So long, Soledad O'Brien. The CNN correspondent, her banker hubby Charles "Brad" Raymond, and their ridiculously adorable brood of four kids are leaving their West 24th Street co-op. They're asking $4.6 million for the 4,000 square foot space, which features a 42-foot-long living room and which underwent exhaustive renovation to make it more kid-friendly. Photos follow after the jump...
Turns out Mike Bloomberg isn't so thrilled with former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's decision to publish a expose on his former employer. "I just hopefully hire people who are a little more responsible," he told reporters. "I've always thought that when you work for somebody, you have an obligation to not write a tell-all book afterwards." So will Ed Skyler emerge in 2009 with a dramatic, behind-the-scenes account of Bloomberg's decision to ban trans fat? Will Patti Harris open the floodgates on Mike's highly contentious implementation of 311? Aside from the fact that there doesn't appear to be all that much juicy material (although we would like to know which one of his advisors is responsible for dispensing notoriously unfortunate fashion advice), the mayor has one thing going for him that George Bush didn't:
Thinking about giving permission to your 16-year-old to throw a party at your home in Water Mill this weekend? You might want to take a lesson from Jodie Hudson, who organized a little event at her parents $6.8 million villa in Marbella last week and promoted it as the "party of the year" on Facebook. Some 400 randoms turned up and transformed the stately mansion into an "uninhabitable...war zone." A TV and a dozen pieces of furniture wound up at the bottom of the pool, much of her mom's jewelry and wardrobe disappeared, and although the home had been up for sale, it's since been yanked from the market. Just a friendly reminder to make sure your homeowners policy covers, like, human urine on your hand-carved ceilings before you head off on vacation and leave your spoiled brat with the keys to the kingdom.
Australian mactress Gemma Ward, she of the doe eyes, long limbs, and tragically dead boyfriend, may actually have her acting career boosted by The Strangers, opening today. The scary movie, in which she stars with Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (remember him?), is a New York Times critics' pick. [NYT]
Are you an extremely plugged-in Jewish business magnate whose newborn son needs his foreskin removed stat? Pull the right strings and you may be able to retain the mohel services of Lev Leviev, the Uzbekistan-born diamond/real estate/chemicals baron who clocked in as Forbes' 210th richest person in the world this year. The scalpel-brandishing billionaire, who insanely opted to circumcise his first son himself despite never having performed a circumcision before, is now apparently open to snipping others' kids: this Sunday he'll be in town to perform a bris on the son of Zina Sapir, the daughter of real estate mogul Tamir Sapir, and Rotem Rosen, the CEO of Leviev's holding company Africa Israel. In addition to currying favor with Leviev, the Sapir-Rosens will enjoy the added benefit of saving a little scratch: Leviev's doing the deed pro bono whereas the average bris runs about $350. Given all the woes besetting the Sapir family's Trump Soho development, every penny helps.
Daniel Benedict, the overly-tanned 'mocialite, companion of Andrew Saffir, and business partner of Marjorie Gubelmann, turns 37 today. (Looking for a gift? A Paul Labrecque Healthy Glow session should do the trick.) Other birthdays: Literary agent Mort Janklow turns 78 today. Burlesque dancer Julie Atlas Muz is 35. Reclusive billionaire Ira Rennert turns 74 tomorrow.
That recession that only seemed to be affecting homeowners in places like Ft. Lauderdale and Tucson seems to have arrived in New York—the local rich aren't splurging on luxury goods as recklessly as in fiscal quarters past. Today the Sun lists a few examples of how moneyed New Yorkers are exhibiting ominious frugality: Sales at local Ferrari dealerships are sagging; cosmetic surgery patients are opting for relatively bargain-basement procedures like lipo in lieu of pricier ones like facelifts; and high-end caterer Serena Bass confesses that clients who once sprang for cornucopia-like cheese tables with 10 choices are now requesting lonely cheese tables with only two choices. Even worse is the news that certain luxury items have been pricier. The price of Beluga caviar is at a record high, which means frugal trophy wives may just be forced to choose between a facelift or a $12,000 1kg tin at Caviar Russe!
