A new season of Real Housewives of New York City is coming soon. And so Kelly Bensimon has unveiled a brand new website which features not only a blog, but there's also an "online shop" where you'll find Kelly selling underwear that depicts Kelly posing in her underwear. How meta!

Mayor Bloomberg was spotted wearing hearing aids for the first time yesterday. [NYDN]

Remember the banker that got busted for looking at racy photos on his computer because one of his colleagues was being interviewed on TV at the time? The woman he was looking at pictures of—Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr—has now stepped in and offered to sign a petition to help him try and save his job. [Herald Sun/NYP, previously]

Band-aid heiress Casey Johnson died of diabetic-related complications, the LA County coroner's office announced this afternoon. As for Brittany Murphy, who died a couple of weeks before Johnson, the cause of death was pneumonia "complicated by an iron deficiency, anemia and multiple drug intoxication." The drugs found in her body weren't of the illegal variety, though. It was a "a mixture of prescription and over-the-counter medications." [AP, Reuters]

Kate Winslet shopping in SoHo with her son ... Jonathan Rhys Meyers walking into the Mercer Hotel with girlfriend Reena Hammer ... Bono and wife Ali Hewson at a bakery on Madison Avenue ... Channing Tatum getting in an SUV at JFK ... Ashley Olsen arriving at ABC studios for an appearance on Good Morning America ... Blake Lively carrying her dog inside her coat on the set of Gossip Girl ... Paris Hilton getting out of a car in front of the Late Show with David Letterman ... Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz attending a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden ... and John Travolta leaving the Plaza with Kelly Preston and daughter Ella.

• Actress/TV producer Polly Draper and her husband Michael Wolff, the jazz pianist and composer best known as the bandleader on the Arsenio Hall Show, have put their full-floor apartment at 43 Fifth Avenue on the market. The 13-room, five-bedroom spread is listed for $25 million. [Curbed, AW]
• Texas-based restaurant kingpin Bradley Blum, who's headed up operations at Olive Garden and Burger King and now serves as CEO of Romano's Macaroni Grill, has picked himself up a pied-à-terre. Blum paid $3.7 million for a two-bedroom apartment at the newly-renovated 141 Fifth Avenue. [NYO]
• Paul Greenwood, the former money manager and Islanders co-owner, has put even more property in Westchester up for sale. In addition to the 16-acre estate in North Salem that he listed last month, Greenwood, who was accused of securities fraud last year, is also looking to sell his 300-acre horse farm nearby for $29 million. [NYP, V&W]

"Just in time for Fashion Week, a top male model is facing criminal charges after allegedly offering sexual favors to Arkansas cops in return for his release following an arrest for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct." [TSG]

• As if Lindsay Lohan didn't have enough problems in her life, it seems she's a "secret hoarder," too. In an interview with the Style Network's Niecy Nash, LiLo's shows all her "stuff," which includes a bedroom filled with shoe boxes and a living room that's been turned into a giant closet. On the plus side, if Sam Ronson ever goes missing, at least the police will know where to start looking. [Us, DM]
• Tiger Woods is supposedly leaving sex rehab in Mississippi by the end of this week, which means he's changed his ways or he's planning on playing in a golf tournament in Arizona in two weeks and he's not going to let his compulsive sexual habits get in the way of that. Elin Nordegren has already flown down to pick him up. Just so there isn't an incident involving a flight attendant in the first-class lounge on the way home. [Radar, NYP]
• Season three of the Real Housewives of New York debuts next month and now word comes that creepy couple Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen may be booted before season four. It's supposedly because "viewers don't have a positive reaction to them" and Simon threw a fit when he found out he wasn't going to be paid as much as the housewives because, well, he's not a housewife, although you're excused if you thought otherwise. [NYDN]
• Precious star—and Academy Award nominee—Gabourey Sidibe would really, really like for Justin Timberlake to be her Oscar date. So, Jessica Biel, if you could step aside and make it happen, that would be great. [People]
• Jon Stewart sat down with Bill O'Reilly last night. Highlights here. [Gawker]

Comedian Rob Corddry turns 39 today. Former Vice President Dan Quayle is turning 63. Musician Gavin DeGraw is 33. Boxer Oscar De La Hoya is turning 37. New York Assemblyman Denny Farrell is 78. Singer Natalie Imbruglia turns 35. Alice Cooper is 62. Country music star Clint Black is 48. Olympic gymnast Carly Patterson is turning 22. And the rapper Cam'ron turns 34 today.

