This is a clip from Eddie Murphy's standup special Delirious, recorded in Washington, DC in 1983, back when Eddie Murphy was funny. He is joking about the first black president, who, back then, was going to be Jesse Jackson, but the joke still works. It works so well, in fact, that it is basically the only joke about The First Black President. The L.A. Times sent a reporter out to the comedy clubs this weekend to watch black comedians make their black comedian jokes about Barack Obama, the new black president.

Bluetooth headsets make you look like a rambling idiot, addressing an audience of one. San Francisco startup Aliph solves that problem: Wearing its sleek Jawbone makes you look like a stylish, rambling idiot. An appropriate accessory for CEO Hosain Rahman. Venture-capital news site PEHub reports that Rahman ordered $500,000 in new, high-end furniture for the office, instructed employees to box up their things, and then laid off a third of the company's 75-person staff. The company has raised $42.5 million in funding. Its backers include Sequoia Capital, the VC firm which recently issued a cost-cutting fatwa to its portfolio companies. Whatever one might say about Rahman, one should credit him for good taste: He has also commissioned a mural for the office from DeYoung Museum artist-in-residence Tucker Nichols.

It's been a week, and the voyeuristic viral puppycam live-feed is still rolling and we can't tear ourselves away. (It may be the most popular live streaming video of all time, reports Alley Insider.) It's not just that they're so darn cute—it's the economy, stupid! The puppycam is a fantasty that cures us of our free-floating anxiety in an uncertain world. We all want to be those puppies: the Shiba Inu fluffballs don't have to worry about losing their jobs, or making money. They are completely provided for in their little box, their mom comes in and nurses them, and they have human caretakers who play with them as well. They've got it made.Also, we all know that Obama is about to get his kids a new puppy. That new-puppy feeling that rushed over the country wasn't about the love of dogs: we want to be the Obamas' puppy. We want him to be a paternal figure who will swoop into office and take care of us. We want him to provide for us and feed us and to make our lives safer. That's also why the people who are running the puppycam have become objects of speculation. All we ever see is the bottom of the man's legs, who comes in to feed them. "Puppies, you want your toys?" you can hear him saying. He's like Curious George's Man in the Yellow Hat, whose character is so sparsely sketched that the reader can project whatever they want onto him. Why did they decide to start a puppycam? How long will it last? Where do they live? WTF is going on? Meanwhile, Gabriel Delahaye of Videogum thinks the puppycam is ruining the Internet: "Don't even get me started on the livefeed puppy cam and the threat it poses to the rest of the internet... because who cares about any other site? Puppies!"

Congratulations—if you're reading this, you've survived another round of layoffs. Everyone else: double congratulations. You may no longer be employed, but you're also still in bed, where we all really should be right now. Your box office numbers: 1. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $63.5 million Exceeding even DreamWorks's loftiest expectations for the CGI bestiary, Madagascar 2 had the highest opening weekend of any animated film this year—$500k more than even Wall-E—and the seventh best animated film opening of all time. Many would no doubt credit scheduling for the success, with a post-election America ready to put the "issues" aside for a few hours of family-friendly entertainment. But it would be a discredit to its superstar cast of voice talent not to praise their fine achievements—and in particular, Sherri Shepherd, who plays a lioness mother worried her infant cub might stray from the pride and float right off the side of the Earth, or, even worse, end up in a zoo in some Sodomite metropolis halfway across the world where lions have won the legal right to lie with other lions.2. Role Models - $19.251 million 5. Zack and Miri Make a Porno - $ 6.521 million Surprising everyone was how well this R-rated child-mentoring comedy fared after Zack and Miri Make a Porno's underwhelming debut. No doubt the Weinsteins are at this moment scratching their heads at the unpredictability of public tastes, though one theory involves Models's bold decision not to replace stars Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott with stick-doodles on all marketing materials. 3. High School Musical 3: Senior Year - $ 9.293 million HSM3 fell just 39% in its third week, a strong showing attributable to encore business from this franchise's core fan constituency of lusty Zacamaniacs, who simply can't wait until Disney's HSM: TOTALLY UNRATED DVD release ("Featuring the raunchy Troy Bolton shower scene you've been dying to see!") for their HSM repeat-viewing fix. 4. Changeling - $ 7.281 million Clint Eastwood has likely already surrendered all the great Oscar hopes he held for this bleak period drama ever since reading EW's Oscar pundit Dave Karger fascinating theory that the Academy only plans on rewarding movies celebrating man's "innate human goodness" this year, like The Dark Knight. 6. Soul Men - $5.61 million Hey—don't feel so bad about the performance of Bernie Mac's last film. He was also a voice in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa! That's got to be the first time a deceased actor was in two movies in the top five—but we're too lazy to actually look that up, so feel free to correct us if we're wrong.