Everyone wants to be on Gossip Girl: after cameos from Lisa Loeb and (an amusingly wooden) Lydia Hearst, now Nicole Richie has reportedly signed on for a guest appearance. While she's surely a little old for a school uniform, the vaguely reformed wild child has a lot in common with Ed Westwick, aka Chuck Bass. The 20-year-old Brit actor, when not posting saucy pictures of himself and his friends on the internet, has been seen carousing around town with Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.
Fatwa'd author Salman Rushdie, whose new novel The Enchantress of Florence came out this week, is eager to let everyone know that contrary to media gossip, he hasn't been playing the field since his divorce from Padma Lakshmi. He tells Patricia Cohen in the New York Times: "All the people I've been associated with" in such reports "are not true...I'm totally eligible, single and available." Perhaps this explains his recent penchant for turning up on celluloid where you'd least expect him, like as Helen Hunt's ob-gyn in her new movie There She Found Me, and—even ickier—a neck-nuzzler in Scarlett Johansson's pop video.
Martha Stewart continues to demonstrate her flair for attracting the authorities. This past holiday weekend she and her billionaire boy toy, Charles Simonyi, were taking a spin in Skylands II, her boat, off the coast of the domestic doyenne's getaway property in Seal Harbor, Maine. A few minutes into the excursion, the Coast Guard showed up for a spot inspection of the vessel! It no doubt triggered painful flashbacks of raids of yore for Martha, but all in all it was a pretty innocuous affair: Stewart's boat was forced to dock, a few guys from the U.S. Coast Guard made sure the safety equipment and whatnot was up to code, and then the Stewart-Simonyi loveboat was allowed back on its way. If anything, Martha actually seemed to take pleasure in the USCG's boarding of her pleasure craft—she pruriently notes that the Coast Guard dudes were "handsome" and "strong."
Poor Dina Matos McGreevey. Since her split from "gay American" Jim McGreevey, New Jersey's former first lady has gone from buying designer duds at Neiman Marcus to shopping the sales rack at T.J. Maxx and the Gap. And not only has Dina had to give up her private chef and security detail, she says she now has to do her laundry at her parents' house because she can't afford a washer and dryer, and their six-year-old has to sleep in a baby crib because Dina didn't have the scratch to buy a bed. Looks like Les Miserables has been revived in Springfield, NJ! Things are going to get even tougher this week when Dina loses her job as an administrator because the hospital she works at is shutting down. But she's hoping a judge feels her pains and awards her the $51,000 a month she's been seeking as part of a divorce settlement. Who knows, by the end of summer, she might finally be able to pick up some bedsheets so poor little Jacqueline Matos McGreevey doesn't have to sleep on a bare mattress.
Things are looking up for publisher Nan Talese: A couple of weeks after James Frey shifted more of the blame for the Million Little Pieces brouhaha onto her namesake imprint, Leon Neyfakh reports that authors including Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer may be joining her list, following their previous editor Janet Silver's new role as Talese's editor-at-large. [Observer]
A 14-year long custody battle between the uber-wealthy king of kitsch and his former wife La Cicciolina, the peroxided blonde ex-porn star and ex-politician, has finally reached a climax. The couple's 16-year-old son, Ludwig, lives in Italy with his mother, who claimed in court in March that Koons owed her $2.3 million in child support. He, however, insists that he's always been denied access to Ludwig, and Cicciolina—real name Ilona Staller—may go to prison this week if a court agrees. Meanwhile, a Jeff Koons "Balloon Flower" sculpture is expected to fetch more than $23 million when it goes to auction at Christie's in London on June 30th.
A UK court has formally charged violent criminal-slash-supermodel Naomi Campbell with assaulting two police officers during one of her trademark hissy fits on an airplane. If convicted, the maximum punishment she faces is six months in jail, where presumably she'll be kept in solitary confinement for the safety of other prisoners. [AP]
In the UK Times, a journalist leads the puff piece into new depths with a profile of Ivanka Trump, the "vice president of real estate development and acquisitions" at the family company. Donald's daughter, as you'd imagine, has some valuable advice for women in the workplace. You might want to take notes.