"The New York area might be in for a blockbuster blizzard at the start of the weekend. A big storm looks to be headed our way from the Rockies, and could dump lots of snow in our area tomorrow night and Saturday morning, say AccuWeather meteorologists. New York City, Long Island, southern and central New Jersey and points south face a "potentially paralyzing" snowfall, the forecasters say." That pretty much sucks, doesn't it? (Unless you're unemployed and desperately looking for work, that is, in which case it's probably good news.) [NYP]

[Photo via Flickr]

• CBS News laid off more than 150 staffers this week. Will Katie Couric be forced to take a pay cut when her contract expires next year? Some say yes; CBS News chief Sean McManus is denying the report. [NYP, Politico]
• Avatar has dominated the box office for seven straight weeks now (and has officially bested Titanic), but that may change this weekend or next. [LAT]
• Janice Kaplan is out as editor-in-chief of Parade magazine. [NYT]
• Nikki Finke says it will take "minutes" for Comcast to dump NBC CEO Jeff Zucker after its acquisition of NBC is approved by regulators. (Meantime, maybe he could explain why the Today show is propping up Scientology?)
• An estimated 12 million people tuned in to Lost last night. [Forbes]
• Time Warner reported fourth-quarter revenues and profits were up. [AP]
• Fox and ESPN will challenge NBC for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics. [BN]
• Does Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter hate non-white women? [DF]

Butt implants are big in Florida, lip augmentation is popular in LA, "permanent makeup" is all the rage in the Southwest, and nose jobs are big business in the Northeast, according to data compiled by the cosmetic surgery website RealSelf.com. [NYDN, MSNBC]

Frances Buss, Pioneer of Early Television, Dies at 92 [NYT]

Anderson Cooper and boyfriend Ben Maisani are adopting a child from Haiti, at least according to the ever-reliable National Enquirer. [Gawker]

Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit is blogging! Well, not exactly. But he does make an appearance on "The New Citi Blog," a site the bank launched earlier this week to try and convince the public—and Washington—that Citi has totally changed since the financial crisis unfolded and is now totally focused on making the world a better place:

The idiotic "trend-tracking firm" that announced this past fall that New York had lost the title of "fashion capital of the world" has returned with another silly list. Global Language Monitor, which is based in fashionable Austin, Texas, says its "proprietary algorithm" has identified the "top 15 fashion buzzwords" of 2010, a list that begins with "Lady GaGa" [sic] and is followed by "leggings 2.0":

John Travolta arriving at the Palm steakhouse in Midtown yesterday only to find it closed ... Courtney Love heading into the Mercer Hotel in SoHo ... Alessandra Ambrosio walking with husband Jamie Mazur in the West Village ... Jon Bon Jovi shopping with wife Dorothea in SoHo ... Kelly Preston leaving the Plaza Hotel with her daughter and a friend ... Sarah Jessica Parker walking with son James in the Village ... Bruce Jenner making his way through JFK dressed in his finest track suit ... Chace Crawford on the set of Gossip Girl ... and Josh Hartnett hailing a cab on Hudson Street.

• James P. Marden, the son of pharmacy mogul Bernard Marden, has picked up a townhouse in the West Village: Marden paid $4.125 million for a 2,200-square-foot, four-story building located at 39 Barrow Street. It's one of several real estate transactions for the family: Bernard Marden father sold his home in Wainscott for $11.2 million last year. And his former wife just recently sold her own penthouse for $11.5 million. [Cityfile, Avian Village Realty]
• Jennifer Scully-Lerner, a Goldman Sachs executive and top Obama fundraiser, and her husband, fellow financial exec Richard, have picked up a new apartment on Fifth Avenue. The couple paid $3.575 million for a three-bedroom co-op at 1170 Fifth Avenue, which first went on the market for $5.2 million back in 2008. [Cityfile]

Why do New York's bridges and tunnels have such boring names? Wouldn't it be possible to come up with something more creative? A few thoughts (and suggestions) via Quite All Right: