If you bump into Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss—or you're a reporter and you happen to be interviewing her for some reason—she'd very much appreciate it if you didn't bring up the name of a certain comedian whom she was involved with more than a decade ago. At least that was the request passed along to a writer from Louisville's Courier-Journal, who had a few questions prepared for the socialite-designer when she touched down in Louisville last week for a trunk show at the (very posh-sounding) Blink Boutique. "No problem," the reporter replies; the subject "wasn't even on my radar screen." Of course, she mentions the snub in the first paragraph and refers to her as "Seinfeld's Ex" in the subhead of the article, so we'll take that as an indication Shoshanna's request was denied.

• Hachette is looking to sell a big bunch of magazines, including Road & Track, Car & Driver, American Photo, Boating, Cycle World, Sound & Vision, and Flying. Package deals available; financing not so much. [AdAge, MW]
• Dick Parsons will step down from the Time Warner board in May. [Crains]
• Time Warner is buying a stake in Ron Lauder's European TV company. [PC]
• Discovery chief David Zaslav is "cable's fastest rising star," according to Forbes. Also: You're welcome to call him "Zazz" if you'd like. [Forbes]
• More on the media tour that Eliot Spitzer has been on recently. [NYO]
• It seems the Obama administration is looking at ways to avoid the "filter of the mainstream media." That sounds familiar, doesn't it? [Politico]
• Further proof that CNBC sucks, assuming you need some. [MediaMatters]
• Barry Meyer and Alan Horn will spend two more years at Warner Bros. [THR]
• George Lopez has a new talk show on TBS. Contain your excitement. [NYT]

It turns out that the Silver Hill rehab facility in New Canaan, Connecticut is ideally located for its new glut of customers: local residents whose Wall Street careers flourished due to personal qualities—being risk-prone and adrenalin-seeking with a deluded sense of invincibility and a work hard/play hard attitude—that have led them down the path of drug addiction and alcoholism now that times are hellishly stressful.

Harvey Weinstein leaving the Waverly Inn with Blake Lively and Penn Badgley ... Hugh Jackman buying art supplies at Blick on Bond Street ... Jennifer Aniston getting in an SUV ... Philip Seymour Hoffman smoking a cigarette in the Village ... Vanessa Williams filming scenes for Ugly Betty on the Lower East Side ... Diane Kruger walking downtown ... Mariska Hargitay standing on the Law & Order set ... U2's The Edge walking with his wife, Morleigh Steinberg ... Celine Dion getting in an SUV outside her hotel ... Mario Lopez grabbing a taxi in front of Rockefeller Center ... and Kirsten Dunst watching a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden.

In the past, when science fiction writers imagined how machines would be our faithful servants, they mostly envisioned robots performing useful tasks like making breakfast and doing laundry. They had no idea that in the post-millennial age, the finest technological minds would be working tirelessly to provide multiple solutions to a single issue of immeasurable import: How can insentient devices protect us from our embarrassing propensity to drunk dial/email/text?

Marie Douglas-David's bitter divorce from United Technologies chairman George David is going to haunt us for weeks, it seems. Just when you think the couple might take a cue from the grim economic climate—and overwhelmingly negative press coverage—and, like, chill, comes another round of craziness.

It's been 10 months since model-turned-designer Milla Jovovich first put her townhouse at 100 Greenwich Avenue on the market for $8.75 million. Since then, the four-story spread—which Jovovich picked up via a trust for $6.375 million back in 2006—has undergone two prices cuts and was even taken off the market briefly at the end of 2008. The four-bedroom home—which features heated stone floors, five fireplaces, solarium, roof terrace, and a master suite that encompasses an entire floor and includes a sitting/dressing room and "walk-in closets behind mirrored French doors"—is now priced at $7 million. Photos of the spread and a floorplan after the jump.

Did you think that the media had exhausted, then flogged to death, then reanimated as a ghost, then exorcised with Santeria all the "how the recession is effecting our lives" reportage? You naive innocent thing! There are a few more stones left to be unturned, apparently, like the disturbing epidemic we're apprised of by today's Times: Candy stores and companies are reporting big sales, since "sugar lifts spirits dragged low by the languishing economy."

Paula Froelich's debut novel, Mercury in Retrograde, doesn't come out until June, but the Page Six gossip already has MySpace and Twitter accounts set up for two of the characters in the book, along with illustrations by Marisa Acocella Marchetto. And they're both a bit fiesty! One recent tweet from "society writer" Lena Lipppencrass who goes by "LpstickCarcrash" on Twitter: "Ran into Dori Cooperman on the street—she's glowing." That she is! [Twitter, MySpace]

• Lionel Pincus's 7,000-square-foot, 14-room duplex at the Pierre, which first went on the market for $50 million and underwent a $7 million price cut late last year, has been discounted again. It can now be yours for the low price of $35 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Ira Resnick, the founder of the Motion Picture Arts Gallery, paid $10.1 million for a 37th-floor condo at the Millennium Tower on West 67th Street. His new neighbors will include Alan Alda, Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky, and Joy and Regis Philbin. [Cityfile]
• Ivan Kaufman, the CEO of Arbor Realty Trust, and his wife Lisa, are paying $9.26 million for a four-bedroom apartment at 823 Park Avenue. [Cityfile]

Tommy Hilfiger turns 58 today. Star Jones is 47. Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend is 65. Lara Flynn Boyle is turning 39. Lake Bell is 30. Actress Alyson Hannigan is 35. Filmmaker Curtis Hanson is turning 64. Fashion designer Bob Mackie is 69. Comedian Louie Anderson is turning 56. And Peyton Manning, the Super Bowl MVP and older brother of Eli, turns 33 today.

