Variety's Michael Schneider reports that husband-and-wife comedy team Samantha Bee and Jason Jones will be developing a sit-com for CBS. The due are both correspondents for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (This comes via the Huffington Post's Media vertical.)

Mr. Schneider describes the show, which will be co-written by and star Ms. Bee and Mr. Jones as revolving "around the behind-the-scenes world of a celebrity chef (played by Jones) and the two women who run his cooking empire (one of whom will be played by Bee)."

Hey, it almost worked for this guy

Two housekeepers employeed by David and Victoria Beckham have been arrested for selling some of the couple's possessions on eBay. [US Weekly]

Some of the high-profile attendees of Prince's Gansevoort Hotel show refused to turn off their cellphones, even after the signals crashed the musician's high-tech sound system. [P6]

Merrill Lynch chief Stanley O'Neal got the cold shoulder from the bold-faced names dining at Michael's last week. [P6]

Grub Street has the first look inside BEast, a new "secret" lounge opening on Thursday and located underneath restaurant Broadway East. [Grub Street]  read more »

Here's David Paterson discussing the role of partisan politics in Albany and deriding the idea that a Democrat would promise not to campaign against incumbent Republicans.

Paterson was speaking with reporters before the start of yesterday's Columbus Day Parade in Manhattan.

A week ago, John McCain seemed poised to devote the final weeks of what could be the final campaign he ever runs to slash-and-burn politics.

His running-mate, Sarah Palin, was deputized to accuse Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Speakers at McCain-Palin events took to invoking Barack Obama’s middle name as if it were an epithet, and the Republican campaign cut an ad that played up Mr. Obama’s tenuous association with Bill Ayers, an aging ’60s radical. Finally, Mr. McCain himself played the Ayers card at one of his town hall meetings – which only prompted his supporters at the event, in an extraordinary scene, to appeal to him to launch even harsher attacks.  read more »

The New York Times' John Harwood makes a decent point today–that candidates with leads the size of Barack Obama's generally don't squander them in the final three weeks of a presidential campaign.

But this principle is even more iron-clad than Harwood seems to realize. He writes:

In the latest Gallup tracking poll, Obama leads Mr. McCain 50 percent to 43 percent among registered voters. Mr. McCain's deficit in that survey has remained seven percentage points or more for most of the last two weeks.

 

Since Gallup began presidential polling in 1936, only one candidate has overcome a deficit that large, and this late, to win the White House: Ronald Reagan, who trailed President Jimmy Carter 47 percent to 39 percent in a survey completed on Oct.

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Kelly Cutrone passed on MTV's New York-based Hills spin-off; instead, she will executive produce her own show and become "the Ryan Seacrest of fashion." [The Cut] 

The Accessories Council's Excellence awards will be held on November 3 at Cipriani on 42nd Street; accepting awards will be Jimmy Choo designer Tamara Mellon, Stella McCartney, Vogue editor Sally Singer, and Emilio Pucci. [WWD]

French holding company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is pulling in profits and its stock is rising despite the recent economic downturn. [WWD]  read more »

Last week, a lot of people in the media were upset about Newsweek's un-retouched cover photograph of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

The cover showed an extreme close up of Governor Palin's face, illustrating a critical appraisal of the candidate by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham in the magazine.

It prompted Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici to aks, "Did 'Newsweek' Have to Show Palin's 'stache?" Fox News devoted a segment to the cover on October 8, 2008, and CBS News' Bonnie Erbe had some thoughts about in her Washington Whispers column last week.

To make the controversy all the weirder, The Weekender is running a shocking cover that touts an "exclusive" view of the "First-Ever Unretouched Photos of the Weird Birthmark on Barack Obama's Face."  read more »

As you may recall, New York's queen bee Tinsley Mortimer has been acting as "lifestyle director" for B+B Investment Group, a real estate-focused private equity fund run by Ilan Bracha. If it may have seemed unlikely that Ms. Mortimer would be willing to step foot in something so dreary as the headquarters of a real estate company (in Plum Sykes's The Debutaunte Divorce, a character based on Ms. Mortimer says, "I only dress for evening… so obviously office life doesn't work for me"), now there is proof that she totally will, provided cameras are present!

Cityfile has posted a clip from CW11's NY Residential featuring Ms. Mortimer explaining her role at the firm. Though her first official project was said to be lending her vision to a hotel and condominium project on West 57th St., it seems that she also contributed to the design of B+B's offices in Trump Tower. We're treated to a couple shots of her handiwork--a plain white couch with black pillows, black conference tables paired with black rolling chairs, a red wall. "Ilan hired me for me and all the various aspects of me, and all the various aspects that make me who I am," she says in the video. "My experience in the fashion world, in the social world here in New York, and my travels and everything. They thought that I could use that experience to help create a new creative edge for them, to sort of use my style to set the tone."

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In case you're not yet numbed to bad economic news, here's some more.

RCA Analytics has released its latest global trends report, and it concludes that global investment sales are--suprise, surprise!--tanking:

"Sales of significant commercial properties worldwide totaled $388b (€254b) through August, representing a 57% decrease compared to same period in 2007."

Nice! Even better, "The pace of transactions continues to slow and preliminary data for Q3’08 shows an even steeper decline of 64% from Q3’07."

Here are some of the report's other conclusions:

First, we should expect a lot more properties to come on the market, either through distressed sales, or companies looking to shore up their balance sheets:

"The failure of Lehman Brothers and the government bailout of AIG may bring a multi-billion dollar flood of new offerings to the market.

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For the last few months, The Atlantic's Web site has featured a call for readers to submit questions for a new advice columnist. James Bennet, the magazine's editor, has been mum about the writer his magazine had enlisted as its answer to Ask Amy.

A post on Pentagram's blog reveals all: The Atlantic's new advice column will be called "What's Your Problem?" and be written by Jeffrey Goldberg. (Pentagram link comes via Kottke.)  read more »