Photo: Jason B. Nicholas/Atlas Press

The front window of Epaulet.Photo: Michael Kuhle

The Sapir Family: Uncle Alex Sapir, mom Zina Sapir,
grandfather Tamir Sapir. Not pictured: Dad Rotem
Rosen, Jared Kushner.Photo: Patrick McMullan

Clockwise from top left, Jackie Collins; an enterprising author; the crowd; Henry Holt president Dan Farley, PW's Louisa Ermelino, agent Ira Silverberg.Photos: Boris Kachka

Sofia CoppolaPhoto: WireImage

Photo: WireImage

Jody Hill (right) on the set.Courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Ex-girlfriend points finger at 50 Cent for house fire [Newsday]

Billboard CD reviews (Reuters)

‘Sex and the City’ Takes Over NYMag.com

Courtesy of New Line Cinema

Don't miss the video of gals (and guys!) before and after last night's midnight showings at Kips Bay. Plus, they polled basically every single person who saw the movie last night, asking them questions like "Are you a straight guy?" and "Why are you here then?" Daily Intel has also investigated whether poor people like Sex and the City too, how Cynthia Nixon has become the movie's gay-publicity weapon, Bloomberg's secret pain, and Steve's secret shame. Over at the Cut, nymag.com's fashion mavens have weighed in on whether SATC is to blame for young professionals' dressing trampily at the office, and interviewed legend Patricia Field about her favorite SATC outfits. And even Grub Street has gotten in on the action, with a slideshow of cupcake porn — luscious pastries whose rich curves far outstrip those of SATC favorite Magnolia.

50 Cent's Home Torched in 'Suspicious' Fire

No felony charges against Farina in gun incident (AP)

AP - Los Angeles County prosecutors won't file felony charges against actor Dennis Farina for having a gun in his luggage at an airport earlier this month.

No felony charges against Farina in gun incident (AP)

AP - Los Angeles County prosecutors won't file felony charges against actor Dennis Farina for having a gun in his luggage at an airport earlier this month.

Meet the New Girl: Anna Selezneva

Photo: Imaxtree

Model profile: Anna Selezneva

For more photos from on and off the runways, check out our Model Manual.

Hitch and Cole are memorable Western heroes "It's like this Wendy's in Fargo when I was growing up: It closed and then another restaurant moved in. And then a year later, that restaurant went out of business, and another moved in. And that happened over and over again, and finally it became a Wendy's again. I think it still is.

"This is just like when I had a girlfriend at the end of 5th grade but then summer came and I was 11 so I didn't have a car or anything, so I couldn't just drive to her house or take her on dates; and anyways we both went to camp so no phones. I didn't see her until the beginning of 6th grade and was then told by one of her friends that we had broken up. Blogs are the new 6th grade friends of your ex-girlfriend."

Congratulations everyone! Wish me luck as I totter off into my dotage.

Is Sex and the City of interest only to a certain kind of woman and the gay man who shops with her? Pretty much! Three intrepid reporters went out to movie theaters across Manhattan last night to see just who was waiting in line for a midnight showing. We interviewed 74 fans and one poor man just in from Greece. Our findings: 43 women, 22 gay men, and 10 suckered straights, and one couple from Atlanta who considered SATC a prime impetus for moving here. (No, really: "It helped us move up here. It influenced our decision — seeing the lifestyle and just what goes on, the energy and everything," said Susan McDowell.) The disturbing data is below*.

Females: 43
Males: 32

Gay Males: 22
Straight Males: 10

"Are you guys here together?" "Um, good question."
"My sister dragged me. She promised me an HDTV."

"I'm Carrie outside, but Samantha in bed."
"I'm hard-core Miranda — pretty blunt and cynical?"
"Samantha. I'm very sexual."
"Carrie. I wear my nameplate necklace in honor of her."
"Carrie. She had to deal with quitting smoking forever."
"A hybrid. I think most women are hybrids. Sometimes I slutty, sometimes I’m smart, sometimes I’m conservative."
"I’m smarter than Carrie, but I’m not as lame as Miranda."

"None. I've got a wife."
"The old one."

"I think Samantha? No, we're too much alike — we'd be at each other's throats."
"I love Samantha because she's a whore."
"Charlotte, because I identify her with the buried Wasp deep within me, far beneath my hipster surface."

