♦ The NYC Wine & Food Festival came to town this past weekend and just about every chef, foodie, and critic was on hand. Among the highlights: Rachael Ray hosted a Burger Bash on Friday (Katie Lee Joel took first prize); Tom Colicchio broke out his guitar and later chatted with Eater about his upcoming plans; Ferran Adria took the stage with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Asimov; Gordon Ramsay vented; Rocco DiSpirito showed off his dancing skills; Bobby Flay mentioned his plans to re-open Bolo; Scott Conant talked about his upcoming eatery in Miami; Marco Maccioni gave details on the restaurant he has planned for the Beekman Hotel; and everyone in attendance generally ate and drank way too much. More here and here.

Coney Island will unveil a "Presidential Shooting Gallery" on October 17th: Visitors will use "ping pong ball rifles" to take aim at assassinated presidents like Kennedy, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. [VV]

Meet "Lisa Ann," the "amateur" picked by Hustler magazine to play role of Sarah Palin in an upcoming "movie." [Less Clothes via Defamer]

No photos of sad traders today: The Dow posted its biggest one-day jump in history, rising nearly 1,000 points after the central banks pumped billions into the system and various European countries announced plans to guarantee loans and prop up ailing banks. More photos of cheery traders after the jump. [NYT, WSJ]

Elizabeth Wurtzel made a name for herself in the 1990s as the author of Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, and resurfaced in the aftermath of the Sept. 11th for controversial comments she made about the attacks. ("It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance... It was just beautiful.") Wurtzel is back in the news: She graduated Yale Law School last year, took a job as an associate at David Boies' powerhouse law firm, Schiller & Flexner, and is now working on the sale of Wachovia to Wells Fargo. [WSJ/Law Blog]

In case you missed it, New York's first pizza-eating competition was held in Times Square this past weekend. The winner? Joey Chestnut, the reigning hot-dog eating champ, who downed 45 slices in 10 minutes. Oh, and in case you're wondering, he took in 11,700 calories in the process. [NYDN]

Following political candidates on the campaign trail as they make the same stump speeches day after day can't be much fun, but news photographers seem to have figured out an amusing way to pass the time: They simply train their lenses on Sarah Palin's legs and shoes and snap pic after pic of the aspiring veep's heels and long gams. (Of course, Palin was sort of asking for it when, for her first TV appearance, she decided to wear red peep-toes with three-and-a-half-inch heels by a company called Naughty Monkey.) Alas, a search of the wires for "Joe Biden" and "shoes" doesn't yield much. (Not that we're complaining.) But evidence of the media's obsession with the leggy vice presidential contender follows after the jump.

♦ Barack Obama locked up 17 newspaper endorsements over the weekend compared to just two for John McCain. [E&P]
♦ John McCain will make an appearance on Letterman on Thursday. [CNN]
♦ Don't mention the recession to Tina Brown: Her new site will burn through $18 mil. over the next three years and most staffers are making more than 100K. [AdAge]
♦ Is the tween magazine over? [AdFreak]
♦ Jon Stewart's Daily Show is heading to the Middle East. [THR]

Albert Hammond Jr. and Agyness Deyn walking their dog in the East Village ... Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber riding around on a Vespa in SoHo and later walking with their son to a bookstore ... Jon Stewart and his wife pushing their kids in strollers ... Julianne Moore getting a parking ticket in the West Village ... Taylor Momsen and Leighton Meester filming Gossip Girl on the Upper East Side ... Sarah Jessica Parker walking son James to school ... Emma Watson walking with an unidentified guy ... Kate Winslet running to keep up with her son ... Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone holding hands on a walk in the West Village ...

Ever tireless in its efforts to metrosexualize men and encourage them to recognize that unless they smell of some bottled mixture of chemicals, women might never have sex with them, the cosmetics industry will launch more than 40 men's scents in the US this year, reports the Financial Times. If Prada's new Infusion D'Homme isn't quite classy enough for you, then Diddy's cologne I Am King, which comes out in December, might be more tempting. Or even better, Paco Rabanne's 1 Million is in a bottle shaped like a gold bar: a cheerful daily reminder of the decimated commodities market!

