‘Cashmere Mafia’ vs. ‘Lipstick Jungle’: The Official Obsessed MatchupOkay, like every fight between tough bitches, the battle royale between Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle could only remain buried underneath rumor, speculation, and outfit comparison for so long. Next week, Jungle debuts on NBC. Its stars, Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price, as well as its creator, Candace Bushnell, have been gearing up for a showdown against the similarly themed Mafia since the announcements of both shows last year. Now, it’s no secret that the two series are trying to inherit the viewership gold mine that was Bushnell’s Sex and the City. One has four sexy, powerful New York women who have fabulous lives and wardrobes, and one has three. But how do they really compare to one another? Short answer: Cashmere sucks, and Lipstick merely gives you an over-the-pants hand job. But how do they handle the legacy of their grand, Jimmy Choo–clad matriarch? Only time will tell. Or, you know, us. Because we got our hands on the first couple of episodes of Jungle, and we thought you’d like to know how each of them fare against one another when dealing with the subjects that Sex and the City held so dear. Which show will truly inherit the Dolce & Gabbana sequined underpants that Carrie was wearing on the runway when she fell, in the best episode of any television show, ever?? Below, a tale of the tape.
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Rethinking ‘Meat Guzzler’
JPRESS: It’s still on there.
CHRISTAL: What?
JPRESS: That Times story. The one with the words “Meat Guzzler” in the headline. It’s still number two on the Most-Emailed list.
CHRISTAL: Hahahahahaha.
JPRESS: I mean, the question is, is it on there solely because Times readers are interested in the environmental impact of meat production?
JPRESS: Or are they just e-mailing it to their friends and going, “Heh. ‘Meat Guzzler’”?
CHRISTAL: I think that’s just you.
The World: Re-thinking The Meat Guzzler [NYT]
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Jessica Yellin: Getting Yelled at by Bill Clinton So You Don’t Have To
It’s hard to be a TV political correspondent. Unlike print and radio reporters, you can’t just show up to work unshowered, wearing yesterday’s pants that are beginning to smell like a muffin. You have to look good, and you have to have energy. That’s while keeping track of who’s up, who’s down, who’s black, who’s white, who used to be black, etc. Bless those people. In this week’s New York, we picked out five of the rising stars in the 2008 presidential-election press corps that you should keep your eye on because they’re fun, smart, trustworthy, and most important, cute. Just for the Web, we spoke with each about covering the campaigns this year. After the jump, check out our eight questions for CNN’s Jessica Yellin. She’s the hard-tested correspondent who got bitched out by Bill Clinton last week after asking a perfectly reasonable question. She’s an old hat at political interviews, having sat down with Laura Bush, George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, and many others. (We also think she’s funny because, as many correspondents were searching for words to describe how blue-staters feel about Karl Rove, she just came out and said it: “For many Democrats, Karl Rove is the ‘Dark Prince’ of the Bush administration.” He’s sexy evil!)
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The Night We Shared a Moment With ‘The Captain’
We had just arrived at Morandi last night when a pair of older, Sopranos-looking gentlemen sitting at the end of the bar got into a spat with some other patrons and stomped out. “You wanna start something with me?” the one with a pompadour snarled. “C’mon, Paulie, let’s get outta here,” his friend said, and they slammed their glasses down and stomped out. “Weird,” our friend said, as we settled into their seats. “Do you think Keith McNally paid those guys to be here, like Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding?” But we were too distracted to ponder this possibility, because right then, at the other end of the bar, directly in our line of vision, was a face that over the past five months and five days we had come to know, and indeed, to love. “Look,” we whispered to our friend. “It’s The Captain.”
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Col Allan Is Not Afraid of Mary-Kate Olsen!Following our post this morning about how the Post’s story on Mary-Kate Olsen being questioned by police turned out to be wrong, we just received this statement from Post editor-in-chief Col Allan, via e-mail:
We confirmed this story last night with an impeccable source inside the NYPD and we stand by our reporting. Almost immediately after the tragic passing of Mr. Ledger, Ms. Olsen’s attorneys began emailing us threatening letters. As has been well reported, there were a number of calls to Ms. Olsen from the masseuse before the NYPD arrived on the scene. We would find it strange if Ms. Olsen were not questioned at all. The New York Post will not be pressured and we find it odd that the chiefs at the NYPD appear to be terrified of 4-foot-11 inch, 90-pound Mary Kate Olsen.
Classic.
Related: In Ledger Mystery, ‘Post’ Goes After Mary-Kate. Cops, Not as Much
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Ally Hilfiger on the ‘New Generation of Creative People’When last we checked in with Ally Hilfiger, daughter of Tommy and appealing teenage star of 2003’s Simple Life precursor Rich Girls, she was living a bohemian life between her Manhattan apartment and Berlin and working on a series of paintings featuring the number 8. “It’s a lucky number for me,” she explained. Tomorrow night, the fruits of her creative period will be on display at the Chelsea Art Museum, as part of a multimedia installation she collaborated on with her friend and painting partner Izzie Gold, otherwise known as Francesco Chivetta, a 26-year-old D.J. and multimedia artist who describes his work as “Warhol-esque Lichtenstein with a slight case of Basquiat.”
The other day we spoke to them about the show over the phone. Ally was sick. “I sound like a dead cow,” she said. “My throat is going to fall out of my ass.”
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Examining Our First Fashion Week Survival KitToday, publicists for Peroni Italian Beer, a sponsor of Fashion Week, sent us a very generous survival kit to help us make it through the coming two weeks. It included a lot of useful things that will keep us feeling healthy enough and looking unhealthy enough to fit right in at the tents at Bryant Park. But some of the objects had us scratching our heads. What on earth, for example, do we need a gift certificate to a spa in Miami for? Below, we’ve divided the contents of the kit into two categories: things that we know the uses for and things that, well, we’re not quite as sure about.
Thanks, guys! This will really help!
1 tube deluxe body crème [For feeling soft while we look sharp.]
1 packet Emergen-C [For energy.]
