Guess what Graydon Carter's December Vanity Fair editor's letter is about! George Bush, Tony Blair, war criminals, waterboarding, torture, the American moral compass, AND YOU ARE ALL GUILTY OF ALLOWING GEORGE BUSH TO MUTILATE PEOPLE. YOU SHOULD FEEL THE SHAME. So maybe irony did die on 9/11—and never did rise from the grave on the third day to eat $55 mac and cheese. [VF]
Waverly Inn chef John DeLucie, who just got back from explaining magabrands at the American Magazine Conference in Boca, has sold a memoir called The Hunger. As per Publishers Marketplace, Endeavor sold it to Ecco, and it'll be "a la Anthony Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confidential.'" We're sure it will be! We can't wait for the part where his boss Graydon Carter pees in the $55 mac and cheese of nemesis Donald Trump. (We hope DeLucie didn't pee in Ivanka Trump's, when she ate at Waverly on Monday with boyfriend Jared Kushner and publicist Steven Rubenstein!) [NYM]
According to a story published in Variety last night and then removed from their website (ah! now it is back!), 'Vanity Fair' will move its annual Oscar party from the defunct Mortons (that site will become the L.A. outpost of heinous Brit-drunkening shack Soho House). This fits nicely into our slightly-shabby working theory that agents are the new movie stars.
Here are some of the crazed rumors we've heard about the Vanity Fair story that John Connolly is writing about alleged financier-perv* billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, of whom it is alleged that he retained a procurer of underage girls. Oh my God, we heard that Bill Clinton came into 4 Times Square and told Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter that this expose of Epstein must not run and of course Graydon folded like a paper doll. And also we heard alleged former Epstein alleged friend Ron Burkle is Danny A's backer on every club he opens and Burkle does that to harvest pretty young things then flies them to L.A. and allegedly sells them to Epstein and alleged movie-producer Steve "Bing Laden" Bing and it is this cabal of partying hedonists that has prevented the piece from running! And also we heard that Prince Andrew (the one who divorced Fergie!) and the royal family interceded, promising to shut down Graydon Carter's restaurant The Waverly Inn if this piece runs and that is all why it has not seen the light of day yet!
Some commenters are just so gosh-darn helpful in relaying the kind of information that we absolutely need to know to, as they say, move the story forward, that they deserve an award: the Helpful Critter award. Oh, and while we're at it, we've decided to execute people whose comments this week make them decidedly Unhelpful Critters. Go back from whence you came!
Today on the New Republic website, retired blogger Elizabeth Spiers reviews the second issue of Portfolio. Spiers finds the title pretentious and lacking in substance. Her suggestion? Replace editor Joanne Lipman with former New Yorker head Tina Brown, who will bring both flash and purpose to the title. Surely Tina, who is currently sitting on her ass awaiting royalty checks from that Princess Diana book, would go for it. But what would happen to poor Joanne? We've come up with a plan that requires a little editorial shuffling throughout the media world, but ends up with everybody comfortably ensconced in positions for which they might be better suited!
Literally dozens of menacing long-haired young people have set up eco-camps around London's Heathrow airport, claiming that airplanes are bad for children and other living things and that you can't hug a child with a nuclear airplane and what if British Airways had to hold a bake sale and all the schools got free upgrades to first class? Apparently these youth believe that airplanes are a significant cause of so-called "global warming" and that nobody should fly in them—that we should all just hop around on giant toadstools and live off the magical power of the wind. The protesters, all of whom are out-of-country millionaires due to the insane value of the English pound, expect to be visited over the next week by green-sympathizers like Bono, Jann Wenner and Graydon Carter, each of whom will arrive in his own private jet.
Last evening, as Town Cars disgorged their passengers at the intersection of Bank St. and Waverly Place, a curious interaction played out in front of Graydon Carter's clubhouse, also known as the Waverly Inn. A man and a woman with carefully alphabetized lists stood guard, checking names as people attempted to enter. It was all in honor of a début novel by Vanity Fair deputy editor Doug Stumpf (#69, currently, on Amazon; #73 on Barnes & Noble's website; film rights optioned by Warner; etc.). Stumpf is no stranger to the publishing world, having worked as a book editor at Morrow, where he edited Michael Chabon. He is also the basis for what became the Robert Downey Jr. character in Wonder Boys, and we hope he came off looking better and better as he edited it. Apparently at one point it was 1,000 pages long. Also, he is also the author of From Baby to Bikini: Keep Your Midsection Toned SAFELY during Pregnancy and Flatten Your Abdominals FAST after You Have Your Baby. Anyway, as Graydon Carter does for all of his loyal pets, he excerpted Stumpf's book in the latest issue of the magazine, and of course, hosted this party.
