gossipmonger

Really, Nobody on Mustique Will Miss the Noels

The poor Noels: They lost half their fortune in the Madoff mess, but people on Mustique are so happy the megabrood won’t be on the island this winter that one bar has created a “no Noel” cocktail. Donna Karan was googly-eyed for A-Rod on Parrot Cay over New Year’s, but he’s “still hung up on Madonna” — just like the name of Madonna’s driving, hypnotic, thoughtful 2005 hit! The Gossip Girl cast and crew donated 500 pounds of canned goods to City Harvest, but Dorota had to lug it all there. A Christie’s V.P. was caught with his pants down along with a guy from the Bronx in Central Park near East 75th Street (in this weather?!), but we’ll spare repeating his name here because, hey, that just as well could’ve been us on an off day. Caroline Kennedy would sass off to the press even when she was 6 years old. “What, do you guys write for Highlights or something?” Well, not quite that, but in the same spirit.

Ron Wood’s attempt to raise divorce money by staging a reunion tour of the Faces, Rod Stewart’s old band, isn’t going so well because the old Faces guys don’t get along, says Cindy today. Cin also says she heard that a maître d’ of an Italian restaurant told Bernie Madoff that he’d have to pay up front in cash, no credit, when Madoff called in for takeout under house arrest. Cin, you hear all the good bits even after all these years. Liz Smith devotes an entire column to a book published in November packed with twenty years of research that shows the mob killed JFK. Jeez, Liz, you are really into this book. Speaking of books, Sloane Crosley, the book publicist with her own book and 45,000 Facebook friends, will title her second book Show Me on the Doll — ha-ha, we remember all too well what that’s from!

Gary Oldman, once briefly wed to Uma Thurman, has married his third wife, musician Alexandra Edenborough. USA Today founder Al Neuharth took nearly a quarter-mil from his journalism charity, the Freedom Foundation, to pay himself; $66,000 to donate to his own wife’s adoption agency; and $46,000 to pay his daughter as a trustee. Whoa, can we get all that in a nice, easy, color pie chart? Spike Lee, who has pads on the UES and Martha’s Vineyard, says that people like Spielberg, Lucas, Gates, Jay-Z, and Oprah are “rich rich,” while compared to them, “I’m on welfare!” Well, compared to you, Spike, we’re on workfare and we go to the E.R. for primary care, so stop the faux poor thing.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick ate sizzling cuttlefish and red snapper at BarBao. Why can’t we bring ourselves to care about Hugh Hefner and his Joan Didion–reading, foreign policy–scrutinizing, darkly complex “girlfriends”? Oh, because they’re none of those things and just interchangeable, battery-powered bimbots who populate a stupid reality show? Guess that’s why. Jamie Foxx and Joaquin Phoenix had Casey Affleck film them dancing on a little stage at a Miami club not one night but two, which is just the kind of thing you do after starring in a biopic of a music icon. Jeremy Piven and Matthew McConaughey both have more hair than they used to.

Really, Nobody on Mustique Will Miss the Noels