The latest casualty of the credit crunch: BART's in-progress rollout of Wi-Fi on its trains. “People won’t loan risk capital until you have a contract,” says an executive for Wi-Fi Rail, the startup tagged with the job. Commuters were promised "ten times faster than DSL" access on BART trains within the next two to three years. A test program had already wired four stations in downtown SF, and 13,000 riders had registered for the service. But BART's schedule was contingent on Wi-Fi Rail raising $20 million, which in itself was contingent on BART signing a contract. Now, of course, even a signed contract won't unlock the big bucks. For BART riders, that means no Internet access during your commute, not for years. Good thing you're getting laid off. (Photo by The Examiner/Cindy Chew)

Analysts say that internet display advertising could plunge as much as 10% next year. They also predict that I will become unemployed. [NYP]

So basically you guys figured that yesterday's guy who likes to have sex with hookers on a pile of money could be anyone and everyone. And you are right. So, there. Today we have a film director robbed by hookers, a drunken actor, a star who is dating his stalker, and a girl who drinks way more than she eats. 1) "Which blockbuster director has only himself to blame for his recent burglary? After a hard day of filming, he decided to unwind with a couple of prostitutes who stole his valuables." [P6] [This ran a couple weeks back in 'BlindGossip,' and now it's in P6... so it must be true!] 2) "Which actor [at the Quantum of Solace after party] had to be tricked into drinking water to sober him up?" [Mirror] 3) "I guess this actor is B list, because he was the lead in a popcorn flick. It did not do as well as expected. He really is more of a name than a great actor. When asked about his most recent girlfriend and how they met, our actor came up with about five different stories leading most to speculate he purchased her for the evening. Not so. The reason he is shy about where she came from is she spent six months stalking him. One day he was lonely and invited her in, and now they are inseparable. This won't end well." [CDaN] 4) "She thinks that she can never be too thin. He does. He has tried to get her to gain a few pounds for her appearance, her health, to set a good example. He stands by her in public, but confesses to friends in private that he is repelled by her appearance. There have been a lot of screaming matches over the weight topic, so they have been spending more time apart, punctuated by the occasional very public appearance together. She is a valuable asset to his own career, so he may not leave her, but he has been quietly scoring the digits of normal-sized girls who catch his eye." [BlindGossip] 5) "Which young star is doing more drinking than eating? Those working with her are concerned that she is both perpetually hungover and getting thinner by the day." [BlindGossip]

If you're dressing up as Sarah Palin for Halloween and you'd like to compare your totally uninspired Halloween outfit to the 46,273 other New Yorkers who are dressing up as the vice presidential candidate, you're in luck! Sarah Palin lookalikes are gathering in Union Square tonight—supposedly!—for a "Sarah Palin Experiment and Pageant"

Lehman Brothers is hiring! Experience handling enormous bankruptcies a plus! [Bloomberg via Clusterstock]

Every once in a while some career marketing exec will have a blinding flash of conscience, and declare that they're quitting the rat race and taking their expertise to a nonprofit where it can do some good for the world. That's not usually what happens. Usually, a marketing exec surveying the fundamental emptiness of their career will have that same twinge of conscience, and decide that the way to solve it is to bring some real do-gooding purpose into the marketing industry. On that note, allow me to introduce you to "purpose-based marketing," just the latest futile quest by a prominent career adman! Jim Stengel is retiring as head of marketing at P&G—the world's biggest advertiser—and starting up his own marketing firm that he says is about "defining what a company does — beyond making money — and how it can make its customers' lives better." Though the WSJ describes this approach as "newfangled," it's been around for years. You know what the ceiling is on the market for this type of thing? The ceiling is how much extra leftover cash companies have to throw around after they do their real marketing, which has the goal of making money. Nothing "beyond making money" comes about until the "making money" part is accomplished. Corporate social responsibility is considered a luxury product. Which is why Jim Stengel's firm is doomed, according to his less conscience-plagued peers:

It is true, as the Times magazine will tell everyone Sunday, that Bravo has put a distinctly urbane stamp on the schlocky genre of reality television, taking "contestants off primitive islands and placing them squarely in sophisticated corners of cities like New York and Los Angeles." The NBC Universal cable network has transmitted a winking, insidery sensibility through shows like Project Runway and Top Chef — and still made the programs look somehow effortless. This natural poise, Bravo Media chief Lauren Zalaznick must have anticipated, was bound to be undermined by the Times' profile of her, which pulls back the corporate curtains to reveal Zalaznick, in the mold of all television executives, as something of a frenzied grasper. Writer Susan Dominus' 16-page story includes this memorable scene of Zalaznick demanding to be kept up on trends:

Lydia Hearst had a little run-in with Page Six magazine earlier this week: After bashing the media conglomerate founded by her great-grandfather in her weekly column, she accused the mag of making the item up and simply slapping her byline at the top. The heiress took her revenge last night. Sort of! Proving originality isn't her strong suit, Lydia wore precisely the same get-up that Britney Spears wore after she was dissed by Page Six way back in 2003. [GoaG, Jossip]

