Just in time for the holidays, layoff season is here. To avoid your own nightmare before Christmas, join a dotcom bust survivor, The Stephenz Group, at the Silicon Valley Capital Club. They'll be sharing their tips for keeping your revenue stream flowing in a tight financial market from 5-8:30 p.m. For something a bit more uplifting, tonight's Net Tuesday is out to prove that some youngs have heart. At 6 p.m., representatives from Millennials Changing America and Change.org will be at Techsoup to discuss how technology can give the next generation of leaders a voice. Lastly, Thrillist SF, the lifestyle e-newsletter that reads like one giant sponsored listing, is celebrating their first anniversary today. The party at Project One in Potrero Hill is already at capacity. So let the party crashing juices flow. (Photo by texas mustang)

Hollywood's steady death march to the Idea-Killing Fields continues with news today that Jaden Smith—smarmy hatchling of the dangerously in black love super-couple Will and Jada Pinkett Smith—will star in a re-imagining of sacred 1980s cinematic text, The Karate Kid. Set to shoot next year in Beijing and other locations, the film won't be a straight-ahead remake, but will rather "borrow elements of the original plot, wherein a bullied youth learns to stand up for himself with the help of an eccentric mentor." With no word on who will play the pivotal role of handyman mentor Mr. Miyagi, we thought we'd offer some casting suggestions to go along with the logical "Ralph Macchio : Jaden Smith" equation:1. Nicolas Cage We can think of no other actor more capable of tapping into both Miyagi's quiet dignity and flying-insect-assassinating ferocity than Cage—to say nothing of his intimate familiarity with Far East mysticism, having served for years as a pachinko pitchman on Japanese TV:

Oh boy, hot news from Random House: once-popular entertainer Ann Coulter has a new book coming out! It's on sale, uh, five days after Christmas, and it's called.. well, apparently the title is embargoed. "This book is so hot we can't tell you what it's about," Random House claims. "Ann Coulter never disappoints." Man. They sure sound excited to be promoting this one, right? We can guess the book will be full of the usual Ann Coulter material, slightly updated for a new age of Democratic ascendence, but what is the over-arching theme? How will she top SLANDER: Liberal Lies About the American Right, TREASON: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and GODLESS: The Church of Liberalism? Maybe this one is called "SOCIALISM." Or "GAYNESS." Or "BESTIALITY." Or "BAD THING: Liberals Being Not Good From Pontius Pilate to Kim Jong-il." Or "NEGRO: That Is The Color Of the Liberal Heart In Illegal Immigrant Spanish, Not a Racist Reference to Barack Obama (Wink Wink)." Or "ALIEN LIZARD PERSON: What I Am." Whatever it's called, we're sure it'll be a big hit, because Ann Coulter is still very popular and relevant.

@barackobama: Please update your Twitter. Since last Tuesday's historic election, Barack Obama's Twitter account hasn't sent any messages. Some Internet President-Elect! He didn't even use Twitter to announce his transition website, change.gov — and what is Twitter for, really, if not spamming your friends with your latest URL? There's no better sign that his 127,196 followers have been pumped and dumped — Twittered into contributing money and time, and then passed over for more presidential means of communication. Like, say, press conferences.

Jerry Portwood is the editor of the New York Press, and he does a lot of theater reviews. Like lots of theater reviewers, he gets free tickets for plays from publicists. But last week, he was abruptly disinvited and taken off the list for the play "The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents," just before he was scheduled to attend. The reason: the play's publicist didn't like a NY Press story that pointed out that the play's publicists were marketing it by hyping up the fact that Meryl Streep's daughter is a cast member. Losing a pair of free tickets isn't the world's biggest tragedy, but it brings up the interesting question: How are flacks supposed to handle bad press? Answer: a lot better than this. The shortest bit of advice that smart PR people can take about bad press is to just suck it up. Nobody likes a negative review, but you have to take the long view of things. Cutting off news outlets for one story you didn't like is the equivalent of selling all your stocks as soon as the market has a bad day; a panicky way to ensure that you get nothing good in the future. Jerry Portwood tells us that when he spoke to the PR guy in question,

