• Did Lindsay Lohan split up with Samantha Ronson? Is she now in "complete denial" about it? And what's going on with her and Sean Penn? All good questions! [P6]
• Graydon Carter's plan to win over neighborhood critics of the Waverly has been revealed: He gives them tables at the restaurant and puts their pictures in Vanity Fair and, sure enough, his foes magically turn into friends. [P6]
• On the View yesterday, Tom Cruise described the death of Jett Travolta as "horrific," but said that Scientology had absolutely nothing to do with it. You've been warned, people. [People]
• Remember Lisa Bonet? Well, she just had a baby girl who she named Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa. Yes, she stole the name you were planning to use. [NYDN]

Last month Cityfile unveiled, oh, a hundred or so domain names of famous New Yorkers' names that it had bought, just because it could. Conde Nast immediately marshaled its team of high-powered attorney warriors!

• Can Michelle Obama single-handedly save America's fashion industry? Here's hoping! [NYT]
• Following the horrific holiday season, Macy's says it plans to close 11 stores in nine states. [AP]
• Communist chic is in. And just in time for the collapse of the capitalist system, too! [NYT]
• William Rast, the brand backed by Justin Timberlake, will make its Bryant Park debut next month. JT will not be performing, though. [WWD]
• Peter Som and backer Creative Design Studios have parted ways. Because of the split (and the economy), a Som show during Fashion Week is not in the cards. [WWD]
• Eight designers you need to know in 2009. [Refinery29]
• Obedient Sons & Daughters is closing its doors. [Style.com]
• New York magazine's fashion-centric biannual spinoff title, New York Look, has been discontinued. [WWD]

Plenty of formerly wealthy New Yorkers are looking for a solution to their financial problems. Selena Valentine isn't going to help them much, but she should keep them plenty entertained. The Midtown hypnotist is offering "Millionaire Mindset" workshops for businessmen willing to fork over $100-an-hour for her services, which seem to involve playing Frank Sinatra songs and somehow convincing her clients that they're still millionaires, even if their bank accounts disagree. ("They come in wanting to reach their financial goals, but once they see how wonderful hypnosis is, they want help with other things, like smoking.")

• The restaurant formerly known as Grayz reopens as Atria tonight. [NYT]
• Bobby Flay is launching a talk radio show on Sirius XM. [AP]
• The latest blow to Giuseppe Cipriani? He's having credit problems. [Eater]
• Here's a great deal: On Friday night, you can watch Babette's Feast and then eat Babette's feast. Just $6,000 a couple! [GS]
• If cash is tight, head over to SideBAR on Saturday night without any pants on and you'll get a free drink. The humiliation you'll experience is free, too. [NYB]
• Devin Tavern on Greenwich Street has officially closed. [Eater]
• For shame: Unless he gets his act together, George W. Bush will become the first U.S. President since FDR who has not dined at the '21' Club. [P6, HuffPo]

The New York Times reports video of Bernie and Ruth Madoff "lounging on their yacht, visiting a winery and relaxing in an upscale hotel in San Tropez [sic] in southern France" will air on Fox Business News tonight at 7pm. In totally unremarkable news, it also seems reporters at the Times don't spend much time visiting luxe French resort towns. [NYT/Dealbook]

Prosecutors say that Bernie Madoff had 100 signed checks worth $173 million in his office desk—ready to go to family and friends—when he was arrested on December 11. We're going to go ahead and assume they were from Deluxe's "Tropical Breeze" series, but if you know otherwise, please let us know. [NYDN]

Do you know who Whitney Casey is? She's an author, occasional TV presence, and a "relationship expert" for Match.com, but that's not the interesting part. It's what she had to say about Rocco DiSpirito on Howard Stern's satellite radio show that might make you run to the toilet. Casey says the unemployed chef provided her with the best sex she's ever had, and he has an absolutely "perfect" penis that resembles "a Viagra version of the statue of David." Your day is complete! [DBTH]

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson were the main attractions at Monday's Bride Wars premiere at the Lincoln Square Cinema. Others who turned up for the chick flick: Vera Wang, Tara Subkoff, Rachel Roy and her daughter Ava, Barbara Walters, Cindy Adams, Erin Fetherston, director Gary Winick, producer Alan Richie, Kristen Johnson, Robert Verdi, Holly Dunlap, Damien Fahey, Mike & Juliet hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy, Lisa Rinna, model Hana Soupkova, and Dina Lohan, as well as the cast of Real Housewives of NYC: Jill Zarin, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Simon van Kempen and Alex McCord, LuAnn DeLesseps, Ramona Singer, and Bethenny Frankel. [PMc, Wiremage, NYO]

Maria Bartiromo turned up on Ellen the other day to explain to the American Express pitchwoman why it is she doesn't possess a credit card. First of all, she has a debit card, which is, like, almost the same thing, isn't it? Plus she has a corporate card, which she uses all the time. (No doubt!) And have you heard about all the people who load themselves up on credit card debt and are forced to pay high interest rates? It's tragic. Of course, if it weren't for those insane interest rates, how else do you think Citigroup would have been able to afford to fly Maria around the world on its private jet?

