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‘Social Heights,’ Starring Kristian Laliberte and Devorah Rose, Will Make It to Reality
Behold the cast of a show that wants to be ‘The Hills’ in Manhattan, except older.
Posted 09/04/08 in Daily Intel : Geniuses
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Kelly Killoren Bensimon to Join ‘Real Housewives’
And we predict what fireworks will ensue.
Posted 07/21/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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‘Real Housewife’ Jill Zarin: Simon Van Kempen Drinks Too Much
Today we learn that the Real Housewives made only $8,000 each for their first season, and that Jill Zarin really hates Alex McCord and her husband.
Posted 06/27/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Kathy Griffin Has Not Learned Her Lesson About Child-Star Jokes
Plus, dish on Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Clinton and the 'Gossip' girls in our daily roundup.
Posted 06/06/08 in Daily Intel : Gossipmonger
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Countess LuAnn Wishes ‘Real Housewives’ Would Get Some Real Socialites
Her ladyship would like some fancier friends.
Posted 06/03/08 in Daily Intel : Party Lines
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Tricia Walsh-Smith to Move to ‘Real Housewives’?
It's possible you'll soon be seeing Tricia Walsh-Smith's crazy-eyed stare in HD!
Posted 05/05/08 in Daily Intel : Early and Often
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The ‘Real Housewives of New York City’ Weigh In on the ‘Real Armpits’ of New Jersey
Bethenny Frankel and Countess LuAnn de Lesseps give their two ha'pennies on the newest spinoff of their show.
Posted 04/23/08 in Daily Intel : Party Lines
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Pop Quiz: Know Your Media Ladies
Yesterday and today, the Times profiled three women in media: Julia Allison, Arianna Huffington, and Lauren Zalaznick. Despite differences in their ages and careers, the three of them seem of a type.
Posted 03/31/08 in Daily Intel : Multiple Choice
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Bethenny Frankel Tortures Ikea Employees Until They Give Her What She Wants
Name: Bethenny Frankel
Age: 37
Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Occupation: Health-conscious celebrity chef, star of The Real Housewives of New York City, Health-magazine columnist, Pepperidge Farm Baked Naturals spokeswoman.Posted 03/07/08 in Daily Intel : 21 Questions
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The Ladies of ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’: A Social Examination
We've been hearing bits and pieces about this for a couple of months now, but the Daily News has busted the story of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York City wide open. With pretty pictures of the pretty ladies, and quotes from all of them about what the show is going to be like ("We work hard and then we party hard!"), their coverage has succeeded in getting us really amped up about the new show. Since it starts out all the way in March, we plan on doing a little buildup research in the meantime. Maybe, if it turns out to be good, we can try being obsessed with it like we were with Gossip Girl. They'll have to earn it, though, we don't go through two bottles of wine, a box of tissues, and a Klonopin once a week for just any show. And from what we can scrounge up so far, we're not yet sold. Below, what a quick scan of Nexis teaches us about these so-called socialites: • Fashion entrepreneur Ramona Singer has zero appearances in the gossip columns and only one appearance on Bill Cunningham's page in the Times (though it was in the Hamptons so that surely earns her some points). But she has eight mentions or pictures on newyorksocialdiary.com, which is technically more legit. • Alex McCord, who lives in Cobble Hill and is therefore the only cast member not filming from the Upper East Side, has appeared once on Cunningham's page (from a Metropolitan Opera opening) and only twice on NYSD.
Posted 01/14/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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The Return of Aleksey Vayner
FINANCE • Aleksey Vayner, everyone's favorite bizarre self-promoting video maker, is back with a new Website and perhaps a book! Impossible may be nothing after all. [Gawker] • Goldman Sachs set new records with their $20.2 billion bonus pool, including $67.9 million for Lloyd Blankfein, but rumor has it the bank decided to stiff their back-office employees. [NYP] • Blankfein's salary still pales in comparison to hedge-fund kings like John Paulson and Paolo Pellegrini, who raked in more than $1 billion each in 2007 betting against the housing market. [NYT]
Posted 01/07/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Hedi and LVMH: Together at Last!
FASHION • Hedi Slimane is back in talks with LVMH to launch his own fashion house. Everyone, commence jumping up and down. [WWD] • IMG is behind Bravo’s new model show but won’t be giving the winner a contract. [Fashionista] • Not even Cavalli can rev up H&M’s sales. [NYP]
Posted 12/18/07 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Live Like a Supermodel, But With a Better Apartment
Comely wannabes looking to launch their modeling careers usually bunk up in tiny apartments to make ends meet until they land that elusive cover. But not apparently the contestants for Make Me a Supermodel, Bravo's upcoming reality series. A tipster says scouts for the show, slated to hit the air early next year and hosted by the easy-on-the-eyes Tyson Beckford, recently checked out a luxe (read camera-ready) 4500-square-foot penthouse on West 20th Street with five bedrooms, four and a half baths, and a roof deck. It's currently on the market for $8.2 million, though apparently also available for rent for somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 a month. Listing broker Darren Sukenik of Prudential Douglas Elliman declined to comment. Needless to say, it's not your average apartment, for models or otherwise. —S. Jhoanna Robledo 129 West 20th Street [Prudential Douglas Elliman]
Posted 12/13/07 in Daily Intel : Vu.
