[Conan O'Brien is back in New York, performing his live show at Radio City Music hall. Here he is walking down the street earlier today. Welcome back, Conan. (via Bauer-Griffin)]

Ivanka Trump towers over her handlers on "the set of "Departures"," which could either be a reference to American Express' magazine for the ultra-wealthy or some secret movie we've never heard of. (Alternate interpretations welcome, naturally.) Images via Bauer-Griffin.

We stand corrected! Not everyone is canceling their Christmas parties. Magazine publishing biggie Bauer (InTouch, Life & Style) is having a "Bauer on Broadway" Christmas party in Weehawken, where you can perform your favorite showtune with a live band! The only drawback? It costs a whopping $170 to bring a spouse or significant other (or, you know, drunken friend) to the shinding. Which is funny because, as a tipster puts it, that kind of "encourages infidelity." If it's too expensive to bring a date, then you'll be at a dateless party with a bunch of your sloshy coworkers and, well, workplace awkwardness can happen. Though it is in New Jersey, and getting extramarital nookie across state lines isn't really cheating anyway. See the full invite below.

In an attempt to eliminate their competition, Bauer may be folding Life&Style into InTouch. "L&S would be dunzo come November- all of the L&S newstand pockets would be turned over to InTouch, thus instantly increasing InTouch's presence," a tipster informs us. Genius plan! Except one detail: "InTouch doesn't want anyone from L&S." Well, of course they don't! Those people work at freaking Life&Style.

We hear that Jo Piazza, late of Bauer's wretched and folded-before-opening Cocktail, is going back to her old home at the New York Daily News. That's crazy! Who goes back to places they quit? Oh right, this stupid industry. She'll be a features princess or something. We also hear she found out about Cocktail's death while on a cigarette break. Heh. Anyway, fellow Cocktail castoff Piper Weiss will also be rolling up to the Daily News. So much for that self-actualizing screenplay or book proposal or whatever she was talking about.

Last week, we dissected a litany of reasons why working at Bauer kind of sucks, although since then we've heard from various employees who wanted to clarify that it's actually just the corporate suits at Bauer that suck, and that most of the rank and file are actually pretty cool and fun to work with. Okay, done! (Though that's usually how it is, we would think.) Then someone emailed us about a Bauer magazine we didn't even know existed, and we learned that sometimes people exist to just make your job difficult. It's true!

Yesterday's announcement that Bauer was shutting down Cocktail before the first issue even launched caught many in the industry off-guard—the poor thing didn't even have a chance! "Nobody saw anything coming," says one former staffer. But another source tells us that signs pointing to the magazine's problems had been evident for the past few months. For one thing, what were they doing naming it Cocktail in the first place?

• CNBC is backing Maria Bartiromo because, really, what else do you know about CNBC apart from Maria Bartiromo? [NYT]
  

At left, the purported engagement ring of Cameron Diaz. At right, Jennifer Aniston's.

Like watching TV but regret that you can't take the tube into the bathroom with you? Well, thank God for Bauer Publishing; WWD reports that the constantly conceptualizing corporation has plans for "a proposed weekly title that would recap and comment on the week's news in a manner similar to VH1's 'Best Week Ever,'" even having gone so far as to hire a writer from the show. While there's a case to be made that we're not exactly lacking opportunities to read "humorous" comments on the week's news, we think this argument fails to appreciate the majesty of print. When Paul F. Tompkins talks about Kevin Federline's cornrows hilarity naturally ensues, but when Paul F. Tompkins writes about Kevin Federline's cornrows you'd swear that Murray Kempton had risen from the grave and once more taken up his pen. Also, the gap in Paul Scheer's teeth is a lot less scary on glossy paper. We're almost excited about this as we are about Fairchild's forthcoming "Pimp My Ride" mag.

From deep within the jungles of New Jersey, a bit of totally unconfirmed chatter: We hear that Life & Style executive editor Joe Bargman may not last much longer. EIC Debra Birnbaum has reportedly assigned Chris Kensler, formerly of OK! and Celebrity Living, to "work with" Bargman. Interestingly, Kensler may also have the same title of executive editor.