It really is about time psychologists gave a name to whatever personality disorder Angelina Jolie suffers from, because "narcissistic control freak with a Mother Teresa complex" (see also: Princess Diana, Mia Farrow) is a bit of a mouthful. Anyway, Angie must have pissed off someone at the Times, because today the paper does a mild hatchet job on her, raking over various details that we already knew: She micro-manages all aspects of her tabloid interviews especially her coverage in People; she supposedly doesn't employ a publicist or agent; she and Brad make a big song and dance about giving the proceeds of their media deals to charity, but only a small slice seems to reach the beneficiaries; and, most importantly, when that bitch Jennifer Aniston is winning the hearts and minds of US Weekly readers, all Ang has to is don a headscarf, be photographed helping the tragedy-stricken in a third world country, and she's back in the game.

Tina Brown's party earlier this week to celebrate the launch of her new site, The Daily Beast, could have just as easily served as an early birthday bash: The famed editor turns 55 today. Indie film powerhouse Christine Vachon is turning 46. Bjork is 43. Goldie Hawn is 63. Publicist Mara Buxbaum is 41. Retired football player Michael Strahan is celebrating his 37th. Actress Cherry Jones is 52. Real estate developer Daniel Brodsky is 44. Norman Siegel, civil rights lawyer and perennial candidate for public office, is 65. Congresswoman Yvette Clark is 44. Nicollette Sheridan is 45. And actress Marlo Thomas is 71. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

♦ Guy Ritchie and Madonna's marriage came to an official end in the High Court of London courtroom this morning. Neither "Ciccone ML" or "Ritchie GS" actually showed up in person for the proceedings, but Madonna had drinks with ex-husband Sean Penn on Wednesday night, possibly as part of an early celebration. [People, The Sun, P6]
♦ The longest pregnancy in history is finally over: Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz welcomed a son named Bronx Mowgli Wentz into the world last night. Yes, that's Bronx Mowgli. [People]
♦ According to The Sun, Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and has changed his name to "Mikaeel." [The Sun]

♦ With shares down 26 percent yesterday, Citigroup is now weighing all of its options, including possible selling the firm. The board meets today to discuss the " range of scenarios that were unthinkable only weeks ago." [WSJ]
♦ The market bounced back in early trading after historic sell-offs in recent days. [MW]
♦ Hedge funds contracted by 9 percent in October, the lowest level in two years. [Bloomberg]
♦ A bailout of the auto industry won't be taking place just yet. Talks between Detroit and Washington collapsed with lawmakers saying the industry lacked credible plans to return to profitability. [WSJ]
♦ The city's securities industry shed about 16,000 employees in October. [DB]

JPMorgan says it's planning to lay off 10 percent of its investment banking staff, or about 3,000 people. The bank also plans to freeze salaries next year for employees who earn more than $60,000 to $70,000. [Bloomberg]

♦ Julia Restoin Roitfeld might call herself a designer, but apparently the fat fees from modeling are hard to resist: She's been cast in the new Mango campaign along with celebuspawn Dakota Johnson Griffith. [WWD]
♦ PR maven Kelly Cutrone may play a hard-nosed bitch on The Hills, but in real life she's all heart: After reading about Marie Conde, who fought with three muggers who snatched her purse, Cutrone collected gifts for the 26-year-old nurse's aide, including Longchamp purses, jewelry, and dinner at the SoHo Grand. [NYP]
♦ During an interview conducted, of course, lying down in a hotel room at Claridge's in London, Diane von Furstenberg is expansive on matters personal (such as her first and only female lover), her "naughtiness" during the seventies, and her political opinions: Barack Obama is "so intelligent and very detached... It gives him perspective." [Telegraph]

♦ Frank Bruni delivered a crushing review of the new East Village restaurant Kurve yesterday. Today, the owner of the Karim Rashid-designed spot, Andy Yang, is doing damage control: What Bruni calls "unremarkable," Yang says, is actually "purposefully simple." [GS]
♦ Celsius, the pop-up restaurant in Bryant Park, is now open. [Eater]
♦ Michael Dorf's City Winery isn't opening on schedule and the space is still raw, but he hosted a musical preview last night anyway. [GS, Eater]
♦ The space that formerly occupied by Seymour Burton is coming back to life as a surf-and-turf spot called Butcher Bay. [Feedbag]
♦ A preview of At Vermilion, the Midtown offshoot of Rohini Dey's Indian-Latin Chicago restaurant, Vermilion. [GS]
♦ A group of deliverymen protested outside Jonathan Morr's Republic yesterday with "No Justice, No Noodles" signs. [NYP]

The Morgans Hotel Group has no plans to stand idly by as the economy crumbles and overpriced, miniature hotel rooms go unsold! The boutique hotel conglomerate launched a new ad campaign, the super-simple tagline for which is on your left. The company started up a new website, too, recessison.com, which, it turns out, is not a reflection on the grammatical abilities of Morgans' marketing staff, but because it stands for "Recess Is On"—or please, please book rooms at our dimly-lit, Philippe Starck-designed hotels and put it to your credit card, even if means you won't be able to pay your AmEx bill at the end of the month. After the jump, two of the videos Morgans uploaded to YouTube to get the silly marketing campaign off the ground.

