Last night at the Four Seasons there was a roast for its owners, restaurateurs Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder. It ended with PR demon Peggy Siegal calling Nora Ephron's son "a horrible person." Fun!:

• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington headquarters is contaminated with asbestos! [NYO]
• Tricky Dylan Ratigan isn't joining ABC after all. He's going to MSNBC. [Gawker]
• Michael Wolff may hate the New York Times, but if it weren't for the Times, he'd probably have nothing to rant about on his unknown website. [HP]
• Amazon unveiled its fancy, new Kindle reader today. [NYT, E&P]

There weren't too many shiny, happy people at Sotheby's last night as the auction house kicked off the spring season with works by Picasso, Giacometti, and Mondrian. Six months ago, back when it was already clear that the economy was headed downhill in a hurry, Sotheby's big seasonal auction had managed to offload $223 million worth of art. This year? The final tally for the 36 works that went under Tobias Meyer's hammer didn't even come close to Sotheby's already-low estimate, bringing in just $61.3 million. (Sotheby's had been hoping for $81.5 million). And some of the people most interested in getting high-priced art off their hands in a hurry—victims of Bernie Madoff, of course—walked away disappointed.

Rihanna shopping in Soho, and later standing under an umbrella outside Bar 89 on Mercer Street ... Chloe Sevigny carrying a bunch of shopping bags downtown ... Kate Bosworth walking with James Rousseau on the Lower East Side ... Venus Williams getting in a taxi outside of Whole Foods ... Chace Crawford hanging out on the set of Twelve with Emma Roberts ... Chanel Iman talking on her cell phone ... Kim Kardashian walking into the Gramercy Park Hotel ... Bethenny Frankel heading into a book signing at the Time Warner Center ... Jessica Biel walking downtown ... and Victoria Beckham going shopping in Chelsea.

Cityfile: "So now that your sales are up—27 percent in the first quarter, you report—does this mean you'll be saving struggling media companies by buying airtime and running this commercial on cable?"
Nick Denton: "Funny what happens when a blog company tries to tell its own story. What does it use? Not the blog post, but video."

Alexandra Lebenthal has scored a book deal, according to Publishers Marketplace: "New York Social Diary contributing editor, CEO of wealth management firm Lebenthal & Company, and active figure on the NY social scene, Alexandra Lebenthal's debut novel, telling the story of four Manhattan socialites whose perfect Upper East Side lives get turned upside down when the economic collapse wreaks havoc on their pampered existences, to Karen Kosztolnyik at Grand Central, by Richard Curtis of Richard Curtis Associates (World)."

The Journal reports that Barneys plans to close two of its seven stores as it tries to stay afloat. One outpost that is definitely going to disappear: the splashy store it opened in Las Vegas last year. And the other? "The location of the other store to be closed couldn't be immediately determined." We're going to guess that it won't be the flagship on Madison Avenue, but you may want to say a prayer or two today just in case. [WSJ]

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Time magazine celebrated the release of its "100 most influential" list last night, a gathering that attracted plenty of rich finance-y types a year ago, back when saying you worked at a hedge fund or investment bank didn't have the reputational value of saying you spent your day repossessing cars or running a funeral home. The financial meltdown translated into a slightly different guest list and seating plan this time around, not surprisingly. Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, who graciously stood on the red carpet last year and even permitted a photographer to take his picture (not that he smiled or anything), wasn't even invited. And while billionaire financier Steve Schwarzman did make the invite list—and turned out for the ceremony—he probably should have just stayed at home.

• Software entrepreneur Peter Norton and pharma mogul Richard Ullman have teamed up to list their condos at Trump International as a package deal for $34.7 million. Once combined, the two units—which had been listed separately for $16.25 million and $18.45 million, respectively—will feature 8,830 square feet of living space and 12 marble baths, along with $277,068 in annual maintenance fees. [NYO, Corcoran]
• Kay LeRoy—the second wife of late restaurateur Warner LeRoy and mother of Jennifer LeRoy, who oversees Tavern on the Green—paid $2.2 million for an 8th-floor condo at 65 West 13th Street, which is just next door to an apartment she already owns in the building. [Cityfile]
• Hedge fund manager Gad Grieve, who was accused of fraud by the SEC in February, has put his 5,700-square-foot limestone townhouse at 113 East 61st Street on the market for $12.885 million. [NYO, PDE]

We were a little concerned when a tipster emailed us to point out that the website for Kelly Cutrone's fashion PR firm, People's Revolution, had been "suspended." "Did they go out of business or something?" No, thankfully, that is not the case. A call to the firm ("Good morning, People's Revolution!") confirms Kelly is still doing her thing. (She also happens to be hiring, too. So, if anything, it appears Cutrone is in expansion mode.) She would be well advised, though, to bring in a techie to fix whatever is wrong with the site. If she leaves it up to one of the Whitney Port-like girls in the office to fix, it could take months to sort out!

