Katie Roiphe, N.Y.U. teacher and date rape apologist, wrote movingly in last week's New York magazine about how she's coping with divorce way better than anyone thinks she is and how she has already met someone and did she mention she's remodeling a house with "honey-colored, wide-planked floors"? She is! But one woman, Linda Friedner Cowen, wasn't so impressed with how adeptly Katie is picking up the pieces.
In an interview with Mediabistro's idiotic Dylan Stableford, we learn, or re-learn, the three most important things we need to know about New York mag editor and former editorial wunderkind Adam Moss.
Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti's new book Full Frontal Feminism has a controversially betorsoed cover, which she justifies to New Yorkmag like so: "Let's face it, no young woman is going to pick up a book with the woman's symbol with a fist on it." Is that what books about feminism usually have on their covers, though? Let's look at some recently published ones.
Her glaring absence from New York's unsexy Sex and Love issue reminded us to, at some unspecified later date, schedule some wondering on the topic of: Where has our Amy Sohn gone? The answer comes today, in an email sent to La Sohn's entire mailing list (to which, we hear, one is added solely by virtue of having ever sent Amy an email!):
Ricki Lake's documentary The Business of Being Born, which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival, features footage of the sometimes-pudgy former talk show host birthing it up in her bathtub at home. Fine! But the reason she opted for home birth is that "some New York hospitals' Cesarean-section rate tops 40 percent." Huh? Not according to a 2005 report by NYC public advocate Betsy Gotbaum, whose research puts the city's overall Cesarean rate at a still-high 26.4%, with New York Hospital boasting the city's highest cesarean rate at 37.3%. But that's not the only aspect of Ricki's recent chat with NY mag that we're hoping is a bit of an exaggeration: "'To this day,' says Lake, 'my assistant talks about how she had to clean up my bathtub afterward.'" All together now: ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Talk-Show Host Gives Birth [NYM]
[Image via HuffPo]
Sex Diary: The Gawker Editor
Female, 25, Straight and in a LTR
Day One
7ish: Woke up. Ah, springtime! Seems like today might be sort of halfway decent. I have a healthy human desire to sometimes have sex!
7:30: Begin reading New York's Sex and Love issue. I'm traumatized already and I have only looked at the 'What Are You Like In Bed' slideshow. Mitchell, 50 (pictured) enjoyed his best-ever sexual experience while wearing a sombrero and poncho, exploring a "Mexican theme." Ok, it's going to be like that.
Model-heiress Lydia Hearst seems slightly peeved that the controversial New York magazine article Isaiah Wilner's working on won't actually be, as promised, all about her: "They contacted my managers and set up an interview saying it was supposed to be about my career as a model and entrepreneur and success and my handbag, and then when I sat down they said the whole story was about Olivia and that's it. Nothing wrong with that, but it's just interesting that a story would be pitched so inaccurately," she sniped to Socialite Rank. As discussed, she's not the only social-lady who has a bone to pick with Isaiah. What's up with this guy, anyway? Is he just sensibly refining his angle from the general to the specific as he works on his socialite story—hey, like Lydia said, nothing wrong with that!—or is he preying on these girls' gullibility unfairly? Does he have a history of ethically questionable behavior? Let's turn back the clock to the heady late 90s....
Isaiah Wilner, the twentysomething Yalie who published a book about the "media scandals" surrounding Time's founders last year, may be kicking up a bit of a scandal of his own. According to a recent Page Six item, Wilner's working on an article about hot-topic social gal Olivia Palermo for New York magazine. Per Page Six, Olivia fears that she might end up regretting having spoken to Wilner without her new publicist Kelly Cutrone present. But judging from Palermo's brief but storied history of mindfuckery, that item might be a ruse—the same kind of attempt to drum up sympathy as that famous groveling letter to her fellow socialites.
Adam Sternbergh has a little naming fun in this week's New York magazine, clarifying once and for all that Jonathan Rhys Myers is not Welsh and is not, in all likelihood, related to either John Rhys-Davis (aka Lord of the Rings' Gimli, and also Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark) or Jean Rhys, the author of the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, a retelling of Jane Eyre. And he's also not related to Jonathan Taylor Thomas, born Jonathan Taylor Weiss. Why JTT is randomly stuck in there, we can't really say. But come on, Sternbergh. If you're going to bring up Home Improvement's Randy Taylor, the least you could do is mention to his fans that he's currently roaming the halls of Columbia University. You can even email him yourself!
