· Vince Vaughn is developing and executive producing a single-camera sitcom for Fox, about "a couple of young men who are just out of college and starting to experience the real world." No title yet, but we submit Just the Tip. [Variety] · Intermittently engaging, Jimmy Smits-employing serial killer dramedy Dexter gets two more seasons on Showtime, promising we'll at least get to see Junior Dexter develop to his Terrible Dayschool-Slaughterer Twos. [Variety] · Universal wants to sell Rogue Pictures—the studio behind The Strangers and its sequel, The Strangiers— to Relativity Media. [Variety] After the jump: Which of NBC's homoerotically-charged new series just got a full season pickup?· Graphic novel Freaks of the Heartland, a Midwestern tale of "horrible secrets" about a monstrous six-year-old, will be adapted for the screen by Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green, who's also writing the adaptation of frat-hazing memoir Goat. [THR] · NBC ordered nine more episodes of Knight Rider, the first new NBC show to get a full-season pickup. Because it's so awesome! Have you seen what that car can do? [THR]

The layoffs are moving up the food chain, from the startups to the larger tech beasts. FuckedStartups writes that Ticketmaster is laying off 35 percent of its 3,000-plus staff, which squares with other reports I've heard. Ticketmaster is besieged with competition from concert promoter LiveNation, and was recently spun off by IAC. If I had to bet, I'd say these cuts have as much to do with removing the layers of cruft which accumulated under years of flitty mismanagement by IAC CEO Barry Diller as they do with the economy.

Remember our good friend Anthony Morley? You know Anthony, he's the Mr. Gay UK winner who slit his lover's throat and then fried him up with olive oil and various spices and ate him. He's a nice young chap, and ha ha!, he was a chef by trade. So that's creepy and funny in a really terrible way. Well he was just sent to prison and, wouldn't you know it, he'll be working as a prison chef! The good news is that they're not letting him use knives. Since this is such a salacious, baroque bit of scandal, we figured we needed a splashy tabloid headline to commemorate the occasion. We came up with the awful one above, and we bet you can beat it. Leave your best gay cannibal headlines in the comments and we'll pick our favorite. Winner gets fame and glory in Photoshopped newspaper form.

Sure, we can usually count on Elisabeth Hasselbeck to make fashion statements that are almost as loud as her constant shouts of "But what about William Ayers...!" Still, even we were impressed by her chutzpah when she showed up to today's edition of The View wearing a salmon-colored t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Great AmeriMcCain Hero." The audience, however, was in a less forgiving mood toward the conservative co-host today.During a discussion about Barack Obama's Titanic-beating money haul, Joy Behar asked Hasselbeck if she thought John McCain would have abstained from the public financing system if he could have made similar money. Her indignant response, "John McCain is a man of his word and a man of honor," drew laughs, groans, and only a smattering of applause. Perhaps chastened by the reaction (as well as a later interruption from Whoopi Goldberg), Hasselbeck announced she was simply going to imagine the rest of her thoughts and not even bother talking. We're imagining that her imagination has something to do with a keffiyeh-clad Obama and four bloody, feminine scalps.

The layoffs we heard about earlier today at Adweek have been confirmed by the company—sort of. An Adweek story and a statement to PRNewser confirm Nielsen Business Media's, ahem, "Reorganization," which will consolidate the staffs of Adweek, Brandweek, and Mediaweek, while leaving them all as separate brands. Layoffs are taking place, though the company doesn't go into details (we heard around 20, and UPDATE: Folio says 19 total—11 in the Adweek group and 8 from other publications). It's a sign that trade mags are no safer than their consumer-oriented peers in this awful economic climate. And it offers some truly classic examples of fact-free corporate jargon:

Just how bad is the global financial crisis? So bad that while many bistros and brasseries in Paris are now being forced to close their doors, McDonald's is expecting a 12 percent bump in sales this year. [Bloomberg]

It's a predictable routine: Write about Glam Media, Samir Arora's dangerously bubbly online-advertising startup, and get bombarded by comments from website operators for whom Glam sells ads. The latest victim: Saul Hansell of the New York Times, who dared to point out that most of Glam's traffic comes not from the kind of high-quality, editorially driven websites his salespeople promise to advertisers, but from horoscopes, social networks, and gaming sites. Two Glam publishers promptly weighed in. It almost makes one wonder if, like a political campaign, Arora gins up faux grassroots complaints. (Valleywag has attracted its own reliable Glam commenter, AretinaAegeus.) Like a well-done Astroturfing, as the process is known in politics, the comments seem genuine enough — original wording, no cutting-and-pasting of talking points. But the process may backfire on Arora. Goaded by the commenters, Hansell updated his piece with a more concise — and damning — explanation of why Glam may be scamming its advertisers:

