Portfolio, Conde Nast's $100 million business magazine, has finally hit what will probably prove to be a permanent downward slope. The latest word is that the magazine is laying off 20% of its total staff—including the vast majority of its web staff—and cutting publication to ten issues per year. Of all the troubled magazines lately, Portfolio is the most significant. Because the decline of Portfolio marks the final, incontrovertible end to the days of big, brash print magazine launches. The good times are over, kids. Portfolio had lots of things against it from the start. The $100 million investment from Conde Nast placed almost superhuman pressure for immediate success on the editor. And that may have been the biggest problem of all: the editor, Joanne Lipman, was not particularly good at her job. Lately she may have even been losing the patient support of Si Newhouse, her overlord and protector. She never really had the support of her staff, and even her deputies may have had waning enthusiasm for her management. Lipman remains in charge for now; but if the magazine survives in the long term, it will probably not be with her at the helm. The magazine's immediate problems are the same ones that face everyone else in the business media: that at the time of this economic crisis—the biggest possible story—there are also the fewest possible advertisers. (It didn't help that the magazine decided to ignore the crisis altogether on the latest cover). Portfolio made a big show of attracting high-profile talent with big paychecks; that was when Wall Street was doing well. Now, they'll have fewer issues to put those writers' material in, and a vastly simplified website without a need for a lot of daily content. Some people will have to go. Big names will be leaving Portfolio soon, upset that they signed on there in the first place—and left without any prospect of receiving an equally good offer somewhere else. Here's the takeaway, as the business types like to say: the Portfolio gamble failed. It wasn't meant to be. Not even a bottomless budget could counteract the fundamental forces that are pushing the media online. The magazine had a lot of talent, a lot of resources, and a lot of good content; but it couldn't put together a package that justified the exorbitant investment in print. Certainly, Portfolio doesn't need to fold just yet; if they can ride out this downturn, streamline the staff, and come out stronger on the other side, they might be around for years and years to come. But their future, like everyone's, is not in the old model of no-expense-spared print behemoths. Magazines will be targeted to niches. General interest publishing will move online (which makes it strange that the mag is laying off its online staff—might be a move in the wrong direction). Thanks for giving it one last shot, Conde Nast; you offered enough proof for anyone.

Tina Brown just can't stop gushing about her new digital venture, the Daily Beast—especially now that she's escaped the overspending print world of Conde Nast. "I’d hate right now to be in the magazine world," Portfolio reported her saying at a conference with Hearst president Cathy Black. "It’s a really tough time to be a magazine editor," Brown added, rubbing salt into the wound. Meanwhile, Black floundered about, defining the future of media in Orwellian terms: we won't have "newspapers" but "news and content distribution." As far as making a profit, "it depends on how you define money," Fishbowl quoted her as saying. Given the harsh cutbacks at Conde today, it looks like making money is out for Fall and thereafter.

· The Beatles video game we mentioned yesterday will not be a Rock Band installment, but rather a standalone title currently in development. Ringo urges you not to choose him, but rather one of the three other "perfectly lovely" mercenary options. [Variety] · Bishop T.D. Jakes is getting his own talk show. Here's a sneak preview of his rousing sermon style at Dallas-based mega-church Potter's House; we're not sure if it will be enhanced by Tyra-esque undercover assignments as a sneaker sweatshop employee and/or Thai massage-parlor worker, but we look forward to finding out. [Variety] · Antediluvian Viacom chief Sumner Redstone reassured investors that his unloading of $233 million CBS and Viacom stock was a one-shot deal to pay down their holding company's debts, and "not a single share" more would leave his gnarled clutches. [Variety] After the jump: Holy freaking crap! You will not believe what movie they are remaking now as a Samuel L. Jackson vehicle.· It's The Last Dragon, with Samuel L. Jackson set to play Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, who'll stop at nothing to get these motherfucking kung-fu dragons off his motherfucking turf. All this excitement as El DeBarge is headed off to jail. Sadface. [THR] · NBC is producing a series based on ChickLit-Your-Own-Adventure book Pretty Little Mistakes. Like its source material, this too will allow you to choose the fate of the protagonists: By ignoring it, they'll all come to a swift demise. So interactive! [THR]

Looks like the stress of the economy is taking a toll on the financial news media. CNBC's Charlie Gasparino had a bit of a meltdown on the air earlier this afternoon, as you'll see in this video clip. It starts off playfully enough, but wait for the end to see Charlie's colleagues have that classic WTF moment as Gasparino starts to say something totally incoherent about "shooting the capitalist system." [YouTube via Dealbreaker]

BoomTown reporter Kara Swisher rappelled from a skylight at Jerry Yang's secret hideout to score this draft copy of an ad, in which a bunch of tech bigwigs come out in favor of gay marriage — or at least in opposition to Proposition 8, a California state ballot initiative which would ban it. No Valley company in its right mind would be seen opposing gay marriage, so why bother?Right: Because it's an awesome branding opportunity. The draft is a self-parody of corner office drama, full of Honorary Co-Chairs, Leaders, and Former CEOs. But the real story is: Who's missing? Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are here, but not Larry Page. Twitter's Ev Williams is here, but not Digg's Kevin Rose. Federated Media: Present. TechCrunch: Absent. Mark Zuckerberg is not here, but Sheryl Sandberg pulled a John Hancock: She's right up top, where Owen can't miss her. Oh, look, she's trying to make nice! She's going to be sorry.