"Do you have a favorite scene? Would you like us to act it out?"
"I called my boyfriend when I couldn't get tickets, and he was like, 'Just call me when it's over because I can't talk to you right now.'"
"He watched it with his father."
"She flew in from Ohio just to see this in New York."
"I've been awake for two days. I had the option of going home and going to sleep but I can't, because I have to see it."
"I’m obsessed with having sex in the city: Lower East Side, Upper West Side, all over."
"Sex and the City defines every moment of my life."

*Totals do not add up to 75 because all participants did not answer every question.

Reported by Randi Eichenbaum, Vanita Salisbury, and Katherine Ward

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 30 May 2008 | 8:16 pm

Artist Lynn Hershman Leeson Discovers Secret of Eternal Youth: Reynolds Wrap

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Wrapped (2007).Courtesy bitforms gallery nyc.

Clint Eastwood spoke out recently about the proliferation of Botox in Hollywood. His role model, the woman he cites as a delectable throwback to the time when Hollywood embraced individual beauty: the impossibly radiant, effortlessly delicious Angelina Jolie. What, pray we, does he suggest today’s leading ladies do to upkeep Jolie’s Botox-less miracle? Perhaps something like this: a woman, wrapped in plastic, self-preserving, stewing in her own ruddy fumes like a lemon in a Moroccan kitchen. Lynn Hershman Leeson presents this sealed woman in many more elegant to indelicate positions at bitforms gallery through June 5. —Emma Pearse

Source: Vulture -- Entertainment, Music, Culture, Theater, Movies, Art -- New York Magazine Blog | 30 May 2008 | 8:15 pm

Salman Rushdie meditates on power and reality

To celebrate the peak of Sex and the City hysteria in New York, our Tim Murphy set out to catch the most die-hard fans in action: giddily waiting to enter, and then weepily exiting the movie theater after midnight screenings last night. Click above to watch — we promise only minor ridicule, but substantial alcohol consumption. And yeah, a lot of homos and chicks.

Street Level: 'Sex and the City' [NYM Video]

Source: Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine | 30 May 2008 | 8:00 pm

Tyra Banks Demonstrates a Few of Her 275 Smiles

The Angry Smile.Photo: nytimes.com

Boy, do we have a wonderful way for you to kill six minutes this lovely Friday afternoon. To go with her New York Times Magazine cover profile hitting stands Sunday, Tyra Banks shot what we'll call a one-installment vlog. Artistically done in black-and-white, Banks gets right down to it, demonstrating a few valuable tools from her modeling tool kit, namely 7 of her 275 smiles. "I have a long list of different smiles that you can do and every model should be equipped," she explains. "Everybody can't handle the long list … That's for, you know, advanced." She starts off simply, with the subtle Smiling With Your Eyes. Then she moves into the Angry Smile, the Flirting With Boyfriend Smile, the Surprised Because Someone Just Gave You a Diamond Ring and You Don't Know Why Smile, and the Commercial Smile. She ends with our personal favorite, the High Fashion Smile, in which she appears to be bopping herself on the side of her head. Sigh. This totally makes up for missing Tyra every day. We're going to go practice in the bathroom now. If we don't come back, just assume we got discovered.

Lynn Hirschberg Talks to Tyra Banks [NYT]
Related: A Peek at Tyra Banks’s ‘New York Times Magazine’ Profile

Username: gawkermix
Password: gawked

I only thought about the playlist recently because I hadn't played it in so long. In fact, it seemed like the past decade of my life can be told by recalling how often I played it: All the time growing up, to only rarely pulling it out now. Does anyone else measure their happiness by playlist?

We have no definitive answers but we point you to two things. Number one: the Tasaday. A remote, isolated tribe in the Philippines living as if it was still the stone age. They knew nothing of the outside world! They became a media sensation in the early 1970s. But!

Then, just a month after the fall of President Marcos in 1986, sensational reports on the Tasaday again appeared in newspapers and television. These reports, however, were calling the 1971 story a hoax. In the chaotic month following Marcos's downfall, foreign journalists had been able to slip into the area. They found the Tasaday living in regular houses in the area, wearing western clothes, and tending gardens just like those of other rural Manobo people in the southern Philippines.

Oh, and also: Nick Douglas reminded us of the beloved Richard Dreyfus classic Kippendorf's Tribe which is more or less about the same thing.