On Fridays, the offices of Vanity Fair are usually ghostly quiet—technically, the magazine has "summer Fridays," that rapidly disappearing vestige of publishing genteelism that assumed that everyone needed to beat the traffic on the LIE every week. (Does your company/magazine still have summer Fridays, btw? Please do let us know.) Anyway, most VF editors manage to wriggle out of coming into the office at all on Fridays; they simply let their assistants know that they'll be "working" from Southampton. But not this weekend!
At 9 p.m. last night, Bank Street was humming with black Mercedeses, all idling for the air conditioning. "It's gotta be cold when my client comes out," said one driver. A bright red motorcycle with Diplomat plates screeched to a halt and an olive-skinned man bounded off into the most literarily significant inn since the Tabard. As prescribed by the Post's Mandy Stadtmiller, we had made reservations through Jon Kelly, Graydon Carter's assistant.
A tipster reports that Graydon Carter recently requested that staffers make him a MySpace page. Folks at the magazine, however, claim it's a prank. Which makes sense, because does Graydon Carter know what the Internet is? Yeah, he sort of does, but only in vague terms. Sort of like a manatee explaining shellfish reproduction! So we wondered whether we would finally learn the secrets of the man with the famously akimbo hair. Would he have a photo of himself in his trademark double-breasted blue blazer with the shiny gold buttons? And what, pray tell, would his general interests be?
Yesterday's trial proceedings of futuresexcrazyfakefiremanvillain Peter Braunstein brought another frightening peek into his twisted mind. He wanted to kill Vogue editor Anna Wintour! "I'm going to kill Anna Wintour—because I just feel like it," the former WWD reporter scrawled in his journal. Our precious Wintour! But why?
Is Graydon Carter putting lives at risk? Yes, says Page Six. Seems that the swells who dine at the Vanity Fair editor's Waverly Inn are blocking the street with their big fancy limousines.
"Charmingly disheveled," a touch of "mildew buildup"—never has a restaurant shared as many qualities with one of its owners as is the case with the Waverly Inn and Vanity Fair doge Graydon Carter. Today's Times yanks the reader by the tassles of his Belgian loafers into the gritty reality that is the Waverly Inn's hygiene situation. The conclusion: Meh, kinda dirty. In March, the restaurant failed a health inspection, garnering 38 violation points in the DOH's book. But, as Eric Konigsberg reports, "the Waverly Inn was reinspected by the city on Thursday, and passed this time, with a score of 22 points." That's still 9 points above average but good enough for a pass. A little less mouse excreta goes a long way. But today's write-up is less notable for who it names than for who it benefits.
In our unbridled pursuit of fame and of the validation of the establishment, we do a lot of things of which we are not particularly proud. Things like appearing on Fox's 2 a.m. shit-show "Red Eye," attending panels where Graydon Carter is a featured speaker, being in the same neighborhood as Julia Allison, walking by the Beatrice Inn, that sort of thing. As we watched the Don Imus drama unfold this week, though, we decided that there must be limits, even for us. No matter how desperate or attention-starved we may be, there is no excuse for condoning racism and sexism. All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do very little, or something like that. Now we must take a stand: We will never make a guest appearance on Mr. Imus' television show or his radio program. Pardon our brief sincerity, but we feel that strongly about this issue, and thought now would be exactly the right time to make this pledge.
Doing anything tomorrow at 9 a.m.? Perhaps you'd like to swing over to Hudson Studios, where a tipster reports Paris Hilton will be in attendance for a Vanity Fair photo shoot. Of course, this raises an important question: Does this signal some sort of weird Paris Hilton comeback? Is she remaking herself per Graydon Carter's specifications? Oh, also, we hear that the clothes include Marc Jacobs, Hudson, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel. And what do they look like? "Like ugly shit. Like little girl, cutesy stuff." Okay then! Maybe Paris won't be presenting a new image after all.
What a time for a young gossip columnist's drugs to permanently kick-in—beneath the short-ceilinged Graydon Carter nest that lurks across the street from Harvey Weinstein's endlessly-renovating townhouse. (Or maybe we meant "peeks," and so did Spencer, probably, when he wrote "Eddie Vedder looked upward, his face peaking out from a tangle of rangy locks." How high? So high!) Ha, we're being so mean and nitpicky—the peace is actually very good! Piece. Sorry. Glass houses! Anyway! Spencer's thesis is that, while in some ways Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn is the new Elaine's, in other ways, well, it isn't. But if one reduces his work to a list of proper nouns, it becomes a handy way to define the Waverly Inn itself!
