We've always been impressed by Facebook CFO Gideon Yu's ability to snooker investors around the world. The list of people he's taken for a ride include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Hong Kong telecom mogul Li Ka-Shing. Just last Friday, he returned from a trip to Dubai, where he tried to shake loose some petrodollars from the Middle Eastern emirate's sovereign wealth funds. Some people seem to think Yu is still in Dubai. Which would be quite a feat, considering he's been spotted in Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters multiple times this week. Perhaps he's using CNN's new hologram technology?

It's getting rough out there for retailers. Sales at Neiman Marcus plunged 28 percent in October, and business was down 17 percent at Saks compared to the same month a year ago. This explains why if you've gone shopping recently, you may have noticed the salespeople get a little aggressive when you walked in the front door. You thought those "Can I help you with that?" interruptions were bad before? Just wait until the saleswoman at the overpriced Nolita boutique is having trouble paying the rent on her Williamsburg apartment because she's not collecting any commissions.

We're hearing today about a script setting a new land-speed circulation record among directors' agents, and why not: Who wouldn't savor the chance to have something called The Beaver on their resume? It's just a bonus that Steve Carell is attached, and that he spends all his time with his hand inside said beaver. What could go wrong?In what's being referred to as a "winning, whimsical" story splitting the difference between Being John Malkovich and Lars and the Real Girl, Carell would portray a man who develops a close relationship with a beaver hand puppet, "treating it as something close to a human creature with human feelings." Every studio around wants it, but producer Anonymous Content is waiting to land a director before actively shopping the project. On that front, Jay Roach has already turned it down, while other candidates' replies await. Obviously, of course, this sounds like a job for Brett Ratner, whose string of hits speaks for itself and whose finely honed sense of metaphor can only enhance to the multidimensionality of the title character. That is a DVD commentary we would pay good money to hear.

Will the CEO of Digg make up his mind on who he wants to be? I once asked him what car he drove, and he took pains to let me know he had a suburban-dad Honda minivan and an environmentalist-standard-issue Toyota Prius. Just a regular guy! But he later complained when I suggested he wasn't a "rock star." I'm thinking Adelson — who commutes from his actual suburban-dad life in upstate New York to his CEO gig in san Francisco — is working on sexing up his image. A tipster says Adelson has just gotten a $109,000 all-electric, obsidian black Tesla Roadster. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the racy kind of vehicle most suburban dads his age might want to buy, if only they could afford it.

OBAMA FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE RUNNING TEN TO FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE! That's not change we can believe in! "Before the election, he was always on time," CNN reports. Now they're playing Rush Limbaugh complaining about Rahm Emanuel on one side of the screen and an empty podium on the other. We'll update with details and eventually video! 2:41 Oh, Robert Byrd is stepping down as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Byrd, the former KKK member, is delighted with new President Obama! What a country! Still an empty podium. 2:43 Oh, god, FIVE MORE MINUTES. Obama is breaking promises all over the place, today. We are ashamed. HILLARY IN 2012! 2:48 Another five minutes! Jesus, what is going on in this economic meeting?? Is he just shouting obscenities about the hideous mess he's just inherited? Are they getting high? Is Larry Summers complaining about uppity womens again? 2:50 Here come the economic superfriends. Robert Reich is hilarious, is it mean to laugh at how funny he looks? Yes, it probably is. But he's not technically a little person, just a regular short person, so it's ok. Now Obama is backstage putting out his cigarette, maybe? 2:53 Rahm Emanuel is another tiny person, isn't he? What's up with that? The tiny cabinet! Trend piece! OH WAIT HERE'S OBAMA. 2:54 God, President Obama, we know things suck, everywhere. "The United States has only one government and one president, at a time" — GOD DAMMIT, NOW HE TELLS US. Right now, President-elect, we don't have any presidents. Bush checked out a year ago! But once Barry is sworn in, he'll help all the hardworking families. Middle class rescue plan! Extend unemployment and a new stimulus plan. Small businesses, blah. Economic policy is boooring. Announce a WPA Federal Bloggers Project, Obama. Do it. Come on. 2:55 Oh, the Auto Industry, they can go to hell. Obama should announce we need a new generation of fuel-efficient FLYING CARS. Then we'd bail them out. We're avoiding the foreclosures. Monitoring challenges. Strengthening the middle class. 2:58 Barack Obama looks exhausted. He does not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead. 2:59 Question time! Does he have a coherent stimulus/rescue plan? Surely he does! Why must it be explained in such vague terms, President Hopey? 3:00 Can we get things done in a lame duck session? No, we can't. So we wait for his new session. 3:01 President Achmadinejad sent a note of congratulations! When do we send all the envoys to the evil countries? Campaign boilerplate about Iran. "It's only been three days since the election," says the President of Disappointing us. Why isn't everything different? 3:02 Only one president at a time! "I am not the president." 3:03 Will it rattle the markets when President Bush does some of his famous DECIDING? Guys, President Bush has done no deciding since 2006. Obama will have dinner with him, later, and they'll get along fine, and everyone will recognize the severity of every situation. Man we all know they're just going to talk about football, the whole time. 3:05 In terms of picking his cabinet, Barack Obama has a weird, foreign, elitist idea about "thinking things through" and deliberating before making decisions? 3:06 Who will Obama select for his Senate seat? He defers to the Governor, though of course it will be Jesse Jackson Jr (shhhh!). 3:07 Lynn Sweet! We love her! She has an arm in a sling! She hurt her shoulder running to his speech on election night! Obama says that was the only major incident! She asks about talking to former presidents. Obama has spoken to ALL OF THEM. Hah, he made a Nancy Reagan seance joke. Obama is rereading Lincoln, so basically it's New Civil War Time, guys. "With respect to the dog: This is a major issue." This is hilarious. Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. But they want a shelter dog! "Obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me." This is a pressing issue in the Obama household. Awesome. 3:09 Are the president's intelligence briefings scaring the shit out of Barry? They don't seem to be! 3:11 We're gonna soak the rich. Good night everybody!

