• Big day for Britney: Her Circus tour kicks off this evening in New Orleans where she'll be wearing elaborate costumes designed by DSquared2. She was also named Candie's new spokesmodel, so she's got that going for her, too. [Vogue UK, SW]
• Barneys is not for sale, or at least that's what the CEO of the retailer's parent company is saying. [WWD]
• Trouble at the Plaza: Half the stores in the basement shopping mall are demanding lower rents. [NYP]
• Poor Dasha Zhukova. Fashion insiders have been laughing about her new job at Pop and now Daphne Guinness says she's having no part in it. [Fashionista]
• A peek at Tracy Feith's new line for Target, which debuts in May. [Racked]
• Reports from the final day of Milan Fashion Week. [NYT, NYT]
• Paris Fashion Week begins tomorrow. But not before fashion's A-list convened for one last party in Milan last night, of course. [Fashionologie]

Did you catch Jim Cramer's rant on Today this morning? Appearing alongside Matt Lauer and Erin Burnett, Cramer called President Obama's budget a "radical agenda," adding "This is the greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a President." It seems Washington couldn't resist an opportunity to fire back. "I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to to make some of the statements," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "And you can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the back-up for those are too." Indeed. [TVNewser]

Bad: Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is rumored to be having an affair with his younger employee. Far worse, for Wolff: this gives News Corp (and others) a chance to get back at him.

• Silvano Marchetto is opening Scuderia across the street from Da Silvano on Sixth Avenue off Downing St. on March 9. It's a trattoria, naturally. [GS]
• Doug Psaltis is Danny Abrams' new partner at Smith's on Macdougal. [Eater]
• Starbucks' latest effort to to reinvent itself as an affordable brand? The chain's new value meal (or "breakfast pairings"), which run $3.95. [NYT]
• The News gives Josh DeChellis' La Fonda del Sol four stars this week. [NYDN]
• Bamn, the Automat-themed spot on St. Mark's, appears to have closed. [GS]
• Tribeca's Dennis Foy has closed, too. [Zagat]
• The yellow waffle truck known as Wafels & Dinges is on its last legs. [Eater]
• Bar Veloce, which became Bar Tonno and then turned into Room4Dessert, before reopening as Bar Veloce, is now named Veloce Club. Got that? [GS]

Sandy Weill presided over Citigroup until 2006 when he stepped aside and handed the reigns to his self-appointed successor Chuck Prince (who, in turn, was replaced by the bank's current CEO, Vikram Pandit). When Weill left the company, he departed with hundreds of millions in Citi stock and a very generous golden parachute to boot. So how much is he worth now that the U.S. government owns a third of the company and Citi shares can be had for a buck and a quarter? Charlie Gasparino does the math: "The last public filing for Weill stock ownership came out in February 2006. It said he held 16.555 million shares. With a stock price hovering off its highs but at a still healthy $46 dollars, Weill's holdings in Citi were worth more than $760 million. If he hadn't sold a single share, those same holdings would be worth a tad more than $20 million today."

Aren't you in for a treat! This Saturday, all sorts of wondrous items will be auctioned off at the Tribeca Spring Preview Housing Works sale, and almost all of the ladies of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York are participating. Alex McCord has donated a "bolero jacket with beads all over it," which she tells the Observer she bought at an estate sale a decade ago but has only worn once. LuAnn de Lesseps chipped in a Furla handbag, and Ramona Singer donated one by Christian Dior. And while Kelly Killoren Bensimon is participating as well—she's donating a dress and this pair of John Varvatos Converse sneakers—she'd also like to point out that, unlike her low-class castmates, her pieces have never touched human skin:

When we revealed the details of Michael Wolff's affair with a former Vanity Fair intern last week, Wolff promised his lawyer would be in touch with us, presumably to refute the charges. But it's been several days now and we've yet to hear from him. Does this mean he's not prepared to dispute the account? Or is his lawyer just busy with other matters? We're going to go with the former and "assume the extreme," an approach that Wolff himself suggested in a June 2008 Vanity Fair story entitled "It's the Adultery, Stupid." (An excerpt from the piece, which we edited a touch, is above.) But in the event we did get any of the details wrong, Michael, your lawyer can reach us at 646-723-4542. We're waiting!

Martha Stewart's French bulldogs now have their own blog. It's called "The Daily Wag with Francesca and Sharkey." And chunks of it are written in French. Thank us later. [The Daily Wag via Buzzfeed]

Michelle Williams running errands in Brooklyn with daughter Matilda ... Kevin Kline walking to the set of The Extra Man in Midtown ... Kate Winslet taking a walk in the Village ... Ugly Betty's Ana Ortiz leaving the Nederlander Theatre ... Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge, and Larry Mullen Jr. shoveling snow outside the Ed Sullivan Theater for a David Letterman segment ... Liev Schreiber getting out of a car in front of the New York Academy of Art on Franklin Street before last night's Tribeca Ball ... and Philip Seymour Hoffman standing on the set of his new movie, Jack Goes Boating, in the West Village.

