On Monday night, Mindy Meyer, the 22-year-old New York state senate candidate with a very pink website, hosted her first political fundraiser at Long Island's expansive Inwood Country Club. "It's a pink tie affair!" cried the conservative campaign's invitation to the $500-a-plate dinner a few weeks back. "Come rub elbowes [sic] with politicians and members of the press." By last Thursday, though, Mindy's Twitter account offered a kind of clearance special: $150 for dinner and a "mind blowing surprise!"

Tinsley Mortimer has returned to NYC after a brief jaunt across the pond to hit up London Fashion Week. (She's now "living between New York and Knightsbridge," she explained to WWD earlier this week.) She rushed back to NYC yesterday, though, so she could make an appearance at the annual New Yorkers for Children gala at Cipriani 42nd Street last night.

It isn't every day a friend of Gawker is nominated for an Emmy award. Come to think of it, it isn't any day...To commemorate the occasion we asked former media public enemy/Top Chef judge Toby Young to share the experience.

The scale and volume of the following for TV's most unlovable gang of losers was on display last night at New York's Beacon Theater where the gang put on a musical entitled The Nightman Cometh. Defamer went to bear witness.

There is nothing Hollywood likes better than a theme party and last night TV's big wigs assembled the themeiest of launches, going back to the land of their primal fears, high school for the Glee premiere.

The High Line, the elevated railway turned public promenade, opened last night to a select group of donors and supporters. Before the gala kicked off, Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller issued a challenge grant, promising to donate $10 million to the walkway if someone else came along and matched it. Hedge fund mogul Phil Falcone and his wife Lisa delivered, and while it's still unclear when the public park will actually be public—rumor has it that it may just be a matter of days now—in the meantime, venture capitalist Fred Wilson was good enough to bring a camera along to last night's event so we can all get a little peek at what's in store.

Silda Wall Spitzer turned up at Michael's yesterday to celebrate the birthday of "communications consultant" Kathy Lacey Hoge and the wife of the former governor is doing "just fine," you'll be relieved to hear. More importantly: What on earth happened to Ashley Dupre? Now that summer is over and she's no longer spending her days sunning herself on the Jersey Shore with her mother (with Post photographers following closely behind her, naturally), she seems to have vanished! Do drop us a line if you know more! [NYO, NYSD]

Just in case your invite got lost in the mail, photos from the Metropolitan Opera's opening night gala last night. [Paper]

Oh pooh! The moneyed slobs of the Hamptons are feeling the pinch of the recession this summer! Tiffy's gala will be positively ruined! "Trustees of the Children's Museum of the East End rejected a dinner dance at a rented farm in favor of a cocktail party on the museum grounds here, replaced a five-piece rock ‘n' roll cover band with a teenage jazz combo and slashed ticket prices to $150 from $450, but still only drew about 150 guests, half the number that turned out for the benefit last year... And there are still hundreds of tickets left for the annual Art for Life gala, also scheduled for Saturday night, at the East Hampton estate of Russell Simmons, the rap impresario." People, won't someone please think of the rappers?!

Stalker spotted A-Ol at some dance thingy and managed to trash her and follow it up with a swift compliment. Pretty ambivalent, which is generally how I feel about Les Olsens, too. I can't tell if they're pretty, or if I'm just used to their faces, having grown up watching Michelle Tanner and all those awful mystery-adventure series videos that relatives would buy me, even though I was clearly too old for the genre. Sighting after the jump.

Last night there was a gala for Rosie O'Donnell's For All Kids Foundation. She told the audience "George Bush is a war criminal," and everybody applauded, even Fox Business Network's Cody Willard who was sitting at a table with Susan Thomases, Hillary's right-hand woman. Joan Rivers was there. So were a ton of gays. Some of them even got in a fight over some Cyndi Lauper tickets. Strangely, we know someone who witnessed these events and sent us this bulleted report.

Last night the big Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation gala at the Marriott Marquis had an endless program of award-giving to the likes of Meryl Streep and Bob Woodruff. But notes an attendee: Whenever the guests could get up and mingle amid all this honoring, a "a big black guy" in a tan suit would emerge from the side of the room and stand behind Anne Hathaway and her scandal-ridden boyfriend, Raffaello Follieri. Did Meryl Streep have a bodyguard? No. Did Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters or Robin Williams? God no. And we've seen the delightful Ms. Hathaway out and about plenty, and she does just fine without any security. "The weird thing," writes our spy, "was no one was approaching the guy anyway and, since it was a multiple-thousand dollar-a-plate event, my money is on the off-chance that it is not terribly likely that a crazed Raffaello fan will get through security, secrete a razor blade from his sphincter and slit his throat." Oh, I dunno. We wouldn't put that past any of the people the young Italian has apparently done wrong—least of all the Pope, Ron Burkle and Bill Clinton.

Last night was the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave gala in... Manhattan. Yeah, no. we know. But I guess there aren't any spaces in Brooklyn that are nice. So instead, it was at 7 World Trade Center on some really high floor. Below, Ground Zero looked like a little deserted Erector Set. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgard were supposed to be there. But they had some other benefit to attend. John Turturro was supposed to be there too but wasn't. You know who was? Lou Reed. And you want to know something else? Turns out he's not a nice guy! Nikola Tamindzic was our witness.

The Met's Costume Institute Gala's increasing celebrity focus brings out the bitchy queen in the Times' Eric Wilson, who went around last night asking a bunch of poor helpless movie stars whether they'd heard of Paul Poiret, the man they were supposedly honoring. While he reports that America Ferrera "blinked gamely" when quizzed about the art deco-era French designer, he also mentions that "Jennifer Lopez, Renée Zellweger and Sandra Bullock seemed preoccupied with finding the bar" and that Harry Connick Jr. admitted (horrors!) that he'd "never heard of that person before." It is supposed to be all about the fashion, people! On that note, Scarlett Johansson wore kind of the worst dress imaginable.