1 pack Peroni mints [Because try as we might, we always end up having to talk to people.]
2 packets Advil [Since the above effort always gives us a headache.]
1 emery board [To sharpen our talons, of course.]
1 box TipToes [Well, we’re certainly not going to be wearing flats.]
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Michelle Obama Doesn’t Need to Fight Bill Clinton — That’s What You Are ForWe just got an e-mail from Michelle Obama that, frankly, has left us a little disappointed. It turns out that Michelle, whom we have always perceived to be the balls portion of the whole Obama package, is turning her sights on Bill Clinton. In an e-mail to supporters with the subject “What we didn’t expect,” Mama Obama has this to say:
We knew getting into this race that Barack would be competing with Senator Clinton and President Clinton at the same time. We expected that Bill Clinton would tout his record from the nineties and talk about Hillary’s role in his past success. That’s a fair approach and a challenge we are prepared to face. What we didn’t expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we’ve seen recently. We didn’t expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack’s record.
We knew Michelle had been called into South Carolina to counter the Bubba effect. On the ground, she’s been talking generally about “opponents” using “attacks and fear.” But we were kind of hoping that she’d take him face-on more openly. It’s partially because one of us is gay, and therefore enjoys any scenario in which a powerful black woman lays the smack down.
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Tom Arnold Doesn’t Have Sex for Money, His Producers Do It for HimTom Arnold can play the game — so well that it’s kind of scary. When we caught up with the former Best Damn Sports Show Period host in Sundance at the Greenhouse, he showed us a Machiavellian side we never knew he possessed. See, back in 2003, news reports wrongfully linked Arnold to a sexual-harassment suit filed by a hairstylist against his colleagues on Fox’s Best Damn Sports Show Period. According to the actor, he asked the network to pay his legal bills, and the female head of human resources told him no. This is where his tale of devious retribution begins.
Arnold and his co-workers had a party a few days later and invited the fortysomething HR director. When she arrived, Arnold “sent her a couple drinks,” and then enlisted the help of a young producer on his show, nicknamed “Firepubes.” (“He has red hair,” explained Arnold. “He’s 24.”) “I say, ‘Come here, you gotta do something for me. Keep giving her drinks, and I want you to dance with her,’” the True Lies star explained. “So he goes in, and he’s dancing.” As the night progressed, Arnold told young Firepubes that he was worried for the HR director’s safety. “I need you to drive her home,” he commanded. “And I need you to have sex with her.”
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Natalia Vodianova’s Hips Do LieSo as you’ve probably guessed, we’re all in a tizzy getting ready for Fashion Week. We’ve started getting our invitations, we’re assigning photographers, and we’re going through the schedule and castings. As we looked at agency DNA’s list of models who are up for gigs starting next week, we spotted a familiar name: 25-year-old Natalia Vodianova. The beauty from a destitute Russian village turned British aristocrat’s wife is among the lovelies. It got us thinking about how Vodianova never seems to age. After nearly ten years of modeling, she still has the same baby face and baby hips. Like, not the kind that are made for the having of babies (even though she’s popped out three), but ones that a model for babyGap would take one look at and stop breast-feeding for a week out of sheer envy for them. Nothing she can do seems to shake that girlish figure. Vodianova gave birth to son Viktor on September 13, and while she sat out the New York shows in the fall, she hit the Paris runways less than three weeks later. This made us wonder about Vodianova’s other model-cum-mommy powers, so we went back and did the math on her past postpartum runway returns.
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Happy Martin Luther King Day!In honor of MLK, we will not be posting today. If you don’t have the day off, we hope work isn’t too tough without our mildly amusing banter and pictures. We also hope you get a new job soon.
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Video: Backstage at Ford’s Supermodel of the Year Competition
Ford’s Supermodel of the World competition last year launched model Chanel Iman (who was a runner-up) into the freezing, barely breathable atmosphere of the modeling world. Since then she’s modeled for Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler, and Derek Lam, among many others. She was also featured on the cover of Vogue last year in an homage to fashion’s new supermodels. So anyone who says the annual Ford contest isn’t a ticket to stardom is just plain wrong. Click above to view some backstage video of this year’s competition and model interviews with New York’s Jada Yuan.
Ford Supermodel of the World [NYM Video]
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The Skinny on Milan’s Male ModelsRemember how, during the past few fashion weeks, there’s been such a to-do about the health of female models? In 2006 in Madrid, designers were ordered to select only runway models with a healthy body mass index and officially banned from using any that set an unhealthy example for young women. This was followed by political efforts in other cities, including New York, to institute the same kind of rule. Designers and buyers alike took sides in the debate. Well, it’s been a while since we’ve talked about the issue, but we’re wondering whether it might be coming up again this season. As many fashionistas are winging their way back to New York from the Milan shows today, we’re hearing that there’s buzz about the size of the models. The male models.In this week’s Italian menswear shows, as you can tell from scanning through New York’s extensive photo galleries, there was an emphasis on the super-skinny. “The models did look more like stick insects than usual,” texted one fashion guru while idling on an airport runway waiting to come home. “Even Dolce & Gabbana [who often favor overmuscled hunks] had slightly more slender models!” This is a city that made headlines for plastering itself with cautionary billboards of a naked anorexic woman before last fashion week, too. We’re not saying any of these guys are unhealthy (we’ll wait until the swimwear shows start to really start judging), but they’ve certainly gotten that “colt look” going. Kate Bosworth would kill for those legs!
European Menswear Shows [NYM Fashion]
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Zagat Family Gets Poor Ratings From EmployeesThe office culture at Tim and Nina Zagat’s office is “antiquated and weird,” a former employee told Portfolio today, of the restaurant-guide publisher, which has been reported to be for sale for up to $200 million. Apparently, few will shed tears when the family passes the torch. “They have vendettas,” another former Zagat worker told us this afternoon. “If you piss them off — give them a bad meal, are not as fawning to them as they would like — they’ll kick you out of the book. I always thought that kind of vindictiveness was really hypocritical for a company that claims its reviews are ‘by the people.’” Yikes! Either that ex-employee has a really good point or is just still bitter about the party the Zagats threw at their Central Park West townhouse last year. “Despite the open bar, the hosts didn’t think to rent portable toilets for the occasion, nor did they want employees entering their home to use the bathrooms,” says Portfolio. “Instead, suffering underlings were instructed to ‘hold it.’” A Zagat rep did not immediately return calls for comment.