Anyways. We don't know! There seems to be very little verifiable information in this story beyond two photos, which could be lost extras from Apocalypto for all we know! Plus some nonsense from the Brazilian government about how they have to follow the Prime Directive and not interfere with these tribespeople's lives. Which, on the whole, seems ok with us, because those chaps from Blur were pretty much spot-on about Modern Life, eh?

In addition, the images are being used to prevent massive disruptive logging in the Amazon by saying, look, there are ppl who live here! So whatevs! If it's a hoax it looks to be in the service of a good cause.

New York's Boris Kachka reports from Book Expo America, the book industry's largest get-together, which runs this weekend in Los Angeles.

Maybe it was the early hour — eight in the morning — but today's BEA "Buzz Panel," the annual ritual whereby six editors try to manufacture excitement for their very special galleys, was astoundingly brisk and efficient. Unlike last year, there were no video presentations or long, teary effusions. Forty minutes after Publishers Weekly's editor-in-chief, Sara Nelson, introduced the editors, the whole thing was over. This is entirely thanks to Nelson, who peppered the editors with questions actually relevant to the booksellers ("What's the writer's backstory?" "Who's the audience for this book?") and interjected her own buzzy testimony ("I've met Kira Salak," Nelson said of the travel writer whose first novel, The White Mary, is out this fall, "and she is an incredible storyteller.") You get the feeling she could have done this on her own.

Buzzed books (only one per editor this year) seemed more or less split between kooky dysfunctional families and, well, witches. Witches are huge. Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter and The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry (you can call her Sandy), both feature them. And though Nelson insisted "they couldn't be more different," they are both set in Salem, and the latter comes with a built-in publicity tour pushing Barry as Salem's answer to Savannah's John Berendt. (One reason for the glut of witches? Barnes and Noble's lead fiction buyer, Sessalee Hensley, likes Salem, we heard publishing employees gossip on the floor later.) Richard Nash, who helms Soft Skull Press, led with something we've all been waiting for — essentially a book version of Little Miss Sunshine called The Flying Troutmans, right down to "three crazy people traveling in a van." Nelson had the last word: "Edgy enough for twentysomethings, and not so super-cool that older readers wouldn't like it."

Most of the digressing was left to Harmony editor John Glusman, owing to the fact that what he's selling, The Book of Animal Ignorance, is basically one long digression, a smart bathroom read from Aardvark to Worm. Based on a BBC quiz show, it features such delightful factoids as the animal with the largest penis: the lowly barnacle (it can be seven times as long as its body). And even then, Nelson cut right to the heart of the matter. "Are there pictures?" she asked. "Yes," Glusman replied, "which is important to me, because I don't like to read." —Boris Kachka

Source: Vulture -- Entertainment, Music, Culture, Theater, Movies, Art -- New York Magazine Blog | 30 May 2008 | 7:30 pm

Brearley School Evicting Its Neighbors to Make Room for Robots

No room for an orchestra.Photo: Nytimes

The Brearley School’s plan to purchase an adjacent apartment building and evict 29 rent-stabilized tenants is near completion, but the elite Upper East Side girls’ school’s headmistress and her entourage filled half the seats at a community-board meeting on May 28 in, she said, the “spirit of dialogue” to explain school’s “urgent need for additional teaching space.” Brearley, which last year claimed an endowment of $106 million, is currently housed in a fourteen-story building, with more than 50 classrooms and three gyms (including a double-height gym that’s rarely used) for its 687 students, but the headmistress, Stephanie Hull, said it only had fifteen classrooms for the middle- and upper-school schedules. Plus, she said, the school has “no regular orchestra space" and the six recently renovated science rooms are insufficient and “prevent us from adding a single new elective science course." Already, she added the ”enthusiastic and very hardworking robotics team spills out of a tiny room that can’t accommodate the necessary equipment and members.” —Elizabeth Wolff

Source: Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine | 30 May 2008 | 7:15 pm

FashionMeetsFinance ‘Purifies the Dating Pool’

Pure romance.Photo: fashionmeetsfinance.com

If you're broke, shameless, work in fashion, and have a costly handbag habit, plan to be at Taj on June 5 to mix and mingle with men in finance. That's right! A crop of six-figure earners from the likes of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity are gathering next week, and they want to make you, fashion girl, their arm candy. (Because they're so hard to find elsewhere in this city.) Yes, it's as superficial as it sounds. The affair is the brainchild of nascent matchmaking organization FashionMeetsFinance. Its Website reads:

In a bar these two populations have to siphon through multiple unwanted encounters to find each other. FashionMeetsFinance facilitates destiny by purifying the dating pool bringing together only the most appealing populations in the New York dating game … Ladies, you no longer need to worry that the cute guy at the bar works in advertising.

