The Bloomberg administration is rethinking laws that dictate where clubgoers can and cannot dance, and considering abolishing the dancing restrictions completely. [Compensation for the smoking ban?] This will break (Lotus owner and New York Night Life Association President) David Rabin's little black heart. Rabin says he's concerned about increased regulatory power but has used the cabaret laws against competitors in the past by informing police of dancing violations. Then again, the Bloomberg administration seems to have a determined "no fun" policy, so it'll probably be regulated dancingthe "twist" is fine, but anything invented between 1981 and 1993 is strictly forbidden.
After 77 years, cabaret laws face rewrite [NYT]

· Best restaurant websites
· New York City skyscraper page [via Muxway]
· Ellis Island immigration records database [via Ultrasparky]

Paris Hilton, quoted in Entertainment Weekly's "It List" issue: [Role model] "Cameron Diaz. She's, like, one of the prettiest actresses, and yet she's hysterical. I like when a pretty girl can be funny." [Best job] "I never had a job."
Paris Hilton [EW]

The Post's take on week two of the NYT under Lelyveld: "on Friday they had a front page picture about a weather cloud. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ... And they are even covering Albany on Page One. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..." ("ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" is the technical term for "ZZZZZzzzzzzzz")
Seems like old times at the NY Times [Post]

· Spotted at Soho House - Nicole Kidman and Lenny Kravitz - CANOODLING! Saturday night. Sixth floor, table in the back. They came in together around 1:30ish-2 and left together an hour later.
· Thursday - "I saw Luke Wilson at Cafe Habana on Prince/ Elizabeth. He brushed past our table to use the restroom in the back. He looked very tan."
· I saw the lovely Anna Wintour yesterday having brunch at Balthazar. She was sitting with 2 very handsome men in one of the back booths. I must admit she looked great, she wasn't even wearing her signature glasses! It pained me to notice that even wearing a buttoned up sweater and jeans she looked better than I do in my Saturday night best

· Police are now raiding art gallery receptions and ticketing people standing outside. [Page Six]
· CNN's Tucker Carlson said he'd eat his shoes if Hillary Clinton's book sold more than a million copies. So far she's sold 600,000. [Page Six]
· Colin Farrell on America: "Quite a [bleep]ed up place." On tabloids: "Couldn't give a [bleep]." Fame: "[Bleep]ing lovely." And American women: "They [bleep]ing wax." [Page Six]
· Liz Smith, after reading the Devil Wears Prada, warns Si Newhouse that perhaps Conde Nast employees are abusing their expense accounts. (Surely not.) [Liz Smith]
· Amanda Hearst, great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, is the newest celeb/socialite-turned-model. [NY Daily News]
· Nicole Kidman spotted canoodling with Jude Law at Soho House. [Intelligencer]

This week on Craig's List: blow job techniques, New Zealanders in New York, and where to buy absinthe. Says roundup author Amy Blair, "This weekend I'm drinking some absinthe and blowing a kiwi."
Week in Craig: how not to bite the big one [BlackTable]

· Forbes top 100 celebrities list

· A gallery of Harrison Ford's finger [via Muxway]

· Orange alert jewelry [via BoingBoing]

Blogger Bunsen has produced the missing chapter from Hillary Clinton's autobiography: "Bill just looked me in the eyes across our bed, and for a moment I remembered that aura of little-boy sexiness that had first drawn me to him all those years ago at Yale Law School. And then I remembered that he'd let That Fat Intern suck him off under his desk while attending to matters of national importance, in clear violation of the fellatio embargo we'd negotiated as my twentieth anniversary present."
Hillary Clinton's Living History: the lost chapter [Bob from Accounting]

"Done in pen, again: more poems by New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz,"
courtesy of McSweeney's.
When an insult demands I seek vengeance
Or I'm pushed into venting my spleen,
I hand down a punitive sentence
On my page in the Times Magazine...

Indiewire's Brandon Judell covers Mark Brian Smith's film, "Overnight," which is described as "an unflinching look at an obnoxious young man, Troy Duffy, a bartender whose world comes apart when [Miramax chief] Harvey Weinstein decides to make his screenplay, 'Boondock Saints,' and then not make it." "In the current cut, Sundance's Geoff Gilmore is said, due to Harvey's insistence, to reject the film. Then in fear of Harvey's wrath, the rest of the Hollywood studios supposedly refuse to distribute the picture. One wonders who'll be brave enough to distribute this feisty doc, one that might eventually be killed off by a bunch of lawyers."
Finding "Respect and Affection" at the 29th Seattle International Film Fest [Indiewire]