Ashley Dupre won't be the only person in Eliot Spitzer's life making headlines tomorrow. Hours before her primetime debut, Eliot's 84-year-old father Bernard Spitzer will be making an appearance of his own when he turns up in court to testify in his own defense in connection with charges he fired four men from one of his apartment buildings because they're African-American. (Interestingly, Spitzer family nemesis Roger Stone is advising the four men for free.) We're going to go ahead and assume Silda won't be watching the action unfold at either event.

No wonder the Trump kids seem so screwed up: When asked by Portfolio about some of their childhood memories, Donny Jr. and Eric tell a story about how their dad repeatedly reminded them to "never trust anyone," something Eric says he started hearing on a daily basis beginning at the age of four. (Trump insisted that the rule applied to the boys' own father, too, which come to think of it, was actually pretty solid advice.) Listen to the sad childhood story for yourself after the jump.

How bad is the situation at Citigroup today? Really, really bad. Citi executives are now frantically lobbying Washington to crack down on short-sellers, something that both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers tried to do. (And you know how that turned out.) Meanwhile, Dealbreaker reports that the bank has removed the company's ticker symbol from the screens in the lobby, lest employees start to panic at the sight of Citi shares hovering below $4.

♦ Roger Ailes (left) has renewed his contract with News Corp., which will keep him by Rupert Murdoch's side for at least five more years (and keep him running the show at Fox News for at least one more presidential election). [NYT]
♦ New York has fired longtime restaurant critic Gael Greene. [Feedbag]
♦ The Runway battle continues: Lifetime has sued NBC over claims it is blocking the cable channel from airing future episodes of the reality TV show. [NYP]

The recession didn't put a damper on Sol Kerzner's plans to throw one of the most lavish parties in recent memory. The South African casino mogul threw a $25 million fête in Dubai this evening to celebrate the opening of the Atlantis, his $1.5 billion hotel on the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah. (It's modeled on his Bahamas resort by the same name.) A long list of stars put in appearances (Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Robert De Niro, Charlize Theron, Mary-Kate Olsen, Albert Hammond Jr., Agyness Deyn), Kylie Minogue was paid in the neighborhood of $4 million to perform a 60-minute set, and a bunch of famous chefs (like Nobu Matsuhisa) were responsible for assembling the menu. Now Kerzner just has to figure out how to get people to rent rooms that begin at $800 a night (and go up to $25,000) and he can start making his money back. [WSJ, Daily Mail]

Members of Soho House will have a new place to mingle with Eurotrash by the end of 2009: The private club's parent company, Soho House Ltd., has acquired the The Sovereign Hotel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and says it plans to turn the property into its latest outpost, with a boutique hotel, rooftop bar, pool, spa, and screening room. [GlobeSt via TRD]

Isaac Mizrahi gave this talk at TED—the annual conference for elites from technology and design—back in February, but the video was only posted this week. If you have some time today, you can listen along as he explains his insomniac lifestyle, how he occasionally follows random people around New York, and why he's obsessed with men who happen to be named Eric. [TED.com]

Some journalistic exercises just never get old, no matter how many times they're carried out, like the one in which a young woman asks for anti-aging procedures and then becomes mildly outraged when doctors recommend what they're in business to sell. (Slim woman seeking out liposuction works, too.) In today's Daily News, a "baby-faced" 26-year-old reporter named Leah Chernikoff goes undercover at Botox-peddlers and, what a surprise, the doctors are more than happy to inject her.

The most dangerous intersection in Manhattan is at Park Avenue and East 33rd Street, according to Almanac of New York City by Kenneth T. Jackson. Oh, and there are more Rottweilers in the Soundview section of the Bronx than in any other neighborhood. [Bowery Boys]

Glenn Close walking her dogs in Central Park ... James Gandolfini making faces at photographers outside the Milk after-party at the Bowery Hotel ... Madonna walking on the sidewalk last night ... Natalie Portman carrying her dog and a cup of coffee ... Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price filming scenes for Lipstick Jungle on the Upper East Side ... Twilight star Robert Pattinson arriving at JFK ... Katie Holmes leaving her apartment on East 13th and later shopping at Dean & DeLuca with Suri ... and Beyonce unveiling her Seventeen cover at the Hearst building.

The chief executives of the big three American auto manufacturers were blasted by lawmakers in Washington yesterday for having the audacity to turn up on Capitol Hill with their tin cups in hand after having just stepped off their lavish corporate jets. The episode turned into a PR disaster for GM, Ford, and Chrysler—and damaged their chances of scoring a deal and landing billions in taxpayer dollars—but at least they were using the jets on company business. Even more eyebrow-raising is how often these palaces in the sky are used to ferry top execs on vacation, or to hang out at events like the Olympics. Of course, there's no way to be sure that GE execs weren't just negotiating a new microwave manufacturing contract when the company's Gulfstream touched down in Puerto Rico on the eve of a holiday weekend. But if you click here, you can see how two of the companies now collecting billions in taxpayer dollars have been making use of their jets over the last few months.

She has a job in real estate, a brand of jewelry, and a line of microwaveable meals, but it looks like Ivanka Trump is now branching out into book publishing, too. According to Publisher's Weekly, the daughter of The Donald has inked a deal with Touchstone to pen a motivational book for women based on her "personal experiences in life and business" as well as "lessons learned from her father." The book is scheduled to come out in 2009. No word yet on what seemingly insurmountable hardships Ivanka managed to overcome that will provide her with the fodder to inspire and motivate, although something tells us her oft-repeated story of having to model in high school to pay her own phone bill will somehow make its way into print.