The Wait Is Almost Over for Zagat Workers [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
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‘Gossip Girl’: Too Beautiful for This World
Last night — the night we will forever remember as the first Wednesday night after the first season of Gossip Girl, the best show of our time, came to its untimely, tragic end — we stepped out of the office and immediately felt something missing. We felt tingly and strange, like an amputee missing a limb. Well, maybe not quite like an amputee missing a limb. We looked at our hands — they were shaking. Our foreheads — boiling. We felt faint, empty, and there was only one way to fill the void inside of us. We hastened to our DVR. “We’ll just watch one,” we said to ourselves. “Just one.” Hours later we came to, as if from a dream. We were sticky and wearing four to six striped scarves. It was then we realized: We had gone on a full-on Gossip Girl binge. But! We managed to record some of our favorite moments, which we present to you in the above montage. It’s not all of our favorite moments — our bastard DVR took it upon itself to delete the first half of the season — but that’s probably a good thing. If we had watched the full season in our fugue state, it might have been dangerous. Click the image to watch.
Earlier: The Progression of Intel’s Obsession With Gossip Girl
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Chris From ‘Project Runway’ Gives Good (Lettuce) Head
Okay, okay, so Chris March and Christian Siriano’s couture dress on Project Runway last night was positively delicious. But you know how they’re always talking about Chris’s costume-designing experience, and you never really get to see it in action? Well, here’s a genuinely tasty blast-from-the-past video from the nohib.com archives featuring Chris’s work on a “Salad Fashion Show” for Wishbone Salad Dressings last May (click above to view). Witness as Chris chops a head of lettuce off its stalk moments before shoving it on a model’s hat. This guy was ready for Project Runway the day he was born.
Salad Fashion Show [NYM Video]
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We KNEW We Recognized That Bubble Butt!So, we went to The Little Mermaid last night. And, as one does, we went home and watched an episode of Sex and the City on TBS as we got ready for bed. Now, we know we’re not first to notice this, but we couldn’t help but be distracted by the fact that the dashingly heterosexual Prince Eric from Mermaid is actually the very same person as the cringingly homosexual Marcus on SATC! You remember, Stanford’s “Broadway-caliber dancer” boyfriend? In real life, the actor goes by the name of Sean Palmer. It was, as they say, nearly a gay trifecta. Then, as we watched a second episode of SATC, we saw another familiar face. Playing the role of a guy who dumps Miranda when he finds out she has a kid was none other than Robert John Burke. That’s right: Chuck’s dad from Gossip Girl!!
Okay, someone hose us down now before we set fire to our cubicle.
Related: Earthbound Ariel [NYM]
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More ‘Gossip Girl’ Locations Explained!Apparently we are not the only people feeling withdrawal from the Greatest Show of Our Time. Today Gridskipper.com unveils its “Gossip Girl Guide to New York.” In it, they run through several things we know (the club “Victrola” was actually the Box; Chuck tried ply Serena for sex with a grilled cheese from Gilt), but it also explains a few things we didn’t know. For example:
• Rufus Humphrey’s art showroom is really the Front Room Gallery on Roebling Street in Williamsburg.
• Vanessa works at Communitea in Long Island City (come on, we might believe that Blair & Co. could find Brooklyn, but this is a bit of a stretch).
• The Eleanor Waldorf Boutique is in fact Rubin Chappelle in the meatpacking district.
• In the pilot, Blair and Nate have dinner at Geisha.
• The “Kiss on the Lips” Party is actually at the Foundry in Long Island City.
Back in December, the producers of Gossip Girl told us much of the filming goes on in Long Island City, so the locations there should come as no surprise. But as time goes by, we can only hope the rest of the great riddles of Gossip Girl are explained. You know, so we can be prepared for next fall when the show comes back from boarding school unexpected, and we fall in love all over again.
The ‘Gossip Girl’ Guide to New York [Gridskipper]
Need more Gossip Girl in your day? Click here for all of our previous dish and episode recaps.
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Did a Fast Make Gwyneth Sicketh?Horreur! Gwyneth Paltrow was admitted to Mount Sinai yesterday with ailments unknown, Us Weekly is reporting. “She was slumped over in a wheelchair pushed by [husband] Chris Martin,” a witness told Us. “She looked not well.” However, Us also reported that later that evening a bag from Organic Avenue was delivered, which indicates that the actress is at least eating. Or is she? Like the virtual Woodward and Bernsteins we are, we called Organic Avenue to find out what was in the bag. “She’s doing our five-day live-food fast,” an employee told us. Reaaaaaally, we drawled in our best gumshoe-detective voice. Could that be why she’s in the hospital, perhaps? The employee laughed like that was just crazy talk. Right, because whoever heard of anyone getting sick from not eating? “Oh, no,” she said. “She’s eating salads, there’s juices. There’s actually quite a bit of food there, it’s just all raw and organic.” And so our groundbreaking reporting reached a dubious but still satisfying conclusion. Because Gwyneth can’t actually be that sick if she’s still sticking to her diet.
Gwyneth Paltrow Admitted to New York Hospital [Us Magazine]
Update: OK! reports that Gwyneth has left the hospital, and has a comment from her rep: “Gwyneth is fine and at home - we are not commenting further.”
