Real estate brokers have been long known as lying, cheating scumbags. We bet it's a real bitch to sell an apartment in this economy. And so, the vulture-brokers have stooped even lower, plying prospective buyers with alcohol—it's the newest new trend, reports the New York Times. It's practically real-estate date-rape! Just 'cause you show up doesn't mean you're, you know, asking for it.
We received a celeb-stalker sighting this morning: "Ivanka Trump—5th avenue and 57th street - Her hair was a mess. Didn't bother to dry it before leaving her place. Other than that, she looked great." Wet hair? We've got news for for 26-year-old Ivanka, whose job with her dad comes with a fancy title (Vice President of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions) and an assistant: According to Megan Hustad's newish book, How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work, she's just broken a cardinal rule for young twentysomethings in the workplace.
Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical kid in the 60s whose relationship with Barack Obama was the single most important issue facing America during the presidential campaign, has finally spoken to the intrepid journalists at Good Morning America (Click to watch a highlight). He kept his mouth shut like a good boy throughout the entire campaign, and now it's time to sell a few books! So Ayers has smartly added a new afterword to his 2001 memoir and reissued it, with this stunning addition: he may have been a "family friend" to Obama, rather than just "a guy in the neighborhood." Grab your guns, patriotic Americans! Ayers told GMA that, yes, he knew Obama from way back, and yes, he was on a board, and all of this is public, and thousands of other Chicagoans knew Obama just as well as he did, and that the entire issue is bullshit, all of which is patently true. Still... It's now clear that Hussein Obama is little more than a Manchurian Candidate who has squirmed his way into the White House only to take direct orders from radical latte-sipping college professor Ayers! Even more clearly, Ayers is a canny businessman for someone so opposed to the capitalist power structure. Instead of selling 35 copies of his book a year to his own students as required reading, he's now poised to sell thousands to various right wing lunatics who will buy it just to "preserve the evidence" of his Obama ties for use in the coming race war. Good for him.
John Mayer shopping at Paragon Sports on Broadway and later leaving Gold Bar in SoHo with Jennifer Aniston (left) ... Jeff Daniels riding around town on a tiny bike ... Miley Cyrus arriving at the Sirius studios in Midtown for an appearance on Howard Stern's show ... Matthew Broderick walking son James to school in the West Village ... Regis Philbin and Don Rickles arriving at ABC's studios ... Famke Janssen crossing the street with her dog ... Leighton Meester hanging out on the Gossip Girl set ... Katie Holmes talking on her cell phone ... and Natalie Portman leaving her trailer on the set of her new film.
How long can the dying print media ride the feel-good Obama victory wave? Forever and ever and ever! Or at least another month, maybe. The effect on newspapers was only one day long (and for as long as they can sell reprints of that issue—six months?), but magazines are just starting to take their share of the American Dream, which is to pimp out our hopeful new black president for every last dollar his likable young ass can generate. Ready to pay extra for a thin, hastily assembled package of glossy photos and sickeningly reverent journalistic pablum? Sure you are!:
Here's a new way to sell real estate in these troubled economic times: Supply your hesitant clients with copious amounts of liquor, and then sit back and watch as inhibitions fade and the offers start to roll in. At least that's what several Manhattan real estate brokers are hoping, a number of whom are now offering up bourbon, wine, and whiskey at condo tours around town. [NYT]
Yesterday Times fashion writer Cathy Horyn gently rebuked Barack Obama's sartorial tastes, implying his "dad jeans" made him look like a sitcom character from the 1990s. ("When he wears them with white sneakers and a windbreaker, one could almost say he had stolen the look from Jerry Seinfeld's character on the television series.") The criticism isn't likely to convince Obama to break out the baggy jeans. As the President-elect made clear a few months ago, he's no fan of the belted-around-the-thighs look style favored by many young black men: "Brothers should pull up their pants," he told MTV viewers in a pre-election appearance. "You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing... Some people might not want to see your underwear. I'm one of them."
It's a grim day for employees of Citigroup as they hear more about the beleaguered bank's plans to cut costs and slash another 10,000 jobs. But Citi director Dick Parsons doesn't want to see anyone to give up hope. He issued a memo to company employees earlier this morning and urged them to "keep the faith." The memo's below.
