Mountain View's biggest advertising company went on a hiring binge, backed by what seemed like an unlimited money supply. Now, thousands of shoulda-been millionaires have only their salaries as compensation. A surprising majority of GOOG employees I know don't really like their jobs. Will they stick around for the free snacks? My guess is there's already a collaborative Google Doc on this problem floating around the HR department. You know where to send it.

Not Your Average Bear. Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show has received a full-season order from Fox, but has been pushed all the way to Fall. In another announcement we totally saw coming, THR reports that "Arianna Huffington will join the cast in a recurring role as the [talking] matriarch of a bear family," who says things like, "Da eeconomeec game is not supposed to be rrrigged like some shaydee ring toss on a carneeval midway. Now who vould like another helping of flopping sah-mon?" [THR]

How do you get half of the Hamptons to hate you instantly? Destroying the 3,000-year-old sand dunes on your property is a good way to start. Billionaire fund manager Ron Baron now stands accused of razing part of the beachfront property he purchased in May 2007 when he spent a record $103 million for 40 acres of prime East Hampton real estate. Baron has since constructed a 30,000-square-foot mansion on a nearby parcel, but it was the recent destruction of the historic dunes near his house that now has environmental groups up in arms.

Your company doesn't just need a great product, it needs something that sounds cool. Put the "name" in "name brand" at tonight's SD Forum's marketing event. Athol Foden, president of Brighter Naming, will be sharing his tips on power branding and trademarks at DLA Piper from 6:30-9 p.m. At the Commonwealth Club, Jan Muehlfeit, Microsoft's European chairman, will be espousing his thoughts on what you need to maintain your competitive advantage globally. Quick hint: talent and intelligence might not be enough. And the High Tech Entrepreneurs forum is giving the floor to their fully-employed peers. Hear corporate intrapreneurs speak out on innovation at Jones Day from 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Expectations are high for the next administration, but they're even higher for your work and personal life. Spoilers below! If today - November 10 - is your birthday: It's time to make some hard decisions with your primetime lineup. It's like deciding which child you love more - only harder - because you love your actual daughter a lot more than any of those step-kids. Scorpio (October 24 - November 21): That long distance relationship can be difficult to endure, especially when you're both so career-focused. Either break it off or consider moving, because driving from Venice to Silver Lake is killing your Miata. More star signs after the jump!Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21): Trying to juggle all of those projects - album, clothing line, reality show - has stressed you out beyond belief. Close the blinds, turn off your phone and combine a couple medications — your troubles/pulse will melt away.

Hire This Man! [Ritholtz via Clusterstock]

No one in Hollywood likely ever expected to see the words "Batman" and "Turkey" in the same sentence, but a developing story out of the Balkans reaffirms our faith in the impossible: The mayor of an actual Turkish city called Batman announced over the weekend he plans to sue director Christopher Nolan for naming infringement.Frustrated over the superhero's incursion into his centuries-old city's cultural turf, mayor Hüseyin Kalkan's proposed lawsuit would nevertheless omit Batman creator Bob Kane, publisher DC Comics and film franchisee Warner Bros. as Nolan's co-defendants. Instead, it would hold the filmmaker himself singly responsible for the region's growing international reputation as a brooding, froggy-voiced world capital of mayhem — none of it in glorious IMAX:

Some days it seems like Steve Jobs will be CEO of Apple until he dies. But after a bout with pancreatic cancer and a health scare earlier this year, peope are starting the grieving process earlier. Part of that involves playing a guessing game about who will take his place. Fortune convincingly argues that Apple COO Tim Cook is the only real candidate.Cook is paid more than anyone else at Apple, and he's the only executive allowed an outside board seat (Cook is a director at Nike). More importantly, he's humble enough not to push for a CEO job that can never be his as long as Jobs is in the saddle. True, Cook is an operations expert, not a product genius like Jobs, but he could surround himself with Apple executives like Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive to make up for that lack. Only one wild card: Mark Papermaster, the IBM chip executive whose recruitment by Apple has embroiled the companies in a lawsuit. if the hire goes through, Papermaster will report to Jobs, not Cook.