The "voting" bit of the endless 2008 election has not yet happened, but honestly the winner of that particular contest is of little concern to anyone but plumbers and unemployed auto workers and ladies who want their precious "abortions." No, from here, two weeks out from Election Day, with Obama suspending his campaign and John McCain abandoning swing states, we can already plainly see who's really come out on top over these last couple months. Media whores! And, you know, media people who we actually like and wouldn't therefore call "whores." After the jump, the five real winners of the 2008 elections.

Press-obsessed divorce attorney Raoul Felder has found a clever way to stay in the spotlight in these turbulent economic times: He's suing the money management firm AllianceBernstein for $5 million for losing $200,000 he invested in a hedge fund based on AllianceBernstein's advice. It's been a few years since the 74-year-old attorney has been the center of the spotlight. (His most notable clients in recent years: Rudy Giuliani in his divorce from Donna Hanover, and David Gest in his split from Liza Minnelli. Until, that is, Gest fired him for overdoing it with the press.) But Felder seems to have figured out a great way to take center-stage amid the financial crisis: Sue the firm that managed your portfolio for 25 times what you lost, and then give a dozen interviews about how the system is corrupt and you're just standing up for the little man.

Any i-bankers out there with plenty of time on their hands and some anguish to exorcise? Our readers need to understand what went wrong on Wall Street. And they may also need someone to blame for losses on the markets in the last two weeks. Any financial-sector masochists want to do penance by explaining the credit crunch in the comments? You can remain anonymous. Email me to apply for this position. (It pays in worthless credit default swaps.)

We've heard of (and often tried) a lot of ways to ladder-climb in Hollywood, but "superstar tax-evasion defense attorney" is one we had pretty far down our list, just above "blogger." Still, that's not stopping Robert Bernhoft and Robert Barnes (or simply "the Bobs," as Portfolio refers to them in its November issue) from parlaying their momentum from last spring's Wesley Snipes trial into a kind of Malibu-based, Uncle Sam-swatting empire. "Wait," you ask, "didn't Wesley Snipes get three years in prison for misdemeanor tax evasion?" True, but these pinstriped paragons of justice have their own brazen, slightly lawyerly way of looking at it.After all, they argue, Snipes dropped the Bobs after they urged a "good-faith" offer to defray his tax debt on three misdemeanor charges — unprecedentedly dropped from the original six counts for his nonpayment from 1999 to 2005. The actor's rejection of the deal (at least until he showed up with $5 million in personal checks on the day of his sentencing) set the attorneys up to have their historic cake and eat it, too. And to hear Bernhoft and Barnes tell it, it's a delicious cake; if only there were government-stiffing action stars in their native Milwaukee to share it with. Next stop: Malibu, where they've already roped in Girls Gone Wild kingpin Joe Francis, who faces 10 years in prison if convicted next spring of felony tax evasion. And from there? The gutter is apparently the limit:

Yes, Google has laid off employees before. But those were DoubleClick employees. America's CTO, Eric Schmidt, managed to cull any deadwood from Google's Mountain View campus without it becoming a hot story. This time it's different, writes one of my leakers, and all the smart people can smell it. Here's the algorithm:

Are you an orphan entrepreneur looking for your Daddy Warbucks? The Knight News Challenge has $5 million up for grabs for innovative online news and social media sites. Hey, it worked for Adrian Holovaty's EveryBlock. If you have an idea but need a boost getting your application in gear before the November 1 deadline, Knight representatives will be at Tech Soup for a workshop from 7-8:30 p.m. For those whose startup song and dance isn't winning fans, Fuzzyshot.com invites you to their Mountain View headquarters for the "World's Smallest Violin" pity party. Whining and dining begins at 7 p.m. And now a shameless plug for tech pursuits outside of the industry. MarketWatch's Tech Tales columnist Therese Poletti wrote a book on architecture, which just happens to relate to my day job. My other self will be hosting book launch/reception at the American Institute of Architects San Francisco at 5:30 p.m. Or head to House of Shields for a "No on Prop 8" happy hour and fundraiser from 6-8 p.m. (Photo bhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/freemarketmyass/2879511360/">freemarketmyass)