Related: Blythe Danner on her love-hate relationship with New York
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The No Pants Dance“Honestly, I might be an exhibitionist,” said Chris Scott, a 25-year-old medical-office worker from Brooklyn, who rode the subway in blue polka-dotted boxers in Saturday’s seventh annual No Pants Subway Ride, organized by public-comedy group Improv Everywhere. “I just wanted to see how people would react if different people kept getting on the same subway car in their underwear, stop after stop, and acting as if everything was normal,” said Improv member and No Pants founder Charlie Todd. So how do they react? While some riders encountered “fuck-yous” and disapproving glares, for the most part, partici-pants told New York that people just laughed. Which is the point. “Really, all we’re going for is a laugh and a smile, and perhaps a moment of questioning your sanity,” said Todd. Scott, who loved the feeling of stale subway-car air against his bare legs so much that after it was over, he rode the L train back home sans trousers, said that while some of the reactions he got were “priceless,” the response was less surprising than he’d thought. “The whole thing was kind of normal,” he said. “For some reason people look at me funny anyways.” —Julie Gerstein
Related: No Pants 2k8 NYC Reports [Improv Everywhere]
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Why Heatherette Canceled Their Show: Our ReasonsWe love, love, love Heatherette — even though their show is a glamorous debacle every year, and even though we’re not always sure where to buy their clothes. Traver Raines and Richie Rich, the house’s creative team, are nice, fun, energetic, and brilliant. Every season their train wreck of an exposition is the highlight during Fashion Week. That’s why we are hit hard by the news that they won’t be showing this February. They were supposed to show at Roseland Ballroom this year, too, which would have meant that everyone could have come, and the after-party would have been glorious. We’re trying to find out why they’ve bailed (they “prefer not to comment,” but we’ll get it out of them — we run with the same gays, after all), but in the meantime, we’ve compiled a top ten list of reasons they might have called off the show:
1) They’re only doing a “Cruise” collection this year.
2) They, like so many other small fashion houses, fell victim to great glitter shortage of 2008.
3) The only chaps they could find had asses.
4) Tinsley ate something.
5) Boy Meets Boy went back on the air.
6) A six-foot-eight drag queen has Richie and Traver locked up in a basement somewhere in the Village because she didn’t get into their last fashion show, even though she WAS INVITED.
7) Lady Bunny ate Lydia Hearst. Totally kidding. She flossed with her.
8) Someone actually wanted to buy something from last season’s show, and they had to figure out how to make it again.
9) Richie broke an axle. On his roller skate.
10) Their Amanda Lepore popped.
Heatherette Cancels Fashion Show [Fashionista]
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Some Necessary Advice for Sam ZellToday Business Week’s Jon Fine has a bunch of advice for new Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell. It’s all about how to make the most of his recent acquisition and includes counsel like “Outsource all printing,” “Don’t fall for the mirage of synergy,” and “Don’t be afraid of price hikes.” Very technical stuff, and probably very useful. But come on. Zell is a new media baron. He has much more important changes to worry about, like how to change his personal life and habits in order to fit the role! Not just anybody can be a press lord. It takes a specific breed of crotchety old men with unique sexual proclivities and horrendous progeny to fit the bill. So we’ve come up with some advice for Zell that has actual practical applications. Without further ado:
• Dump your wife of many years and immediately marry a much younger, much more Asian version.
• Pit your children against one another in a battle to become your heir apparent, in which none have any hope of winning.
• Start getting mad about Israel.
• Get to work on that gin-blossom look.
• Begin hanging around with Tom Wolfe or an equivalent writer who will fictionalize you and talk appropriately about your masculinity.
• Get anointed as a member of the Order of Letters or Knights of the Garter from a foreign nation. Then insist upon being called “Lord.”
• Pick a nemesis, preferably one whose company is already weakening. Then attack!
• Sleep with Jane Fonda. If possible, make her feel bad about herself.
Come on, Sammy! Get started! Those kids won’t disinherit themselves!
You’ve Got Tribune. Now Do Something [Business Week]
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Hey, MSNBC, Stop Trying to Make ‘Tsunami Tuesday’ Happen
Has anyone else noticed that since the December 2004 tsunami that killed over 200,000 people, most networks have shied away from using the sometimes-mentioned Super Tuesday nickname “Tsunami Tuesday”? It has been used to describe February 5, the day when a crazy amount of states will be holding their primaries. But since the word “tsunami” is sort of synonymous with, um, mass death, it’s hasn’t really built up much steam. Except for on MSNBC. They’ve really been trying to make “Tsunami Tuesday” into a buzz term. It’s on all their ads, in their Web editorial language, and used on the air. We have to say, we’re not quite ready to bring the term back into common parlance. What’s next, an election countdown to “Nagasaki November”?
Will Tsunami Tuesday be an afterthought? [MSNBC]
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So, Wait, Was ‘Gossip Girl’ Realistic or Not?Can you believe it’s really over? Like, you won’t be getting any more Gossip Girl until fall 2008? Why can’t we get this for the next ten months instead of the goddamned election? It would prove the same amount of highs and lows, except without all of the unflattering self-judgment. Lucky for you, we’re still reeling with withdrawal. So to satisfy your (and our) cravings, we’ve gone back through all of our obsessed recaps and broken things down character-by-character. Below, witness our Electoral College–inspired evaluation of the reality and fake-ality of Gossip Girl via its most important characters.
New York: Don’t tease. Only five years after Sarah Jessica Parker said that Manhattan was the fifth lady on Sex and the City, Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz explained that New York was the, um, twelfth character on his new show. As far as roles on Gossip Girl go, New York’s was by far the most violated. Brooklyn geography was mauled like a blonde’s left boob on prom night. The Upper East Side’s dimensions were exaggerated like a jock’s staying power the morning after prom night. And the meatpacking district was pushed around like the returns manager who spotted those mysterious stains at a Mr. Tux the day after the morning after prom night. But through it all, the city was honored with luxurious locations shots, glamorous interiors, and ambitious editing that brought Dumbo, Yorkville, and Williamsburg within arm’s reach. Sure, there was that whole Brooklyn real-estate problem. But the producers clearly did their best with Manhattan (arranging shoots at The Box and Marquee? Touché!) , and it was all done with love. Reality Index: 60%.