What? Why... why is this happening? What is Keith Olbermann doing on The View? Look, there he is, looking weird and uncomfortable. He told them all he doesn't vote (!), and they all yelled at him. All of them! Even stupid Elisabeth Hasselbeck yelled at him, for this not voting, and she is actually totally in the right. Keith does this "not voting is a symbolic stand" thing because he is obsessed with the idea that he is a Big Serious Important Old-Timey News Man. You know who else makes a big point of saying he is so non-partisan that he doesn't vote? Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. Len, in the words of Michael Kinsley, "does not even allow himself the luxury of deciding whom he would vote for if he was into that sort of thing." We'll freely admit that it is stupid and unfair to say "Keith Olbermann is a big fat liberal" just because he hates George W. Bush with great intensity. It is quite possible to intensely hate George W. Bush as a conservative, a moderate, a libertarian, an Anti-Federalist, a Whig, or a fascist. It is reductive and stupid to equate hatred of George W. Bush and the modern ruling Republican party with any political ideology beyond an affinity for competence and morality in government. And, you know, genuinely unbiased objectivity does sometimes mean saying "Jesus Christ this administration is terrible." That's not a political statement if it's true! But, Keith, it does not make you Serious to say you don't vote. It doesn't change the fact that you would've voted for Obama. It doesn't actually fool anyone, either. None of those View ladies would have any of it! You disappointed Whoopi. So we'll agree that we honestly have no idea what Keith Olbermann's political leanings are beyond hating George Bush if he'll stop pretending to be too Serious-Minded to participate in the vast voting conspiracy. And hey, maybe we'll get a chance, in an Obama administration, to figure out what Keith Olbermann's politics actually are! Because he just signed on through Obama's re-election campaign, hosting Countdown on MSNBC through 2012. NBC even gave him primetime "essays" on the network news and he gets two specials a year on regular NBC. Man. NBC had to give him network gigs to keep him from taking his show and moving to another channel, supposedly, though there is not a channel left, on the TV, that Keith Olbermann has not already worked at. And he left nothing but bad blood at all of them.

Who would've thunk it: apparently, The View's dunderheaded, error-ridden discussion of California's Proposition 8 didn't go over so well with the gay community! On today's show, Whoopi Goldberg divulged that the co-hosts had received angry phone calls from both GLAAD and Ellen DeGeneres in the wake of Friday's conversation. Unfortunately, Goldberg's list of errata and fact checks didn't stop Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck from committing a few more blunders.

New York's most successful real estate broker, Dolly Lenz, has never been known for her modesty. And don't think for a minute that the falling real estate market has put a damper on her taste for exaggeration. In the current issue of ForbesLife, Lenz keeps up the tradition of hyperbole as she rattles off all sorts of impressive facts about her day-to-day routine. Back in 2007, for example, she said she owned three Blackberrys to keep in touch with her clients at all times. By February 2008, her collection had grown to four. Now? The one-time Blackberry spokesmodel now says she keeps 12 of them with her.

The world belongs to Nate Silver! Briefly. Silver, the number-crunching baseball stat geek who decided to become a political poll-cruncher in his spare time and only turned out to be the most freakishly accurate election predictor ever, is now the toast of the media, Obamaphiles, and stat nerds alike. The Times has even weighed in now, several months behind the curve! Now is your chance to capitalize, Nate; screw this up and you'll soon return to the depths of nerd-only notoriety. After the jump, our professional advice to Nate about building his entire future in five easy steps—five being a number that statistics show gets a lot of page views!: 1. Stay off of television: You got yourself a (well-deserved) spot as a TV election pundit during the election cycle, Nate. But your future is behind a computer. You're not particularly telegenic (don't feel bad, neither are we!), and besides, the punditocracy is already overflowing. We don't need another talking head; we need a true guru. Plus, TV appearances require you to learn to apply makeup, which the Times has already packaged as an anecdote to poke fun at you. Don't fall into this trap. 2. Follow the money: Statistics show (never gets old) that corporate America has all the money. Baseball fans and political junkies are fine people, but they're not the ones holding an extravagant portion of the world's wealth in their dessicated, greedy hands. In order to have a long-term career you're going to have to do something that appeals to the corporate types. Luckily, they love numbers too! 3. Open a consultancy: "Consultant" is the best job of all. You get to sell your advice for steep prices—then, if your advice turns out to be awful, it doesn't matter because you already got paid. Your future is in selling your statistical magic to evil corporate overlords. And you're already ahead of the game, because you have a catchy name. "Silver Consultants" or something like that should look good on a business card. 4. Don't be evil: Just because we stole this slogan from The Google doesn't mean it's bad advice. Just as there are plenty of TV pundits, there are also plenty of consultants willing to pimp out their expertise to the highest bidder, regardless of how many sweatshops they run. Your advantage, Nate, is that you're actually better than your competition right now, which gives you some leverage over your clients. That means you can pre-screen to ensure that Silver Consultants does not provide its trademarked Mystical Statisticals to any firm that wants to do terrible awful things with the knowledge! In this way you become both rich and ethical, at least by the standards of the rich. 5. In four years, sign on with Obama: Might as well make it official. This election was your audition. We all know it. Everyone knows you're good. You have three years to get your consultancy up and running, make a pile of money, and then become the chief pollster for Obama '12. This is truly Living The Dream. Nate Silver, you are the new Mark Penn. Only younger, smarter, and less evil. We hope. [Pic via Newsweek]

