Back in my day, weed was bought from shady characters standing on the corner, or at a weed spot where shady characters gathered. There was none of this ordering on the phone and having some aspiring male model type roll up to your front door on his bike to deliver your quarter ounce. That's that bullshit. Just another sign of dwindling grittiness, like getting our tattoos in malls. So it's no surprise that our city's weed dealers have morphed from streetwise hustlers posted up in the shadows to fancy-free longhairs who give interviews about their business to the Observer under their real names: Stefan Fitzgerald is a bike delivery guy for a large weed operation who was only too happy to bitch to the Observer about his boss:

Barclays, which acquired the operations of a bankrupt Lehman Brothers in September (and has been firing people left and right ever since), has cancelled its annual Christmas party. [Dealbreaker]

The CW, having had some marginal success with their insanely awful 90210 brand rape, have decided to plow on ahead and update the next 90's Fox show produced by Aaron Spelling. No, not Models, Inc., sadly. It's that show about a group of beautiful youngish people who all live around the same swimming pool, Melrose Place! Yes Amanda and Billy and the gay one and, um, the rest of 'em might become a new and updated series. They'll still blow up apartment buildings and try to kill each other, but now they'll do it by using the internet. [AP]

Terrible news: if Obama wins, you have to love America! That's right, New Yorkers have given the game away—all the hipster Obama gear and unconcealed excitement at his candidacy means no longer can we hide behind our secret glee at the utter rejection of our values and lifestyle by "Real America." If it's a landslide, we're screwed. Do we really want our smirking appropriation of the gung-ho patriotic vernacular (America—fuck yeah!) to suddenly become... sincere? As Doree Shafrir writes in today's Observer, some New Yorkers are becoming dangerously proud of their country.

Martha Stewart threw a Halloween party at her home in Bedford this past weekend. Of course, she didn't just buy some candy and throw on the same costume from last year: The soirée inside her horse stable featured pumpkin soup prepared by her personal chef, Pierre, served inside hollowed-out pumpkins. Between the soup and the fact that the perimeter of her estate appears to be ringed with them, it's probably safe to say she's cornered the pumpkin market in Westchester County. [The Martha Blog]

Getting laid off is never fun. But complaining about how awful being laid off is, in a perverse and masochistic way. Because misery loves company, we want your layoff stories. (Send them to tips@gawker.com.) Here are two we received so far: one from a man who wasn't even allowed to get his birthday cards, and another about a laid-off employee who the bosses actually forgot to fire...

[Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens, stars of the movie 'High School Musical 3,' which grossed a billion dollars over the weekend, in Los Angeles yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin] Meg's new line beats the original, Having Money Is Fun

The feud between Tatiana and Natasha Boncompagni rages on. As you may recall, Tatiana is the author of the chick lit novel Gilding Lily and the forthcoming book Hedge Fund Wives; Natasha, her sister, claims she co-authored Hedge Fund Wives and says the book is based on her career on Wall Street. Earlier this week, Tatiana filed suit against Natasha, claiming her sister had stolen a copy of the manuscript and posted it online. Natasha countered her sister's claim with the assertion that Tatiana had tried to pay her to go away and had lied to her publisher, HarperCollins, on numerous occasions, most notably about being the daughter of an Italian princess. (She also said her sister had installed a "keylogging" device on her computer so she could spy on her.) Yesterday a judge issued a temporary restraining order forcing Natasha to take down the site that had previously hosted several sections of the novel. But Tatiana's already-battered reputation is about to take another blow. It turns out that she's not even named "Boncompagni" and her vacuum heir husband had a very similar legal run-in of his own not so long ago.

Oh Fox News PR machine, how we've missed your vicious personal attacks on anyone speaking ill of the Mothership! It's been literally months since one of Roger Ailes' specially trained attack flacks unloaded against a reporter or a PR person or anybody else for the crime of calling Fox News a den of writhing right-wing pus-sucking leeches, or words to that effect. Well now they're up against 6'6, 250-pound man who specializes in snatching balls. Finally, a fair fight: NBA Hall-of-Famer, erstwhile (former) Alabama Republican and free-speaking man Charles Barkley pointed out the obvious:

What to do if you have a magazine assignment, but the mag folds days before you're scheduled to leave for freaking Alaska? If the trip's already paid for, you go anyway and hope to shop the resulting piece to another publication. That was the case with Jessica Pilot (of the infamous "Hipster Hooker" story) and Radar. "It was purchased on [editor] Maer [Roshan's] card, so I guess I'm good to go," she told us.First order of business in Wasilla: a good old-fashioned house party.

