All of you recession negative Nellies should just quit your bellyaching now, because … guess what?

According to the L.A. Times, our millionaire count is on the rise again! This after the “poor” folks’ ranks dropped 27% in 2008, what with the economy being all icky and such. The number of millionaires in the U.S. is now up 16% from those desperate times, according to a national survey by the Spectrem Group.

Either this bodes well, or very, very badly, for the masses of us who are still working day and night jobs to break even and remembering our 2007 salaries (like, an actual salary?!) with equal measures of nostalgia and disbelief.

“Households with net worth of $1 million or more—not including their primary home—grew to 7.8 million in 2009,” according to the report.

If they had me at “not including their primary home,” Patti Stanger must be ecstatic.

While Us Weekly bills Suri Cruise’s glossy pink-lipsticked mouth as “cute,” I find it intensely disturbing—even more so than kitten heels or coatlessness.

What do you think?

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I love it when pizza-and-wing-stealing criminals are caught in the net of their own bad manners!

A pizza delivery man was attacked for his pies early Saturday morning, but the suspected thieves didn’t make as clean a getaway as they had hoped—the idiots left a Hansel-and-Gretel-like trail of pizza and chicken wing sauce right to their front door.

There are days when I’ve wanted pizza bad. But never so bad that I was inspired to hit my delivery guy on the head with a coffee pot, grab the pie, and bolt. Also, I always use napkins.

I admit, though, marinara sauce and white clothing do seem to have a love-hate relationship.

No word on whether the pies were Domino’s new recipe. Which might explain some things.

Could this be a signifier of the end of the recession—or simply an inevitable (albeit artistic) low point in our culture’s ongoing obsession with thin?

Per the New York Times,

One of Alberto Giacometti’s best-loved bronzes, “Walking Man I,” broke the world record price for a work of art at auction, selling to an unidentified telephone bidder for $92.5 million, or $104.3 million with fees at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday night.

Either way, I’m going to take it as a good sign, even if the waifish work was purchased by one oligarch or another. And I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of hungry.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

This has to be one of the best article titles ever, from the AP: “Feng Shui Master Loses Bid for Ex-Lover’s Fortune”

In a nutshell?

A feng shui adviser who had an affair with Asia’s richest businesswoman before she died lost his bid for her multibillion-dollar estate Tuesday when a Hong Kong court deemed the will in which he was named a forgery.

It’s a story complete with gifted pigtails, money burning, and illicit love. Aspiring novelists and Law and Order writers, take note.

He did get to keep the pigtails. Hey, billions may come and go, but hair is forever.

Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

Well, happy Friday to you! A chipper new study reveals that the wombs of those of us over 30 are already practically eggless. Oh, and, by the way, “women who put off childbearing for too long could have difficulty ever conceiving.”

The study published by the University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University in Scotland found that women have lost 90 percent of their eggs by the time they are 30 years old, and only have about 3 percent remaining by the time they are 40.

I guess that means that the thirtysomethings among us who’ve been carefully avoiding unplanned pregnancy for years should just chill. And also, if you’re 29 and you’ve been thinking long and hard about what kind of mom you’d be, whether you have the financial resources and/or partner stability to have a baby, or even whether you should really bring a child into the world in this day and age, stop your dilly-dallying and get to it!

As Good Morning America’s medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard so helpfully points out, “That biological clock does tick.”

Maybe it just galls me because I’m about to turn 34. But is this a warning we ladies really need?

Strapped for cash on the big V-Day? Not to worry! White Castle is offering “an unforgettable evening” for all you lovers—candlelight, flowers, table service, even complimentary digital photos included with your sack o’ sliders. (Sack Meal No. 3—10 sliders, 2 sodas, and 2 fries—will run you less than $11!) Now that’s what I call Recession Romance.

If you’re a real mensch, get your honey-bunch a customized White Castle tee to commemorate the event. Because nothing says I love you like having something comfy to wear when you’re curled up on the bathroom floor all day on February 15.

Remember last year when Condé Nast let go the majority of their receptionists?  This of course led to the awkward situation of having to wait creepily outside the glass doors of whatever publication you were attempting to access (especially annoying if you were, say, a freelancer returning from lunch) until someone with an access card coming or going took pity on you and let you in. Or, having to telephonically stalk whoever hired you until they took pity on you and agreed to come and get you. Inefficient at best.

But upon my perusal of the Mediabistro job posts today, I found this: The formerly flush pub giant is now seeking a Human Resources receptionist!

Which means either things are getting a little better … or far worse. The fact that there’s no mention of bullet-proof vests or military training, however, has me hopeful.

*Note that the reception area in the photo is far too hideous to ever exist in the Condé Nast building. It clearly belongs to a law firm. Or an insurance company.

I feel for that poor woman who fell on Picasso’s “The Actor” at the Met last week, I really do. Of all the days to forget your V8! Her mishap led to a rip in the corner of the painting’s canvas, and a simultaneous shredding of the work’s value by approximately half (from $130 million to a scant $65, say the experts).

But when I was a kid my mother called me Grace for purely ironic reasons, and I’ve never lost my sympathies for the klutzy. And, as the New York Times points out, worse and more ridiculous things have happened.

Frankly, our art lover should be pretty happy she didn’t …

• Get busted by the police while stashing the painting in a Bronx dumpster after finding it attached to the back of her Velcro coat on 89th and Park.

• Administer the Heimlich Maneuver to a choking man only to thrust him (and that errant morsel) headfirst into the painting.

• Drunkenly mistake “The Actor” for an ex-boyfriend and throw a glass of wine (or a shoe) in his face.

• Trip while simultaneously walking and playing Game Boy—Tetris is that engrossing—and bash the side of her face against the painting, resulting in a bloody stain on “The Actor’s” arse and possible stitches to her own eyelid. Then, sue the Met for medical costs and mortification money.

• Do a spit take on it.

• Pee on anything.

I have never done any of the above. Exactly.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve seen Duane Reade’s “delish” coffee brand (part of the drugstore’s latest overhaul) for weeks now in my local branch, but I have yet to purchase it. I admit, I’m kind of a coffee snob; I grind my own beans and everything.

(I did break down and buy some delish brand almonds, and found them indistinguishable from non-drugstore almonds, which is a good sign, I suppose.)

My question, though—would you buy faux-premium coffee from the drugstore when bodegas and even coffee specialists with (presumably) better coffee (or at least coffee not kept in close proximity to pharmaceuticals) abound? Tell me: Am I, in fact, just a snob—or simply not very forward-thinking? Is Duane Reade wisely capitalizing on an untapped drugstore-coffee-convenience market … and is coffee kept near pharmaceuticals perhaps even a good thing?

Beyond all that, there’s the name—delish could be anything of any food type, and “Fire Fighter’s Joe” sounds like copywriting 101 to me. Personally, I’d prefer a more focused branding on Duane himself, an intriguing foil to that iconic Colombian who has, frankly, grown a bit wearisome, and may even depict racial stereotypes. I would enjoy seeing those two battle it out for world dominance in the bean game.

Because even though I know that Duane Reade is named for the intersection in New York where the original store was located, I’ve always preferred to think of Duane as someone I might go out of my way to avoid in a bar and then be mortified when I run into him the next day picking up nasal spray.  And I think he and Juan would have a lot to say to each other.