Michael Musto Finds a Blog Home, At LastAll together now: three snaps up, in a circle. Legendary Village Voice scribe Michael Musto has entered the blogosphere! He told us last night while we were out at (where else?) Beige, but before we could do a scoopy post, his publicist sent out a press release. “Complimenting his immensely popular weekly ‘La Dolce Musto’ column, readers will be tipped off to breaking news items and get the most crucial news from the world of nightlife, entertainment, politics,” explains the breathless missive. Musto will do one post a day, he told us last night. We could not be more excited. Musto is hilarious and raunchy — in fact, he’s the only gay writer who makes fart jokes. In the whole world! “I’m really nervous about finding things to write about,” he explained, but judging by today’s entry, he should be fine. Here’s our favorite part of today’s post (which does a much better job of selling it than the press release), in which the shy Musto is confronted by gay performer Ari Gold (yes, really) and accused of not giving Gold enough publicity:
Gold feels that as an openly gay artist, he deserves a heaping of attention from me, who champions homo talent all the time. In all candor, I told him I don’t write much about music, but he shot back, “I don’t buy that” — not the most gracious response to a gracious response, but again, very singular. Another valid excuse is that I don’t automatically write about someone just because they’re openly gay. If that were an instant ticket to publicity, there’d be a lot more artists bursting out of the closet (which would actually be fabulous — maybe next week I’ll plug every single out person there is, but perhaps not the murderers).
Welcome to the blog underworld, Michael! We’ve been awaiting you. Just don’t get injured, ya hear?
The Daily Musto [VV]
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‘Times’ of London Rips Off ‘Radar’ ListicleWhen Radar ran their medium-funny “100 Reasons You’re Still Single” article back in September, we thought it was a smidge annoying. But in Radar’s defense, it wasn’t nearly as annoying as when the Times of London fully ripped off their list and published a very similar version this weekend. Note the similarities from the Times’ “50 Reasons Why You’re Still Single”:
RADAR: 5. Are only gay when you’re drunk
TIMES: 16. Are only gay when you’re drunk
RADAR: 38. Refuse to remove your Bluetooth earpiece during sex
TIMES: 18. Refuse to remove your Bluetooth headset before making love
RADAR: 52. Have more than zero stuffed animals on your bed
TIMES: 3. Have more than zero stuffed animals on your bed
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Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls. It Tolls for Tina Brown.Late last week, we received a very nice invitation to a luncheon sponsored by the Magazine Publisher’s Association and the American Society of Magazine Editors. It was their annual lifetime achievement awards, and guess who is being honored? Tina Brown. Apparently the former editor of Tatler, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the ill-fated Talk is at that point in her career when the final retrospective is in order. You know, the point in her career that comes at the end. We feel a little bad for Tina. Getting a lifetime achievement award when you are 54 is a little bit like getting the “Most Improved GPA” certificate at college graduation or a magazine cover with the tagline “Sexy at ANY Age”: It’s an honor and an insult at once. Surely, we thought, Tina must be up to something. She’s a legend! For example, there’s that HBO development deal that we heard about but HBO exec Sheila Nevins apparently didn’t. And after finishing her book The Diana Chronicles in late 2006, she went on to write Um Well, we’re not sure, exactly. An insider tells us that she’s shopping around two or three new projects. But we haven’t heard about them. Does anybody know what Tina’s been up to? Or should we start assembling a clip reel for her memorial service award-ceremony montage right now? We’ll set it to the tune of “Candle in the Wind.”
Related: HBO’s Sheila Nevins Is Confused by Tina Brown, Bored by Hillary
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Guess We Know What Serena Was Doing in ‘Europe’ This SummerAs you may imagine, we are eagerly looking forward to the Gossip Girl season finale tomorrow night. You might even say that we are pregnant with anticipation. Even though we know “Episode 17: A Thin Line Between Chuck and Nate” is not the finale as God and Josh Schwartz intended, that the show is only actually ending now because some stupid writers decided they needed to have health insurance or whatever, we’ve got our white tights and headbands all laid out for the blessed event because we’re sure the Best Show of Our Time will go out with a bang. And now, our friends over at Radar have got us whipped into even more of a frenzy with an excellent item about one of the Gossip Girl players. As you may know, we prefer not to acknowledge anything that suggests the people on the show are actors and actresses, because the characters are real to us and we think everyone should fucking respect that. So we’ll put it this way: Which prominent Upper East Side princess once had a much more prominent honker? Oh, wait, duh, you can tell from the photos above. This sheds new light on what Serena was doing in “Europe” over the summer. Will Blair have to go “away” to have Chuck-Nate Jr.?
Gossip Girl Moves Out of Idol’s Way [TV Guide]
Gossip Girl Serena’s Van der Newnosen [Radar]
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Karl Rove Is a Sparkling, Multifaceted CreatureYou don’t usually get much insight into people from their Vanity Fair Proust Questionaire; usually it sounds like they’re just trying to show off. But not Karl Rove, whose answers in the latest issue are so interesting and thoughtful, we found ourselves, well, not hating him. Indeed, the Questionaire seemed to have brought out a new side of the former chief of staff, as the sunlight brings out the rainbows in a prism. For instance, could you have imagined that the earnest Texan is a fan of high-society satirist Evelyn Waugh? Or that his most overused phrase is “Fabulous!”? (How could that have worked at the White House? “Let’s start a war with Iraq.” “Fabulous!” “Let’s start a warrantless wiretapping program.” “Faaaaaaabulous!”) Also, he says his most deplored trait in others is not being authentic.
Okay, now he’s just fucking with us.
Proust Questionaire: Karl Rove [Vanity Fair]
UPDATE!: Someone just pointed out to us that VF editor Graydon Carter was not as enchanted by Karl Rove’s Proust Questionaire as we were. In fact, he devoted half of his editor’s letter to making fun of Rove’s answers and the man himself!