"I am not darker, angrier or moodier these days... All that's happened is that I've given up on trying to find a way to use unwanted media as a form of entertainment." That's what the large-headed singer of sensitive fuckjams tells us via his blog. [US Weekly]

If you're excited to read something terrible today, you're in luck! The LAT's Patrick Goldstein has taken time out of his busy, blogger-excoriating schedule to continue his second career as a one-man promo machine for the Samuel L. Jackson/Bernie Mac vehicle Soul Men, and today, he's produced a real whopper. Periodically, Goldstein has used his column to check in with the film's producer David Friendly (also a former LAT writer, and thus easy to get on the phone) to rebut rumors about Soul Men that you haven't heard, but rarely have the results been this dunderheaded:

Apocalyptic pronouncements have been made in publishing amidst the layoffs and rough economy; even megastore Borders is struggling. Barnes and Noble's chairman told the Wall Street Journal last week that "never in all my years have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in;" he's preparing for a terrible holiday sales season. It might not be all bad, reports Motoko Rich in today's Times. After all, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind sold a million copies in a year—in 1936, the middle of the Depression. Other literary types remain true to their wishful thinking: the whole nation was simply distracted by the election and that's why they weren't reading books for the last year!

If you're hunting for a cheapo apartment to purchase in Manhattan, this isn't a bad time to be looking: Prices are falling, the number of buyers is declining, and as long as you have very good credit (or don't need a mortgage), there's never been more inventory to choose from. Below you'll find a list of the 20 cheapest apartments in Manhattan on the market at the moment. A few quick caveats, though: The list only includes apartments in Manhattan below 96th Street, so if you're looking for a deal in Brooklyn, you're on your own for the time being. Also, we've only included proper apartments on the list, which means "fractional-ownership" condos, apartments with tenants living in them or, say, rooftop cabanas, have all been excluded. But don't worry: There's still plenty of sub-$300K apartments to choose from, just as long as you're not too worried about having an actual bedroom and you have no objection to bathing in the kitchen sink.

Just yesterday, we were hearing gossip about how Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, had spared Wired while slashing Portfolio, its troubled business magazine. Not so: Wired.com is having layoffs due to "unexpected cutbacks," Silicon Alley Insider reports. No details on numbers yet; the publication is having a conference call to discuss the cuts now. Wired.com, which is managed separately from the magazine, had gone on an acquisition spree of late, having bought Reddit, Ars Technica, and Webmonkey recently. It also had plans to resuscitate HotWired, a '90s-era Web property which popularized the banner ad; those may now be on hold. Update: More details have arrived on the cuts. A quarter of the 50 or so staff in Wired.com's San Francisco newsroom are gone.

Facebook has made a bold bet on being the next Google. The problem is that it may have made the wrong bet. The Wall Street Journal has taken tardy notice of Facebook's "engagement ads," first launched in August. They are not an easy sell; they require advertisers to come up with some compelling "action" for Facebook users to take, which will then be shared with their friends, and thus spread virally through the social network. And yet the chief way Facebook hopes to sell these ads is through an automated sign-up process. Facebook has a direct-sales team, but its top management lacks experience in managing large sales teams. Which may explain why MySpace, which has built a large salesforce by recruiting heavily from Yahoo, has 15.9 percent of the display-ad market, while Facebook has a mere 1.1 percent. (Chart by WSJ/ComScore)

You only get one chance at a 30th anniversary — much to the dismay of Dallas fans who last weekend paid as much as $1,000 to be essentially shut out of their favorite nighttime soap opera's cast reunion. Reports today cite a surge of gatecrashers at the show's famous Southfork Ranch last Saturday, when a barbecue and meet-and-greet with Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and others deteriorated into a near-riot of confused, angry ticketholders and sobbing protests that Falcon Crest would never do its fans like this.The anguish persists into this week, with many attendees outraged at promoters who failed to honor their tiered ducats — $100 for the basic, "Corn on the Cob with Charlene Tilton" package, we hear, all the way up to the $1,000, "Who Shot J.R.?" VIP access featuring all-you-can-eat burgers and three attempts at the Larry Hagman dunk tank. In their defense, organizers argued that ranch officials allowed in 2,000 walk-ups in addition to the 2,000 ticketed guests, all of whom fought for vaguely enforced access once inside the ranch. But whomever is to blame, heartbroken fans who waited three decades for the chance to pray at the altar of Jock Ewing (God rest his soul) want answers now:

SAP will introduce a new hire Tuesday. However, the real news isn’t the man but his title: executive vice president of large enterprise on demand.

