Ana Marie Cox Comes Full Circle at ‘Radar’The founding Wonkette editor signs on to do irreverent political coverage for Maer’s magazine, another Charles Kushner associate goes down, and Andrew Cuomo noses around Dick Grasso’s package, in our daily roundup of news from the worlds of media, real estate, law, and finance.
Jamie Dimon: ‘Many’ of Bear’s 14,000 Employees Will Lose JobsDid Bear Stearns collapse in part because of a whisper campaign? How will Starbucks keep its customers if everyone starts pinching pennies? And what did Sarah Jessica Parker think of Maxim naming her the “unsexiest woman alive”? Our weekly roundup of law, media, and business news.
company town
Conan O’Brien Reads, But Does Not Give Recipes to, ‘Good Housekeeping’MEDIA
•Yesterday the New York Post reported on Tiger Woods’s new $65 million Hamptons pad. The only problem? He didn’t buy the house. [Radar]
• Good Housekeeping published Conan O’Brien’s stew recipe in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day. Except it wasn’t actually his recipe. “I’ve never cooked anything in my life. I didn’t send this to them; they completely made this up,” he said, then added: “I love this magazine, I’m not mad or anything.” [WWD]
• After a year of bickering, Dow Jones decided it will no longer carry news from the Associated Press. [Reuters]
ink-stained wretches
‘Radar’ Hires Spencer Pratt to Dispense Advice, WisdomRadar has hired Spencer Pratt, the blond, cherubic Hills star with a heart of darkness, as their new advice columnist. “Yo Spencer!,” which will tackle “problems from hot girls to family affairs,” will debut in the next issue. (A sneak preview of the first column, which answers questions about smelly co-workers, girls who like threesomes, and whether one should discourage one’s brother from enlisting in the army, is after the jump.) “Spencer is never afraid to speak his mind,” Radar editor-in-chief Maer Roshan says in the press release. “When asking for advice, it’s good to have someone who will be brutally honest with you, and tell it like it is.” Sure, because that worked out really well for Heidi. You can e-mail Spencer, or whoever’s writing his column, about your problems at spencer@radaronline.com, though it might take him a while to get back to you, since we predict that mailbox will be full of “You’re a douche bag” messages in, oh, ten to twenty minutes.
in other news
Adrian Grenier Meets a Belle in the Big CityYou’re at a party, sitting bored on the couch next to some drunk Indian guy, when a shaggy-haired, twinkly-eyed stranger ambles up to you. He smiles. You smile back. “What’s your name?” he says. You tell him, and then you ask for his. “Adrian,” he says. He says he’s a documentary filmmaker, along with some other stuff. As he says this, his eyes twinkle, and you realize that you have seen these twinkling eyes before, on the hit show Entourage. Why, it’s Adrian Grenier! Immediately, you start planning your lives together. Half the year, you’ll live in his Clinton Hill brownstone. Winters, you’ll decamp to Los Angeles, with the occasional jaunt to St. Barts, Italy, and Cannes. He asks what you do. You tell him you’re in fashion. “That’s cool,” he says. Maybe he’ll pay for you to start your own clothing line, like Harvey did for Georgina! Then he leans in and huskily whispers the thing every woman has always dreamed of hearing. “So,” he says, “how about we go home, and I fuck the shit out of you?”
Adrian Grenier Pickup Lines: A Play in One Act [Radar]
intel
‘Times’ of London Rips Off ‘Radar’ ListicleWhen Radar ran their medium-funny “100 Reasons You’re Still Single” article back in September, we thought it was a smidge annoying. But in Radar’s defense, it wasn’t nearly as annoying as when the Times of London fully ripped off their list and published a very similar version this weekend. Note the similarities from the Times’ “50 Reasons Why You’re Still Single”:
RADAR: 5. Are only gay when you’re drunk
TIMES: 16. Are only gay when you’re drunk
RADAR: 38. Refuse to remove your Bluetooth earpiece during sex
TIMES: 18. Refuse to remove your Bluetooth headset before making love
RADAR: 52. Have more than zero stuffed animals on your bed
TIMES: 3. Have more than zero stuffed animals on your bed
in other news
Keith Olbermann Creates a Perfect Media MomentSo if Balk’s Cock writing from under the desk at Radar to apply for Alex Balk’s old job at Gawker.com wasn’t meta-media enough for you, take a look at this video. It’s Keith Olbermann on his Countdown show reading aloud Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon “Bill O’Reilly’s Very Useful Advice for Young People,” which appeared in the Village Voice last week. Olbermann reads the panels (at length) in O’Reilly’s voice, including the parts about how Olbermann himself has a small cock. Click the image above and let us know: Is it boring? Is it genius? Is it just plain confusing? Damned if we know. But to add another meta-layer to this post, why don’t you just imagine it was written by Daily Intel’s cock. Makes everything funnier, no?