Remember how the novel Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones's book about the child bride of Muhammad, was going to set off a wave of Muslim outrage and violence? In the exhaustively-chronicled journey to publication for Jewel of Medina? Random House pussed out on publishing it due to some wingnut remarks by academic Denise Spellerg when they asked her for a blurb, so then other people decided rush in and publish it, including a British publisher who was rewarded with a firebomb in his mail slot. So then he decided not to publish it, and Jones quickly became a poster child for hysterical pre-emptory censorship. Well, now the book is out and Jones is doing her book tour. The "widespread violence" Spellberg warned Random House of isn't happening, and as the Seattle Times reported, Jones' visit in their town was sparsely attended and sold exactly three copies of the book. Just like every other bookstore reading!

Hike! For some reason, daughter forgetter Ashton Kutcher has spent the last year assistant coaching the Harvard-Westlake freshman football team, a duty that mostly involves protecting them from the advances of hungry cougar Demi Moore. Yet, the kids are not all right. "The kids want him gone," a source tells Star. "They think he doesn't know what he's talking about and can't stand his tough-guy attitude." The high-schoolers have even nicknamed him "Ashton Doucher." Kids today! Back in our day, "Asston" would have been the no-brainer. [Star]

The news media has tracked failed VP candidate Sarah Palin to the wilds of Alaska to get her reaction to the LOL-legation that she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent. Her forceful rebuke of the charge can be summed up as: It, uh, sounds like some bitters are saying I maybe, uh, didn't know the answer to a question so, uh, who was it that said that, anyhow? Click to watch the mush-mouthed meanderings of a geographically challenged woman.

When the highlight of the evening is Twitter CEO Ev Williams meeting faded hip-hop star MC Hammer, you know the night was a waste. Indie-music consultant Corey Denis reports that the event "had ten actual music industry people there, tops." MySpace didn't have much to celebrate, either: It has yet to appoint a figurehead CEO to its MySpace Music faux joint venture. The only thing confirmed about Courtney Holt, the MTV executive widely rumored to be taking the job, is his gender. (Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

Lucky hosted its fifth annual "Lucky Shops" last night inside the Metropolitan Pavilion. Lucky editor Kim France and publisher Gina Sanders welcomed Leighton Meester, Jessica Szohr, Georgina Chapman, Katrina Bowden, Alexandra Richards, Charlotte Ronson, Thalia, Beverly Johnson, Ginny Barber, and Michaela McManus, who all did a little shopping to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation. [The Daily, PMc, Wireimage]

Today, Newsweek posted the final chapter of their Special Election Project, the annual How He Did It book they've published for each presidential campaign since 1984 (when the answer was much easier: he just ran against Walter Mondale). The reporters assigned to the special project are embargoed from those publishing in the regular magazine, so they get jucier anecdotes, more hilarious quotes, and revealing stories, all of which are then packaged and in such a way as to make the winning campaign look like a well-oiled machine and the losing campaign look like a parade of idiots. Did you read the whole thing? We did! We'll share with you the funniest bits, the important takeaway, and the already solidifying conventional wisdom. In short, this is the story of the 2008 campaign: the Hillary Clinton campaign was a stressful psychodrama, the Obama campaign was an intellectual exercise, and the McCain campaign was a ragtag bunch of misfits who stumbled into an insane family nightmare from Twin Peaks, Alaska. Let's begin with Hillary and co. Hillary The Clinton campaign was beset by the vicious infighting among assholes, basically. The biggest and dumbest asshole was chief pollster/strategist Mark Penn!

Amazingly, Norm Coleman's wafer-thin lead over Al Franken in Minnesota's Senate race continues to erode, with the latest numbers suggesting the former SNL star now trails his Republican foe by exactly one-half vote. (The single ballot bears a crescent moon inside a GOP circle, accompanied by the perplexing message, "It's Norm Tonight!"). In other celebrity-career-change news, Val Kilmer—yes, the Val Kilmer, soon to be seen as a Dorff-hunting mercenary out to avenge the assassination of a President Palin-alike in an NBC movie of the week—has informed Pomeranian-herding gossipsaur Cindy Adams that he plans on running for the governorship of New Mexico:

If work is your mistress, give her a little extra loving this weekend. At the Freebase Hack Day, dataheads will be getting together to unconference about Open Government applications and other topics at Metaweb Technologies from 10-6 p.m. on Saturday. Code Camp is taking over Foothill Community College for a fluff free weekend about, well, code. Whether you talk Ruby or Hadoop, geek out at 100-plus sessions at the annual event by developers for developers. Meanwhile, SIPACON 08 will be tackling social media and enterprise at Hewlett-Packard from 8:30-4 p.m. Find out how big business is planning to actually make money on Web 2.0. And finally, a quick message about Proposition 8. Californian farm animals may have fared better than the gay and lesbian community in this election, but that doesn't mean you have to pull a Yahoo and chicken out about the issue. Prop 8 protest kicks off at 7th and Market tonight at 5:30 p.m. (Photo by elliotcable)

We hear that Neel Shah—former Gawker intern-turned prolific (and recently laid-off) Radar writer and occasional magical berry salesman—is joining the staff of ever-grinding gossip machine Page Six next week. Thus marks the completion of Neel's whirlwind full circuit through all of the stages of the gossip-based media, leaving spinning social vortexes in his wake that scientists assure us will not create universe-eating black holes. Upon reaching P6 he will receive a banana, a bottle of water, a blanket, a winner's ribbon, and the last media paycheck in New York.

Births, Deaths, and Marriages is a column about what's happening to persons of interest in Gawker society. Send us your tips about breakups, hookups, knock-ups, and everything else that completes the circle of media-life. Today's roundup: hotelier Ian Schrager, Hugh Hefner and Kendra Wilkinson, late Obama campaigner Terence Tolbert, and a rare pygmy hippo baby:

Sprint Nextel reported yet another quarterly loss, its fourth in the row. The wireless carrier was $326 million in the red, and also lost 1.1 million subscribers. CEO Dan Hesse said he wants the company to focus on customer service. Dan, how about spending less time filiming commercials and more time answering calls? [Reuters]

Remember that pretty, red dress that the adorable Malia Obama wore on Tuesday night when her dad took the podium in front of 125,000 adoring supporters in Chicago's Grant Park? It didn't take long for the Oakland-based company that manufactured the dress, Biscotti Inc., to be besieged with callers interested in purchasing the red silk, bubble-hemmed number that retails for $110. Unfortunately, the company didn't have any more in stock and said they didn't even have the fabric in stock to make more. They've since figured out a solution. They located just enough fabric to make 200 more of them, says Biscotti's co-owner Bernadette Reiss, and they company will have them completed in three weeks, just in time for the holidays. How can she guarantee such a quick turnaround? They'll be made in Vietnam, naturally. [WSJ]

Yes, we know, Sherri Shepherd used to think the earth was flat, and thus, we never should have put too much stock in her opinions. Still, it was hard, America! She really appeared to be trying, often showing up with research, shouting down false statements made by Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and then finally earning our affection with a tremendously affecting Obamalogue this past Wednesday. Sadly, the good times could not last, as Shepherd wandered back into the wilds of ignorance for today's View discussion of Proposition 8.Without Joy Behar around to rebut her, Shepherd ran rampant, tossing out right-wing talking points about the proposition (which took away the marriage rights awarded to gay Californians) like they were so many Sherri coins. First, she insists that without Prop 8, her pastor could have been sent to jail for preaching against homosexuality. Either she's referring to Swedish pastor Ake Green who was convicted, then acquitted of "hate speech" (under, y'know, Swedish laws) and became a religious cause celebre, or she's bringing up the falsehood that churches would be sued for not performing same-sex marriage. Just like they get sued so much when Jews want to marry in the Mormon temple! Oh wait, that doesn't happen. Barbara Walters attempts a weak rebuttal, but the audience is on Sherri's side. Eventually, even Whoopi concedes that if civil unions were strengthened until they reached a point that seems awfully separate but equal to our ears, maybe the gays would be happy and stop fighting so much. Or not! Clip above.

It's been a very busy Oprah week, between the Obama victory, her much-hyped appearance on last night's 30 Rock as (spoiler alert) a sleep-aid-induced hallucination at 30,000 feet, and, of course, her ongoing supervision at the Oprah Winfrey Favorite Thing Research Institute in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where the rigorous testing of alpaca foot warmers and self-battering waffle makers never ends. Somehow, she still manages to find time to tape her flagship show, though that occasionally requires some creative scheduling—particularly when your guest is Brad Pitt. On the show yesterday for an episode scheduled to air Nov. 18th, one half of the kiddie-wrangling global phenomenon known as Brangelina sat down for a lengthy Oprahside chat to promote The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. These Boots Are Made For Stalking penetrated the taping, and share every Pax-peeing anecdote and nervous, off-camera Pitt-fidget:

"De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest are the reasons that there is a non-white president-elect for these United States. You think white folks would have gotten behind a Public Enemy X-Clan candidate? Hellz the fuck no!" This is just what we said but much more pithy. [XXL]