Gwyneth Paltrow Does Not Mingle With Hoi PolloiAnd that includes Katie Lee Joel. Plus, Brooke Shields bristles at an improv group’s tasteless jokes and people turn up their noses at Russian billionaires, in today’s selective gossip roundup.
NBC Throws a ChangeupThe Peacock network is the first to ditch the traditional notion of television “seasons.” That, and more news from the city’s media, finance, law and real-estate industries.
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Nobody Messes With Karl LagerfeldKarl Lagerfeld’s bodyguard protects him and Jay-Z from a pesky pap, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will get $10 million for their baby pictures, Spencer Morgan and Alexis Bryan probably will not, and more in today’s compilation of greatest hits from New York’s gossip columns!
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Ashley Alexandra Dupré Continues to Haunt New YorkReal celebrities are riled by sightings of Eliot’s lady friend; Simon Doonan gets his own TV show and pretty people buy expensive homes in our daily roundup of the news from New York’s best gossip columns.
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Brooke Shields Shares the Love on ‘Lipstick’Lipstick Jungle may top Cashmere Mafia because Jungle star Brooke Shields is nicer to her castmates than Mafia star Lucy Liu is to hers. Details editor Dan Peres says he’s going crazy and putting on weight because wife Sarah Wynter is pregnant. Kid Rock paid a busboy at Southern Hospitality $1,000 after he returned a $200,000 watch found on the floor of the bathroom that belonged to a Rock posse member. Val Kilmer was spotted running around town with Chad Lowe’s girlfriend, Kim Painter. Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce refused to use his credit card at Tenjune and left to go find a club where he could use cash. Donald Trump is hosting a Celebrity Apprentice party at Tenjune during Fashion Week. Uma Thurman and boyfriend Arpad Busson were all over each other at lunch at Lever House.
intel
New Year’s Resolutions for the Best New YorkersRecently, we were watching John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker, which starred all kinds of great people like Martha Plimpton and Lily Taylor and Edward Furlong, before he got weird and started getting arrested and dating his manager. Anyway, as in all John Waters movies, there were about five really brilliantly funny parts in it, one of which was a game the characters played called “Shopping for Others,” in which they’d go to the supermarket and sneak things into the shopping carts of fellow shoppers when they weren’t looking. (Like a long phallic gourd in the cart of a mousy single woman or a stack of Depends for a smarmy dude in tight jeans, etc.) Anyway, we got to thinking: How about if, this year, we make New Year’s resolutions for others? We’ve never made New Year’s resolutions ourselves — it’s weird, every year New Year’s Eve rolls around, and we realize we’re still kind of perfect! — but we’ve always felt we were missing out on that great American tradition. Not to mention, frankly, there are people that could use our assistance. So. To celebrate the great New Yorkers who make this blog possible and to help them continue their gloriousness into 2008, we’ve generously ginned up some resolutions for their benefit.
new york fugging city
The Fug Girls: A New TV Diet for Spring!With Hollywood’s warring writers and producers seemingly spending more time on PR statements than negotiations, it’s going to be a long, wretched winter for television fans. To patch scheduling holes, networks are rushing out “mid-season replacements” (everything from game shows to reality hours) — essentially, shows that are handy in a pinch, but weren’t good enough to debut in the fall. It’s the idea that if there’s no water at the oasis, we’ll just drink the sand; too bad for them we’re not so easily satisfied. However, we ARE easily bored without our stories, so if our holiday wish for a speedy, fair strike resolution is impossible, then it’ll take some crafty TV-diet substitutions to get us through the drought.
Here are a few simple swaps:
American Gladiators. The show that brought us such spandex-wrapped warriors as “Turbo” and “Zap” obviously occupies its own vital place in TV history. But it also ably replaces the absent 24. Think about it: Jack Bauer runs a lot. He sweats. He does things to America, for America. And he likes to hit people with blunt objects. If he’d had the wherewithal to do it all with a Speedo and a tennis-ball cannon, you’d never even know the difference.
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And He Was Telling Her She’s Still GoingJennifer Hudson tried to back out from performing at the Soul Train Awards in L.A., until Clive Davis gave her a stern talking to. Leonardo DiCaprio is in Israel visiting the family of girlfriend Bar Rafaeli. Lindsay Lohan has been hanging out with Jude Law in New York, but it’s unclear whether they’re dating. (Lindsay’s dad also gets out of jail today.) Eddie Vedder joined the band of teenager Miles Robbins, son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, for an impromptu jam session at a bar. Harvey Weinstein is trying to buy fashion house Halston, but not for girlfriend Georgina Chapman. Marc Jacobs is in rehab in Arizona, and “Page Six”-ers are annoyed they didn’t get the scoop. Foxy Brown is banned from Junior’s in Brooklyn for dining-and-dashing on a $53 bill and then lying about it.
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Death By ImplantsJosh Hartnett was involved in a bar brawl on the Lower East Side, but it’s unclear whether his posse started it. Siberia owner Tracy Westmoreland is the new nightlife correspondent for Fox News’ Redeye With Greg Gutfeld. (Also, Siberia is still open!) Naomi Campbell will have to sweep an undisclosed New York City facility for five days as punishment for assaulting a maid with a cell phone. Robert Downey Jr. plays a drunken journalist in Zodiac but wouldn’t want to be one in real life. Governor Jon Corzine’s ex, Carla Katz, is “getting cozy” with Newark mayor Cory Booker. Courtney Love claims Paris Hilton had a “big pile of white powder” in the bathroom of her birthday party on Oscar eve. A new Anna Nicole Smith rumor: death by implants.
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Barbara Bush Stops By Cipriani En Route to OblivionTonight’s boldfaced parties:
• UNICEF Snowflake Ball. Cipriani, 110 E. 42nd St., nr. Vanderbilt Ave., 6:30 p.m. Al Roker, Téa Leoni, Barbara Bush the Younger, Jeff Zucker, and Oprah pal Gayle King are slated to attend. One of our friends once turned down the chance to hang out with Barbara Bush, thus depriving us of an opportunity to obnoxiously name-drop his secondhand story about hanging out with Barbara Bush whenever her name is mentioned. How selfish.
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It’s Not Easy Being a PatakiBreaking: Tinsley Mortimer shops for her own groceries! Kevin Federline is broke, steals food and booze from a restaurant. Emily Pataki failed the bar exam. How Kennedyesque. Former Tom Cruise sparring partner Brooke Shields is going to his wedding, perhaps as a publicity stunt. Nicole Kidman probably isn’t pregnant, Ivanka Trump maybe had a boob job, but Tom DeLay definitely nominated about-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Time’s Person of the Year. Dave Chappelle bowed out of a gig for HBO, and HBO isn’t happy. Axl Rose brought some strippers to Soho House. Borat’s cultural learnings may soon be available in a Barnes & Noble near you. (Meantime, he’d do well to avoid getting into a fight with fellow Kazakh Wladimir Klitschko.) Bruce Springsteen made a surprise appearance at a London concert; the crowd liked him. George Gershwin and Ed Bradley were honored at Lincoln Center, where it is discovered that Mr. Gershwin used to be quite the ladies’ man. Liza Minnelli played a $1 million bat mitzvah pro bono. A former America’s Next Top Model winner ditched Tyra Banks as her manager, changed her last name. Angelina Jolie was going to adopt an Indian kid, but Madonna scared her off.