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CNBC and the ‘Times’: United Against Fox Business Network!Did anybody else notice the funny timing of the New York Times’ attack coverage of Fox Business Network? On January 4, Jacques Steinberg and Brian Stelter wrote a story called “Few Viewers for Infancy of Fox Business,” in which the two television writers tore down the new channel for getting only about 6,000 viewers during the day. “By contrast, Fox Business’s chief competitor, CNBC, attracted about 283,000 viewers each weekday,” the story explained, going on to accuse FBN of having “bravado” during their launch. “Thus far, at least, CNBC would seem to have easily eluded Fox’s crosshairs,” the writers cackle. The numbers were based on secret Nielsen ratings for the new channel that only CNBC and FBN had paid to receive. On the same day, there were several other stories on the topic, with less gleeful Schadenfreude. And since, in those stories, a Fox rep spoke with reporters, it’s probably a safe bet that they didn’t cooperate on the Times story. In other words, they probably didn’t leak the unpublished Nielsen ratings: CNBC most likely did. Now, it’s pretty easy to understand wanting Rupert Murdoch and Fox to fail. But the aggression in this story was put into a surprising new context yesterday when it was announced that CNBC and the New York Times are starting a content-sharing partnership that has been in the works for a while. From the Reuters story reporting the collaboration:
The deal also gives the Times and CNBC access to each other’s breaking business news as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp prepares to fight them both with the nascent Fox Business Network cable channel and the recently acquired Wall Street Journal.
Um, huh. Is it us, or does it seem like CNBC and the Times had already started fighting side by side?
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Blogging ‘The Colbert Report’Last night, like you, we were thrilled to sit down and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as they returned from their WGA–strike-induced hiatus. It was going to be great, we assumed. Either that, or it was going to suck, which would also kind of be great, in the whole “this will get us a lot of mileage by the office soda machine tomorrow” kind of way. So we tuned in, AND, in a Daily Intel first, we IMed about it with our culturally superior colleague, the Vulture blog. As it turned out, the two shows weren’t all laughs and rubber faces. In fact, The Daily Show turned out to be a bit of a tough act to swallow (and follow; as a lead-in, it must have cost The Colbert Report some viewers). Since Vulture knows more about the nuances of the writers’ strike, they are hosting our conversation about Jon Stewart’s somber effort. But below, here’s what Vulture editor Dan Kois and Intel editor Chris Rovzar had to say about last night’s glorious episode of Colbert:
Kois: HAHAHAHAH. “This is the ColberT ReporT.”
Rovzar: HAHAHA. We’re already laughing! He pronounced it the white-trashy way.
Kois: Wow.
Rovzar: Did you read that GQ story about when he changed his last name at Northwestern? I loved that.
Kois: No!
Rovzar: It used to actually be COLbert. With the “t” pronounced, when he grew up in South Carolina or whatever
Kois: So he just did it to be intentionally snooty? Awesome. ColBERTian, actually.
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‘New York’ Wants to Know How You Chill OutWow, New Year’s Day seems so long ago. Remember, last week? When you had a day off just to nurse your hangover? It was really great. Not because you got anything done or because you were particularly festive. It was great because it was quiet.
Here at New York, we want to know what you do to find peace and quiet in the city. We live here (believe it or not), so we know how essential it is to just get a minute to yourself to rest. We already know how we do it (three steps, in succession: Scotch. Law. Order.), so we’d like to know about your strategies. We’re interested in hearing about the most stressful five minutes of your day — in excruciating detail. Your boss is hysterical; your customers are angry; you’ve done the same thing 600 times in a row: Make us feel how miserable and stressed-out you are by heaping on the details of what happens to you at work or home. Then, we want to know how you calm yourself down. Do you run for ice cream? Breathe deeply and count? Stand on your head in a corner? Read the Sex Diaries? Tell us in detail your idiosyncratic habits. We can’t get enough of them. Plus, we need some help — the most stressful five minutes of our day is when our editor sends us an e-mail about a magazine writer who needs help on a story and orders us to do a post about it “ASAP.”
E-mail your stories to [email protected], or leave them in the comments.
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Seth Tobias Wife Was Involved With His Death, Aide Says
Bill Ash, a former assistant to Seth Tobias, the hedge-fund manager and CNBC analyst who was found dead in his pool in September, has passed a lie-detector test, in which he swore that Tobias’s wife, Filomena, confessed to him that she murdered her husband by stirring Ambien into a “spicy” pasta sauce, then coaxed him into their pool, telling him, “If you eat [all the pasta], I’ll call Tiger [tattooed go-go dancer, escort, and porn star, pictured at left] to come over for some kinky sex.” Ash has been saying for months that Tobias was murdered by his wife, but his insistences have been rather drowned out by his record, which includes eleven arrests, for prostitution and writing bad checks. Ostensibly, he’s hoping the lie-detector test, news of which he distributed by press release, will clear his, uh, good name. Filomena Tobias’s lawyer continues to deny the allegations. “We’ve tried to take his deposition three times under oath [in the probate proceeding over Seth’s estate],” he told the Daily News today of Ash. “He failed to show up.” Ash e-mailed New York this morning to say that’s not exactly true, that he just asked for an extension, and moreover and that Tobias’s lawyers have actually tried to block his testimony by filing motions that “attack” his credibility: “They are trying to block me for giving a deposition!” he said. “They are telling the press I won’t be deposed, but they are filing motions to try to block me They have been hitting the roof.”
Widow Drugged Money Mogul, Aide Says [NYDN]
Earlier: Daily Intel’s Coverage of Seth Tobias
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Gawker Writer Quits After Just One Day of WorkAll is not well in the house of Denton. We hear that just one day after media reporter Richard Morgan began at Gawker.com, he’s already quit. Just yesterday, site owner and (new) managing editor Nick Denton made much ado about the Website’s brave new image for 2008, including a role for Morgan covering the TV networks. But it turns out Denton’s pledge to elevate more serious journalistic work on the blog wasn’t as fulfilled as Morgan had hoped. “I believed what Nick said about making the site more reported, making it more mainstream, and, vainly, thought that’s why he hired me,” Morgan told us over IM just now. The former freelance writer has covered science, media, ideas, and lifestyle for publications like New York (woot woot!), Forbes, the Times, Discover, and Slate. “[Denton] is erratic,” he told us. “There is no vision beyond page views. I was announced as being some kind of television beat writer. And I spent the day reading TV blogs and e-mailing and calling and meeting with TV folks. And Nick would tell me to post, like, something about Us Weekly getting Ashlee Simpson’s engagement wrong. And then he wanted me to do another on Playgirl.” “He is obsessed with the gay mafia,” Morgan added, which is confusing, because we never thought of Denton as being self-obsessed. Big-headed maybe, but in a purely physical way only. “Jesus spent three days in Hell,” Morgan said. “I could only handle one.”