"Which wife of a top Lehman executive went on a $132,000 shopping spree at the Americana Manhasset Mall the day after her hubby filed for bankruptcy?" Page Six asked today. It didn't take very long for commenters over at Dealbreaker to come to a conclusion. After eliminating Dick Fuld's wife Kathy (who spends most of her time in Greenwich and wouldn't be caught dead shopping at a Long Island mall), the crowd seemed to settle on Niki Gregory, the wife of axed Lehman president Joe Gregory, who has a home in nearby Lloyd Harbor and was rumored to be filing for personal bankruptcy in September. [Dealbreaker]

Not much has changed in the last week since industry observers filed a missing persons report on Australia; Baz Luhrmann's $130 million historical romance is still officially unfinished with only nine days to go before its homeland premiere and 16 days before it opens worldwide. Again, Baz, don't hurry on our behalves, but! We learned a lot more over the weekend about those "mechanics of stotrytelling" so troubling the director in his quest to put his Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman epic to bed. And massive spoiler aside, it should make for a roiling eternity of second-guessing, DVD revisionism and studio-hating from Luhrmann loyalists.The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that "disastrous reviews from test screenings" rejected Australia's original ending, in which Jackman's character dies:

When does America care about a Jersey City Councilman? When a Jersey City Councilman urinates on people in Washington, DC. Steven Lipski was arrested in our nation's capital this weekend, because he went to the 9:30 Club to see a Grateful Dead tribute band, got wasted, and peed off the balcony. Idiot drunk middle-aged politicians are DC's cross to bear, of course, and Lipski has given the 9:30 Club staff trouble before:

In keeping with the new law that every single ad for everything must how have a "Hard Times" theme, companies that want to sell any product to the public are now forced to talk about how cheap their stuff is, which just months ago would have been offensive to their "brand integrity" or some such bullshit. They've already started plastering coupons (gauche!) on the outside of everything and trying to convince you that their product fits into your new pauper lifestyle. How bad has it gotten? This bad:

♦ Keith Olbermann has signed a new, four-year contract with MSNBC. He'll earn $7.5 million a year, which is 25 percent less than what his arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly is collecting from Fox News. [TVDecoder]
♦ MSNBC's new slogan—"Experience the power of change"—has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama's victory, naturally. [NYT]
♦ The job cuts at Time Inc. are underway. People is looking for 18 people to take buyout packages. Time is looking for 20 volunteers. [WWD]
♦ Jared Kushner says revenues at the Observer are up 40 percent, although the paper is still losing $2 million a year. [Guardian]
♦ Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, from DreamWorks/Paramount, reeled in $63.5 million in its first weekend. [NYT]

This morning's temporary YouTube overload didn't bring civilization to its knees. But I love the error message, "please include the following information in your error report" followed by a page of spew. My knowledge of software engineering is years out of whack now, but I have to ask: If you can deliver this data to the user's browser window, why do they then need to cut and paste it into an error report?

President Bush basically checked out six months ago, leaving the country rudderless and lost. We were distracted from this by a diverting election for a while, but now that's over. As President-elect Obama painfully explained in his first post-election press conference, we only get one president at a time. Except right now we get none! So maybe Obama should use today's White House transition meeting to figure out how to seize power, maybe? A coup, anyone? What else are they gonna do with the afternoon? Usually White House transition meetings are taken up with impressing upon the successor the awesome task ahead of him, but Obama probably understands that better than Bush does. So today Bush will probably just share some awesome White House secrets. The gold standard of terrible presidential transitions? The 1933 handover from Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt. Back then, the new president didn't take office until March, so there were four months of lame duck Hoover trying to fix the economy, and the banking crisis, while FDR just passive-aggressively let him fuck things up and promised to undo everything Hoover did, once in office.