That Daniel Radcliffe has been thrilling horny Potterites on both sides of the Atlantic in a revival of the play Equus featuring full-frontal (and backal) nudity is hardly news. But until now, there have been no satisfying audience photos or video of his Golden Snitch. Perhaps it was some unspoken code of honor between wizard and $130-a-seat theatergoer, as if to say, "We'll pay for the privilege—and it is a privilege, young Harry—but we'll also keep it just between us." Well, the code has been broken, as OMG Blog has obtained video footage recently recorded by a front-row Broadway patron. We pass this along not out of licentiousness, but rather in hopes that it will goose ticket sales for the production, which has seen a 10% drop. See how selfless we are? Now, enough preamble—on with the NSFW show!

"I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no," Google baldfaced-liar-in-chief Eric Schmidt told Jim Cramer on CNBC Friday, when asked if he'd take a job with the incoming administration. "Google is its own exciting opportunity." I know what you're thinking: Obama turned him down already, how cold is that? More likely, Schmidt truly doesn't want the job. He just wanted Obama to ask.Because, come on, why manage a bunch of government IT when you already run Google and park your jets next door at Nasa? The city of Washington, D.C. uses Google Docs. Schmidt doesn't need to become America's CTO, because he already is America's CTO. (Photo by Reuters/Carlos Barria)

Not that you need any more proof that the economy is falling to pieces, but it seems layaway shopping—the installment payment system left over from the Great Depression—is now on the rise, as crafty retailers try and figure out how to get people to buy stuff for the holidays. Unfortunately, the trend is restricted to discount stores at the moment, which means if you're doing your Christmas shopping at Barneys, you'll just have to settle for just running up your credit card balance. [AMNY, MSNBC]

[Actress Natalie Portman on the New York set of "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits" today; image via INF]

You've probably never heard of Bob Cohn, but he played a major role in saving Wired from running aground in 2001. As executive editor, Cohn was the low-key second-in-command to Chris Anderson. He pushed editors and writers to abandon Wired's too-insidery voice and craft a new kind of tech journalism aimed at curious outsiders. Trust me, that sounds great until you try to do it. Starting in January, Cohn will take editorial charge of TheAtlantic.com, reporting directly to editor-in-chief James Bennet. "It's a great website," Bob told me via cell phone just now. Translation: Change a-comin'!

So the election is over! What good news for us and what terrible news for... um, news. All the CNN and MSNBC and Fox junkies who were glued to the tube while the election Wehrmacht rolled its ruinous iron wheels over the land will now be leaving the news behind and returning to their regularly scheduled shitty programming. Or at least the people in charge of that shitty programming hope so! It's kind of a crock theory because news nets' ratings weren't that high that they seemed to be distracting a huge amount of TV watchers, and regular television was in a decline long before people started caring about politics anyway. But there must be some folks who traded their CSI for their POTUS and would now like an inroad back to the glorious world of primetime entertainment TV, hopefully with a methadone-dash of politics thrown in to add a bit of spice. And we've got a guide to Politics-related television for them, after the jump! How handy!

Lindsay Lohan's career path may be studded with recent missteps (Labor Pains and a stint on Ugly Betty cut short with just one majestic eye-roll from America Ferrera, to name a few), but if there's one thing that actually seems to be going well in Lohan's life, it's that whole "dating Samantha Ronson" thing. Not only did it appear to inspire near-sobriety and some cogent blog posts, but it also repelled sleaze-meister Joe Francis, breaking him of his addiction to girl-on-girl action forever. So, how has Lohan shown Ronson her thanks? With a couple of cagey disavowals in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar, of course:

If you hear someone announcing that their teenage daughter is "coming out" at the end of the month, you might want to look impressed rather than inquire if it might be just a phase. At the annual Crillon Ball in Paris, 24 girls from all over the world will be trussed up in haute couture and "presented" to society on the arm of a dashing escort chosen for them by the event's organizer Ophélie Renouard. Strictly invitation only, the ball has in past years included lucky debutantes like Amanda Hearst, Lauren Bush, Victoria and Vanessa Traina, and Bee Shaffer—whose mom, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Renouard remembers fondly.