Oh, how we love when someone out there on the Internet reads our minds! Hungry for more details? Check out Pocket Change to RSVP, surf pics of those who have already dipped into this "purified dating pool" (we spy Versace and Marc Jacobs gals as well as Condé Nasties on there), and watch a video of the slick-haired founder. He admits this is all very superficial but emphasizes that really, he's "giving back to society."

…We're going to go take a shower now.

What: FashionMeetsFinance
When: June 5
Complimentary drinks from 5:30–6:30 p.m.
Where: Taj
48 W. 21st St., nr. Sixth Ave.

—Katie Hintz

Source: The Cut - New York Magazine's Fashion Blog | 30 May 2008 | 7:00 pm

Filmmaking Collective Meerkat Media Makes a Better Bee Movie

The Eighth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival, presented by Arts Engine, kicked off on Wednesday night, its mission to use the short film medium to engage audiences and inspire them to take action about a range of important issues. One of our favorites of the bunch, the Meerkat Media Collective’s Every Third Bite, tackles a topic we’ve heard a lot about in recent months but still find a bit hard to understand: colony collapse disorder (CCD), the unexplained phenomenon of worker bees abruptly disappearing from hives in Europe and the United States. This could make for a very alarmist narrative, of course — without bees we’d pretty much all starve. But Every Third Bite takes a different approach. After giving us a brief overview of CCD, it introduces us to a number of individual beekeepers who are doing their part to battle CCD, some in the most unlikely places. Of particular interest to readers will be David Graves, who operates twelve hives on the rooftops of New York City and sees the city as an untapped resource for beekeeping. —Bilge Ebiri

Source: Vulture -- Entertainment, Music, Culture, Theater, Movies, Art -- New York Magazine Blog | 30 May 2008 | 6:50 pm

Danny Glover on His Flower-Child Days: ‘I Wore Bell Bottoms, Platform Shoes, Edwardian Coats’

Photo: Getty Images

Danny Glover, known for playing tough guys in movies and for his activism, was a flower child. "I'm a native of San Francisco, I grew up in the Haight Ashbury, I graduated from high school in 1965," Glover told us at the Jazz Foundation of America's Great Night in Harlem benefit on Thursday, where the conversation turned to music. In high school in 1963, Glover watched Sly Stone rehearse in his friend's basement down the street. "I didn't go to Woodstock, but I saw Jimi Hendrix at Marx Meadow in San Francisco," Glover said. He used to hang out at the legendary Avalon Ballroom in the mid-sixties, when he was 18 years old. "My friend was a doorman there. We used to sneak into the Avalon Ballroom," Glover said. "Listened to everything, you know. Janis Joplin — one of the cats that lived in my commune in 1968, every time Janis came to town, he'd go get a bottle of Southern Comfort and bring it up there," the Lethal Weapon star recalled, laughing.

"I lived in a commune in 1968 to 1969. We were part of the commune network that included the Grateful Dead commune and the Jefferson Airplane commune." We immediately had visions of giant Afros and fringed vests. "I wore bell bottoms, platform shoes, the Edwardian coats, you know? I don't even want to see myself in that stuff no more," Glover told us, laughing. In 1975, Glover saw Bob Marley play his first show in the U.S. at San Francisco's Boarding House. "It's funny. We produced a film about celebrating the 60th birthday of Bob Marley, you know. When I saw him, I was 28 years old. My daughter, who's got the Rasta, and my grandson's a Rasta — her mother was pregnant with her when we went to see Bob Marley — she says, 'That's the reason why I can't get away from these Rasta boys!'" —Bennett Marcus

Source: Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine | 30 May 2008 | 6:30 pm

The happiest man in television

Read full story for latest details.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 30 May 2008 | 6:24 pm

Documentary tells how Bush changed Texas town (AP)

AP - For years, folks took for granted the pleasures of small-town life: unlocked doors, little traffic and a tranquility interrupted only by high school football games or passing train horns.

Source: Yahoo! News: Movie News | 30 May 2008 | 6:23 pm

Robert Lee Morris Is Making Jewelry With the Olsens?