The ugly new trend in epic-length movie trailers continues today with the latest teaser for The Day the Earth Stood Still, the remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic creatively recast with Keanu Reeves as a flat-voiced humanoid alien warning Earth's inhabitants of their impending doom. Quite a stretch, we know (and yes, he has made this one before), but from the looks of the accompanying clip, DTESS is a soaring upgrade from low-budget earnestness to a sort of glossy, glassy-eyed indignance; there is true, brow-furrowing peril in that stilted baritone suggesting his past "would only frighten you." If only we felt less endangered by the four minutes of line readings that follow from Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates and even Jon Hamm, from whom we expected so much more than bromides about the history of mankind. Believe us, Jon — we know history, and this has all the symptoms of being exactly that. And not the good kind, either. [20th Century Fox]

Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. chief who used to run Yahoo, can't catch a break from wild-child daughter Courtenay, who continues to embarrass him. The latest, via celebrity blog TMZ: Testimony from a court case about an incident last August where Courtenay — who's now dating MySpace hottie Tila Tequila — got handcuffed after swearing at Jaroslaw Jarczok, a security guard at Pure, a Las Vegas nightclub. The line that did her in: "Do you even know who I am, f**king idiot?...Google me, you dumb f**k." You would think, if she had any respect for Daddy whatsoever, she'd have told Jarczok to search for her name on Yahoo.

Tomorrow is Halloween! It's a sacred holiday for children, what with the heaping mounds (if you do not feel like a nut) of candy and the fun, scaaarryyy costumes. The costume aspect also makes it something of an important day for adults because, to paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, you get a night of being someone else before you step back into your mold the next day. But really, you're always you and one can tell a lot about a person from their choice of Halloween attire. Really, there are five types of costumes (and only five types of people!), and we'll dissect them—and what they say about their wearer—after the jump.

Steve Schwarzman's 60th birthday party last year may go down as the last, great party before the fall. Days after closing on what was then the biggest leveraged buyout in history, the $39 billion purchase of Equity Office Properties, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group invited 500 people to the Armory on Park Avenue for a party that cost an estimated $3 million. A very long list of notables turned up—Donald Trump, Barbara Walters, Barry Diller, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon—as did many of the people who have now become poster boys for the global financial crisis, like former Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal, ex-Bear Stearns chief Jimmy Cayne. Rod Stewart was paid $1 million to perform for the assembled guests; Patti LaBelle sang "Happy Birthday." And the room was designed to replicate Schwarzman's $40 million co-op at 740 Park Avenue. So does Schwarzman have any regrets now the economy has crumbled and he was depicted as a real-life Gordon Gekko in the relentless press coverage that followed?

The big weekend box office for High School Musical 3 proves that Disney knows not to mess with a winning thing, and why should it? The series's profitable formula (40% Bollywood chastity, 35% 'N Sync b-sides, and 25% total gayness) has paid off in spades. Perhaps, then, the threat of tinkering with this equation was what Disney had in mind when they cut what was apparently a Zac Efron-led musical sequence in a boys' group shower (!), the existence of which came to light after an Ebay seller included pictures of the number in a cache of HSM3 photos. What cinematic contribution to homoerotica was lost when a cruel executive axed "Lather Up, Y'all"? Gaze upon the additional pictures after the jump, and muse upon what might have been.

Following every poll to watch swing states move from left to right and back again? A 24/7 news cycle feeds our craving for instant information, but separating fact from hype is trickier than ever. Join reps from YouTube, The Real News Network, BettyConfidential.com, and Google for a Churchill Club discussion on spin and politics in the age of online journalism at the SRI International Building tonight. If you have a post-World Series hole in your heart, fill it with beer. The Ubuntu 8.10 Release Party will be at Thirsty Bear at 7 p.m. for a low-key celebration of the latest in Linux's rapid-fire OS updates. Meanwhile, the creator of Movable Type and TypePad, Six Apart, is celebrating the second anniversary of its Vox blogging service from 6-9 p.m. at its 4th Street headquarters in SoMa. (Photo by Paul Keleher)

Ashley Todd is the moronic young college Republican who thought it would be a fantastic idea to, while volunteering for the McCain campaign in Pittsburgh, stage her mugging and facial mutilation by a large black Obama supporter. She drew a B on her face, backwards, because she did it in the mirror, and the rest is history. She is an American Hero. Paraded before the press in handcuffs, a faint B still visible on her face, we all knew no jail could hold Ol' B-Face. And we were right! Todd has been released from jail and will be "required to undergo mental health treatment." Then her record will be expunged, so she can still act as campaign manager for Bristol Palin's historic 2036 presidential campaign.