♦ Hedge fund manager Chris Shumway is the mystery buyer behind 104 Gin Lane—the mammoth-sized Southampton mansion that sold for $60 million last March—not Tiger Woods, as was previously reported. Chumway can afford it: He was reported to have made $400 million last year. A larger photo of the home is after the jump. [Newsday]
♦ The owners of a four-bedroom apartment at the Dakota have lowered the price of the spread by 19 percent after four months on the market. The sixth-floor residence, which is owned by an unknown "Wall Street executive," is now available for the bargain price of $19.5 million. [WSJ, Curbed, Brown Harris Stevens]
♦ Diandra De Morrell Douglas, the ex-wife of Michael Douglas, has gone into contract to sell her East 71st Street townhouse for $9.25 million, or $3.3 million more than what she paid for it three years ago. [WSJ]

Condé Nast announced yesterday it planned to scale back publication of Men's Vogue to two times a year. But not before Condé took one last opportunity to rope in Men's Vogue readers to renew their subscriptions! A reader was kind enough to send in this renewal offer he received last week, which offered two years ("20 issues!") for the price of one. But as he pointed out, when a Vogue title stamps "Free Gift Enclosed!" on the envelope and the gift turns out to be a flimsy bookmark, that's a pretty good sign the end is near.

A few years ago, Vanity Fair columnist and author Michael Wolff announced that he would never dine at the media hotspot Michael's ever again. Did he suffer a horrible case of food poisoning? Get attacked by an elderly socialite with her Hermès handbag? Actually, his outrage stemmed from the fact that he'd been denied his customary table at the restaurant. Now we get to hear the other side of the story: Steve Millington, the general manager of the restaurant, describes the Wolff brouhaha on the Fortune website. And it turns out that quite a few Michael's regulars were pretty psyched to hear they'd no longer have to see him during their lunch hours:

• Madonna and Alex Rodriguez helicoptered to the Hamptons, spent four hours in a house with Jerry Seinfeld and possibly Seinfeld's wife, then helicoptered back home. Must have been quite a dinner party. [Post, Sun]

Do be careful if you have a habit of visiting sleazy video stores for anonymous, gay sex. It seems the NYPD is cracking down on the practice, possibly by sending in cops to pose as gay men. [Gay City News via EV Grieve]

Nightlife impresario Scott Sartiano turns 34 today. Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni turns 44. Dan Rather is 71. Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger is turning 52. Architect Zaha Hadid is 58. Novelist Kinky Friedman is 64. Jane Pauley is turning 58. Mega hotel developer Ira Drukier turns 63. Actor Dermot Mulroney is 45. Director Peter Jackson turns 47. Rob Schneider is 45. And Robert Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, is 41.

Nine days ago, Bill O'Reilly landed himself a big raise when he signed a new four-year contract with Fox News worth an estimated $10-12 million a year. So how did he repay this act of generosity on Fox News' part? He devoted a segment of his show to saluting his boss, Fox News chief Roger Ailes, for his charity work. Last night, the "Patriot" part of O'Reilly's "Pinheads & Patriots" segment plugged Ailes' work supporting wounded Navy SEALS. "He's been a quiet, longtime supporter of this very fine charity," O'Reilly says. "And for that he is a patriot." Such a kiss-ass, no? But we're guessing this is what you have to do to when you're making all that money and your ratings are on the decline.

"By this October it was looking like 1931." [Folio]

♦ Madonna and Alex Rodriguez were able to fly out to the Hamptons for a "quick and cozy rendezvous" without anyone knowing, but only because Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld picked the couple up (separately) from the East Hampton airport and let them hang out for several hours at their waterfront manse. [P6, The Sun]
♦ With her husband Rossano Rubicondi filming a reality show in Italy, Ivana Trump has been hanging out with a 23-year-old Belgian model named Marius Rusovici. [P6]
♦ Tina Brown and Cathie Black are enemies, apparently, since they "disagreed on just about everything" and "wouldn't even look at each other," at a conference this week. [R&M]
♦ Is John McCain making an Saturday Night Live appearance this weekend? Does anyone care? [MSNBC]

HP thought it would be nifty to use Joan Jett's "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" in ads for its new touch-screen computers. And it was pretty nifty! The song is catchy and fun, and works very well in the context of the ad (which is after the jump). Only one problem: It was written by glam-rock singer Gary Glitter, who was convicted of child molestation in Vietnam and child porn possession in the U.K. This is terrible for HP on so many levels, starting with the fact that it enriched a child predator.

♦ October will go down as one of the gloomiest months in history. [CNN]
♦ Barclays plans to raise $11.8 billion by selling shares to Abu Dhabi and Qatar in order to meet Britain's new capital requirements. [NYT, WSJ]
♦ The banks benefiting from the bailout also owe $40 billion in compensation to employees, just in case you were wondering where your tax dollars were going. [WSJ]
♦ Meanwhile, banking CEOs may be in talks to cap compensation. Or they may just be paying the idea lip service in this sensitive political climate. [WSJ]

Talk about taking backstabbing to a new level: "On Thursday, the owners of Castlewood, a gothic castle in West Orange, N.J., hosted a live jousting competition to generate buzz among real-estate brokers..." [WSJ]