Spooky.Photo: Getty Images

In case you don't know him, Robert Lee Morris is a sculptor and jewelry designer. His work has appeared on the cover of Vogue and in dozens of issues. He's also collaborated with Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Anne Klein, Donna Karan, and Michael Kors and won a CFDA award. According to rumors, he's got another collaboration in the works with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Hmm, two of these are not like the others! Yes, the Olsens have an upmarket clothing line (Elizabeth and James), but still, we're kind of surprised because they haven't really dabbled in accessories. Nonetheless, WWD reports:

According to sources, the trio has been hard at work for the past few months on a collection of jewelry dubbed Robert Lee Morris for Elizabeth and James. Apparently the twins long have been fans of Morris and pored over his vast archives in at his headquarters in downtown Manhattan. The line of silver and brass dagger necklaces, amorphous knuckle rings and edgy earrings will bow in the next few months.

Dagger necklaces? Knuckle rings? The Olsens may be wee things, but now we're a bit scared.

Fashion Scoops: Three's A Crowd [WWD]

Source: The Cut - New York Magazine's Fashion Blog | 30 May 2008 | 6:10 pm

Time Warner Cable to offer web to TV link (Reuters)

Reuters - Time Warner Cable Inc plans to offer subscribers an easier way to bring Internet video to their television screens as part of an overall home networking system, Chief Executive Glenn Britt said on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Television News | 30 May 2008 | 6:04 pm

Boring Witness Shoots Holes in R. Kelly's CGI Defense

Photo: Getty Images

Yesterday, as R. Kelly's child-pornography trial was engulfed in behind-the-scenes surprise-witness hysteria, jurors were subjected to the testimony of forensic-video analyst Grant Fredericks (described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "painstaking" and "dull") when they probably really just wanted to hear about threesomes. Sadly, talk of threesomes will have to wait until next week, as prosecution witness and three-way-partaker Lisa Van Allen has left Chicago and flown back to her Atlanta home and won't testify until at least Monday.

Anyway, Kelly's lawyers have long insisted that his image was added to his alleged sex tape using CGI (possibly by haters), but Fredericks testified yesterday that this was unlikely. Walking jurors through it in slow motion, he showed that a mole on Kelly's back (which Kelly claims is not visible in the tape, thereby absolving him) is in fact visible. Fredericks also claimed that it was "impossible" that anything had been digitally manipulated. Still, that's exactly what we said the first time we saw Jurassic Park.

Mole defense takes a beating [Chicago Sun-Times]

Earlier: Vulture's previous coverage of the R. Kelly trial

Source: Vulture -- Entertainment, Music, Culture, Theater, Movies, Art -- New York Magazine Blog | 30 May 2008 | 6:00 pm

Al Roker Tells Us a Hamster Story About Brian Williams

Al Roker gossiping about colleague Brian Williams.Photo: Getty Images

We've always thought of Brian Williams as charmingly quirky, but his behavior at Wednesday's Gracie Allen Awards for women in radio and television, where he was one of the few men present, struck us as odd. We spotted him backstage. Then he exited to our left. Then reappeared to our right. Then exited to our left, then reappeared again. We had to ask: Was he circling the ballroom endlessly? "Yes, he just does that," said his NBC colleague Al Roker, standing nearby, observing Williams. "He just wanders around, basically looking for snacks. That's why he's so thin. He eats constantly, but he's got the metabolism of a hamster. Literally, the NBC bullpen is like a giant hamster wheel. If you've ever been there, it's circular and it spins as he goes. Brian's hamster wheel powers Nightly News. We're very green." According to Roker, Williams responds best to Goldberg's Peanut Chews.

"I leave a trail, and I've managed to lure him into my office," says Roker. "It's very nice when he comes. He's got a lovely singing voice. Sometimes he does show tunes." Roker also confirmed that Williams, in addition to being hamsterlike, was bred to be a newscaster. "He came out like that. He was born with the hair and a starched shirt. Well, bib at the time," says Roker. "Didn't cry as much as commanded attention. Actually, he couldn't talk until his parents got him a TelePrompTer at age 3." —Jada Yuan

Source: Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine | 30 May 2008 | 6:00 pm

Did Angelina Jolie Give Birth?

