Tina Brown Thinks Bubba Will Recalibrate; Peter Hermann Thinks It’s Best to Watch His Sex Scenes in PrivateWhen we caught up with Tina Brown at last night’s Atlantic dinner and State of the Union–viewing session, we were curious as to what she thinks about Hillary Clinton lately. The senator, after all, is going to be one of the subjects of Brown’s just-announced book, The Clinton Chronicles. “I think [her campaign so far] is a complete high-wire, absolutely astonishing, ever-changing drama,” Brown explained. “I think a lot of it, too, is a construct as well. Whenever I see so-called Bill Clinton eruptions, they’re not eruptions at all.” Man, she’s already dissecting them like fetal pigs! Awesome. “I think that he will definitely recalibrate,” Brown added. “I think you will probably see less of him in the next two weeks.” Elsewhere at the party, Law & Order: SVU heroine Mariska Hargitay lounged with her husband, Peter Hermann, one of the male stars of Cashmere Mafia. So, Peter, what does Mariska think of your steamy Cashmere sex scenes? “We go do other things when it’s on, and then I rewind the DVR and watch them in private,” Hermann explained carefully. “Then we talk it through and let it all subside a little bit and then we move on.” He laughed then and showed his megawatt smile (Mariska has one, too, but she’s not allowed to show it on TV). “We’re working through it.” Good for them, but too bad for us. How great would it be if Mariska kicked down a studio door and shoved a 9mm in Miranda Otto’s face? We love it when she does that. —Jada Yuan
Get more dirt from Andy Borowitz, Bronson van Wyck, and Rick Lazio at our complete coverage of the Atlantic’s State of the Union Dinner.
Earlier: Tina Brown to Publish a New ‘Chronicles’
in other news
More Gruesome Details From the Trump SohoA little bit more news has come out today about yesterday’s collapse at the Trump Soho. Apparently it was not a bucket swinging into the scaffolding, as we and others reported yesterday, that caused the accident. Rather, a wooden mold in which a worker was tamping down concrete collapsed, and the wet concrete caused the worker to fall 42 stories to his death. Though the name of the worker, who was decapitated, according to the Times, has not been officially released, the Post is still flagrantly identifying him as Yuri. The Daily News points out that the company in charge of the site, Bovis Lend Lease, was also the company whose violations at the Deutsche Bank building led to a fire that killed two firefighters last year, and notes that their projects have “a history of worker injuries and deaths and objects hitting passersby.” Meanwhile, the Times digs up the fact that Joseph Fama, one of the owners of the DiFama Concrete Company of Brooklyn, the subcontractor hired by Bovis, who employed the deceased and the other workers, has been in jail since 2004 for racketeering and extortion, and according to federal authorities is an associate of the Lucchese crime family. And still, no one has heard from the Family Trump.
Construction Worker Dies in 42 Story Fall in SoHo [NYT]
Worker plunges to death at Trump site [NYDN]
Trump Horror [NYP]
party lines
Philip Seymour Hoffman Gets Schooled by Jeremy SistoHe may have an Oscar, but Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t feeling too sure of his acting ability at the LAByrinth Theater Company’s annual Celebrity Charades event last night. “I don’t know,” he said early on. “We won last year, but we lost the year before last. And we’re missing Justin Theroux tonight. He’s a very important fellow.” Hoffman had reason to worry. His team — Billy Crudup, John Ortiz, Andre Royo, Yul Vasquez, and Craig “muMs” Grant — was weak, and the other teams knew it. “Phil’s team is off,” Jeremy Sisto whispered after they failed to recognize Cabaret. “They’re not focused. They’re not as competitive.” Sisto, on the other hand, was prepared.
in other news
Giuliani Gains Access to City’s Most ‘Exclusive’ Club!The Harmonie Club: Founded in 1852 by Jews after Christian clubs would not let them join, it’s lately been hitting headlines because of its own exclusivity. MTA chief Dale Hemmerdinger was pressured by black and Latino politicians to quit the club (he was a former president) before taking on his post this month. The membership of Bernard Spitzer, father of Eliot, has been much discussed of late, as has Barack Obama’s decision to cancel a fund-raiser there earlier this year. Mayor Bloomberg himself canceled his membership before taking office, citing their lack of diversity as his main complaint. So it’s perhaps an off choice of location for Rudy Giuliani’s Republican Jewish fund-raiser today, as the Daily News’s Daily Politics blog reports. The campaign was hush-hush about it, so maybe they were hoping no one would notice. It might also be the case that he agrees with Ed Koch and thinks the club has every right to exclude non-Jews. Or maybe he just doesn’t care what New Yorkers think of him anymore, unless they’re giving him money. Our secret theory is that he was confused and thought the Harmonie Club was only keeping out straight people. Just because of, you know, the name.