A former staffer made some allegations about J. Lo's husband, Marc Anthony. Apparently he "is the guy who wants to stay home and play video games all night. He looks like the kind of person that needs to be fed. Food is not a priority. When he eats, he eats pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's." In response, his rep Blanca LaSalle told New York mag that "Even if that's true, what's wrong with that?" With this simple act, Blanca has trumped Leslie Sloan "It's all bullshit" Zelnick in the "best publicist statement" sweepstakes. Congratulations, Blanca, and condolences, Leslie. We recommend adopting Blanca's line in the future. Actually, it would be great if this was the only thing publicists ever said.
Video Games And Junk Food [NYM]
How ice cold is ice cold New York publicist Serena Torrey? Ice cold. We hear that back in January, when Radar ran its Jeff Bercovici-penned report on New York's refusal to extend health benefits to its employees' domestic partners, Torrey immediately cut Roshan, a former New York editor and erstwhile contributor, from the magazine's complimentary delivery list (a list he had been on for seven years). Later that week, she hid in an darkened alley and jumped out at Bercovici, slicing his face with a silver-plated P.E. Guerin antique-style key, which, per this week's Strategist, costs $300.
Rejoice, gay slaves of New York! The magazine has finally decided to extend benefits to its staffers with homosexual tendencies—which, at our last (very!) informal count, were many in number. That number being five men and one woman. Three of whom have boyfriends. (Not the woman!) Anyway, now Jesse Oxfeld can start dating again!
Today's New York magazine serves up a massive "OMG, did you know? Offices!" package, starring an insane, useless, and quite still exhaustive look into who gets smoothies with whom at ad agency Publicis New York. (Remember, they were so excited about being photographed!) What did we learn about Publicis? NOTHING. Smoothies? Sorry, is someone not doing someone in this office? So we decided to go behind the scenes at another Manhattan workplace and bring to light the tensions therein. After all, this sort of feature is way too stupid and easy to not be ripped-off on the cheap.
Sometimes, debut authors astonish us with their ability to channel the voices of the past or to invent new universes out of whole cloth. Joshua Ferris, who worked at a Chicago ad agency toward the end of the dot com boom and whose book, Then We Came To The End is about working in a Chicago ad agency toward the end of the dot com boom, is not one of those novelists. But the book is still pretty good! It's Josh's attitude that sucks.
The revolving doors at the Voice continue to spin: This time it's senior art critic Jerry Saltz doing the departing. Saltz, who had been with the paper since 1998, is headed to New York, where he'll replace Mark Stevens, who has some kind of book deal and takes a contributing editor title. Full memo from Voice chief Tony Ortega after the jump.
Hark! Wedding season is upon us! Get ready for brides running amok and way too many service-y pieces about buying dresses and choosing caterers. Helpfully, New York magazine has packaged everything together in the Summer installment of their twice-yearly Weddings issue, which hits newsstands tomorrow and isn't online yet. We decided to take a peek inside to see if, were we planning a wedding, which we're not, thank you God, the magazine would be remotely helpful or if it would simply inspire that oddly yet reasonably similar pang of irritation that one feels upon visiting Park Slope.
Debut novelist Dana Vachon is all over the news of late, with a mention of his new book in today's roundup of Wall Street-themed titles in the Times Biz section, that New York mag bit about how he knows that the people who will buy his book will do so because it's trendy ("I know my audience. They don't read a book a week. My audience is people who are going to go out and buy this book because they've heard they have to read it") and of course, yesterday's A Night Out With column, which found Vachon recreating a scene from his novel at Le Bilboquet with the people who his characters are based on.
Did you know that even some fashionable, attractive white people don't have health insurance? It's true! Today, New York magazine goes deep inside this shocking phenomenon, exploring the lives of people who may, yes, be way cooler than New York's 'hedge funders and their mommy-wives' target audience, but who are also way more totally fucked if they get appendicitis. It's a different angle on the typical 'let's pat ourselves on the back while eating Berkshire pork' article, but still heartwarming in that same way. Sure, the twentysomethings in the article's accompanying photo portfolio may be blessed with great bone structure and cool jobs, but they will have to wait in the emergency room like some kind of commoners if they injure themselves while snowboarding!