New York City's tourism marketing agency, NYC & Company, announced today that it plans to open a tourism office in Mumbai. An ad campaign directed at Indian tourists will soon feature hotel developer Sant Singh Chatwal, director Mira Nair, and cookbook author/TV hostess Padma Lakshmi. Because clearly there's no better way to endear the city to a billion Indians than to feature a man accused in his native country of bank fraud and a woman who dumped her Indian husband for an elderly, white billionaire. [City Room]

Because this is the perfect time to be pitching high-end condos that come along with socialite "lifestyle directors," CW11's NY Residential caught up with Tinsley Mortimer and her real estate development partner, Ilan Bracha, who claims he decided to work with Tinz after he read a profile of her in Page Six magazine. After the jump, watch Tinsley pore over floorplans, peck away at her Blackberry, share a few baby photos, and explain she doesn't want to just be known for going to parties. "I go to parties to promote what I'm doing."

Here's a lesson to all those celebrities who sign big endorsement deals and then don't bother to actually wear the products they were paid to promote: A New York judge has ruled that Charlize Theron did violated her exclusivity contract with luxury watchmaker Raymond Weil by wearing a Dior watch in 2006 (even if it was only for "one hour of a fifteen-month contract" as Charlize has claimed). Siding with the watch company in a 32-page ruling, the judge listed off a handful of other Theron misdeeds: In 2006, she collected $300,000 by wearing Chopard and Montblanc items to the Oscars and the BAFTAs; she also violated the deal by accepting free baubles from Cartier. Charlize now has to either settle the $20 million lawsuit (which she's expected to do) or prepare to head to trial. In the meantime you can see the judge's full ruling for yourself after the jump.

After 15 weeks—and a bit of controversy—Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls exhibit will bid goodbye to New York today. [NYT]

Last month, when Penguin Books spent over $2 million on signing up three books on the Wall Street crisis, it seemed they might have been over-estimating the public's hunger for reading about the financial meltdown. Not any more: As the Wall Street Journal reports today, bookstores can hardly keep up with the demand for financial titles, as people scramble to try to understand what the hell just happened.

Peter Cook turned up on 20/20 last Friday to explain why he's not the "scumbag pervert that he's been painted to be," and explain why his marriage to Christie Brinkley devolved into a mess of epic proportions last summer. Cook says the dispute had nothing to do with money, he only cheated on her because he was "seeking a connection he wasn't getting at home," and that he's not really addicted to porn. Also: He has a brand new girlfriend, Suzanne Shaw, who his kids get along fantastically well with. We're sure. A clip of the encounter is to your left.

Tiffany Trump, the Donald's fourth child and the only member of the immediate family who shares his hair color, turns 15 today. Also celebrating: Sacha Baron Cohen is 37. Ashanti is 28. Paul Simon turns 67. Kelly Preston is 46. Van Halen's Sammy Hagar turns 61. George Bush's cousin, Access Hollywood's Billy Bush, is 37. George Bush's former spokesman, Ari Fleischer, is 48. Modeling legend Beverly Johnson is turning 56. Modeling honcho Ivan Bart is 45. Art dealer William Acquavella is 71. And billionaire heir Thomas Tisch is 54.

♦ Not only did Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony renew their vows at 3:15 a.m. in Las Vegas on Sunday, they did it in a joint ceremony with Mets outfielder Carlos Beltran and his wife Jessica. [E!, People]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson tell friends they're planning on dressing up as Todd and Sarah Palin for Halloween. [NYDN]
♦ Jay-Z couldn't get any London clubs to pay his $50,000 appearance fee this weekend. [This London Blog via E!]
♦ Is Suri Cruise lonely and sad because has no friends her own age? [P6]

♦ Morgan Stanley closed its deal with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. The $9 billion investment on the part of MUFJ gives it a 21 percent stake in the beleaguered bank. [WSJ, DB]
♦ U.S. stock futures rallied on Monday morning as government efforts to beef up the banking system reassured panicky investors. [WSJ]
♦ Treasury official Neel Kashkari outlined the government's efforts to bail out the financial system and resuscitate the economy this morning, although details were few and far between. [CNNMoney]
♦ New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman won the Nobel economics prize this morning. He'll collect a $1.4 million check for the honor. [Economix]

Yet one more Wall Street exec looking to take a little cash off the table: The Daily News Tribune in Massachusetts reports that Goldman Sachs co-president Jon Winkelried—pictured here with one of his many horses, Quintan Blue—has put his Nantucket spread on the market for $55 million. Winkelried, who took home more than $67 million last year, purchased the 5.9-acre waterfront property for $7 million in 1999. If he can find a buyer at the price he's seeking, the deal will go down as the biggest in Nantucket residential history. Photos of the spread after the jump. [Daily News Tribune via Dealbreaker]