Yesterday you guys figured that the balding foreign movie star had to be Jude Law. I think you're right. Good work, all of us! Today we have a singer with a bad BO problem, a tweensy star with a sex problem, a secretly married couple, and a guy who boned his sister. Yup. 1) "Which British female singer has such a bad BO problem, her poor entourage are forced to restrict their breathing to avoid inhaling her sweaty fumes?" [Mirror] 2) "This female tweener star may want to head on over to her doctor. Why do you ask? Well her tweener boyfriend picked up the gift that Paris made popular. And here we thought they were monogamous." [CDaN] 3) "Which celebrity couple has secretly wed but still haven't told anyone except their immediate families? One is more famous than the other, but you would recognize both names. He wouldn't mind telling people, but she is extremely protective of their privacy after a negative experience with the paparazzi a while back." [BlindGossip] 4) "Which young famous black performer didn't know the identity of his real father and thus wound up sleeping with his own sister? The young man (who we'll call Junior) was the product of an affair his mother had in the seventies with a talented married black celebrity (who we'll call Senior). Although there was the occasional wicked whisper because Junior and Senior resemble each other physically and have similar triple-threat talents, neither Senior nor the woman ever told anyone that Senior was Junior's father. They really thought they could keep things quiet, live separate lives, and carry the secret of Junior's true ancestry to their graves. The situation changed when Senior learned that his daughter from his second marriage had begun dating Junior. Very alarmed and needing to intervene without divulging his paternity, Senior quickly inserted himself into the situation, became Junior's friend and mentor, and forced the young couple to break up. It worked. Junior still doesn't know that Senior - whom he greatly admires - is his real father, or that his former girlfriend - to whom he lost his virginity - was his own half-sister." [BlindGossip]

Everyone is basically in agreement that the advertising market next year is going to suck—even your precious internet ads! So I guess it's appropriate that Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign, which started out with such an ineffective burst of star power, has now been reduced to using videos submitted by you, the idiot consumers. This is all part of a grand strategy by a brilliant ad agency and not at all a harbinger of Microsoft getting its ass handed to it on a national stage, okay?

The Observer has a round-up of some of the New York-based FOB's (or Friends of Barack) who are expected to have a major voice in Washington if the Democratic nominee wins the election next week. Who, exactly? Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, and Richard Holbrooke should all have a place at the table, assuming any of them are interested. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will almost certainly have Barack's ear, as will New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, who is believed to be a contender for Treasury Secretary. Some of the lesser-know figures who will be on speed dial: Citi exec Michael Froman; Jamie Rubin (the son of Bob); Jeh Johnson, an attorney at Paul, Weiss; Josh Steiner, a private equity pro who works with Steve Rattner; former Lazard exec Josh Gotbaum; law professor Seth Harris, financier Orin Kramer; Robert Wolf, the CEO of UBS Americas, and Preeta Bansal, a partner at Skadden, Arps. [NYO]

• Shiksa Ivanka Trump and Observer-owning Jewish beau Jared Kushner have the rabbi for her conversion all picked out. It was important to both of them that he hate the Times. [P6]

It looks like James Kurisunkal has been so busy gobbling down the cookies that socialites send him in exchange for coverage on his blog Park Avenue Peerage that he hasn't had time to register the website ParkAvenuePeerage.com. A porn website occupies the domain, although if you look at the two sites side-by-side, you may have a tough time telling the pretty young socials from the pretty young adult actresses.

Isaac Mizrahi appeared on CNN yesterday to promote his new book, How to Get Style. When a CNN anchor asked the designer about how the First Lady fashion has evolved over the years, Mizrahi used it as an opportunity to gush about how fabulous it will be to have Michelle Obama in the White House: "The First Lady that I'm thinking about is a smart and stylish person," he starts. "I don't think it's a moment to be flashy and way glamorous if you're the First Lady, but I don't think Michelle Obama will disappoint. She's going to be gorgeous." And how about Cindy McCain? Isaac has no interest in even contemplating such a horrible thought, thank you very much. Video after the jump.

Goldman Sachs named 94 new partners today, down from the 115 new partners named during the last round two years ago. Clusterstock has the list of the very few people who work on Wall Street who will drinking champagne tonight. [Clusterstock]

♦ Late fashion mogul (and Showgirls producer) Charles Evans' triplex apartment at 895 Park, which had already been cut from $29.5 million to $25 million in May, has been lowered once again. It's now $20 million. [NYO, Stribling]
♦ Morgan Stanley managing director Guy Metcalfe has paid $9.35 million for a five-bedroom, second-floor apartment at 15 Central Park West. [Real Deal]
♦ TV legend Dick Cavett sold 77 acres of waterfront property in Montauk to the Town of East Hampton, Suffolk County and New York State for $18 mil. The land will be used as part of a wetland conservation site. [Hamptons.com]

The Times got to watch a very special one-minute trailer for Barack Obama's half-hour informercial, set to air tonight on NBC, CBS, Fox and various other networks. And it sounds like a total dork-fest. No flying saucers, fashion makeovers, musical guests, or variety show gimmicks, as the media elite has helpfully suggested. No, it looks like we're getting tons of "strings, flags, presidential imagery and... Americana," plus a whole lot of white people:

It's been three years since Tom Ford announced plans to
make movies, but it looks like Ford will soon get a chance to take a seat in a canvas (gasp!) director's chair and scream at terrified PAs on the set of a major motion picture. His production company, Fade to Black, is set to start filming A Single Man in Los Angeles early next month, starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode. [WWD]