♦ Charles, the West Village spot that's been billed as the next Waverly Inn, is opening tonight. [Eater]
♦ A list of 18 spots ideal for fireside dining and boozing. [The Feedbag]
♦ Danny Meyer says sales are up at his budget-friendly restaurants (Shake Shack) while his pricier joints (Tabla, Eleven Madison Park) are beginning to suffer. [GS]
♦ A look inside West Branch, Tom Valenti's Upper West Side Brasserie opening tonight. [Eater]
♦ It's not too late to make Halloween plans: GoaG has a guide to festivities across the city, including a number you're probably not invited to. [GoaG]

Bruce Wasserstein might be looking better than ever these days, but Lazard employees won't get to admire Bruce's new visage in the warm glow of Christmas: The firm has cancelled its holiday party! [Dealbreaker]

In November of 2006, Nicklaus Lovelady wrote a shocking column about Barack Obama for the Henry Daily Harold in Henry County, Georgia. The column was a first-hand account of the despicable behavior of Senator Barack Obama during an appearance at the Southern Illinois University Edwardville. Lovelady, covering the event for a local paper, apparently had his eye on "a pretty young thing" interning with a rival paper. But when he tried to ask Senator Obama a question, Obama humiliated him in front of everyone and ruined Lovelady's chances of going home with the pretty intern.

Nikki Finke says that MTV is planning a massive round of layoffs. And they've decided to do it on Tuesday so that the news is totally overshadowed by Election Day. True? We don't know. But it isn't a bad idea. All those hipstery PAs won't know whether to mourn the loss of their jobs or celebrate the election of Barack Obama, and we're guessing the two will cancel one another out. That Judy is a clever one, isn't she? [Deadline Hollywood]

· John McCain will appear on SNL tomorrow, playing what we hear is his uncannily dead-on impression of David Archuleta in a planned sketch with musical guest David Cook. Good on McCain for managing to stay up that late, assuming he does! [Variety] · Spider-Man 4 will be written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, giving this franchise a key into the snooty, UES-society-lady demographic that has been eluding it until now. [THR] · Samantha Who? gets a back seven order from ABC. [Variety] After the jump: Finally—an answer to your "Tatum O'Neal and Brigitte Nielsen starring in the same B-movie" prayers! Find out who else joins them.· Tatum O'Neal, Tom Berenger and James Brolin join Brigitte Nielsen and Moon Unit Zappa in Last Will, an indie suspense drama we're predicting might have been better off casting unknowns. [THR] · Bradley Whitford will star with Weeds's Romany Malco in NBC pilot Off Duty, a buddy cop comedy. [THR]

[Tom Cruise and wife Katie Holmes in New York today; image via INF]

Vanity Fair has a new excerpt from professional media beef-starter Michael Wolff's upcoming biography of News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch already said publicly that the book is flawed, but his problems with it seemed to center on how some of his business relationships are portrayed. The excerpt today, disappointingly, focuses on Murdoch's family life, and some of it is predictable. Friction between the new wife and the old wife and the kids from the old wife! Drama about succession! The only real interesting parts come when Wolff starts riffing on Murdoch's greedy ambitious kids and their Oedipal tendencies: Prue, Murdoch's eldest daughter, is a weirdo, says Wolff. But at least she didn't want to marry her mom, yuck!:

♦ Zac Posen posted a 15-second video online urging people to vote for Obama. Also: He'd really like you to dress for the occasion. "I think blue obviously is the color of choice, and red is a good accent color." Duly noted! [WWD]
♦ Anna Wintour choked up? We can't contemplate the thought. [Unbeige]
♦ Bravo has no less than five new fashion reality shows in the works. [The Cut]
♦ Sarah Jessica Parker has no less than three fragrances to promote these days—Dawn, Endless and Twilight. [WWD]
♦ Chanel creative director (and part-time Vermont resident) Karl Lagerfeld has unveiled Chanel Unlimited, a newline of bags and accessories. [Vogue UK]

We told you to steel yourselves, and now here it is: following Whoopi Goldberg's sartorial lead, the other co-hosts of The View dressed up as men today for Halloween. Presidents, in fact! They even introduced themselves in character, which was a little bit awkward when Barbara Walters-as-George Washington babbled on about freeing her slaves in a manner so leading that she practically demanded Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd fall at her feet in exultant praise. Then, it was Elisabeth Hasselbeck's turn.Dressed up as Ronald Reagan, she offered a hearty, beyond-the-grave endorsement of John McCain (O RLY?) before Grandma Barbara led her into the weeds with a tortured Sarah Palin analogy and an appreciative Werther's Original. Then, as Hasselbeck is wont to do, she gave Joy Behar (as Teddy Roosevelt) a Cold War-worthy slam. Happy Halloween, ladies: who knew we could be frightened so early in the day?

Author Milan Kundera just demanded that a Czech publication say they're sorry for printing that he turned in a spy. Respekt is all, "Um, no." [IHT]

Esther Wojcicki, known as "Woj" at Palo Alto High School, where she teaches journalism, is a beloved figure on campus. She's also quite welcome at the Googleplex, as the mother of Anne Wojcicki, who's married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and Google executive Susan Wojcicki. I wonder if proximity to power and wealth has dulled Woj's reportorial instincts.She recently wrote a wide-eyed travelogue for the Huffington Post about the first flight of the Zeppelin NT, a blimp launched by startup Airship Ventures. Airship is backed by Esther Dyson, who is also an investor in her daughter Anne's startup, 23andMe. That, at the least, Woj ought to have disclosed. (I've asked Mario Ruiz, an executive at Huffington Post, if she violated any of the online publication's disclosure rules for writers; he has yet to reply. But if she really wanted to impress her students with her journalism chops, Woj might have asked questions about Amphitheatre LLC, the shadowy entity which has also invested in Airship Ventures. Amphitheatre shares a name with the street address of Google's headquarters — and possibly more. I would love to have known what Woj would have discovered, had she been less interested in promoting her daughter's investor's new startup.