Giuliani at the Harmonie? [NYDN]
neighborhood watch
Bushwick: Now With Ice Caves!Bedford-Stuyvesant: Wanna know if your Bed-Stuy block is respectable? Check to see if FreshDirect delivers there. [Bed Stuy Blog]
Bushwick: If you rent a subterranean room in the Lair, you won’t get a window, but you will enjoy “the only indoor ice cave that Bushwick has ever seen.” Sounds like breaking even to us. [Curbed]
Ditmas Park: All those serious-looking South Asians outside P.S. 139 the other day? They were there for local elections for the Chittagong Association, which sends disaster relief to folks back home in Bangladesh. Duh! [Ditmas Park Blog]
early and often
Anti-Clinton Video: The New ‘Dick in a Box’?When we heard that an anti-Clinton video is racking up Dick in a Box–type numbers in online views (1.4 million on GoogleVideo, 350,000 on YouTube), we figured that the author, Peter Paul, had gotten his hands on photos of Hillary high-fiving Bill over Vernon Jordan’s corpse or personally strangling Socks. Imagine our disappointment when the incriminating clip turned out to be a long, whiny hate letter from a spurned supporter: a video equivalent of what Jezebel.com terms a Crap Email From a Dude.
party lines
The Lady Is a TrumpIvana Trump may be about to change her name to Rubicondi, but she’s still got that Trump-family braggadocio. When we asked her if she’d ever seen a yacht as fabulous as Angel Ball host Denise Rich’s 6,000-foot My Lady Joy, Ivana smiled sweetly and answered in true Trumpian style. “Well, you know, the most unbelievable yacht was actually Trump Princess,” she said, without missing a beat. “It was previously owned by [Saudi arms dealer] Adnan Khashoggi, then he sold it to the Sultan of Brunei. Then we bought it from Sultana de Brunei” [Ed.: Dude, I think a “sultana” is a kind of raisin.] [BM: What I am I supposed to do? That’s what she said.] “then Donald sold it to the banks when he was in certain financial difficulties at a certain time.” That, of course, was years ago, so Ivana brought us up to date. “And then, Ivana, which is my yacht, is also spectacular,” she added. Obviously! —Bennett Marcus
Get hair coloring tips from Joss Stone and accessories advice from Don King at our complete coverage of the 2007 Angel Ball.
gossipmonger
Cisco Adler Plops Down Near Another Hot BlondeA-Rod and ur-agent Scott Boras dined at Nello’s. Eva Mendes hopped in the wrong limo. New York’s First Lady Silda Wall Spitzer told attendees of a More-magazine convention that the best advice she ever got was “either piss or get off the pot.” Cisco Adler and Lydia Hearst were cozy at Bungalow 8. Jann Wenner was widely mocked at the 30th reunion party of the Rolling Stone staff from 1977 (everyone gave him the finger in the group photo, and no one drank the Champagne he sent). Joaquin Phoenix hung up on a reporter from Time Out after she asked him what he did to prepare for his roles. Single-again Nick Cannon hung out with a bunch of beauty-pageant queens at Tenjune.
company town
Goldman Defies Credit CrunchFINANCE
• Credit crunch, what credit crunch? Goldman’s record profits, which involved somehow shorting the mortgage market, have left a bonus pool of $17 billion, even larger than last year’s record. [WSJ, DealBreaker]
• The surge in the markets aside, the Fed rate-cut had one immediate bad effect: The Canadian dollar, a.k.a. the Loonie, pulled even with U.S. greenbacks for the first time since 1976. The euro also pushed past $1.40, another record. [NYP]
• It’s tough out there for a billionaire: While sixty-four New Yorkers made Forbes’s list of the 400 richest Americans, eighty-two Americans failed to make it with their paltry billion dollars. [AP]
company town
Did You Hear the One About the iPhone Nano?FINANCE
• A JP Morgan analyst got canned for writing a report about a fictional Apple product, the iPhone Nano. [Apple 2.0 via DealBreaker]
• Using the screen name Rahodeb, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey posted on Yahoo Finance bulletin boards to bash competitor Wild Oats. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• The SEC tries to reclaim authority over hedge funds by writing rules allowing the agency to sue for misleading investors. [Bloomberg]
in other news
Starting Next Week, Bloomberg Would Like You to Quiet Down, Too
These days you’ll find a Chase branch, not kids with boom boxes, on nearly every corner of the city, but, even so, New York’s not exactly a quiet town: There’ll always be horn-honking, engine-revving, and your downstairs neighbor’s death-metal band practice. But don’t be surprised if all those irritants become a bit more muted next week. Bloomberg’s new noise regulations take effect July 1. Unlike Hizzoner’s smoking and trans-fat bans, the 2005 noise-ordinance tweak attracted surprisingly little, well, noise. The tabloids did decry the supposed silencing of Mr. Softee trucks — they will now be allowed to blast their jingle only while on the move — but even that got only limited traction (mostly because everyone hates the damned jingle).
party lines
Arts Club Honors Heatherette — But Why?