• Paramount chief Brad Grey has renewed his contract for 5 more years. [NYT]
• Meredith Corp. is shutting down Country Home magazine. [MW]
• The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet is ending this summer. [NYT]
• Barnes & Noble reports sales dropped off in 2008, not surprisingly. [WSJ]
• CBS slashed its Tel Aviv bureau just before war erupted in Gaza. [NYO]
• Oprah's weight-gain confessional scored big ratings for Monday's show. [NYP]

Great news for desperate singles: According to behavioral scientist Larry Young, who studies the chemical basis of love and romance while apparently watching telenovelas, "recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a "love potion" in our drink." We can't wait for men to start paranoically keeping an eye on their beers in bars. [Reuters]

It's not easy making billions while everyone else is losing their shirts. Just ask John Paulson, the founder of the hedge fund Paulson & Co. who collected $3.7 billion in 2007 and, unlike the vast majority of his peers, had a fantastically profitable 2008, too. Of course, making money off the collapse of the global economy isn't the sort of thing that earns you many fans, as Gary Weiss points out in the new issue of Portfolio: "It's hard to see how any financier who made a fortune from market turbulence can improve his public image when the economy is in such serious trouble... Traders like Paulson will probably never be popular. They might as well get used to it."

Far be it from us to make you dread the year before it's properly begun, but if you assumed that the blood pressure-raising murderousness you once felt toward Brooklyn boy-wonder novelist Jonathan Safran Foer was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, during 2009 his brother Joshua Foer will sadly prove you wrong. Foer the younger is about to launch a travel website (featuring "all the curious, wondrous and bizarre places that are just below the radar of more conventional travel guides") and this fall will see the launch of Moonwalking with Einstein, his book on memory that, since it cost Penguin $1.2 million to acquire, will probably be promoted until we beg for mercy. [New Statesman]

If you're a Top Chef fan—or the idea of having Padma Lakshmi list off a bunch of different foods every time your cell phone rings amuses you for some reason—this ringtone is for you! Click on Padma's pic to download the MP3. As we've mentioned before, you may need to do a little work to get the ringtone working on your phone. But we're sure the five minutes you spend sorting it out will be time well spent. Previous ringtones: Anna Wintour, Andre Leon Talley, Bernie Madoff.

Get ready to see lots of overdressed couples with stars in their eyes wondering around Lower Manhattan beginning on Monday. Next week the city opens its new, 24,000-square-foot Manhattan Marriage Bureau following $12 million in renovations to the building. (The mayor tapped his personal interior designer, Jamie Drake, to do the job.) Why spend so much money on such a trivial slice of city bureaucracy when New York City is facing a historic budget shortfall? It's all part of Michael Bloomberg's plan to unseat Las Vegas as the nation's "wedding capital" and turn New York into a marriage destination!

Good news for Italian fashion mogul Valentino! Although London's Evening Standard reported yesterday that the golden-hued designer had been a victim of Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Valentino's reps have denied the account to WWD: "A spokeswoman for Valentino said Wednesday that neither the designer nor his longtime business partner Giancarlo Giammetti has any links whatsoever to Bernard Madoff." [WWD]

When future historians look back on the late aughts, this period will undoubtedly be viewed as the dark night of our country's soul, a time when security was suddenly stripped away, faith in the church of capitalism was eroded, and, perhaps most hellishly symbolic of all, mustaches again became socially acceptable. Yes, hairy top lips have been bubbling under for a few years, but now the Times' David Colman has given the trend his imprimatur with a lengthy analysis on the subject, so we can't cling to denial any longer. Still, at least the article, in raking over the mustache's inglorious past, resists mentioning the most frighteningly evil 'tache-wearer who ever lived. Dov Charney, however, is quoted.

As Page Six reported this morning, Nevan Donahue, the sexually ambigious regular on The City whose big claim to fame in life is that he's Olivia Palermo's cousin, was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Palm Beach in 2007. Click on the photo to see his mugshot and booking sheet. And keep in mind that there's still a warrant out for his arrest, so if you spot him out and you feel like taking justice into your own hands and snapping cuffs around his wrists, you can be assured the gratitude of the Palm Beach Police Department. [HuffPo]

• Marquis Jets co-founder Jesse Itzler and his wife, Spanx CEO Sara Blakely, have closed on the sale of their 14th-floor pad at 15 Central Park West for $8.7 million. That's a million less than their asking price, but $200,000 more than what they paid for it last March. [Cityfile]
• Leo Tilman, who was Bear Stearns' chief institutional strategist before starting up his own advisory firm, has paid $3.5 million for a condo at Tribeca's 101 Warren Street. [Cityfile]
• Sameer Nath, who heads up M&A for Citigroup in India, paid $4.4 million for a penthouse apartment at 1 River Terrace in Battery Park City. [Cityfile]