"On inauguration night, Halle Berry was spotted on her way to the Western Ball, 'looking lost and confused in the crowd,' according to our witness. 'She stepped onto the escalator and the long train of her dress got caught, causing a scene of panic.' The source said Berry was 'frantically screaming' and 'security had to hit the emergency brake.' The distressed beauty eventually yanked her dress out of the escalator and went to the party." (PageSix)
"Jay-Z and Beyoncé sitting in the same row as Diddy in the front section, about twenty rows back from the podium, but not in the grandstand. Beyoncé wore sunglasses but no hat. Jay-Z wore the most ridiculously huge fur hat we've ever seen, which became less and less ridiculous-looking as our body temperature reached hypothermia levels .. Attention-seeking senators peering over the ledge of the Capitol balcony and waving at their public as if in some ticker-tape parade. Chris Dodd was probably the most egregious offender, clinging to the marble railing. 'It's like he's finally living out his presidential fantasy,' we overheard someone say. John Kerry and Chuck Schumer were equal offenders, though they waited until the end of the ceremony ..Chris Tucker getting a little emotional. We ran into him after the ceremony, but he wouldn't cop to our previous observation. 'I can't believe I'm here,' he said. 'But I only cry on the inside.'" (NYMag)
(image via bloomberg)
"Despite some static over whether Tim Geithner filed the proper tax returns, he will be easily confirmed as Treasury secretary. But back in mid-September, as president of the New York Fed, Geithner proved to me why he shouldn't be. Back then, Lehman Brothers was in bad trouble, teetering on the verge of insolvency. Geithner and his sidekick, then-Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, put the heads of all the big Wall Street firms in a room and ordered them to come up with a plan to save Lehman. For the next few hours, the capos of these big firms did something unusual—they cooperated. By the end of the Saturday, a draft plan was on the table to buy all of Lehman's bad debt and arrange a sale to Barclays PLC, a giant bank. Letting Lehman implode, they knew, would set off a global shock wave of mass selling, and a further lockdown of the credit markets. Larry Fink, the CEO of the giant money-management firm BlackRock and one of the smartest men in the financial business, told me he decided to leave New York to meet clients in Asia that weekend because he believed that a bailout was the only answer—in other words, Paulson and Geithner wouldn't allow Lehman to fail because if they did 'it would be Armageddon.' Well as we all know, Lehman did fail. In the end, Paulson and Geithner did next to nothing to prop up the ailing 158-year-old investment bank with a balance sheet of around $500 billion and trading partners across the globe. And the next day, one of the worst weeks in financial-market history began." (Charlie Gasparino/TheDailyBeast)
"A few weeks ago, the internet was rampant with speculation about Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell’s roles in Iron Man 2. Conflicting reports from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter made people ask who was playing who, and wonder whether Rourke would in fact be playing Crimson Dynamo in the sequel. You can check out our original post on the subject here, and be sure to check out some good analysis by CHUD and MTV too. Unfortunately, it’s looking like negotiations for the film aren’t going as well as Rourke fans might have hoped. Variety has published an article about the cost cuts that studios have decided to make while under the Damoclean sword of a potential SAG disaster, as well as a punishing economic climate. Actor salaries are one of the first places they’re trying to cut back on, as they don’t represent fixed costs." (SlashFilm)
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