Click to viewBoomp3.com At the Rome Film Festival screening of teen bloodsucking epic Twilight, Kristen Stewart wondered if her co-star Robert Pattinson had bathed since wrapping production on the film in April of this year. Stewart politely asked if Pattinson had been keeping up with his hygiene and personal grooming. Pattinson explained that he has been taking a lot of sponge baths, but he wanted to stay in character for the sequel. Pattinson said, “I mean I’m playing a 107 year old teen. I’m going to be stinky.” [Photo Credit: Getty Images] *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.

Another embarrassing outage for Facebook: The homepage for Facebook.co.uk is displaying a set of directories, as if the server had been wiped clean. Before you blame Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for this one, check out the domain-name registration. Facebook.co.uk is registered to one Cameron Winklevoss; last year, it displayed a placeholder homepage. So who's Cameron Winklevoss, and what makes this deception so intriguing?Cameron and his twin brother Tyler famously sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he copied the code for his site from ConnectU, a similar social network they asked him to help code while they were all students at Harvard. Facebook and ConnectU settled the lawsuit earlier this year. One wonders if Facebook's lawyers forgot to ask for the UK domain name.

Now is not a good time to be in the auction business, especially if your business involved selling overpriced items to people who have just lost all their money in the market. Sales were extremely slow at Sotheby's "Exceptional Wines" auction on Tuesday night: Only 70 percent of the 190 lots were ultimately auctioned off, bringing in $2.2 million, a far cry from the $5.1 million the auction house had been hoping for. Sotheby's isn't alone, of course: Business has been dismal at nearly every major auction from London to New York in recent weeks. But organizers for next week's Impressionist and Modern art sale at Sotheby's are already bracing for the worst, especially after one of the auction's priciest pieces was unexpectedly withdrawn by its owner. Now they just have to hope Henry Kravis doesn't pull out, too. He's planning to unload his Degas pastel of a seated ballerina, and is hoping for as much as $40 million for the work (he paid $28 million for it in 1999), and we all know that financiers need every penny they can get these days.

Alec Baldwin appeared on Late Show last night to reprise his own, sub-Tina Fey impression of Sarah Palin while recounting to Dave the (completely justifiable!) circumstances of Palin's visit to SNL. Unlike her offer to Fey that night, Palin did not serve up Bristol as a potential babysitter to Baldwin's daughter, but that's not to say these two unlikely scenemates didn't find something in common to talk about.Still, even though the two bonded while discussing Baldwin's "right-winger" brother Stephen, Alec's vote is all sewn up. And, as he says, the candidate he's pulling for is not the "guy running with Bible Spice." Still, if Bible Spice would be down for a February sweeps cameo on 30 Rock, then bygones!

New York's most expensive real estate listing—an $80 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West—has been pulled off the market. [NYO]

Kara Swisher's new pet media blogger Peter Kafka praises CBS executive Quincy Smith, shown here, for picking up CNET. Revenues were up 6 percent in the most recent quarter, with a 12 percent increase in display advertising. But wait a second: Aren't display ads most of CNET's revenue? The company also makes money through e-commerce referrals and the sale of marketing data — which suggests something went wrong enough in CNET's other businesses to blunt the welcome rise in advertising.

The 5% across-the-board cuts at Conde Nast are already manifesting themselves. Men's Vogue has been officially scaled back to a twice-a-year publication—meaning that it's folding, in the sense of being a regular (almost) monthly magazine. Tipsters tell us that the MV staff is getting laid off, although Conde's own statement uses the vague phrasing, "Men's Vogue will be absorbed into Vogue," leaving open the possibility of some staff retention (MV editor Jay Fielden is staying on). And All Things D reports that the entire staff of Conde's troubled business title Portfolio has been summoned into a meeting that's going on right now. Ominous. Anyone with specific info on layoffs, email us. [UPDATE: Portfolio has indeed suffered a serious cutback, along with layoffs]: The bad news at the meeting: Portfolio is going to be published ten times per year, rather than 12. The December and January issues will be combined, as well as the June and July issues. Alley Insider says that Porfolio's web staff is being cut from twenty employees to five. More layoffs may be coming. The magazine has a lot of high-profile, highly-paid journalists on its staff—and now, one-sixth less space to publish their stories.

Today brings an addendum to our one-stop guide to comprehending Courtenay Semel, the celebrity lesbian nexus who was last seen having her claws removed from a Vegas security guard: Her alleged victim, Jaroslaw Jarczok, filed suit yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming that the volatile Yahoo! scion attacked him in a drunken rage last August at Caesar's Palace. Worse yet, he alleges that Semel humiliated him with one of the most emasculating things a Z-list reality alumna can bellow at a man.Just when Jarczok had finally gotten used to those "Jar Jar" taunts from wasted junior executives shuffling back to their suites upstairs, the Lohan ex and current Tila Tequila flame Semel is said to have uncorked the searing rejoinder, "Do you even know who I am, fucking idiot? ... Google me, you dumb fuck." Of course, he probably did just that, uncovering the definitive Semel cheat-sheet to which his name will now be linked forevermore — and which also stated that Semel's net worth is not nearly what her father Terry's wealth might imply. In any case, the elder Semel won't be coming to his daughter's rescue as the guard seeks unspecified damages; her little Google stunt sent his Yahoo! shares plunging 12% in early trading. This one's coming right out of her inheritance.