♦ John Paulson, the hedge funder who testified on the financial meltdown in front of a congressional committee yesterday, is having a meltdown of his own in the Hamptons. Seven months after he put his mansion on the market for $19 million—and after lowering the price to $16.9 million in August—he's dropped it once again. The Southampton spread is now listed at $13.9, which is getting close to the $12.75 million he paid for the property in 2006. [WSJ, PDE]
♦ Murat Ozyegin, the son of Turkish mogul Husnu Ozyegin, paid $6.2 million for a three-bedroom apartment 40 East 66th Street. [NYO]
♦ The 12,000-square-foot Harlem house built by Barnum & Bailey co-founder James Bailey is on the market with a $10 million listing price. [WSJ]
CNN anchor and precious treasure Anderson Cooper was on the Tonight Show last night, and, in between digressions into world affairs, host Jay Leno asked about his well-documented love for the reality show Real Housewives of Atlanta, and specifically for star NeNe Leakes. Shrewd as ever, Leno then teased Cooper for clearly favoring Leakes for her ample bosom, at which point Cooper abruptly changed the subject. When asked at a different point in the conversation about the inevitability of holographic porn, Cooper abruptly brought up making holograms of wrestlers. Leno must have been wondering about that, because wrestlers tend to lack ample bosoms! Click the video icon to unlock the mystery for yourself.
Possible the most poorly-timed project in the history of television will soon be upon us: Joan Rivers is launching a new show in which she talks to very, very rich people about exactly how they got to be so very, very rich. "She knocks on the doors of mega-mansions, and approaches drivers of luxury cars, to ask how the heck they have all that money," explains Mark Burnett, the show's producer and the man responsible for unleashing the Survivor phenomenon. Could there be a worse time for a show like this in, say, the last 100 years or so? Probably not, which explains why even Burnett has trouble explaining the concept's awkward timing. "This show is about the super-rich. And, in this climate, the super-rich get richer." Tell that to billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has lost $30 billion (or $100 million a day) in recent weeks—or Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Sergei Brin, or Larry Page, who have each lost 11-figure sums since the start of the financial crisis.
You would think that after the dismal performances of the contemporary art sales at Christie's and Sotheby's earlier this week, sellers might recognize the need to reduce reserve prices if they were to have any hope of selling anything. At Phillips de Pury & Co.'s auction last night, estimates set before the markers unraveled remained in place, despite the fact that the auction house had tried to persuade people that the figures were now too optimistic. Sellers "had a luxury of eight years of the climbing prices,'' said Phillips senior partner Michael McGinnis. "They were not receptive.''
Fox News anchor (and former CNN hottie) Bill Hemmer turns 44 today. Prince Charles is celebrating his 60th. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turns 54 today. Fashion designer Stefano Gabbana is 46. Reverend Run is 44. Writer P.J. O'Rourke is 61. Actor Josh Duhamel is turning 36. Jonathan Landman of the Times is 56. And Travis Barker, who almost didn't make it to his birthday this year, turns 33 today. Weekend birthdays after the jump.
Even moreso than the Times, Fox News can't seem to let go of trite and clichéd red state-blue state dichotomies, even in the face of Barack Obama's bountiful harvest of "red" electoral votes. Exhibit A: Bill O'Reilly warning Daily Show host Jon Stewart not to visit the "center-right" South on pain of death, and criticizing his "Greenwich Village... crew." We wouldn't be speaking in some kind of code here, would we Bill? And your viewers are used to you referring to them as a bunch of bloodthirsty animals? Ah right, they get the "joke." (Click the thumbnail to watch.)
♦ Things are going from bad to worse for Damon Dash and Rachel Roy: Three months after a bank foreclosed on their two Tribeca condos, Dash's Chevy Tahoe was seized this week after he failed to make the monthly lease payments. Does this mean he's already lost his Maybach? [NYDN]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson were supposedly getting engaged yesterday. Today the relationship is supposedly "heading for choppy waters," because Lindsay wants to "explore her heterosexuality." [The Sun]
♦ How is Lindsay's publicist explaining her client's description of Barack Obama earlier this week as the country's first "colored President"? She says no one knows what LiLo really said, since it was "unintelligible." [MSNBC]
♦ Katie Holmes is supposedly refusing to move back to LA after she's finished on Broadway. Why? Because she doesn't get dragged to as many Scientology events when she's in NYC. [NYDN]
♦ Things may be about to get worse at Citigroup: The Times reports that the bank may be forced to lay off another 25 percent of its workforce as it deals with continued losses, a plunging stock price, and a lack of investor confidence. [NYT]
♦ In a show of faith, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit and three deputies bought a total of 1.3 million shares yesterday after the stock fell below $9 for the first time in 12 years. [Bloomberg]
♦ Is the $700 billion bailout working? Not so much: More than a month and nearly $300 billion into it, "many of the nation's financial arteries seem nearly as sclerotic as they were before. Some of them, in fact, appear to be hardening more." [NYT]
Henry Blodget, the Wall Street analyst returned to journalism, wrote that Michael Lewis' (last?) Portfolio article on short-seller Steve Eisman and the collapse of Wall Street generally is "pure pleasure from start to finish." It's true; it's the sort of piece that will keep you up late, assuming you're remotely interested in the ongoing collapse of the modern financial system. But the article's most compelling section deals not so much with finance as with the eternal tension between writer and subject, i.e. fucking over your sources. '
