‘Martial Law’ About to Hit the Hamptons?While celebs shopped like mad at the Super Saturday benefit in the Hamptons, Starbucks were closing, Molly Sims was late for her own party, ‘SATC”s Jason Lewis ran on the beach, and all the scarecrows fell down!
Why Wouldn’t Sharon Bush Be Involved With Roger Clemens’s Steroid Scandal?Roger Clemens’s friendship with the black sheep of the Bush family, Sharon Bush, may cost him a pardon from George W. if he is convicted of perjury. Both HarperCollins and Random House are set to come out with books about George Steinbrenner. A “Page Six” spy thinks Howard Stern’s fiancée, Beth Ostrosky, wants to have a baby because she, uh, stopped to say hello to one. Will Ferrell and Tom Brokaw did an onstage bit together at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday for Ferrell’s Funny or Die tour. The New Yorker reveals that the late Bishop Paul Moore was a closeted homosexual. Tracy Westmoreland, owner of erstwhile dive bar Siberia, may play a bouncer in a movie called The Bouncer.
gossipmonger
Gwyneth: Hungry AND Pregnant?Gwyneth Paltrow may have gone to Mount Sinai Medical Center on Monday to deal with pregnancy complications. Pink is teaming up with PETA to help stop horse-drawn carriage rides in Central Park. Billionaire Band-Aid heiress Libet Johnson refused to let her husband, weight-loss guru Dr. Lionel Bissoon, see their adopted child after they broke up. WD-50 chef Wylie Dufresne had BBQ and finger food at his wedding to former magazine editor Maile Carpenter this past weekend. Maroon Five guitarist James Valentine wrote about how much harder he used to party on his MySpace page. 5WPR founder Ronn Torossian has really low standards for the cases he’ll agree to take on. Ed Burns claims that critics in New York hate his films because he didn’t go to an Ivy League school and his dad’s a cop.
company town
Anna Wintour Puts Friends Before Fashion. Really.FINANCE
• Here come the job cuts: Lehman Brothers will shutter its subprime unit, leaving 1,200 employees out of work. [NYT]
• A new study suggests raising taxes on private equity wouldn’t make any difference because Steve Schwarzman and friends would just find new ways to wriggle out of them. After all, taxes are for the little people, right? [Bloomberg]
• Alan Greenspan supposedly told his new bosses at Deutsche that he would have lowered rates by now, though he denies it. [WSJ]
gossipmonger
Guv Love?The “tall and attractive” 25-year-old aide whom Jon Corzine may have been sitting next to at the time of his car crash was reassigned last month because she and the governor were allegedly getting too close. Larry and Laurie David may have split because Laurie had an affair with a married man on Martha’s Vineyard. Some Columbia Records staffers are worried that producer Rick Rubin has been named co-head of the label, given that he has no executive experience. Richie Sambora dumped Denise Richards during a Hawaii vacation a few months ago; she’d been expecting him to propose. Michael Jackson placed a number of odd, ill-timed room-service orders at an inn in Maryland, but he did bless the manager. Oliver Platt is an ardent supporter of the business tactics of George Steinbrenner, whom he plays in The Bronx Is Burning. Lindsay Lohan is dropping booze for bottled water.
gossipmonger
One of These Days, Sandra Day, Pow, Right in the KisserMembers of the ten-person Iraq Study Group, which included Sandra Day O’Connor and Vernon Jordan, almost came to blows over a disagreement. Both Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were no-shows at the Heatherette show. Sienna Miller’s secret to having a nice rump in Factory Girl? Spray-on makeup. Park Chinois, the haute Chinese restaurant that was to open in the Gramercy Park Hotel, is no more. Owen Wilson ate with the boldfaced names but hung out with the nobodies at the Waverly Inn. After getting dumped by boyfriend Isaac Cohen via phone, Britney Spears went out “partying like a college girl looking to get laid.” (And how, we must ask, is that different from all other nights?)
cultural capital
What’s New, Pussy Cat?
With this week’s release of Pussy Cats Starring the Walkmen, the New York warble rockers have breathed new life into Harry Nilsson’s 1974 original Pussy Cats, an odd album produced by John Lennon in the midst of his “lost weekend” debauchery. The Walkmen faithfully and completely re-create the pop gem, a bewildering mix of classics and originals recorded while Lennon and his drinking buddy Nilsson were tearing through L.A.’s bar scene.
The release also reanimates an almost-forgotten strand of creative gimmickry: the full-length cover. Past reimaginings have run the gamut from genre makeovers (Booker T. & The MGs’ McElmore Avenue was a funky Abbey Road) to hipster novelties (Pussy Galore’s Exile on Main Street, a cassette-only limited edition) to theatrical nerdiness (Rufus Wainwright’s recent restaging of Judy Garland’s classic 1961 Carnegie Hall performance). Some hit and some miss, but that’s no reason to give up on the genre all together. Now the Walkmen have us thinking about some other bands we’d like to see paired with classic LPs.