♦ The Limelight can be yours for a mere $60 million if you happen to be looking to buy a club and/or a church. [GS]
♦ APT has been shut down for "criminal sale or possession of controlled substances or marijuana." [Eater]
♦ Top Chef runner-up Dave Martin has bid goodbye to Crave on 42nd. [Feedbag]
♦ Lovely Day on Elizabeth Street was shuttered following a fire. [Eater]
♦ You missed it: Ivanka Trump was handing out microwavable meals on the street today. [MidtownLunch]

Finally, some good news from television! At least, we think it's good news. Showtime has renewed their serial killer with a heart of gold drama Dexter for another two seasons. The show has been a ratings boon for the premium cable network, which continues to fortify its stable of original series in the hopes of overtaking HBO as the King of Sunday Night. And, again, we're pretty sure this is good news. I mean it is, right? The season currently airing, the show's third, has been good enough so far, we think. Some of us here at HQ are sick of Rita's scrunchy-faced whining. The baby/marriage plotline was sort of inevitable, as they couldn't really have had Dex skulking around an only semi-serious relationship forever. The whole Prado business is... well, it's whatever. We're not really sure where Jimmy Smits' character arc is headed, but we hope it's surprisingly gruesome. Because, you know, that's what this show does best. And, once again, Jennifer Carpenter steals the show as sister Deb, who is getting tangled up not only in an Internal Affairs investigation, but with a sultry guitar-playing CI as well. She sure knows how to pick 'em! So what say you? Is two more seasons a good thing, or should this show be Saran Wrapped to a table and cruelly put out of its misery?

Future President of the United States of America Sarah Palin is already proving to be a valuable inspiration to our nation's patriotic art community! Or at least to raggedy, drug-ridden "street art" types in elitist coastal cities. It's not just the happy-go-lucky "Frightening Prospect" posters you see here—we've found three more examples as well, making it an official trend, with room to spare! Click through to view the collected opinions of America's great artistic minds:

Click to viewBoomp3.com Potential Los Angeles Clippers savior Baron Davis was spotted leaving an event with Kate Hudson on Monday night. Before hoping into his SUV, Hudson jokingly told the baller that if he had signed with the Lakers he could have probably partied with even bigger celebrities like Cloris Leachman or Angelina Jolie. David politely told Hudson that there was nobody bigger than her, then bit his thumb and thought about all the fun he could be having if he wore purple and gold. [Photo Credit: X17] *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.

Zvue, a maker of video players and operator of websites like eBaum's World and Dorks.com, has a post-Halloween deadline to make $1.9 million in payments to a hedge-fund lender. Also owed money: The company's chief technology officer, Carl Page, the older brother of Google cofounder Larry Page, who has loaned his employer at least $4.9 million, including $1 million in July. Could bankruptcy be in the cards? If so, it would be quite a reversal for the elder Page.A decade ago, Carl looked like the more successful brother, having sold eGroups, a company he cofounded, to Yahoo for $432 million. But Carl's efforts to repeat his success, and come anywhere close to Larry's, have made him a buffoon. Zvue shut down its San Francisco Web operations in July, leaving its collection of funny-if-you're-15-years-old websites to Eric Bauman, the creator of eBaum's World. Bauman is also owed millions by Zvue, for fare like "Ass Cream Vendor."

CNBC reports that Merrill Lynch sent 500 people packing today, and a total of 10,000 people may ultimately lose their jobs after the firm merges with Bank of America. [Clusterstock]

If you believe what you read in the papers, Sarah Silverman's first full-length performance in the U.K. last night was a disaster unbefitting the Matt Damon-Fucking Jewess Queen of Hollywood. The BBC reports the crowd of 3600 at London's Hammersmith Apollo—who had paid somewhere in the vicinity of $70-$100 a seat for the privilege of hearing Silverman's fishy-smelling-gym-shorts stories—"slow hand clapped and shouted they wanted their money back" at the end of a 40-minute mini-set, then heckled "you're over-hyped Sarah" and "I've seen longer clips on YouTube" until she came back out for an encore. Appropriately enough, we have YouTube video of said encore, and it suggests Silverman wasn't quite as reviled by the inquisitive Limeys as the reviews said. It's after the jump.