NYT book reviewer Michiko Kakutani has a sense of humor. (Who knew?) She reviews Sex in the City author Candace Bushnell's new book, Trading Up from the viewpoint of Elle Woods, the main character in the Reese Witherspoon pseudo-chick-flick, Legally Blonde: "Excuse the interruption, but I just read your story in 'Trading Up,' and thought I really, really need to write you. I mean, we Blondes have to stick together, right? And we both started out with so much in common like we coulda been sisters at Delta Nu! You know, the whole blonde stereotype thing, where people look at us and they just see blond hair and think airhead. It's like no one takes us seriously!"
Digging for gold in stilettos and silk [NYT]

Missed this earlier: the Observer [over]analyzes Kirstie, one of the participants in Metro TV's reality show, "To Live and Date in New York": "Twenty-two years old, and her limpid brown eyes are already full of marbled wisdom. The girl has seen things. You get the sense that if she and freelancer Laurie ever found themselves comparing notes, Kirstie would stare down at poor tremulous Laurie and tell her how it is, then maybe slap her hard and instruct her to go out and get very, very drunk and whore herself to the first halfway-rich-looking guy in the bar... 'Whatever you do, darling,' you can imagine Kirstie instructing Laurie, 'Do not uh date any more men you meet on the uh Inter-fucking-net.'"
Party girl philosopher [Observer]

Blogger Brian Devinney just emailed to alert me regarding multiple trucker hat sightings at last night's Comedy Central roast of Denis Leary, and I discovered something even better: it's Karen Walker Week at Tales from the City. (Karen Walker, for those of you who are too good to watch TV, is the bitchy UES-ish trophy wife on "Will and Grace.") Quotes from Karen Walker Week:
· "I think you're missing the silver lining here. When you're old and in diapers, a gay son will know how to keep you away from chiffon and backlighting."
· "Honey, when I agreed to drive you to the set, you didn't say it was on Staten Island! How the hell am I ever gonna get the stench of landfill and working class families out of tropical lightweight wool?"
· "Good Lord. I can't believe I'm at a public pool. Why doesn't somebody just pee directly on me?"
[Tales from the City]

Dana Giacchetto, corrupt broker to the stars, was apparently a poet. The poetry of Dana Giacchetto:
And to clot
And to clot
And stop all this
Pain I've caused.

· Graydon in love: Graydon Carter is dating European PR exec, Anna Scott. [Page Six]
· Hamptons police raided Two Mile Dune Beach in East Hampton and arrested several gay men for "public lewdness" and two for having sex on the beach. [Page Six]
· Josh Hartnett spotted at East Village gay bar, The Hole. The ensuing conversation: "Josh was wearing a button-down shirt, looking very preppy. He was there with the ugly one from the Strokes." Um, Julian Casablancas? "No, the really ugly one with the curly hair." Albert Hammond Jr.?
"Yes." [NY Daily News]

January 12, 2004. [via 601am]

The WaPo's Anne Applebaum: "what makes me nervous about Manhattan nowadays is not the criminals, who have faded back into the Bronx, but the people who replaced them: clever people, accomplished people, well-educated peopleand people who agree about almost everything." She goes on to say that New York is completely monocultural and dinner parties consist of everyone in the room agreeing on everything. She must have missed this.
Just another one-horse town [WaPo]

· GQ food writer Alan Richman recalls Four Season co-owner Julian Niccolini bringing a rare bottle of wine and two glasses to late GQ editor Art Cooper: "Art said, 'Julian, you know I don't drink wine,' to which Julian answered, 'I know, Art, but Mr. Newhouse [that is, publisher Si Newhouse] is paying.' [NY Daily News]
· Page Six speculates that Bill Clinton and Canadian billionaire Belinda Stronach are more than just "close friends." [Page Six]
· Miami DJs crank call Castro. [Page Six]
· Cameron Diaz's eyes were reportedly digitally enhanced in "Charlie's Angels" to be bluer. [Page Six]
· Rosie O'Donnell on raising kids in Greenwich CT: "I don't know what kind of screwed up kids are in Greenwich. There's no Toys "R" Us there. Unfortunately, for me, my kids know what's in every aisle of the Times Square store." [Cindy Adams]

"Wylie Dufresne" (the quotations are there for a reason) exploits the comments section on Lockhart Steele's blog to defend his precious WD-50 after the NYT's William Grimes gave it two stars: "It won't surprise the media-savvy out there that Jayson Blair was just the tip of a throbbing iceberg of lies over at the New York Times. History has given us Pinocchio, Ollie North, and now the esteemed Willie Grimes. The foul stench of inaccuracy in his review crinkles up my delicate chef-nose. First, Willie claims that my restaurant was built in place of a bodega. In fact, it stands on top of what used to be a tobacco field. He claims that my lemon gnocchi is 'bitter and intrusive'. In fact, it is delicious..."
Grimes on WD-50 [Lockhart Steele]