Is it possible that a perfume that costs $865 for 10ml could make someone smell expensive? You'd think that New York magazine's Daily Intel bloggers would conclude "yes," but actually they polled some Midtown shoppers who concluded that you'd be better off using that cash to conspicuously consume in some slightly less useless fashion, like by buying "a new coat from Saks on sale, like a Loro Piana cashmere coat." Glad that's settled. [NYM]
Well, I've read Phil Weiss's New York mag story on sex-perv maybe-millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein twice now, but I just keep coming back to this early paragraph, from when Phil's sitting in publicist Howard Rubenstein's office with Epstein: "When I said we were interested in the agony of his ordeal, Rubenstein wrote out the word agony in capital letters on his pad. But agony seemed the last thing on Epstein's soul. 'It's the Icarus story, someone who flies too close to the sun,' I said. 'Did Icarus like massages?' Epstein asked." Which says, it seems, that Epstein's life is a disaster because he's tone-deaf and without a clue. And something about Howard, too. [NY]
In the classifieds of New York magazine, a place we once only went to for full body massages and Mature Mates of Means matchmaking services, we came across a personal ad from an Upper West Side family in search of a "philanthropic, wealthy person who would not miss a million bucks" to give them said million dollars to buy a place. Otherwise, they might have to move to Westchester or, even worse, Westport! See for yourself.
Since Monday, NYC women have been assaulted by a clusterfuck of articles pointing out our possible body inadequacies—more than usual, actually! In fact, it's utterly confusing for us gals to figure out which flaw to hate the most. Has femiladyism taken a step backward, or is this just what inevitably happens right before the December glut of top ten lists hits next week?
EXTENDED BASEBALL METAPHOR EXPLAINS EVERYTHING TERRIBLE ABOUT RUDY GIULIANI! "For most of Giuliani's life, the Yankees have been the richest, most powerful, and usually winningest team in baseball. Yet the ultimate fan of baseball's biggest overdog thinks he's a brave, oppressed partisan of an underdog. Giuliani won back the city from the mongrel hordes—the descendants of Brooklyn Dodgers fans—and now he's proposing to win back the world for America." [NYM]
The amazingly old-school feminists at the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women will be protesting New York magazine on Thursday at noon! Why? "With ads for sex tours that advertise 'have your own harem' and ads for massage parlors that promise 'accommodating Asian women' New York Magazine is the marketing arm of the organized crime world of prostitution and trafficking.... It makes $10,000 a week facilitating the commercial sex industry." Oh my God, 10,000 whole dollars a week? Our femiladyist friends do have at least one good point: Some of the advertising brothels of New York probably are full of Peter Landesman-style sex slaves! Eww! But after going Andrea Dworkin-wrong by painting all prostitution ads with the brush of duress and international conspiracy, they then go further afield: "New York Magazine represents the life and times of New Yorkers," they claim. Well, we've got bigger problems than sex trafficking if that's true. Update: OMG, sex ads and protest canceled!
Actually! You know what's really great? The story in this week's New York mag about the crew who works at Trader Joe's on 14th Street. "Today's crew includes a filmmaker, an actor, two fashion students, two painters, a film-production intern, and a martial artist. They're mostly college graduates—University of Washington, New York University, the University of Maine—here with dreams of making it in the city's bourgeois bohemia, but currently stuck serving it hummus." The whole thing is awesome. [NY]
"I think that the sort of caricature of the magazine, which had too much truth in it, was that it was a magazine for the Upper East Side. We had to signal that the magazine was as much for people who ride the L train as for people who live on Fifth Avenue or even Second Avenue."—New York magazine editor Adam Moss, emphasis ours. [Ad Age]
New York mag editor Adam Moss is the Lord God King Of All Magazines, says the American Magazine Conference. Or at least he is the "Ad Age editor of the year." (And at a time when the editing is getting significantly less skillful at his magazine—though the packaging is increasingly stupendously good!) Also Conde Nast was named the "publishing company of the year." Those crazy young upstarts! [NYP]
We haven't gotten our "next week in New York magazine email yet" that usually comes by now—but we hear David France's story on former Times and former Portfolio reporter and one-time kiddie-porn-ring investigator Kurt Eichenwald is running on Monday! (That was speedy.) Hoooo boy.
According to Geoffrey Gray, the author of New York mag's piece on a D. B. Cooper suspect, the F.B.I. has decided to "revive its decades-old file on D.B. Cooper, the mysterious hijacker who parachuted out of a Northwest Airplane in 1971 with $200,000 in ransom money and was never seen again." Rrrrreally? [Daily Intel]
At last night's launch of the Fox Business Channel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (more on that later), we saw Portfolio blogger Lloyd Grove roaming about the grounds of the Temple of Dendur. Talk about relics! (We kid!) What has our favorite Daily News ankler been doing since he left his gossip column behind almost exactly a year ago?
We've been waiting all week for word of the success or failure of New York magazine's sort-of maybe kinda identification of D. B. Cooper—who has become something of an American myth since he hijacked a Northwest plane in 1971 and made off with $200,000. So far we've gotten not much: "Bonney Lake residents doubt neighbor was D. B. Cooper," says the AP today. Meh. The suspect's brother, Lyle Christiansen of Minnesota, really really wanted Nora Ephron to direct the movie but of course she didn't even return his letters. (Just like that Eminem song Stan.) But how reliable a narrator is Lyle? In order to send Ephron the letter, he paid a gumshoe $495 to find her address. Really, how can one rely on the word of a man who can't figure out how Whitepages.com works?
From the mailbag: "In the off-chance she hasn't told you herself, New York magazine is doing a full-length (3000+ words) think piece on the splendor that is Julia Allison [with writer Stephen Rodrick]. It's completely unrelated to Vanessa Grigoriadis's Gawker feature, which is being considered for, but is unlikely to get, the next cover." *Shudder*
Bored of hair? Well, good news in the fake hair trend department, courtesy of New York mag. "Who's cutting off their shags and manes? Right now, lots of people." Lots of people besides models and actresses? Well, no. People are not actually dumb enough to believe a pixie cut is going to look cute on anyone but the youngest and most bone-structurally blessed among us. Seriously, even the most stereotypical of lesbians are beginning to be like "Um actually that is a really unflattering look for most people." [NYM]
Book parties tend to be circle jerk affairs: sordid Chardonnay-and-canapé-fueled minuets of self-congratulation. Last night's New York mag Look Book book party at Bergdorf Goodman, however, was amazingly a creative act. Characters who'd otherwise only rub shoulders when on adjoining pages were actually in the same room with each other and in some cases even talked! This was great! And Nikola Tamindzic found that these people were eager and comfortable photographic subjects.