Just in case you had any doubts that the fourth quarter of 2008 was a horrible one for hedge funds, the bloody 13F charts compiled by Wall Street Folly will help you put the misery into perspective in a matter of seconds. [WSF]

Step away from the fashion closet: Sean Avery is returning to New York and rejoining the Rangers. Sadly, another stint at Men's Vogue this summer is not in the cards, since the magazine was dismantled while Avery was off in Dallas. But maybe he'll use this as an opportunity to join Vogue proper and branch out to womenswear. [AP]

• Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has landed a six-figure advance to write a book about "his rise and fall, and the dark side of politics." [LAT]
• CBS chief Les Moonves says he no longer has any plans to merge the company's news operations with Time Warner's CNN. [B&C]
• Martha Stewart Living is "broadening its editorial focus" to "beauty, travel and fashion" in order to appeal to advertisers. [Mediaweek]
• Jane Velez-Mitchell's show on Headline News has been doing well. [NYT]
• The Philly Daily News will be folded into the Philadelphia Inquirer. [Gawker]
• Thomson Reuters is launching a new video-on-demand service. [NYT]
• Arena, the 22-year-old British men's style magazine, is no more. [WWD]

Why bother with an ordinary kid when you can order up a designer one? A fertility doctor says would-be parents will be able to customize their own babies at his clinic beginning the summer. The implanted embryos can be screened for skin, eye and hair color as well as gender, which means if this catches on it will only be a matter of time before every woman in the 10021 zip code really does have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fierce tan. [NYDN]

It's been a rough few weeks for CNN. Ratings have falling fast, especially for primetime programs hosted by Anderson Cooper and Campbell Brown, news that came to light the same day Brown rather bizarrely confessed her apartment had been invaded by "toxic mold" in recent months. To make matters worse, this past weekend the Daily News revealed that Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's very-much-married legal analyst, has been having an affair with the daughter of former colleague Jeff Greenfield, and may have even gotten her pregnant, too. So how is CNN CEO Jon Klein responding to the bad news?

"Negative calorie" foods like celery, which reputedly burns more energy chewing than it actually contains, are the dieter's holy grail. So now a soft drink company is making the enticing claim that "Celsius"—super-caffeinated, vitamin and chemical-laced—burns 100 calories per can, meaning you can lose weight merely by sitting on your ass sucking down soda. "The beverage ramps up the body's metabolism," it's promised, "allowing those who consume it to stoke their calorie-burning furnaces."

If you're looking to invest some money in real estate but you're not sure where exactly to place your bets, Ivanka Trump has some advice for you: Invest in Panama! "I have projects all over the world [and] have a unique sense of the global real estate climate and submarkets," she tells Latin Business Chronicle today. "With great conviction, Panama is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, real estate market." Who knew? Naturally, there's a reason for her extreme bullishness on the Central American nation: A 70-story Trump development is scheduled to open there next year. But she may be also thinking ahead in the event her dad's well-publicized financial troubles get even worse: She also tells the paper that she now sees the country as a great "escape." [Latin Business Chronicle via CS]

Must be a slow day over at City Hall: Mayor Bloomberg plans to "temporarily rename" part of West 53rd Street "U2 Way" today, in honor of the group's latest CD. [AP]

Although the DVR ranks up there with the most miraculous of modern technologies and is cherished by many as the cornerstone of civilized existence thanks to its gift of freedom from the tyranny of commercial interruption, a new study is purporting to show that, yet again, people just have no idea what's good for them. TV ads, allegedly, make watching shows more, not less, fun.

New Yorkers were happier with Eliot Spitzer as governor—even after he became tangled up with Ashley Dupre—compared to David Paterson, according to the results of a new poll. Just 26 percent of the 1,045 voters surveyed by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion said Paterson was doing either a "good" or "excellent" job, the lowest job approval figures Marist has seen in the 27 years it's been surveying voters. (Spitzer had a 30 percent approval in the days after his prostitution scandal broke.) At least Paterson seems to be aware of his enormous unpopularity: "If it wasn't for A-Rod and Bernie Madoff, they'd just about run me out of this state right now." [NYT]

• Got $75 million to spare? Edward Lee Cave says Courtney Sale Ross' massive duplex at 740 Park is still up for sale and he's willing to show the apartment to "qualified buyers." [NYO]
• Srinivas Modukuri, the former head of mortgage strategies at Lehman Brothers, paid $2.995 million for a three-bedroom apartment on the 10th floor of 74 Fifth Avenue. [Cityfile]
• Fashion stylist and V magazine editor-at-large Beat Bolliger paid $1.59 million for a two-bedroom apartment at 12 East 12th Street. [Cityfile]