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Padma Leaves a Bad Taste in Fiamma's Mouth
Manhattan Moms, an East Coast equivalent of Bravo's The Real Housewives of Orange County, will premiere early next year. A lot of the city's foremost graffiti artists congregated for a book party at Auto in the meatpacking district. Billy Joel is in talks with the Mets to perform a bunch of gigs at Shea Stadium. George Steinbrenner will have a high school named after him in Tampa. Padma Lakshmi was rude to the staff at Soho eatery Fiamma, but Martha Stewart overtipped and was nice. CNN gave out an award to someone for forcing "one of the world's largest oil corporations to pay more than $6 billion to clean up toxic waste in the Amazon rain forest," but didn't name Chevron as the company because they are an advertiser.
Posted 12/13/07 in Daily Intel : Gossipmonger
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Is Jay McCarroll Homeless? He Sure Said So (and So Did His Publicist)
In this week's cover story on the challenges facing winners of Bravo's reality shows, New York's Jennifer Senior noted that two years after winning Project Runway's first season, Jay McCarroll is still homeless in New York, using his studio and other people’s couches as crash pads. How did Senior know McCarroll was homeless? He told her so. But once the fact appeared in print, he denied it, posting mocking YouTube videos of himself wandering city streets with a cardboard sign reading “Will Design for Food.” Then his best friend and publicist, Nancy Kane, responded more aggressively, as publicists and best friends are wont to do: She left an angry voice-mail message for Senior Tuesday charging that the suggestion McCarroll is homeless is “unequivocally untrue.” She went on: "His studio is a live/work space, and it might not be ideal, but it is more than a lot of people have in New York City, and he pays rent every month.” Later in the day, however, she must have realized this wasn’t much of a response; in fact, it was exactly what Senior had written. So Kane proceeded to tell various gossip columns that New York Magazine had fallen for a hoax. Jay, she said, in fact lives in a beautiful apartment building at 72nd Street and Riverside Drive. Perhaps. (Why Kane's so defensive we don't know. There’s no shame in struggling for your success, which was the whole point of Senior’s story.) We'll choose to believe the version enshrined in her voice mail, reported in the magazine, and detailed by McCarroll himself. Don't believe us? Take a look at the transcript, after the jump.
Posted 08/09/07 in Daily Intel : The Follow-up
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Padma Lakshmi Introduces Dismemberment, Cannibalism to ‘Top Chef,’ Our Fantasies
The freakazoid highlight of last night's Top Chef premiere, provided by host and Salman squeeze Padma Lakshmi in response to a contestant's decision to fry a snake:
"Anything can stand up to frying. You can fry my toe and if you batter it right, it's going to taste good."
We don't know if we're hungry, horny, or nauseous.Posted 06/14/07 in Daily Intel : Cultural Capital
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‘Top Design’ Was Too Dull Even for Basic Cable
Last night, Bravo's interior-decorating contest Top Design aired its season finale. Not that you'd know it: Though the climaxes of the hip network's reality shows for creative types have generated mild (Top Chef) to major (Project Runway) buzz, nobody's watercoolers are atwitter today with gossip about whether Matt's monochromatic loft deserved to win. In fact, the only chatter we heard amounted to an anemic, "Is that still on?" And with good reason. Top Design stank.
Posted 04/12/07 in Daily Intel : New York Fugging City
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Al for Hill?
Al Sharpton claims he is not backing Hillary Clinton for president, despite a rumor that he and Bill smoked cigars in Harlem two weeks ago. Rupert Murdoch would back Michael Bloomberg for president, if Bloomberg were to run. A $1.5 million lawsuit against Beyoncé, regarding her House of Dereon clothing line, was thrown out. Michael Jackson was reported to have been hospitalized for pneumonia, but his flack says he's just fine. Bravo is shooting a reality show about photog Patrick McMullan. Jenna Jameson hasn't been attending meetings with mainstream producers regarding the film adaptation of her book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star because she's allegedly unhappy with her vaginoplasty.
Posted 03/30/07 in Daily Intel : Gossipmonger
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Bravo Scrapes Bottom
Those Bravo ads that have popped up on virtually every available bus shelter and subway-station wall in the last week or so? Yeah, they're a sign that the ever-reliable supplier of gay-themed broadcasting and James Lipton close-ups is officially scraping the bottom of the barrel. They're advertising the channel's latest reality TV competition, Shear Genius, which will feature twelve hairstylists tested on technical and creative capabilities. (It premieres April 11, immediately following the season finale of Top Design.)
Posted 03/28/07 in Daily Intel : Cultural Capital
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Todd Oldham Is Not Our Bravo Idol
Top Chef viewers who dealt with their postpartum depression last night by mooning around Bravo hoping for another toque or two before things were truly cashed found themselves suddenly facing an entirely different kind of high. Coming up next was the premiere of Bravo's new Top Design, in which Todd Oldham wannabes remake rooms for a chance at some start-up cash and a place in a top interior-design firm. The new show, it seems, will stick to the standard reality formula: early ejection of boring contestants, the establishment of a villain (oodles of possible Marcels, don't worry), and a new mentor and host in Oldham himself. But that, sadly, is the show's big problem: Oldham's wooden delivery was in desperate need of some hot Tim Gunn glue. (How Top Chef's Padma was allowed to sound half-asleep all the time, we'll never know.) Which gives us, suddenly, the perfect idea for the next reality show: So You Want to Be a Reality-Show Host. And sorry, Todd, you've got some talent, but we just don't think you've got the stage presence to be an idol. Top Design [BravoTV.com] Earlier: For Todd Oldham, Brunch Is a Prison
Posted 02/01/07 in Daily Intel : Cultural Capital
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