Olbermann Channels Tom Tomorrow Channeling O’Reilly [VV]
in other news
Today in Unroch and Cordera: The Plot Thickens, and Will the Pants Come Off?Maximilia Cordero and William Unroch will not be stopped! As we mentioned yesterday, the model/Jeffery Epstein rape-accuser and her lawyer-boyfriend filed a defamation suit against the Post for a series of stories they say “paint an outrageous, false, and defamatory portrait of the victim plaintiff and her attorney as ‘money-seeking lawyers and their women.” Strangely absent from the complaint was a specific rebuttal to the Post’s allegation that Maximilia was actually born a man, which the twosome had previously denied. Therefore, we assumed that Maximilia was indeed a man and was getting to be okay with that. However! Speaking about her lawsuit to the Daily News’ “Rush and Molloy” this morning, the lady again denied she was a dude: “They put in vicious lies — that I’m a man, that I’m on hormone therapy, that I’ve had cosmetic surgery,” she said. Now, Above the Law has a birth certificate up on their site for a Maximilia Josephine Cordero, born in 1983. It looks kind of fake, but note the two masculine-ish names! Man? Not a man? What? “If the judge orders her to pull her pants down, [the gender question] will be answered very quickly,” Unroch told the News. The way this has all been snowballing, we queasily expect photos of Cordero’s mystery genitals to appear on Radar within the week.
Rush and Molloy [NYDN]
Maximilia Cordero: Maybe Not a Man? [Above the Law]
company town
Bloomberg’s Baby Problems: They Just Keep Popping OutFINANCE
• Another woman joined the federal discrimination lawsuit against Bloomberg LP. After her first child in 2005, her pay fell and her colleagues turned into sharks. One supervisor even asked, “What is this, your third baby?” [NYT]
• More of the same on the Street: Bank of America wrote down $3 billion, Bear Stearns $1.2 billion, and British bank HSBC took the cake with $3.4 billion, largely due to U.S. mortgage weaknesses. Meanwhile, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein laughed in everyone’s face, predicting no more write-downs (not that they lost much in the first place) at the Teflon bank. [NYP, NYT, NYT, DealBreaker]
• Is the credit crunch just like Enron all over again? So says Bethany McLean, the reporter who first broke Ken Lay’s fraud wide open. [Fortune]
in other news
New ‘Radar’: This Time, Prince Harry in BoxersYippee: The September Radar is almost here! Which means it’s time for early teases of the cover story! The mag posted the new cover yesterday, and Drudge picked it up today, and we’re sure you’re shocked to discover it features a Photoshopped image of a celebrity’s head on an underwear-clad body. (Interestingly, the underwear isn’t white.) Also, “Pop, Politics, Scandal, Style” has given way to “Fresh Intelligence” as the slogan, and there’s nary a mention of Paris Hilton, a presidential candidate, or any sort of homosexuality (in either babies or pets). We barely recognize the thing.
The Trouble with Harry [Radar via Drudge]
Earlier: The March of ‘Radar’
party lines
‘Radar’ Throws a Party, and We Discover We Are Not Cool Enough to Buy DrinksAnd what [owner Simon Hammerstein] absolutely doesn’t want is for the Box to be known as a club. “It’s a dinner theater!” Simon interjects sternly whenever you mention the C-word. “It could be the hottest club in New York,” adds Lucas, one of 30-odd investors. “But if that’s all it is, then it is a failure. If he turns it into a club, then I’m going to kick his ass.”
— “What’s in the Box,” New York,February 5, 2007
Last night Radar magazine fêted its seventh issue at Hammerstein’s non-club. The invitation said the party would run from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. It was a pleasant affair. A few minutes after ten, we tried to order another drink. We expected the free bar to be closed; we pulled out our AmEx to open a tab. The barman would not accept it. No, no, we said, we know the open bar is closed, and we’ll pay. We were not permitted to. We were not cool enough. Our money was not good enough. We were to leave. We did.
Sounds an awful lot like a club to us, no? Oh, also: We will never set foot in that place again.