• Things aren't looking up for Damon Dash. He's lost a fortune recently and is buried under a mountain of debt. Now it looks like he's losing his wife, too: Rachel Roy just slapped the hip hop mogul with divorce papers. [NYDN]
• David Letterman and his longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko got married last week. [NYP, Us]
• Courtenay Semel, daughter of media mogul Terry Semel and occasional girlfriend of Casey Johnson, has checked into rehab. [P6]
• The real reason behind Jen Aniston and John Mayer's split? Jen was supposedly sick of his "obsession" with Twitter. Naturally. [Sun, Telegraph]

Your favorite Internet nut job, Tricia Walsh-Smith, is back. And she's finally moved on from complaining about her ex-husband, theater exec Philip Smith. Her latest target: Google/YouTube, since she's convinced the company has been conspiring against her by burying her search results and tampering with her videos, particularly outrageous behavior considering she's the one who made YouTube so popular in the first place! The clip is above.

• Andrew Cuomo reports that 15 of the top 20 recipients of the $165 million in AIG bonuses have agreed to give back the cash. As for the other five, Cuomo is still "thinking about" releasing their names. Hint, hint. [NYT]
• Tim Geithner will call for the Treasury to be granted the power to seize troubled financial firms when he goes before a Congressional panel today. [DB]
• More trouble for AIG: The IRS is looking into cushy tax deals that were structured by the same unit that collected those millions in bonuses. [WSJ]
• Goldman Sachs plans to give back its bailout money in the next month. [DB]
• More on the programs unveiled by Tim Geithner yesterday, which created plenty of enthusiasm on Wall Street and sent the Dow up 7 percent. [NYT]
• The trustee overseeing the Madoff mess says he found an additional $75 million laying around, so there's some good news for you. [NYT]
• What a difference a year makes: "The best-performing deal of billionaire Henry Kravis's empire is a deep-discount retailer selling $1 dog treats and $2 bleach to lower-income shoppers." [WSJ]

• Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone have been in Brazil since late last week, presiding over the opening of a new store and showing off their gold rings. Now they say they're thinking about adopting a baby girl, too. [Fashionologie]
• Speaking of Marc, the life-size hamster wheel in the window of his Bleecker Street kids store is back. [Racked]
• House of Style returned on Saturday. Just what you needed: a "recessionista rescue" by Jessica Stam. [Jezebel]
• A recession bonus: expensive models are no longer that expensive. [AdAge]
• Erin Wasson's garage sale in LA was a mob scene, as expected. [RackedLA]
• The Times chats with Dree Hemingway, model, actress, daughter of Mariel Hemingway, and new Twitter fan. [NYT]
• The "obscure private label watch brand" worn by Barack Obama is a little less obscure these days. Funny how that happens. [WWD]

• The James Beard Foundation announced the final nominees for its 2009 awards today. The names in the mix for New York's "best chef": Michael Anthony, Terrance Brennan, Wylie Dufresne, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Gabriel Kreuther. The two New Yorkers competing for the "outstanding restaurateur" award: Keith McNally and Drew Nieporent. [JBF]
• JGV and partner Phil Suarez plan to open 10 restaurants in 2009. [Fortune]
• Tonda is planning to open in the former E.U. space tomorrow. [GS]
• Rumor has it Katie Lee Joel is getting into the restaurant business. The spot will be called "Logan County" and will be located in the financial district. [TFB]
• As for Padma Lakshmi, she's branching out into comedy, apparently. [GS]
• It looks like restaurant publicist (and regular Iron Chef judge) Karine Bakhoum is working on a reality show. [TONY]
• Another season of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is on tap. [THR]

The markets were pretty pleased with Washington's new plan to shore up the banking system: The Dow Jones industrial average surged 497 points, or nearly 7 percent, turning in its biggest one-day point gain since November 21. Given everything that has happened over the last few months, you might think analysts would be smart enough to avoid issuing proclamations the worst is behind us. You'd be wrong! "This is the bottom," James W. Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, told the Times. And Now you know who to call if the market heads south again tomorrow. [WSJ, NYT, MW]

If you're outraged about the current state of the economy and you need an outlet for your anger, you may want to catch a bus to Boston instead of taking one to visit the homes of AIG executives. Just a few of the names in the press these days who happen to be graduates of Harvard Business School: Former Merrill Lynch chiefs Stan O'Neal and John Thain, former treasury secretaries Bob Rubin and Hank Paulson, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, and Bernie Madoff enabler Ezra Merkin. [Clusterstock]

So much for those two new jets and a "state-of-the-art" airplane hanger in Westchester—for the time being, at least. A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase now says the bank has no plans to move forward with the deal as long as it is holding on to taxpayer money: "We will not purchase any replacement plane or make any related expenditure until after we have repaid TARP funds in full." [NYT/Dealbook]

It really didn't look like David Paterson's approval ratings could get any worse when they hit an all-time low a few weeks back. But as usual Paterson has somehow managed to outdo himself. According to a new poll by the Siena Research Institute, his ratings have dropped another 10 percent in the past month alone, with only 14 percent of voters now saying they would be willing to vote for him in 2010 and only 29 percent giving him a "favorable" rating. Music to Andrew Cuomo's ears, no doubt. [Bloomberg, previously]