"ET" reports Angelina Jolie has given birth to twins, "People" says she hasn't.
Source: ABC News: Entertainment | 30 May 2008 | 5:39 pm

Alexander Wang Drops at Uniqlo Without Chaos

From left, Wang; clothes, glorious clothes at right.Photo: Melissa Hom

Alexander Wang launched his Uniqlo collection this morning with a leisurely opening for friends, family, and fashion insiders at 9 a.m. Editors and stylists browsed the five-piece dress collection (while sipping Bellinis) as about a dozen young fans waited outside for the doors to open to the public at 11 a.m. Wang explained Uniqlo reps e-mailed him about a year and a half ago to see if he "might be interested at all" in a collaboration. "I replied like, 'Yeaaaaah' and ran screaming to my brother and sister who I work with, just so excited."

Wang fans should hurry to the store to score one of the dresses, all hovering around the $50 to $60 range. The collection will be replenished a few times throughout the day with about 200 more units per style. For those stuck at work, here's a glimmer of hope: They will be restocking "a really small amount" on Monday as well. Wang admitted he learned a lot teaming up with Uniqlo. "They're such a huge team, which I'm not used to. They come in and present options, fabrics to pick from, everything down to the seam. It's very controlled, very focused. I wanted to create something very classic. A lot of times high-end collaborations look very trendy, like, 'Oh, there's that dress from that low-high collection.' But I just wanted mine to be streamlined and affordable prices. Pieces you can easily mix with my regular collection too." Indeed, the dresses are done in slate grays and black, typical of Wang's emerging signature look. Why not play with more color for summertime? "I thought about it. But color for me has to be so specific."

Wang didn't have long to linger with his fans; he's off to shoot his resort look book. And then to get ready for Monday's CFDAs. He'll be going with model pal Erin Wasson. She wasn't involved at all in the Uniqlo collection, but she's a "great friend and it's good to go to those events with someone that you're comfortable with, that you want to hang out with." Asked about his nomination, Wang mentioned he wasn't nervous, just honored to be going. After, his focus shifts to his spring 2009 collection. And then … shoes! Accessories fanatics rejoice. —Kendall Herbst

Related: Some Marriages Work: The High-Low Designer-Retail Partnership

Source: The Cut - New York Magazine's Fashion Blog | 30 May 2008 | 5:30 pm

Thom Yorke Would Like to Remind Prince Who the Original ‘Creep’ Was

Photo: Getty Images

"Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our … song." —Radiohead's Thom Yorke reacts to news that Prince has blocked YouTube clips of his Coachella performance "Creep" [AP]

"I'm a scientist — which I know is unbelievable." —Liv Tyler is realistic about her role in The Incredible Hulk [Superhero Hype]

"When people hear the music, it's Led Zeppelin. I know that's a bold statement, but it's as good as that." —Sammy Hagar, boldly, on his new band, Chickenfoot [Music Radar]

"This is a war, man. The shit that we do, nine guys trying to fucking write together, and keep this insanity going? Does anybody take the time to realize that? For me, this is like going to Vietnam, serving your tour and then the government asking you to do another tour because you're a badass. We've got 10 purple hearts, and we're fucking killers. This isn't your rock and roll; this is our rock and roll." —Slipknot's musical war veteran, Shawn "Clown" Crahan [MTV]

"I used to do karate and judo when I was a child. I did them for a year, you know, the obligatory, 'Start something and then give up'? But, obviously I was great." —Jack Black on the kung fu in Kung Fu Panda [FemaleFirst.co.uk]

Source: Vulture -- Entertainment, Music, Culture, Theater, Movies, Art -- New York Magazine Blog | 30 May 2008 | 5:30 pm

Bloomberg: Crane Collapse ‘Intolerable’

Photo: Getty Images

REAL ESTATE
• "You can rest assured, I don't care how much the industry says, 'Oh you're slowing down our construction or your jobs.' First comes safety, and then we can talk about the rest," Mayor Bloomberg said angrily in a press conference this morning. "And…I don't need any developer or union leader or anybody else telling me about the consequences of slowing things down. Nobody wants this economy to grow more than me. But we're not going to kill people." [NYP]
• The Donnell Library will be razed this week to make room for a hotel, and its longtime patrons are sad. “I cried,” said Esther Hautzig, 77, who worked two days a week at the information desk. [NYT]
• The New York City Housing Authority plans to raise rents between 5 and 15 percent for some tenants and eliminate hundreds of community centers and resident programs. [NYT]