From Vibe magazine: "The December 2008 issue also features an exclusive interview with R&B superstar Brandy, providing the first look into her life after her fatal car accident and a four-year hiatus from the spotlight. 'I really didn’t know what to do. I was in limbo for a long time,' she says of the tragedy. 'I didn’t go outside for months.'" Coffins are hard to claw out of.

What's the first thing to go when you're an out-of-work Wall Streeter cutting costs from the family budget? Your kids' education, apparently. Enrollment at Manhattan's top private schools is expected to drop dramatically next year as even wealthy parents think twice about shelling out $30,000 (or more) on annual tuition. At Trinity, 45 families have already given notice that they'll be leaving at the end of the year. Other schools are reporting that parents have been demanding discounts and/or haggling for more financial aid in recent weeks.

Oh, not again. Is this part of the goal of her startup Nonsociety—"liv[ing] differently"? It's Mary Rambin's second videoblogged colonic. Of course, the blog-your-colonic pioneer was Tracie from Jezebel. And Katie Couric underwent a colonscopy on her show, but that was to raise awareness of colon cancer, from which her husband died. This is more like ... raising awareness for unnecessary spa treatments. Internet: over. (Click for the video!) Update from Mary: "A shot of water up your ass to clean you out is helpful not harmful when done the right way. The procedure is certainly not “unnecessary.” Think of my video as a preventative measure against cancer. Our bodies store so many toxins from food (pesticides, chemicals, preservatives) and our bodies were not made to process and flush them out. We need help." Yes, we do. Here's her guide to eating healthy. OK, now click for the video, which should be taken as a public service announcement.

White truffle prices are falling fast! At a Tokyo auction last night, the biggest truffle on the block went for $30,000, a far cry from the $330,000 paid for the largest specimen at last year's auction. [FT]

People magazine just sent out a staff memo soliciting buyout candidates, as part of the 600-person company-wide layoffs announced at Time Inc. two weeks ago. Although People has a large staff, the reporting cuts they seek in both New York and LA—which total 18 editorial employees—would add up to a significant loss of celebrity-watching resources. Click through for the entire memo [UPDATE: and details of similar buyout offers at four other titles]:

North America's biggest phone equipment maker has joined the Tough Times, Tough Decisions club. Third-quarter losses, at $3.4 billion, were the worst since 2001. Bloomberg's report has all the details.

The financially-struggling New York Times should simply stop printing new papers and stick to 11/05/08 editions forever, as their endless pimping of the commemorative paper suggest that's the only one people want to buy. They've been running house ads which inform that we can buy an "actual New York Times newspaper on Nov. 5, 2008, which boldly reported Obama's decisive victory over John McCain. Price includes the full newspaper with a resealable plastic envelope." It's available for the low price of $14.95 (please allow two weeks for shipping.) In fact, they've cordoned off a section of their online store, nytstore.com/obama, in order for you to buy anything Obama-related. OMG—due to high traffic, the site's overloaded!

Square-jawed Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is out to show that the media is not totally in the tank, by giving a fair and balanced interview to Gov. Sarah Palin right in her own back yard! And by that we mean not just "the state of Alaska," but literally "her own back yard." Greta is chronicling her trip to Wasilla on her very own blog, "GretaWire," which allows us all to take an intimate peek into this cross-continental journalistic excursion. Question: On a scale of 1-10, how much of this trip was for "journalism," and how much was for "Whoa, free snowmobile ride!"? Let Greta's own pictures guide you:
EXCLUSIVE PALIN KITCHEN PHOTO!!!!!

The first family-to-be has been given their code names by the Secret Service. Barack Obama will be known as "Renegade"—at least when it comes to dark-suited agents whispering into the microphones attached to their cuffs. Michelle will be "Renaissance." And Malia and Sasha will go by "Radiance" and "Rosebud," respectively. [Chicago Tribune]