Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Arianna's Best Birthday Ever | How has Arianna Huffington been spending her 59th birthday? She started the day in Greece before making her way to Croatia, reportedly aboard the Rising Sun, the 454-foot, $250 million yacht that is co-owned by billionaires David Geffen and Larry Ellison. [Gawker]

Happy Birthday | If you see Arianna Huffington today, don't forget to say "xronia polla." The pundit, author and Greek native is 59. Others celebrating today: Beth Ostrosky Stern is turning 37. Actress Diane Kruger is turning 33. Paul Sevigny is 38. Forest Whitaker is 48. Guitar legend Joe Satriani turns 53. David Easton, the prominent interior designer, is turning 73. Club owner Don Hill is 65. Real estate scion Dan Tishman is turning 54. Former wrestler (and governor) Jesse Ventura is 58. Actor Scott Foley is turning 37. Marky Ramone of The Ramones is 56. Brian Austin Green is 36. And Brigitte Nielsen celebrates her 46th birthday today.

Many people have criticized The Huffington Post for not paying its writers. But Ken Lerer, who co-founded the site with Arianna Huffington and remains the company's chairman, sure has one heck of a generous streak. Last week, we noticed that Joey Bartolomeo, a senior writer at People and frequent TV talking head, had purchased an apartment on the Upper East Side. What was strange was that Bartolomeo didn't buy the $1.025 million co-op on her own. Lerer's name appeared on the property documents as well. And it turns out that Joey isn't the first member of the Bartolomeo family to have benefited from Lerer's largesse. Bartolomeo's older sister, Stephanie Bartolomeo, picked up a $1.25 million co-op on the Upper West Side back in March. And once again, Lerer co-signed for the apartment. More

Michelle Obama was the main attraction at Time magazine's sixth annual 100 "most influential" ceremony at Lincoln Center last night. She was joined by a predictably massive group of A-listers, including Oprah, Harvey Weinstein, Mort Zuckerman, Steve Schwarzman, Jeff Bewkes, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Carine Roitfeld, Gayle King, Stella McCartney, Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy, Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler, Jay Leno, Lorne Michaels, Jimmy Fallon and Nancy Juvonen, Charlie Rose, David Lauren and Lauren Bush, Ann Coulter, Suze Orman, Arianna Huffington, Kate Betts, Andy Serwer, Paul Krugman, Vivi Nevo and Ziyi Zhang, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews ... More

Arianna Snags Carl | Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown are locked in a bitter battle to line up high-profile contributors for their respective websites/blog networks, but it looks like Arianna will emerge as this week's winner: She's convinced cranky billionaire Carl Icahn to not only blog on his own site, but also post the same pieces on the Huffington Post. Now you can not read Icahn's boring missives on two sites instead of one!

♦ No official confirmation yet, but media insiders say David Gregory has been tapped to take over as host of Meet the Press. [Politico]
♦ It's rumored Carine Roitfeld is replacing Anna Wintour at Vogue. [Gawker]
♦ A former employee of Charles Kushner is accusing him of funneling cash from his real estate empire to prop up Jared Kushner's Observer. [Daily Intel]
♦ Harvey Weinstein owes Cindy Adams $10,000. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast has shuttered its social networking site Flip.com. [Gawker]
♦ CBS is producing a new hidden camera show with Ashton Kutcher. [NYT]
♦ Katie Couric has a new haircut, in case you haven't noticed. [HuffPo]
♦ Arianna Huffington's how-to book for aspiring bloggers. [Jossip]
♦ Ever fantasized about having lunch with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? You can—for $2,500. [NYO]

More Cash for HuffPo? | So much for doom-mongering and talk of post-election crashes: The Huffington Post, founded by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, has supposedly landed $15 million in financing from Oak Investment Partners. Or maybe not! [PaidContent]

♦  When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦  National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦  Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦  Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦  ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦  Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦  Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts."  [HuffPo]
♦  Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]

Arianna Huffington Introduces Us to Rachel Maddow's Wardrobe | Arianna Huffington is filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program this evening. Until then, the Huffington Post co-founder has been snooping around Rachel's corner office and getting prepared for the show. Arianna's video tour of Maddow's collection of pantsuits after the jump.More