‘Radar’ Finds a Permanent(ish) Home
Back in October, the Observer reported that third-time’s-the-charm Radar magazine was thisclose to moving into a permanent office. And it wasn’t just any office; the space near Columbus Circle was home to Esquire until the new Hearst Tower opened. “I think it’s all but signed,” Radar editor Maer Roshan said at the time, noting that old Esquire posters still dotted the walls and that the space came with “the apparatus of making magazines.” But he also told Off the Record reporter Michael Calderone that he wasn’t taking the space in an attempt to ape the venerable men’s mag’s success: “I’m a great fan of Esquire, but it didn’t really play a role in our decision.” And a good thing, too, judging from the mass e-mail just arrived from Radar senior writer Jeff Bercovici.
in other news
A ‘Time’ to Laugh, a ‘Time’ to WeepSo the new Time magazine is out. We must say that we find it much like the old Time magazine, except that it is, well, a little prettier. (The Time logo on the cover is smaller, the cover teasers are now in boxes like, perhaps, a banner across a Web page? and the inside pages have a lighter, airier feel, with big, bold headlines.) It looks lovely which we’re sure we’d say if it hadn’t been designed by our admired pal Luke Hayman, who was New York’s creative director until he was lured away to work on Time’s makeover. Surprisingly, though, a controversy has arisen over this first new Time cover.
gossipmonger
‘Radar’ CallingA Radar editor left a cell phone on — as in, making a call to someone’s voice mail — during a meeting, and the recording showed that staff meetings are disorganized. Donald Trump is planning to build a $125 million house in Palm Beach, and the locals aren’t happy about it. Damaging tape of Britney Spears “partying” with two dancers at a club may soon surface. A play about Spalding Gray shows he wasn’t a very attentive father. Brandon Davis tells his parents he’s an art dealer; he may actually be a different type of dealer. A married TV anchorwoman is about to get dumped for having an affair.
company town
Barbarians at the Energy GridFINANCE
• A group led by Kohlberg Kravis is taking energy giant TXU private for $45 billion, besting the Blackstone record by $6 billion. But can Kravis beat Schwarzman’s party? [NYT]
• Gary Crittenden named Citigroup CFO. Job description: Fix CEO Charles Prince’s mistakes. [NYT]
• Goldman media banker Sebastian Grigg may defect to Credit Suisse. [DealBook/NYT]
intel
The March of ‘Radar’
The new Radar arrived in yesterday’s mail. We’ve seen it before, when Roshan & Co. leaked its cover to the Huffington Post’s uniquely uncynical media blog, Eat the Press. But actually holding the thing in our hands suddenly brought back memories of so many Radars perdu. And so we took a walk down memory lane, examining all six Radar covers (you can click on them for larger versions) and noticing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same in the nearly four years — four years! — since the mag’s first premiere issue.
in other news
Susan Orlean Thinks You’re FatLong before politicians realized their idiotic public gaffes would be indexed forever in YouTube, writers faced a similar but somehow graver problem: ill-advised books published early in their career that stick around on shelves forever to haunt their authors. On Radar Online today, Claire Zulkey catalogues many of those wish-they-were-forgotten titles, hitting many of the greatest hits, like Lynne Cheney’s sapphic romp and Scooter Libby’s oddly bestial mystery. We were most interested, however, in a less well-known work that made the cut. New Yorker scribes Patricia Marx and Susan Sistrom — that’s Susan Orlean to you — apparently once interrupted their careers to author the compelling The Skinny: What Every Skinny Woman Knows About Dieting and Won’t Tell You!, which, according to Amazon commenters, is a “sick book by unhealthy women” filled with “tips on self-destruction.” We’d love to ascribe this detour to youthful desperation, but the book was published in 1999 — one year after The Orchid Thief and while Marx was firmly ensconced in a career as a novelist and Saturday Night Live writer. The book’s money quote? “Eat all you want, but never swallow. Spit always.” And to think of all the money Si Newhouse has wasted on their expense accounts.
Read in the Face [Radar Online]
in other news
Donald Trump: Short-Memoried Vulgarian, TooFrom “Page Six” today, on Donald Trump and his old nemesis, Spy magazine:
Trump flatly denies he ever signed a 64-cent check, a 32-cent check, or a 16-cent check, “and I would like them to try and show it to me.”
From Radar Online today, pulled from the pages of Spy:
Perhaps The Donald was being Clintonian? It’s a 13-cent check.
Trump Fingers Spy ‘Failure’ [NYP]
Full Court Press [Radar Online]