Richard Morgan [Official site]
Update: Denton IMs with a response! “Richard Morgan didn’t so much quit as splutter out. We did manage to get two publishable posts out of him before that happened. I wish him luck at a more leisurely institution.”
Related: Everybody Sucks
Hedge-funders Use Their Skills for Evil, Not Good
So it goes that just as soon as the holidays end, the snowflake-shaped scales fall from our eyes and harsh, cold reality sets in. All that goodwill and cheer just got us fat credit-card bills and a fatter ass, and you know those nice boys from the New York Times? The ones who left their hedge-fund jobs to start Givewell, a charitable organization that rates other charitable organizations, that separates the wheat from the chaff, that keeps them honest, as our dear friend Anderson Cooper would say? Well, they turned out not to be so honest themselves.
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It’s New Year’s Eve. Run for Your Life.Well, folks, we were back for a moment, and now we’re gone again. But never fear, Daily Intel will return with a vengeance on Wednesday (and for good. We have no vacation written into our contracts — we just had to stop last week because our fingers, and souls, were bleeding). Since we know you’ve probably already left work and are going on to whatever horror you’ve got planned for this evening, we’re going to leave you with a bunch of heartfelt wishes for New Year’s Eve. While we would normally recommend getting the hell out of the city on this wretched night, we know you all, like us, are still here, and that you, like us, still allow yourself at your age to be bullied by some latent high-school-era belief that tonight should be the most fun night you have this year, and not only that, but the most fun night of your entire life thus far! We sure hope you won’t be disappointed! Here’s to that! And along with that we’d like to bestow upon you the following well-intentioned toasts…
May you
• Know more than eight other people at the giant open-bar party that you paid $200 to get into.
• Be so entertained by friends and merriment that you don’t have to watch any New Year’s Eve special on any major network, including MTV because God help you if you do.
• Not have to give a midnight kiss to that only semi-cute person you were sandbagging at the beginning of the evening in case no one hotter came around.
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We’re Back!Welcome back to us, that is. Like many of you, we spent most of the last ten days or so in the isolation tank that is our homes, eating butter and sugar by the fistful, drinking, and willfully ignoring the outside world; the only newspaper headline that passed in front of our bleary eyes was one that said, “War Hero Harry Bailey Returns to Bedford Falls.” We were happy, and all was right with the world. That is, until this morning, when we were cruelly deposited back into the cold, cookie-less world we lived in before, blinking, five pounds fatter, and approximately ten times stupider. We thought some of you might be in the same position, so we’ve quickly pulled together a list of what we think might have happened last week while we were napping.
•Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup all got foreign money in their Christmas stockings.
•Serena and Dan started dating in real life, sending our Gossip Girl Reality Index numbers flying off the charts.
•Benazir Bhutto was killed.
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FreshDirect Admits That Something Has Turned SourHey, remember before Christmas when we told you about how FreshDirect was out of many basic products and was having trouble offering prompt delivery times? And how it might have been because of an exodus of illegal immigrant workers after a Homeland Security probe of the company? When we asked a rep for the popular grocery service about the issues, we were cryptically told to “plan ahead and to double-check available times.” Now, though, FreshDirect brass are finally addressing the problem. Regular users with e-mail logins were sent a letter late yesterday telling them that this month, the company is “going to have a harder time meeting your food needs” than usual. The letter explains the labor issues and employee shortages they’ve been battling. Which is all well and good, but if it means we are going to have to carry an entire spiral ham on the M14 bus back from Whole Foods tomorrow, we might just have to move back to the suburbs.
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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.
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PETA Shakes Up Anna WintourThe folks at PETA are really outdoing themselves this year. First, there were the Hairy Kate and Trashley dolls. Now, they’ve reverted to their old standby, Anna Wintour, whom they’ve stuck in a snow globe this holiday season — you know, so you can “shake some sense into her.” Inside the virtual globe, fearsome opera plays as Anna drifts through a fiery netherworld inhabited by workers in Karl Lagerfeld glasses whose job, it seems, is to skin shrieking animals and toss their carcasses into a massive pile for “pelt pusher” Anna’s future coats. It’s creepy, of course, but it’s still kind of fun to shake the globe and watch “Anna” bounce around in the snow. Until you realize that, whenever she falls, her neck bends at a disturbing angle.
PETA’s Holiday Snow Globe [PETA]
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A Very ‘Gossip Girl’ ChristmasOur mind-shatteringly detailed guide to what in this week’s episode of Gossip Girl could pass for real-life New York experience, what seemed kinda fake, and what really put the “Jesus Christ” back in our Christmas.
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We Ask Shoppers Whether They’re Spending Like Good, Patriotic Americans
The Times reported earlier this week that nationwide sales of women’s clothes are “unusually bleak” this holiday season, thanks to the slowing economy and weak fashions. As with most everything else, we wondered whether this “ominous” sign for year-end retail revenue applied to those great American exceptionalists, New Yorkers. And so we put some questions to them — plus a couple of bargain-hunting Euros — as they shopped. —Kendall Herbst
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FreshDirect Snafu Endangers Cookie Plans, LivelihoodsPerhaps, last weekend, you were thinking of making some cookies for your officemates. You were going to give them out this week, before everybody left for the holiday. So you woke up on Saturday morning and you logged on to FreshDirect to order the ingredients. Except, to your surprise, they were out of chocolate chips. And nearly out of flour. And running low on sugar. And then, when you tried to schedule a delivery time, you learned that the soonest they could get your modest ingredients to you was four days from then. You may have been irritated. You may have been outraged. You may have even gone to the grocery store. See, readers, this week there’s something amiss with FreshDirect, and it’s going to get in the way of your food planning. They’re out of many of their staples, and they don’t have any available delivery openings. It may be the holiday season, but it’s practically unbearable. What could be worse?!
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Hello, Kettle? This Is Bonnie. You’re Black.We’re a little confused by Bonnie Fuller’s Huffington Post tirade about Lynne Spears. Just a month ago, Fuller wrote a column on the Website thanking celebrity moms for making real moms feel better about themselves. “Every time that our girl [Britney Spears] cluelessly tries to whitestrip her toddler’s teeth instead of brushing them or runs a red light with the court-appointed monitor and her two sons all strapped in her car,” the tabloid queen wrote then, “working moms across the continent can set back our own personal guilt-meters about our mothering skills.” Aw. Perhaps that’s a little demented, but we can appreciate the sentiment. But today she no longer loves celebrity mothers. She hates them. Specifically, Britney’s mom, Lynne, whom she accuses of not properly teaching her daughters about the birds and the bees, and inadvertently causing her young daughter’s pregnancy. “Were you too busy pushing their careers to ever have this heart-to-heart with them?” the Star editorial director demands. “Were you too tied up lining up meetings with record company executives, TV networks, publicists and tour managers to check on whether you were instilling personal values and self-esteem in your daughters?”
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Happy Holidays, From the Fox Business NetworkWhen we received this card from the Fox Business Network today, our first instinct was to recoil in horror. Lord, have mercy! we said to ourselves (because sometimes the voice in our heads sounds a little like a southern grandmother). That pack of dogs is trying to tear that poor, defenseless Christmas tree limb from limb! Then we realized, They’re not dogs. They’re foxes! For Fox Business News! So does the tree then symbolize CNBC? Wow, that is sick. Look at that long, horrible tongue on that one — Oh. That’s not a tongue. That’s a…bugle? Finally, we got it: The foxes are supposed to be, like angels. Which makes the golden Fox Business logo at the top God? Then, slowly, we opened the card…
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‘New York Weddings’ Wants You to Relive Your Happiest DayHey there, happily married readers. This is a post that’s just for you. Bitter singletons, don’t bother continuing to read. For once, we’re not pandering in your direction. Okay? Cool. Now, you couples: We know that since your wedding, you’ve maybe caught yourself now and then remembering back to that joyous day, with a fond smile on your face. Wow, you think to yourself in those quiet, personal moments. Why the hell did I only get that one day? How come, since then, there hasn’t been a time when everyone devoted all of their attention to you? After all, that was the only time anyone oohed and aahed over a Website full of pictures of just you and your spouse. And lately, nobody has been getting up onstage to read drunken speeches about how pretty you are and how many tequila shots you kept down on your bachelorette party. What the hell? Being married is the hard part. Being engaged was cake.
Here at New York, we have some comfort to offer. We’re looking to shoot and poll married couples (the only restriction is that they be New Yorkers, and we’d love a range of ages) for story in our Weddings issue. We want to (wait for it) hear all about your wedding! We can do the polls via e-mail or in person at the shoot (and, of course, all answers or quotes that may be a little too honest can be kept anonymous!). We’ll probably do the photo shoot in mid-January.
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They Steal Christmas Trees, Don’t They?It’s that time of year again. Pine trees have sprung up along the sidewalks like forests on the concrete and asphalt, and although most of the trees are appraised and bought by happy homemakers, some meet a darker fate. Yes, in the criminal-justice system, there is one seasonal crime that is considered especially heinous: Christmas-Tree Thievery. It’s an issue that plagues sellers, who often work alone or with a partner, with a large, difficult-to-keep-track-of stock, year after year, and dealing with the misappropriation of trees has become as much part of the job as enduring the sleet, snow, and rain. But although they have come up with a few ways to foil potential tree-snatchers (tying together those trees out of the stand operator’s view, or, for the more well-to-do, setting up an elaborate network of surveillance cameras), thievery still abounds. Surprisingly, one operator on Avenue A reported, most trees disappear during the day, although there are occasions of alcohol-emboldened theft that happen after dark. Danny Velastegui, a tree seller who works at a stand on Essex Street, described a scene in which his colleague spied a man, “probably drunk,” helping himself to a pinecone, festively spray-painted and covered in glitter, before hailing a cab. He chased the man to the car, demanding payment, but the thief got away with his prize. For Velastegui and his comrades, for whom trees are their livelihood, tree-stealing is an abomination. “It’s like stealing a cross,” he said, mournfully. “What are you going to do, pray to it?” —Ellen Moynihan
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MoMo Isn’t Exactly the New Seeing-Eye Dog, But He Sure Is CuteYesterday and today, the technorati gathered at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for the Interactive Telecommunications Program’s famed Winter Show. Among the assorted bots and light displays was a decidedly homespun-looking creature, wrapped in a red, fuzzy sweater. MoMo, an egg-shaped, handbag-size creature made of metal and wood, is billed by its creators as a “haptic navigation device.” Imbued with a sort of GPS system, moMo leans in the direction of wherever its user wishes to go, its beating heart speeding up as they get close to their destination. The kinks are still being worked out, as is its purpose — since it won’t stop you from walking directly into buildings, fountains, or the path of careening taxi, so it’s not exactly the sort of thing that will help the blind. Right now, it’s more like a strange companion for solo travelers. “Think of it this way: If you’re lost in the city, oftentimes someone will just point in the right direction and that’s enough to get you where you’re going,” said 28-year-old Che-Wei Wang, who created moMo with fellow student Kristin O’Friel. Knit-capped moMo certainly seemed like friendliest exhibit yesterday at Tisch, where there was also a beautiful if disorienting “Infinity Mirrored Room” and a creature called “Robbie the Racist Robot.” But it doesn’t always seem so benign. “I walk around the streets with it a lot, and I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me if it’s a bomb,” said O’Friel. “So we gave it ears.” — Christine Lagorio