I'm instituting a new feature at Gawker: Questions, Answers, And Somewhat Useful Information. Send me questions you want answered and if they're appropriateor let's face it, I like themI'll post them to Gawker and other readers can send answers, which, if they're appropriateor let's face it, I like themI'll post. (I hate service journalism so I'm just going to let you do it for me.) The first question, to which I don't have the answer: "I've heard that all the women [Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor author] Rick Marin ever dated during his years as a Toxic Bachelor are getting together somewhere this week in Manhattan to toast his recent wedding. Can you publish the where-and-when details of this must-attend bash?" Anyone? Anyone? Rick?

Vincent Gallo's Cannes film, "Brown Bunny," was the lowest-rated film in the history of Screen International, the British trade paper that tabulates votes of a panel of critics. Star Chloe Sevigny reportedly cried during the screening and there were "countless" walkouts. Gallo's description of the film: "It is a disaster and a waste of time." Adds Roger Ebert: "That several French critics liked it was, Gallo said, 'almost like salt in the wound.'"
Director's dud reviledeven by him [Chicago Sun-Times]

[Gawker designer] Jason Kottke mocks the Gawker Stalker:
· Samuel L. Jackson standing outside of Madame Tussaud's in Times Square. He was very nice, posing for picture after picture with people.
· "Every actor that has ever been in an independent film in a tiny vegan coffee shop (so hip!) in the West Village (so, so hip!). Seriously, they were all there. I dare you to name someone who wasn't there. When we left, Philip Seymour Hoffman was leading a rousing game of Who's Keeping It Most Real?"
· Everyone doing cocaine. (Ed. note: This is funny because everyone in NYC does coke — how quaint! — and it makes us all feel extremely cool to mention it as often as we can.)
Kottke stalker [Kottke.org]

· The Bryant Park reading room re-opens.
· Quiz: art or crap? [via Fark]
· Test your fact-checking ability (a.k.a., The Most Tedious Quiz in the World) [via Slate]
· "like virtually ever other daily, the Times doesn't use fact checkers to verify stories before publication."

The Matthew Barney hysteria has spread beyond New York and one of the results is a detailed Cremaster/Donkey Kong comparison: "Richard Serra tosses melted Vaseline at the top level of the Guggenheim, which trickles down the rotunda. Vaseline is one of many materials, including tapioca, which Barney has become famous for using. The tossing is a reference to some of Serra's most important work. Using molten lead thrown against a wall, Serra performed the physical dance of Jackson Pollack's [sic] dripping and tossing, challenging the assumption that sculpture is a static object on a pedestal that is separate from the space around it. Barney challenges the need a sculptor like Serra has to create any physical object, instead making his sculpture exist as characters in films. While Mario causes the ape to fall several stories onto his head, Barney castrates his Donkey Kong, robbing the older artist of his material of choice." Yeeeeah. Okay.
Matthew Barney vs. Donkey Kong [GameGirlAdvance via Greg.org]

· PETA protestors are planning to flood Vogue with phone calls and emails on the day ad sales close and cover the city with the poster on the right. In other news, George Soros is splitting with his wife and Alexander Von Furstenberg may be the first resident of Soho House New York. [Intelligencer]
· Palm Beach Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Judy Hoffman said that she "finds the use of the Trump name [on the crests outside Mar-a-Lago] 'cheapens'" it. [Page Six]
· "Companies filed trademark applications to use the military's theme for its Iraqi war strategy on more than 40 products, Harper's magazine reports. The products include teddy bears, rum, dollhouse furnishings, lotions, cars, hang gliders, ski boots and, inexplicably, eyeglass cords." [NY Daily News]

· Jayson Blair: White House Press Secretary [via Frankenstein]
· Swap books with people near you [via Anil]
· Nerve's bad erotica contest

· More reporting problems at the NYT: Pulitzer Prize winning correspondents-in-Iraq Judith Miller and John Burns are fighting over who gets to use Ahmad Chalabi (who is slated to become the next leader of Iraq) as a source. In addition, the CIA says that Chalabi has been giving out false information. [Page Six]
· Tim Robbins says Republicans are not always bad people: "'I have a picture of Jimmy Stewart in my office. He's there because he was one of my favorite actors of all time, but mainly also because he's a Republican, and I want him there to remind me that that kind of stuff doesn't matter when you're talking about the creative process . . . and an awful lot of Republicans contacted me after the Baseball Hall of Fame controversy, basically saying, 'I don't agree with your politics, but you have a right to express them.'" [Liz Smith]

The English have long sold themselves on shambolic charm. In the case of Soho House, the London private members club with a new branch in New York, emphasis on the shambles. On Wednesday, the club's opening night, a leak had put the elevators out of commission, and visitors had to trudge up sodden stairs. And, last night, members were turned away because the database was on the blink. "The computer's deleted the newer members," said the receptionist. "I've tried to call Podge, but he's wandering the house." A manager named Podge: ah, that must be the charm part.
Soho House New York

· The CamelToe Report
· Rob Petrie's SubURBAN photos: post-teenage wasteland in Long Island [via ReverseCowgirl]
· Lomographic Society International: New York [via MeFi]
· Big Apple barbecue block party [via Anil]
· TheBlackTable's Craig's List roundup

· Jonathan Pillet, executive producer of Meg Ryan's new film Against the Ropes, on Ryan: "She is so rude in person; she was even rude to my kids when they met, and I am the executive producer of the film!" [Page Six]
· Daschle Sticks Foot in Mouth Again: "Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle blundered yesterday when he accidentally mixed up two black reporters who've been covering him for years." [Page Six]
· Queens Congressman Anthony Weiner on California Representative Ellen Tauscher at Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer's May 7 Comedy Night fund-raiser and did an expletive-laden New York tough-guy routine. 'I wouldn't mind having sex with Ellen Tauscher...But I'm afraid that it would be like a praying mantis deal and she'd bite my head off.' The Daily News: "One stunned guest told the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call: 'It was so completely inappropriate, it was shocking.'" [NY Daily News]

Choire Sicha, reporting for the Morning News on the jury duty experience in Manhattan. "I am nervous," he writes. "Spending half a week passing harsh judgment on your fellow Manhattanites just seems so...well, when put like that, it sounds just like every other day." (Valid point.)
It must have been something I hate [TMN]

People impersonating actor Vincent Gallo have been leaving messages on his website's message board. (Shock! Horror!) He's not too happy about it: "if I notice any polluted messages, which usually come from bitter, jealous, ugly, poorly-hung men, who are unhappy at work and wished their whole life to be like me, I will remove these unproductive nasty little posts and I would like to say to these twisted queers and half-men, I feel sorry for you. All I ever wanted to do was be me. I hope one day you feel the same about yourself and release yourself from the petty, small-minded urges of polluting this message board and distracting its wonderful members. So go ahead and say whatever you want nasty about me, but know that we will all know by your insults just how small your pecker really is and how miserable your life has always been and how long it's been since any girl under 500 pounds responded to your cheap lines at the local pub. As for girls who badmouth me, I don't know what I did to offend you, but I'm sorry. Please forgive me and be nice. My mom was mean. She never liked me. So have a heart."
VincentGallo.com: message board [VincentGallo.com]

· The oracle of Starbucks [via MeFi]
· Interview with Jayson Blair's interviewer [via Gothamist]
· Guide to indie rock hair [via NoGoodForMe]
· 10 weekend pleasures [MUG]
· Lighthouses of Long Island [via TMN]
· New York photos from the 40s and 50s [via TMN]

· Four high-profile Times reporters are likely to be investigated in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. [Ed.I have two names. Anyone else feel like sharing?] [Page Six]
· Mayor Bloomberg on J-Lo: "I assume Jennifer Lopez would want to have dinner with me. I don't know. I never met the young lady, but I'd certainly be willing to." [Page Six]
· Comedian Jon Stewart is being criticized by the Catholic League for making fun of the pope's hat: "Pope John Paul 'is a nice man,' Stewart told the crowd at the Waldorf [for the United Jewish Appeal Foundation fundraiser]. 'But, in a fashion sense, he is a hat choice away from being the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.'" Also, Tara Reid spotted drunk at a concert. (But then, Tara Reid drunk is neither scandalous nor unusual.) [NY Daily News]

Bomb damages rooms at Law School [Yale Daily News]
Bomb is suspected in explosion at Yale [NYT]
Explosion at Yale Law School [Balkinization via Anil]

The NYT points out the new wax J-Lo seems to be drawing a lot of attention at Madame Tussaud's. We'd like to make a suggestion: why not replace the real J-Lo with the wax J-Lo? No more bitching about midtown stores refusing to shut down so she can shop; no more making out with her fiancee (whoever it is this week) in public; no more screaming temper tantrums. Who votes to replace the real J-Lo with the wax J-Lo? One...two...three...Oh, wait. Nevermind. Memo just in: the wax J-Lo is being melted down to make grapefruit-scented candles.
Even in wax, she moves: J-Lo the copy draws a crowd at Tussaud's [NYT]

· Jason Davis, the "obese" 18-year-old grandson of billionaire Marvin Davis who just went to his prom last week with Nicky Hilton in tow, has agreed to be on a WB reality show about young socialites. [NY Post]
· Alice Cooper on Celine Dion's Vegas show: "'She only took one breath! She is my favorite singer!" [Page Six]
· Comedian Larry David on his environmentalist wife, Laurie: "Thirteen years ago, I met a materialistic, narcissistic, superficial, bosomy woman from Long Island. She was the girl of my dreams." "But David recounted how Laurie began "peppering her conversation with words like 'ozone layer,' 'how she forbade him from flushing the toilet, and how, after touching a whale, she 'had her first orgasm in six years.'" [NY Daily News]

The March 1998 lunch at the Occidental Grill. He said, he said:
Hitchens on Blumenthal: "I don't think I will or could ever forget the transformation...Where was my witty if sometimes cynical, clever if sometimes dogmatic, friend? In his place seemed to be someone who had gone to work for John Gotti. He talked coldly and intently of a lethal right-wing conspiracy that was slowly engulfing the capital. And he spoke, as if out of the side of a tough-guy mouth, about the women who were tools of the plot."
Blumenthal on Hitchens: ""As we ate and drank, they laughed and laughed. Tell us more, what happened then?...Hitchens roared, Carol giggled...It was impressive how anyone could be so lubricated and articulate...My mistake had been to think that he was a harmless entertainer. The surprise was that he was capable of doing harm without conscience or regret."
Hitchens, again: "I had the ability to nail the lie, and when contacted by the House Judiciary Committee, I did so nail it. And I would do it again."
Behind the Irony [Reliable Source]

· Upper East Side megasite [via Muxway]
· Summer Stage schedule 2003 [via TMN]
· Bryant Park HBO film festival schedule