New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss turns 52 today. If you work at the magazine and you see him in the hallway, please be sure to extend your best wishes. Others celebrating today: George Clooney is turning 48. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is 56. Folk legend Bob Seger is 64. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is turning 75. Baseball great Willie Mays is 78. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is turning 71. Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron is 54. Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett is 38. And Touched by an Angel actress Roma Downey (and the wife of TV mega-producer Mark Burnett) turns 49 today.

• The drama surrounding fashion's most famous headbutt continues: Kiefer Sutherland says he was "defending the honor" of Brooke Shields by attacking Jack McCollough, since Jack had knocked Brooke over and then failed to apologize. Brooke and Jack, however, say the push never even happened, and Kiefer was running around drunk and "looking for something to smack." The police are now investigating the matter, since apparently there aren't more important crimes to be tackling right now. [TMZ, TMZ, NYDN, P6]
• Anna Wintour and Rihanna were acting like old pals at a Costume Institute afterparty on Monday night, which certainly bodes well for Rihanna's chances of landing a Vogue cover in the future. [NYDN]
• Lindsay Lohan was supposed to chaperone her little sister to a party at LA's Roosevelt Hotel on Monday night, but ended up "getting up close and personal" with ex-boyfriend Jared Leto instead. [E!, P6]
• Casey Johnson, meanwhile, showed up to the same party and was overheard telling a friend that she and Courtenay Semel have broken up, again. [P6]

How did Bernie Madoff's secretary know that something was really wrong with her boss in the final days leading up to his arrest? His blood pressure was up, he had to lie on the floor of his office because he was experiencing so much back pain, and one day he threw the mail in her face and declared he "didn't want to look at it anymore." [Vanity Fair]

• Bank of America chief Ken Lewis won't be in a good mood today, that's for sure. Regulators have informed the bank that it will have to come up with $34 billion in new capital if it expects to weather the downturn. [WSJ, NYT]
• For its part, Citigroup may have to come up with $5-$10 billion. [Reuters]
• Remember all the outrage that followed the disclosure that AIG had paid out more than $100 million in bonuses? It seems the bonus pool was four times larger than previously anticipated. Oh, well. [NYP]
• Companies cut an estimated 491,000 workers in April, which is less than previous months and possibly a sign that the worst is over. [BN]

Mayor Mike Bloomberg: The Music Man [WNBC]

• More photos, commentary, and criticism from last night's Costume Institute Gala, assuming you're not totally sick of hearing about it by this point. [W, Pipeline, Glamour, NYM, NYT, SF]
• Rumor has it Kate Moss is planning to write her autobiography. We can't wait! [Grazia]
• Narciso Rodriguez, Thakoon Panichgul, and Maria Cornejo —all three of whom happen to have dressed Michelle Obama—have lovely things to say about the first lady's sense of style. [WWD]
• A tour of Jason Wu's apartment. [NYM]
• Eva Mendes and Jamie Dornan will be appearing in the new ad campaigns for Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear. [WWD]

• The New York City outpost of Govind Armstrong's Table 8 opens tomorrow evening inside the Cooper Square Hotel. [Eater, Zagat]
• Now that Todd English is out, The Libertine has hired itself a new chef. [Zagat]
• Robert De Niro's universally reviled Ago has officially shuttered. [Eater]
• Some suggestions on where to take your mom for Mother's Day. [Zagat]
• Pinkberry is now making deliveries; a $10 minimum is required. [Crain's]
• Places to go to drink yourself into oblivion in honor of Cinco de Mayo. [GS]

Desperate to make a quick buck? Unwilling to take the clichéd route of offering up your natural assets to the highest bidder as a high-priced escort? Provided you're not put off by the prospect of looking like Rachel Maddow for the next six months or so, a company called The Hair Trader, which bills itself as "the worlds (sic) largest independent hair sale site," is promising to turn of your other assets—your hair!—into a virtual ATM machine.

So much for the swine flu. Now that just one death has been attributed to the illness—and experts have concluded that the swine flu isn't any more deadly than the regular, old seasonal flu—U.S. health officials are no longer recommending that schools close down if students come down with virus. That sound you hear? It's millions of kids groaning in pain at the prospect of having to turn off the Wii and return to their homework. [AP]

A website called Shoot The Banker will allow you to fire a paintball gun at someone dressed up as a banker (but is probably just an out-of-work comedian). It's Coney Island's Shoot the Freak attraction mixed with the sort of seething anti-capitalist rage that seems to be so popular these days. But it's nice to know that Vikram Pandit and Ken Lewis have something to fall back on when they eventually find themselves unemployed. Sure, you wouldn't pay cash money to fire pellets at a make-believe banker. But both men could probably charge a small fortune to allow Citigroup and Bank of America shareholders to take a shot and the line would still be around the block. [Clusterstock]