• Recovering sex addict David Duchovny has apparently been convinced those weren't secret sexytime text messages from serial divorcé Billy Bob Thornton on wife Téa Leoni's cell phone. [P6]

Unsurprisingly, there aren't so many people wanting to invest millions in pretty (or not so pretty) pictures at the moment: At Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art auction last night, only 64 percent of the lots sold. Still, it's not quite time to get the violins out: The overall tally was $223.8 million, which included $37 million for Henry Kravis's Edgar Degas ballerina pastel and $60 million for a Kazimir Malevich painting. [Bloomberg, Reuters, previously]

Oh, hey, what do you know: Sarah Palin has suddenly been cleared of the two biggest blots on her record, and just in time for the election! What amazing timing. First, the Alaska Personnel Board and its independent counsel decided the Republican vice-presidential nominee didn't abuse her power as Alaska governor to have her former brother-in-law fired as state public safety commissioner. Also, Palin released her medical history just as she promised the entire country she would on television, to disprove all those crazy theories about how Trig Palin isn't really her baby. Have you spotted the terrible distortion in all this yet, traumatized 2008 campaign veteran?

There have been reports of very long lines at the polls this morning. More than 400 people were already assembled outside P.S. 9 in Prospect Heights when the polls opened at 6 a.m. Confusion reigned outside the Hell's Kitchen polling station at 520 West 45th Street, where lines reportedly snaked around the block. Elected officials have had to patiently wait their turns. Chuck Schumer passed the time on a Brooklyn sidewalk chatting on his cell phone. Michael Bloomberg was No. 270 in line when he turned up on the Upper East Side this morning and he spent 45 minutes chatting with reporters and aides before getting a chance to make his pick. One person ahead of him? Eliot Spitzer. [NYT, WNBC, NYP, NYO]

Not only does Diddy get to vote or die today, he gets to celebrate his birthday, too. He's 39. There probably won't be much to celebrate in the White House today, but Laura Bush will have one reason to. She's turning 62. Also celebrating: Literary agent Andrew Wylie is 61. Playwright Jon Robin Baitz is turning 47. Book publisher Jonathan Galassi is 59. Matthew McConaughey is celebrating his 39th. Kathy Griffin is 48. Disney/ABC president Anne Sweeney is celebrating the big 5-0. Walter Cronkite is 92. Survivor host Jeff Probst is turning 46. Author Charles Frazier is 58. And the Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio, is 47.

♦ A long list of celebs have been involved in a last-minute effort to get out the vote for Obama, including Oprah, Diddy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Edie Falco, John McEnroe, Mary J. Blige, Russell Simmons, Beyonce, and Jay-Z. In the elderly celebrity writer department, Vanity Fair's Dominick Dunne says he postponed surgery so he could vote today. [R&M, Politico]
♦ Ivana Trump has been calling Marius Rusovici, the 23-year-old Belgian she's been hanging out with, "her boyfriend," although it may just be a plot to make Rossano Rubicondi jealous. Or stir up some press. Or both. [NYDN]
♦ David Duchovny and Tea Leoni were spotted holding hands while their kids went trick-or-treating on the Upper East Side last Friday, which may or may not mean they're getting back together. [P6]
♦ Sumner Redstone's ex-wife, Paula Fortunato, is still living in his Beverly Hills mansion. But he may have already reunited with his ex-girlfriend, Manuela Herzer. [P6]

The TV news networks have very exciting plans tonight, beyond just calling the election nice and early so you can accelerate your drinking! MSNBC, for one, is poised to bring back its fun, bitchy insanity: Though Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews were supposed to just be "analysts" on election night following their Democratic National Convention bickering, Matthews now says they'll be "hosts." Maybe Rachel Maddow, who has already taken Pat Buchanan in hand, is going to keep them in line. CNN will combat this combustible crew with an actual human transporter, like on Star Trek, reports the Wall Street Journal:

Newark is getting a Zagat guide of its very own: It will be 16 pages long and include just 34 restaurants. At least now you'll know where to eat if you're carjacked on the way to the airport and the assailant asks you for some dining recommendations. [AP]

♦ Horror of horrors: The average Goldman partner may take home a bonus of $1 million or less this year. [FT]
♦ One of Goldman's flagship hedge funds, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, has lost close to $1 billion since January. [FT]
♦ UBS posted a third-quarter profit, but it still laid off 700 U.S.-based employees last week. [CNNMoney, NYP]

What is it about Ivanka Trump that rankles journalists so? She had the Times' Ruth La Ferla all but calling her a harlot last December, and today on the Portfolio website she is irritating an openly exasperated Lloyd Grove. Theory: She's got (nearly) the looks of Paris Hilton and the mouth of a flack. Hilton is obnoxious but palatable to the media, since she acts out and constantly gives regrettable quotes. Trump was summa cum laude at Wharton (undergraduate), which makes it a touch harder to hate her for her privileged life. Grove seems to be trying, at least:

Network news divisions got skittish about calling presidential elections following their colossally terrible performance in 2000. In case you forgot, they all called Florida for Al Gore, then uncalled it, then called it for Bush (following in the trustworthy footsteps of Fox News!), then uncalled the whole election. Their newfound prudence was rewarded in 2004 when leaked exit polls said John Kerry had the whole thing in the bag (oops). But this year the TV guys have their swagger back. Here's a CBS News executive telling the Times why California can suck it:

Tony Fadell, the head of Apple's iPod division, is exiting Steve Jobs's reality distortion field. While Fake Steve Jobs likes to take credit for inventing the frigging iPod, its real mastermind is Tony Fadell, who took his plans for an MP3 player to Apple in 2001 as a consultant. His replacement: Former IBM chip expert Mark Papermaster, whose erstwhile employer is suing Apple to prevent him from taking a job there. That Papermaster is replacing Fadell makes its lawsuit even stranger; it is seeking to enforce a noncompete clause in his contract, but a job overseeing MP3 players and cell phones hardly seems a competitive threat to IBM. Fadell is planning to take some time off Pity. Since he joined Apple, Fadell's homepage has turned into a placeholder. We were looking forward to the return of the "jazzy, shameless self-promotion" it once offered.

Adorable Republican stronghold Dixville Notch, New Hampshire held its annual midnight election, and is officially terrorist for That One. Barack Obama's RESOUNDING 15-6 victory over John McCain is the resort village's first vote for a Democratic president in 40 years. And yet Ben Smith of Politico thinks it's too early to call the whole election for Obama. What do you think the commenters have to say about that?

This. Fucking. Election. (via)

It was around 8 am this morning, John Heilemann reports, that Barack Obama first learned of the passing of his grandmother, a longtime guardian central in his upbringing. The Democratic presidential nominee maintained his composure throughout the day, including during an enthusiastic speech in Jacksonville, Florida. But he could not contain all outward signs of grief tonight at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. After a break in a rain storm, Obama delivered a speech that, in part, eulogized his grandmother. It would be hard, in the attached video, to see that this remembrance moved the candidate to tears, but for some dabs of the cheek, so steady and familiar was the candidate's rhythm as he spoke.

Officially, the New York Times Company isn't commenting on tech executive Jason Calacanis' claim that it is shopping reference site About.com in an effort to shore up its financial position and perhaps go private. But two anonymous sources poured cold water on his statements, according to Peter Kafka of All Things Digital, denying that the profitable property is on the block. Perhaps a rogue banker is trying to drum up interest in a (hypothetical) deal before taking it to the Times, hoping to score some business. Or maybe Calacanis just got his wires crossed. But lack of any dealmaking will hardly tamp down speculation over how the Times Company will pay down its junk-rated debt. If anything, it makes the situation an even more tricky puzzle.

· "Now you listen here, mister. You get your teeth out of my Sookie this instant, or there will be Hell to pay! OK then, don't say I didnt warn you!" · Eater LA has a list of all the local restaurants and businesses offering Election Night specials to anyone wearing a "I Voted!" sticker · Here's a gallery of spooks and ghouls spotted around town on Halloween. Next year we're definitely going as Shirtless Food Grilling Hunk! · EW.com reports one half of Grey's Anatomy's only gay couple, Dr. Erica Hahn (aka actress Brooke Smith), has been ordered removed from the series by ABC, who "'had issues' with...the explicit direction" her relationship was taking. · Assault and battery claims leveled against Keanu Reeves by an allegedly squished paparazzo have been tossed, but the photographer can still pursue a negligence claim.

Director Baz Luhrman's historical epic/romance/tourism ad Australia is set to premiere Nov. 19 in its home country before opening wide here Nov. 26. It has a press junket in LA scheduled in between. And as of this writing, it has Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and $130 million worth of Fox's Oscar hopes tied up in an unfinished bundle in Luhrmann's editing bay. No one has seen much more than a couple stirring trailers and, according to Anne Thompson, an unfinished print that screened without effects for a lucky Oprah Winfrey audience (none of whom, of course, were critics). So with less than three weeks before the studio expects to introduce it to the world, what's taking so long?Last month Luhrmann told The Age that he was expecting to hand the 170-minute film to Fox one reel at a time while he tightened "mechanics of storytelling." (The Kidman/Jackman romance, though? Totally believable!) Over the weekend, though, he vaguely hinted that the Nov. 19 date was just another porous deadline:

· To promote the new Indy 4 tie-in pizza at Papa John's: Veggie Lovers! · As research for his upcoming drama Organic, in which Ford plays a gruff macrobiotic dieter who rescues his kidnapped children with the money quote, "Not in my eco-friendly vegan cafe!" · That's isn't a peapod — it's a green, pustule-covered pointer finger.[Photo Credit: Flynet]

A reader sent Towleroad this snapshot of the sky above Warner Bros. in Burbank, probably the largest and most nausea-inducing "Yes on 8" sign yet erected in the ongoing, Mormon-underwritten campaign to strip gay Californians of their Constitutional right to marry. Luckily, God got one look at the message and blew it away: