kicks off at 10 Eastern tonight. So turn on Bravo, grab the alcoholic beverage of your choice and limber up those commenting fingers. (And here's a tip from the Glad family of products: To protect your keyboard or laptop from drunken spills, just zip it inside an extra-large Glad food storage bag!) I am your live-blog maitre d', Monsieur Hippity, and allow me to start things off by suggesting the first rules of our Top Chef commenter drinking game (suggest more rules in comments!): Take a drink every time … 1. Someone says the word "inedible," "palate," "tangy," "acid"/"acidic," "cheftestant," "challenge," "infused" or "plate" (as a verb). 2. A contestant "bleep-swears." 3. Padma shouts "utensils down!" 4. Something bursts into flame (whether by accident or design). Next, a few general live-blog rules. 1. Please don't use the word "cheftestant," just because I hate that word (pet peeve, sorry). 2. Try not to argue that the judges' opinions are unfair, because let's face it: They can actually taste the food, and we can't. (That's just the way it is with this show: Until somebody invents taste-o-vision, we have to take the judges at their word regarding what sucks and what doesn't.) 3. Don't post spoilers and/or spoil posters. Finally, here are a few of my impressions of this season after watching (too many) promo clips posted on bravotv.com. First impression: Reputed pot-imbiber Padma looks even more stoned than usual lately. (Here's an overshare: In one clip, Padma dreamily intoned, "I want every part of my palate to really be stimulated," and it gave me a culinary boner.) Other impressions: This season's contestant group looks refreshingly "global" (with origins from places like Hawaii, Italy, Finland, Spain and India) as well as promisingly eccentric. Examples include:

· Last night's Dancing with the Stars featured a harrowing intake exam with Cody Linley and his recently appendectomied partner, Julianne Hough. Turns out both of them are hopelessly addicted—to mutual respect and admiration! · Our new hero: Wisconsin native Kyle Drinkwine "became so incensed by a lackluster karaoke performance of a heavy metal song that he assaulted the singer and a second man, police charge." "But which song?!" you bellow. "'Holy Diver,' by Ronnie James Dio," we respond. · Life Saver Wint-O-Green mints and The Wedding Singer's Rapping Granny both turned 90 recently. Why not combine parties? Just don't get too drunk and forget which one to put in your mouth for fresher breath. · Funny—25 seconds of this duet with Def Leppard is how long it took us to decide we need a little less Taylor Swift in our lives, too. · Hey, look everyone—it's Nick Denton's latest CT scan a bad omen of things to come! Hold us. It's so very cold and dark and the wolves are scratching at the door.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: Alec Baldwin in Love Edition! 11/8 — I saw him picking up sushi on Sat. night in the Valley with some really leggy, gorgeous, young looking blonde. They looked like they were on a date. He looked bigger but, happy... Damn I would be happy too, if I had that girl he was with on my arm... She didn't look famous but like a model, kinda familar. They were talking very intimately and looked like they liked each other a lot... [UPDATE: The shocking reveal (maybe!) after the jump!]A tipster follows up:

The Dow got boned to the tune of -411 today and people are talking the big R. If things get bad, our hierarchy of needs goes: cats, TV, clothing, food, and, least important, medical care. Not when there's solid things to wreck with our bodies! WATCH Stylista [9 PM, CW] - This week the contestants scramble to pick out a last minute outfit for Anne Slowey before managing a photo shoot for designer Tory Burch. Our favorite contestants are Danielle, an overweight 22 year-old Pratt Institute drop-out that Anne Slowey makes the politically correct point of complimenting each week, and Kate, who cries each episode, worships fashion icon Jessica Simpson, and ignites fights like this.

It was only two and a half years ago that Nick Denton launched Valleywag, Silicon Valley's tech gossip rag, at a time when the Internet hadn't yet resumed its froth. From the first, Paul Boutin and I were working for Nick Denton for free, feeding launch editor Nick Douglas tips and quips. As Denton wore us down, we both become official employees of Gawker Media. A bubble and a bust later, we're still here. At least through the end of the month — after which, I'll be the Valleywag both here and on Gawker.com, and Paul will no doubt return to his sub rosa role as advisor and instigator. Same party, different venue. Do tag along! (Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)