· Polanski lining up star witnesses for libel suit against Vanity Fair [NYDN]
· CAA junior fired after email gossip [Page Six]
· Matt McAuley of A.R.E. Weapons berates Voice journalist [Page Six]
· Posh Spice tried to make up with her former bandmate when they overlapped at Soho House [Intelligencer]
It's no real challenge to annoy Vincent Gallo, the filmmaker. He blew up after Roger Ebert gave his increasingly self-indulgent work a bad review, and again last week because an obscure Brooklyn band dissed him in their lyrics. From a former friend of Gallo, a suggestion for his enemies: "If you want to piss him off, try referring to him as Vinnie. That's what real Italians named Vincent are usually called."
A New York Times reporter, testing the wireless network at Bryant Park, challenges security consultant Gary Morse to hack remotely into his laptop. "Firing it up, I start Microsoft Outlook, connect to the Bryant Park network, agree to the terms and conditions, including agreeing to forbear from hacking, and start to download my mail. Morse is watching the back and forth between my laptop and the network. In under a minute, he pulls up a screen that contains my e-mail server, user name and password. It was that easy." Meanwhile, a new wireless zone has opened in the East Village. Access is free from most rooftops between Avenues A and B, from 2nd Street to 10th.
Walk-By Hacking [NYT Magazine]
EVill Net
A Columbia student writes in with some background on Julia Stiles' boyfriend, spotted with the actress at Pianos last night. "His name is John Mays and he will be a senior this next year (same year as Julia) at Columbia. He is in the Sigma Nu frat." He's in a band called Parallax, and has put up some tracks on his Columbia web page.
Ooh Parallax, Ooh! [Columbia.edu]
· I spotted Steve Buscemi on his way backstage at the Elvis Costello show at Summerstage on Friday night. He's apparently quite the fan - I hear he shows up every time Elvis plays in New York. Also spotted: Kate Hudson up near the front cheering for her husband, who was the (really dreadful...oops, did I say that out loud?) opening act.
· Saw Giselle at MAC store in Soho on Saturday afternoon. She was at the counter... looking stunning of course!
· Last night at the Tinkle comedy show at Pianos: Janeane Garofalo sporting a bleach-blond she-mullet (seriously), Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney checking out musical guest The Aislers Set, and Julia Stiles holding hands with a tall, lanky faux-indie looking dude. I say 'faux' because he was wearing sandals, so come on...
· Sunday: Hilary Swank, wearing sweatpants, flip-flips and a big t-shirt, crossing Christopher Street at Hudson, in the company of two men. Rather sloppy.
· Saturday: At the Chelsea flea markets, a seemingly not-entirely-sober Parker Posey pulling her Strokes-looking boyfriend (don't they all?) off of a piano he was playing. You had to see what she was wearing—badly streaked hair in a banana clip, dirty yellow-lensed sunglasses and some kind of ill-fitting mumu/pant/jumper thing. Saying she may not have been sober is being very kind.
I wrote an item about Brooklyn band Wide Right's Vincent Gallo song the other day for Page Six (freelance gig) and Gallo wasn't too happy about it. He left a message on voice mail: "It's Vincent Gallo. Ri-chard John-son goes traveling...and this is the best you guys can come up with? An unknown looooser band from Brooklyn's insults about a guy who's made oooooone or twoooo indie films and hasn't been in New York in six months. Remember New York when it was good? And Page Six was good? You guys should stick to your gossip about parties in the Hamptons or somethingwhatever crap you guys write about. And can't you use photos that look a little like the people you're gossiping about? [Reading slowly] A Brooklyn band...named Wide Right...has a gripe...with Gallo. Wow. That's where we are."
The hipster who's auctioning off his network of coolness on Friendster writes to explain himself: "if you bid and win then i will be able to hip you to the extreme levels of coolness of which you have only dreamed. i am in the center of LA HIP
whirlwind nonsense. ask around, find out who i am, come to LA and meet me. believe that i know what words come from which week or month and exactly when they ended. try checking out some of the stuff that you are trying to be hipper than. acting like your over something that just started last week is a long standing tradition in LA. in fact we might say its passe', very last year. interest is the new apathy. feel free to use anything i say to you, i'm sure its much easier to use others material than to have to say this is stupid over and over again all day long." No, no, no, my friend (or my friendster, as it were.) New York has the ultimate advantage in acting like we're over something that just started last week. We control the media industry. You don't know it's cool until we tell you it's cool. But I do like "interest is the new apathy."
Here's the text of the letter mentioned below that [A.R.E. Weapons band member and boyfriend of Chloe Sevigny] Matt Mcauley sent Village Voice reporter Tricia Romano after she wrote about getting whacked in the head with a microphone stand at one of their concerts: [The letter was handwritten and all in caps. Romano denies that it was written in crayon.]