Tina Brown Takes Her Pitch to Fox Business | Tina Brown appeared on Fox Business today to chat about her new site, the Daily Beast. It turns out that credit for the venture goes to Barry Diller, who, Brown says, was having trouble finding anything worthwhile to read on the Web and brought the idea to Tina because he wanted someone he could trust to tell him what to read every day. Oh, and don't be fooled by the title of the segment, "The Battle of the Blogs," or the lead-in, which suggests she's giving the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report a run for their money. She isn't competing with anyone. "It's not a competitive situation... it's a collegial model."

♦  Campbell Brown is reportedly pregnant. [TVNewser]
♦  Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown aren't in competition. They're best friends! [NYT]
♦  The Robb Report is on the market. The price? "Upwards of $100 million." [Folio]
♦  NBC has exiled the struggling Lipstick Jungle to Friday nights. [Variety]
♦  CNN's new (and appallingly unfunny) political humor show starring D.L. Hughley debuted this past weekend. [NYT] More

Tina Brown launched The Daily Beast last Monday, a fact you're undoubtedly aware of by now thanks to Tina's unrivaled talent for drumming up media attention. The Barry Diller-backed site is a news aggregator—or as Brown prefers to describe it, a site that "sifts, sorts and curates" the web—a concept that isn't all that original considering there are half a dozen sites that do precisely the same thing, most notably Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post, which was widely described as Tina's primary competitor last week. But it isn't Huffington who is most concerned with Brown's arrival on the new media scene. That distinction goes to Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair contributing editor and author who founded the buzz-less aggregation site called Newser.com a year ago. More

♦  The opening of Elizabeth Peyton's New Museum exhibition on Tuesday was full of her friends and fans like Marc Jacobs (with boyfriend Lorenzo Martone, left), Glenn O'Brien, Amy Astley, Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour, Hope Atherton, Cecily Brown, Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, Gavin Brown, Barbara Gladstone, Debbie Harry, and Thelma Golden. [The Daily, PMc]

♦  Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer teamed up with Vogue on Tuesday night to host the launch of Lacoste Pink at Lacoste on Fifth Avenue and shoppers got a first look at the company's pink-themed collection with 10% of the profits going to Evelyn Lauder's Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Co-hosts Rose Byrne, Marisa Brown, Gigi Mortimer, and Cynthia Lufkin were joined by Gillian Miniter, Nicole Miller, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict, Philip Bloch, Anisha Lakhani, Zani Gugelmann, Emma Snowdon Jones, Melissa Berkelhammer, and Alexandra Lebenthal. [The Daily, Park Ave Peerage, Wireimage]More

♦  Some 66 million tuned in to Tuesday's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, up from 55 million for the first debate on Sept. 26th. [NYT]
♦  A recap of Michelle Obama's appearances on the Daily Show and Larry King last night. [NYT]
♦  Barack Obama's campaign purchased a half-hour of airtime from CBS for a primetime special on October 29th. [THR]
♦  CBS's Dean Reynolds isn't happy about how the Obama campaign treats the media; fellow reporters take Reynolds to task. [CBS, Radar]
♦  Arianna Huffington: Not such a nice boss! [Gawker]
♦  Haute Living: Not such a fun place to work! [Jossip]

• Charles Gibson reeled in big ratings for ABC with his interview with Sarah Palin. [THR]
• Jerry Seinfeld's second ad for Microsoft is out, and it's funnier than the last one, at least according to AdAge. [AdAge]
• It's official: Obama will appear on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. [THR]
• HuffPo posts close-up shots of Anna Wintour, the Observer responds by posting a close-up of Arianna Huffington. [HuffPo, NYO]
• Tina Brown's new site hasn't debuted yet but it's already getting smacked around by the media. [Gawker, Nikki Finke]
  
• Ryan Seacrest is teaming up with his spiritual twin, Paris Hilton, on a new TV show. [People]
• WWD chats with Toby Young about the big screen version of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Will Graydon appear at the premiere? "I'm not sure of the date of the premiere, but I believe I have a previous engagement."  [WWD]