FINANCE
• Wall Street luminary John Marshall, a retired professor who spent decades teaching at business schools, has been accused by the SEC of insider trading. "I am just shocked beyond belief," says one of his former students. "If he wanted to, he could have made money — lots of money — years ago." [NYT]
• There might be fewer than expected Wall Street layoffs. The number is still high, at 25,000, but it's not as bad as the 36,000 the that State Labor Department estimated. [DealBook/NYT]

MEDIA
• Former Details and Star editor-in-chief Joe Dolce can thank author James Frey for finding him a new business partner. [NYP]
• Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said that NBC journalists had been "under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation." General Electric disagrees. The company "has never, and will never, interfere in the editorial process at NBC News," a spokesperson said in a statement. Yellin's rebuttal? "I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work." [NYT]
• Portfolio is working on a story about Bonnie Fuller, and Keith Kelly, for the life of him, cannot understand why. [NYP]

LAW
• The lawyer for a bedbug-bitten Fox News employee who is suing the landlord and maintenance company of 1211 Sixth Avenue blamed his client's condition on foreigners. [NYO]
• The plaintiffs' lawyers bringing the shareholder class-action suit over the collapse of commodities brokerage Refco, Inc., have been receiving assistance from an unlikely source: Refco's former chief executive officer. "I can't think of another time a CEO who led a massive fraud agreed to sit down with the investors he victimized," one of the lawyers said. [Law.com]
• Art litigation is becoming an increasingly popular specialization, since "lawyers tend to get involved where there is lots of money involved, and they also tend to get involved when people get into disputes." [Law.com]

Source: Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine | 30 May 2008 | 5:30 pm

Radiohead to Prince: Hey, that's OUR song

Read full story for latest details.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 30 May 2008 | 5:23 pm

'Star Trek' Director Joseph Pevney Dies at 96

Joseph Pevney, who directed some of the best-loved episodes of the original "Star Trek" television series, has died. He was 96.
Source: FOXNews.com | 30 May 2008 | 5:18 pm

Will Smith Funds Private Scientology School

Hollywood power couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith have donated nearly $1 million to open a private school that will be headed and run by trained Scientologists.
Source: FOXNews.com | 30 May 2008 | 5:14 pm

Zac Hanson Becomes Father for the First Time

The drummer for the rock group Hanson is now a first-time father.
Source: FOXNews.com | 30 May 2008 | 4:47 pm

Bill Cosby Sweaters to Be Auctioned Off for Charity

Not everyone can be Dr. Cliff Huxtable, the quick-with-a-quip dad that Bill Cosby played on TV for eight years. But for the right price, you could dress just like him this Father's Day.
Source: FOXNews.com | 30 May 2008 | 4:44 pm

Some Stars Multi-Talented? Or Just Vain?

Scarlett Johannson's debut album is the latest of many celeb "side" projects.
Source: ABC News: Entertainment | 30 May 2008 | 4:23 pm

Pop Tarts: Hugh Hefner's Girlfriend 'Scared' of Being Naked

You would assume that as Hugh Hefner's girlfriend, a former body-painted Playboy party promoter and a frequently featured model in the men's magazine, Kendra Wilkinson would be pretty comfortable with baring her body.
Source: FOXNews.com | 30 May 2008 | 4:21 pm

Handbags, Clothes, Condoms Recovered in Counterfeit Bust

Photo: wwd.com

The counterfeit war rages on, and authorities are tackling the problem at the source. Yesterday, eight people were arrested after a raid of counterfeit goods at ZX Trading Corporation, in Queens, which supplies sellers in New York. The loot seized included over 1,100 boxes of fake stuff believed to come from China, ranging from knockoff Tommy Hilfiger and Izod apparel to faux Barbie dolls and Trojan condoms. Of course, fake designer handbags were uncovered; those alone filled two 40-foot trailer trucks.

Back to the condoms: Newsday reports the fake Trojans were sold to small discount retailers in the area. (But if you've bought your rubbers at the 99-cent store recently, don't worry — they're supposedly just as effective as the real thing.) ZX distributes their fakes mostly to sellers in New York and to a handful in Virginia and Texas. Police expect to spend a couple of days sorting through their spoils and assessing the value of the goods. What a glorious weekend.

Counterfeit Apparel Seized in N.Y. Raid [WWD]
8 arrested in raid on suspected counterfeit ring [Newsday]

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