Hey, so, a little bit of news came out of the historic Bush/Obama handover transition secret White House surprise meeting. Details of what the president and the president-elect talked about were leaked to the press: apparently Obama tried to convince Bush to bail out the auto industry, and Bush said he might if Obama supports CAFTA. Hey, you know what the real news is, here? Someone in Obama's camp leaked this info to the New York Times, which led someone in the Bush camp to leak a "we're not very happy with that" story to Drudge! Whee! We think we know who's responsible, and he's a dreamboat. Let's closely examine these two paragraphs from the New York Times exclusive on the Oval Office meeting:

As if cokeheads weren't annoying enough with their obnoxious personalities and endless occupation of club bathrooms, now they can consider themselves victims of their DNA, too. A genetic basis for cocaine addiction has been found by German psychopharmacology researchers, who say that a particular gene variant causes an increased likelihood of becoming addicted to the drug. Getting hooked on the white stuff is 70 percent genetic, the study suggests—cheerful news for the likes of Lila Grace Moss. [Guardian]

Did you know that at Huffington Post you are now allowed to use your position as a "blogger" to simply run ads for your own craptastic imaginary version of a ripoff consulting business? It's true! Exhibit A-Z is the new column by "Jack Myers," a "Media futurist" and one of the most jargon-talking jargonists that you may ever hope to jargon with! (Actual bio item: "Jack Myers has nearly 3,000 Facebook friends"). Media futurist Jack Myers interfaces with end users of HuffPo by communicating a strategic column-formed digital word item that "originally appeared at JackMyers.com." Okay Jack hit us with some of your forward-facing media marketing advertising knowledge!: Media futurist Jack Myers knows how to make billions of dollars for the media!

Guy Ritchie was reunited today with his two sons (yes, even that turncoat Rocco) after weeks apart, but his estranged ex Madonna made sure that the happy meeting came attached to a brand-new set of strict stipulations. Though Autotuned utterances of "Contract, Guy, Contract" didn't seem to help her marriage any, the sinewy pop star hasn't demurred from the format, instead drawing up a list of 12 simple rules for seeing her pre-teen sons. The Daily Mail's got each one:

[Actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard (too many A's!) at a MoMa Film gala last night; image via Bauer-Griffin] EleanorRigby's new line beats the original, Long Lost Wilderness Plane Crash Survivors Found, Instantly Fêted.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: No on 8 Edition! 11/8 — I was at the "No on 8" rally/march/protest on Saturday night in Silver Lake when a friend pointed out GUS VAN SANT to me. I was skeptical at first, but the hoodie with something Portland related on it confirmed suspicions. He was with a younger (20s) blonde guy. Later at the same event, I saw one of the stars of Van Sant's Milk, JAMES FRANCO. He looked happy to be among his people. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

♦ Following a small incident yesterday, MSNBC is reportedly planning to institute a tape-delay on Morning Joe beginning on Monday. [TVNewser]
♦ Vivian Schiller, the head of NYTimes.com, is leaving to join NPR as its new CEO. [Gawker]
♦ NBC political director Chuck Todd is co-authoring a book called How Obama Won that will be published by Knopf before the inauguration in January. [NYO]
♦ Ted Turner doesn't have too many good things to say about Time Warner as he hits the trail to promote his new book. [Portfolio, Gawker]
♦ Why was Cindy Adams so furious about her Wikipedia entry a few weeks ago? It says she's 83 when she's actually 78. [HuffPo]