♦ Narciso Rodriguez was the man of the hour at Bergdorf Goodman last night, where he celebrated the launch of his new coffee table book with guests like Julianna Margulies (left), Jessica Alba, Linda Fargo, Reed Krakoff, Virginia Smith, Roopal Patel, Jim Gold, Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Simon Doonan, Hal Rubenstein, Jaime King, Christopher Wheeldon, Dani Stahl, Linda Wells, Mickey Boardman, Patti Scialfa, and, his dad, Narciso Rodriguez Sr. [Paper, PMc, The Daily]

Click to viewBoomp3.com A couple of fiendish film flashers got their Halloween jollies in a day early as they spooked spectacular sassy screen star Kate Hudson at popular celeb hangout, LAX. The fiends wore spooky burlap sacks over the faces and shouted scary phrases like “Boo!” and “John McCain won the election!” while jumping out in front of the Raising Helen star. [Photo Credit: WENN] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Wondering who are New York restaurateurs backing this election season? Not John McCain. Grub Street combed through the data and of the 33 political donations they located, none—not a single one—went to McCain. The most generous contributor was Amy Rubenstein, the co-owner of Peter Luger's (and the wife of PR kingpin Howard) who handed over $5,600 to Obama, Clinton, and Giuliani. The award for most surprising donation? That would be Sirio Maccioni, who gave $2,300 donation to Rudy Giuliani despite the fact the former mayor once confessed that he used to throw up after eating at Le Cirque because the food was so rich. [Grub Street]

Google and Yahoo target search ads based on mere keywords. How passé! Facebook's targeted ads, which draw on the personal information users enter into their profiles, are clearly the future, right? If only the company's engineers could competently write the code that targets those ads. A Facebook advertiser who has spent thousands of dollars on campaigns targeted by age and country says that the site's new reporting tools for advertisers have exposed a serious problem: Either the targeting routines are broken, or the reporting is completely off. An ad meant for U.K. teens went mostly to the U.S. and other European countries instead. A campaign meant to be placed in front of Irish users saw 1 in 14 ads go elsewhere. It's a poor reflection on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose expertise in running Google's automated ad systems was touted as her main qualification for the job. Here are screenshots of some of the advertisers' reports:

You may recall that about six months ago, we posted a Photoshop contest winning entry featuring the inspired casting of Javier Bardem as everyone's favorite Prince of Dark Chocolateyness, Count Chocula. We said at the time that we'd definitely shell out for such a movie were it ever to be made, and threw out the suggestion of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jake Gyllenhaal to play his monstrous kiddie cereal cohorts, Frankenberry and Boo Berry.Just in time for Halloween, the same digital artiste who conceived the original has sent us his rendering of our proposed dream cast in the breakfast mascot roles they were clearly born to play. Seriously—we don't mean to toot our own horns here, but Jake channels his delicious inspiration right down to those half-cocked eyebrows, wonky smirk, and sleepy boo eyes. What are you waiting for, Hollywood. Poor some milk on this sucker and make some magic happen!

Though we worried yesterday that 30 Rock was facing desperate times, we can stop worrying for at least another week! The Tina Fey dream ballet sitcom scored series high ratings last night, wrangling in 8.5 million viewers. That's up 20% from last season's premiere! The numbers were buoyed, we assume, by Fey's successful turns as VP nominee Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. Hopefully there will be another of those. And next week is the big Oprah Jones appearance, which ought to attract a small legion of moms, sitting tentatively on the edge of the couch, a spare Kleenex tucked in their sleeves, their brows furrowed a bit by the confusing Tracy Morgan. But who cares if they like it, as longs as they watches it. We'll have to wait til next week to see what happens, obviously, but in the meantime, below is a fun Halloween webisode, featuring Sexy Cerie!

How's that going? They're grooming the Trump daughter to marry boy-mensch and 27-year-old New York Observer owner Jared Kushner. But first they've got to beat the Gentile out of her! Of course the YNet's Jewish World has something to say about it, declaring Kushner the "perfect match" and informing us that " following her husband-to-be's request, Ivanka has begun the conversion process at the Kehilath Jeshurun Synagogue in Manhattan's Upper East Side." Has she been turned away by a rabbi three times, as is the custom? Update: But Kushner & Trump are not engaged as this article suggests, says Robert Sommer, Observer Media Group President. Apparently, they're just really seriously going steady.[YNet]

That's the question about the company's obvious leaks to the Wall Street Journal which suggest it might walk away from talks with the government about its search deal with Yahoo. Short answer: Yes, yes it is. [BoomTown]

We challenge you to come up with a more badass job to have than Somali Pirate. You cannot come up with one! Except for the fact of living in a war-torn penniless country and taking your life in your hands on the high seas with no guarantee of success or mercy, it is just about the awesomest line of work ever. A million dollars in a single day? Piracy is the I-banking of a new generation! Easy money!