What was Heatherette duo Richie Rich and Traver Raines doing being honored by the stuffy old National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South last week? To be honest, no one was quite sure. “I was so taken aback when they called me,” Rich said, looking around him. “It’s like going to Naomi Campbell’s house. I was like, ‘Wow. I’m actually doing something with myself.’” Club president O. Aldon James Jr. explained the rationale: The club wants to be hipper. “They do not need this award,” James said. “Our award needs them.” But were the risqué fashion designers — Heatherette recently brought buttless pants to the runway — the best pick for an institution so unfashionable as to have an old-style dress code? “Oleg Cassini would protest that,” James indignantly replied. “He was a member for 40 years!”
sex diaries
The Peripatetic Hot Young Thing Once a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Peripatetic Hot Young Thing: female, 20, Soho, food-manufacturing administrator, straight.
DAY ONE
Midnight: Party at my house.
1:00 a.m.: Roommate’s friend tries to hook up with me, as he generally does when he’s drunk.
2:00 a.m.: Matt arrives. Two weeks ago I was totally crushing on him and we still have that awkward sexual energy.
3:00 a.m.: We leave together to visit a friend in Brooklyn.
7:00 a.m.: He begs me to stay out longer and come over, but I decide to be a responsible adult and come home.
ByArianne Cohen
intel
Bring Me the Head of Boris Yeltsin!If your May Day plans include buying a traditional nesting doll of your favorite first democratically elected Russian leader, you might be out of luck. A week after Boris Yeltsin’s death, we had a hard time locating a matryoshka doll of red-faced former president anywhere in the city. Andre Abramov, the Moscow-born owner of Kalinka Gifts in Brighton Beach, says the items were once wildly popular but he’s now out of stock. “We hope to get more,” he added, hopefully. At Manhattan Russian Souvenirs on East 14th Street, there’s only a single, large matryoshka of Yeltsin available — it’s selling for $300. (Alex, the grizzled owner, a Leningrad native who wouldn’t give his last name, has a smaller, empty Yeltsin nesting doll, but he says it’s not for sale because it’s going in his front window amid Soviet hats, old medals, and more traditional peasant-style nesting dolls.) Your best bet might be N.F. Hardware Store on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea. They’ve got a kitschy version that starts with Vladimir Putin, nests its way past Boris Nikolaevich, and ends with Stalin and Trotsky inside. All for just $49.99. —Mary Reinholz
CORRECTION: This item originally stated that Manhattan Russian Souvenirs had no matryoshkas of Yeltsin for sale; that’s incorrect.
party town
They’ve Come So Far Since Benny Hill• Hot Fuzz premiere. Walter Reade Theatre, 140 W. 65th St., nr. Broadway, 7:15 p.m. Hot Fuzz is brought to you by the folks who made the Will Arnett–narrated Don’t portion of Grindhouse’s fake-trailer interlude, and thus we endorse Hot Fuzz despite not knowing anything about it. The always-entertaining Kevin Smith will be on hand to interview director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg, who co-wrote the film.
neighborhood watch
Times Square Dirty Like the Old DaysBrooklyn Heights: Local resident and restaurant owner Gianluca Martorelli launches mag and Website compiling area’s eateries. [Ready to Order Guide via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chelsea: Della Valle Bernheimer’s futuristically fabulous High Line–snuggling 245 Tenth Avenue development is ready for takers, complete with snazzy Website. [245 Tenth Avenue via Curbed]
Coney Island: New mailers going out to residents talk up the “future of Coney Island” but neglect to mention high rises or Thor Equities. [Gowanus Lounge]
Midtown: Are Mickey and pals staging an offensive old-time minstrel show atop the Disney Store entrance … or do they just need a scrubbing? [Englishman in New York]
Park Slope: Let there be light! Half a mil earmarked so that everything is (better) illuminated at Grand Army Plaza. [Dope on the Slope]
Times Square: Hotel Carter and New York Inn, two of the cheapest stays in the city, also among Top 10 Dirtiest Hotels in the country. Old Times Square lives! [Trip Advisor via NewYorkology]
video look book
Tess Lindgren Bought Her Jacket in Northern Minnesota
Tess Lindgren is a Parsons student who lives on Union Square, listens to “strange avant-garde music,” and makes most of her own clothes. “Someone told me,” she says, “that how I look every day, I looked like I was attacked by my wardrobe.” She’s this week’s Video Look Book.
Tess Lindgren [Video Look Book]