Excerpts from a recent interview (not online yet) with New York hipster band A.R.E. Weapons (known less, perhaps, for their music than the fact that frontman Paul is the brother of Chloe Sevigny and band member Matt Mcauley dates her):
A reader writes, "Liz Smith references 'scurrilous and comic material appearing against [Kennedy biographer Ed] Klein on the Internet ... beyond description' in Wednesday's NY Post (7/9/03) that the 'loyal faction for John and Carolyn' has been passing around." I didn't link to the Liz Smith item originally (I'm generally boycotting stories about Kennedys because, well, it's 2003 and no one gives a shit anymore) but I'll make an exception here, because this is apparently what's being passed around. An excerpt: "'Ed had an unusual taste for nose pleghm', one close friend who asked to remain anonymous revealed. 'He used to greet people at the door of his home with outstretched index finger and insist he have a go at each nostril. Then he would disappear into his study, sometimes for hours, two fingers digging furiously in his own nose with his collection of naked girl scout pictures spread out on the floor.'" I don't think Klein has any reason to feel threatened by that.
Ed Klein, we hardly knew ye! [TeresaDiFalco]
Some poor misguided hipster is auctioning off his Friendster network on eBay. "Be a part my circle on friendster. the very coolest and most exclusive group of peeps inline anywhere," he writes. [Ed.Dude. Like, no one says "peeps" anymore. "Peeps" is, like, so totally over.] This gives new meaning to the phrase "selling out your friends." Current bid: $8.01.
Friendster network coolest guy association [eBay]
The Morning News' Clay Risen complains that American Idol also-ran Clay Aiken has given a bad name to Guys Named Clay. " If I'm lucky, he'll sink into obscurity; if the gods hate me, something really bad will happen. He ll get caught in delicto with a seal, or we'll learn that his 'body parts' are mostly silicone...He'll turn to drugs, or get a bad haircut, or release a duet with Britney Spears. Or worse, at least in the celebrity cosmology, he'll burn out ingloriously, a la New Kids on the Block, desperately remaking his image with each album until he becomes a parody of himself...I might as well have been named Milli Vanilli Risen."
Waiting for Aiken [TMN]
· Ashton Kutcher says the London Evening Standard made up a quote saying Demi Moore "was the hottest actress in Hollywood when I was growing up. Now I'm [bleeping] her," and is demanding a retraction. West Village drag bar Bar d'O has banned its namesake, Bridget Bardot, for making homophobic remarks in her memoir. [NY Daily News]
· Uber-flack Peggy Siegal advised her ex-boyfriend, Bruce Colley, to deny his affair with Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Siegal protests, "What was he going to doadmit it to the newspapers?" [Page Six]
· Tara Reid complained to an LA radio show that the tabloids treat her unfairly. "It's not like I'm dancing on tables or getting kicked out of clubs or chugging down shots," she said, rather unbelievably. I'm at Page Six for a few days while Richard Johnson's out of town, so I asked the show's producer if Reid was sober when she said that. Producer's response: "Well, it was 8AM when we spoke with her... but I don't know." [Page Six]
· The Daily News' Joanna Molloy (reportedly a candidate for the editor position at Star magazine) on ex-US Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller, who was recently hired by Star parent company American Media: "What Bonnie is going to do with Star magazine will be the biggest transformation in the media since Greta von Susteren redid her face." [Page Six]
· Jayson Blair's ex-girlfriend is trying to get a book deal. [Page Six]
· Michael Jackson compares self to Jesus Christ: "'I'm not being a braggadocio or anything like that - but you know you're on top when they start throwing arrows at you. Even Jesus was crucified. People who bring light into the world, from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King to Jesus Christ, even myself." [Liz Smith]
Jared Paul Stern, surveying the havoc wreaked by Brits in the city (Soho House, Posh 'n' Becks, etc) suggests preventative measures: "How 'bout repealing the cabaret laws but not for Brits (who can't dance anyway). Or charging them double for things like taxis and drinks at Da Silvano. Then maybe Kansas won't look so rosy."
To arms! To arms! The British are here! [NY Post]
· Moby, scruffy & annoying, and Michael "soy bomb" Portnoy (does he count?) at the record release party for Fannypack ("Cameltoe") at the Tribeca Grand.
· They were filming Sex and the City in Soho House yesterday (mostly on the roof). Apparently one of the storylines in an upcoming episode is the old women trying to get in without a member on hand. By the way, the two girls with the Stroke (although I had no idea he was one until i read gawker) were lovely.
· Okay, it's not exactly a Graydon-spotting, or even a James Truman-spotting, but Felix [the Conde Nast grill guy] is working the tossed salad station in the CNP cafeteria today. He made my salad. It approaches the best custom-tossed salad I've ever had, and if it were up to me, I think he's ready to go back to the grill.
The sequence of events: The North Sea fire department decides to make a float in the shape of Lizzie Grubman's Mercedes Benz SUV for the Fourth of July parade that reportedly had a "mock corpse" dragging behind it. Driver of said float runs over a child and breaks the boy's legand keeps going. The boy's family is considering suing. The lawyer they hired also represented one of Lizzie Grubman's Conscience Point victims.
Parade route accident breaks boy's leg in Southampton [Southampton Press]
Speaking of "tracing the lifted quotes," the WSJ is reporting that Bob Dylan lifted lyrics from Japanese writer Junichi Saga for his most recent album, "Love and Theft." Saga says he's happy about it: "Please say hello to Bob Dylan for me because I am very flattered and very happy to hear this news."
Bob Dylan lift lines from Dr. Saga? [WSJ]
