More staff turnover at Portofolio: senior associate editor Jeffrey Chu bails for Fast Company. On the plus side, hey, Jeff Bercovici and, uh, Lloyd Grove are on the scene! [NYP]

How crazy is it that Lloyd Grove, our favorite former gossip columnist at the New York Daily News, is on assignment for New York magazine to write about nutty New York Post editor Col Allan? So crazy! We hear the piece is at least a few weeks away, though he's been working on it for a while. One might assume the rationale for assigning the piece, despite any actual or theoretical conflict of interest, is that Lloyd would bring some sort of inside knowledge to the story. But if that were true, wouldn't he still have his job at the Daily News? Hi-o! Oh, just asking, Lloyd!

Sir Harry and Tina Brown are the closest thing the New York scene has to a royal couple. (Tina is Tina, and Harry is more charming and also better-looking than HRH Prince Charles of Edinburg.) On Sunday, aboard the Manhattan-sized cruise ship the Queen Mary II, they hosted a luncheon to benefit the American Institute for Stuttering. (Their son George for many years had a severe stutter.) Katie Couric was the M.C. Carly Simon was an honoree. Jack Welch sat in turtle-like repose as did, closer to the back, a very disengaged former gossip columnist Lloyd Grove. Candace Bushnell promised to set me up on a blind date and despite the early call to port—11 a.m.!—the champagne flowed freely. Joshua, still recovering from the BBQ festival avant-hier biked to Red Hook, following the limousines to the Cruise Terminal. Photographer Nikola Tamindzic took a cab.

Since Lloyd Grove left his gossip post at the Daily News late last year, he's been bouncing around various offices in New York as a freelancer. In fact, he might be sitting next to you right now! Look to your left—now look right? Is that Lloyd Grove? While through his prosody Mr. Lloyd is known to millions, in the flesh he might pass unnoticed, appearing to merely be any number of undistinguished and fleshy middle-aged white men. To let your proximity to greatness pass by without knowing would be to squander your one true brush with the immortal. To prevent that agony, we've assembled this helpful video from some old footage we found by the crapper.

Georgette Mosbacher's Fifth Avenue apartment is directly across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and from the huge windows of her living room—where there is a life-size drawing of herself hanging above the baby grand piano, and fur throws on two settees across the room, and trinkets (decorative knives, feathers, paperweights, commemorative seals) arranged on a console, and photographs and chandeliers and Oriental rugs and velvet and mirrors—one can watch the small figures milling about on the steps of the museum. The elevator opens directly into her apartment, and last evening, in addition to the uniformed attendant, it was packed with people on their way to a party celebrating the publication of 54-year-old Christopher Buckley's new book, Boomsday, which is about a late twentysomething female blogger who proposes that people be given incentives to commit suicide when they reach 75.

Oh, God, today's Lloyd Grove piece on Barbara Walters. The thesis: Barbara was badly damaged during the recent Donald Trump/Rosie O'Donnell contretemps. The question: Can she survive the age of blabbermouth stardom? The article: A semi-competent rehash of everything you've seen about Walters in the last twenty years, written around a subject who wouldn't talk directly to the author, but who did offer plenty of friends to give quotes. We can handily save you the agony of reading the whole thing.

• Maria Bartiromo: too palsy with her subjects. [NYT]
  

• Time layoffs: Here's who's already gone. [Mediaweek]
  

As 2006 huffs toward its inexorable end, we decided to take a moment to recognize those personalities that made our job that much more tolerable this year. These are the people who gave us endless fodder for our douchebag mill, who were attracted to the spotlight like moths to a flame, whose stated disdain for our coverage of them was contradicted by their almost pathetic attempts to court it. The adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity has never felt more apt.

Last night was the opening of the unfortunately-named Beaver Bar, the lobby/sales office/bar of what will eventually be William Beaver House, which is real-estate god Andre Balazs's new luxury condominium set to open in Lower Manhattan at some undetermined point in the future. Apparently, when one is looking to sell ridiculously expensive condos to the oversexed power-hungry Wall Street demographic, your marketing scheme should center on an adorable cartoon beaver. We know, we wouldn't have thought it either, but the guy has a ton of money, so who are we to argue? Instead, we sent Gawkslave Erica, photog Nikola Tamindzic, and videographer Richard Blakeley to cover the festivities. Enjoy a beaverlicious display of photos, plus Nikola's extra-adorable full gallery, plus dancing near-naked ladies on fire and the textual rundown after the jump.

Last time we checked, the Gramercy Park area was the epitome of everything that is wrong with Manhattan. This means it's the perfect place for Sex and the City scribe Candace Bushnell and screenwriter Jay McInerney to read steamy sexcapes in front of a gaggle of media folk, socialites, and debutards. We sent GawkSlave Stephanie along with photographer Kate and tipsy videographer Richard Blakeley to make an official record of the blatant debauchery. Waste an additional 20 minutes of your nonproductive day by checking out the Gawker gallery of love, plus Kate's full gallery. After the jump our "I'm only here for the free drinks" trio enter a roomful of a Blue States Lose, with bonus Paula Froelich naughtiness transcription feature.

• Kevin Federline gets mocked to his face at his own album release party and fails to notice. Do you ever feel kind of jealous of really stupid people? Like, nothing can hurt them. [cityrag]
  

So this Sunday Liz Smith broke the news that former Lowdown columnist Lloyd Grove, "has landed on his feet with Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair." We got in touch with Lloyd, whose bio at the News made mention of the fact that, "Aside from newspapers, he also has written extensively for Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar magazines," and he issued a demure response: "I love Liz Smith. Actually, I'm doing a little piece for VF while I decide among various interesting options for my next gig."

I was sort of annoyed that the New York Times didn't interview me ... I'm sort of surprised no news producers have called me yet.

And we are here to bring you her every word. If you can't want to hear about reshaping the privates and the lip-plumping-gone wrong that finally convinced her to cold turkey, this clip from WNBC this morning is for you.

Last night saw a book launch party at the Hotel QT for photographer Joan Sinclair's Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs. The party itself seemed to draw more Japanophiles than Japanese, though a few from Nippon were in attendance. Also spotted enjoying the pool-humid ambience were newly unemployed gossipist Lloyd Grove, one half of gossip duo Rush & Molloy (formerly paper-mates with Grove at the Daily News, natch), and Z-lister/prehistoric MTV veejay Karen Duffy. We're told that our videographer, Richard Blakeley, did at one point strip to his skivvies and wade into the pool, but fortunately for us all, that footage will remain part of his private collection.

We want to thank Page Six for their mention of former Newsie Lloyd Grove's recent stint at this site. While we're well aware that their attention was merely a convenient way for them to once again poke fun at frequent target (and Daily News owner) Mort Zuckerman, we're happy for all the attention we can get. Still, something troubled us about the picture of Lloyd that they used on the item. Who's that guy standing next to him, cropped out and buried under the credit for Richard Johnson? He looks... familiar. What could it all mean? We'd ask Richard ourselves, but we've been told he's a man of few words.

A hearty thank you to Gawker guest editor Lloyd Grove, who has somehow managed to keep from being incapacitated by envy during his brief tenure. Lloyd, who today filled a position once held by such luminaries as Greg Lindsay and Andrew Krucoff, has succeeded by any measure, and we'll happily welcome him back if his new gig at James Truman's media company doesn't work out.

Submit your questions to asklloyd@gawker.com.

Submit your questions to asklloyd@gawker.com.