Porn Company Gets ‘SATC’ Doll Right, New York WrongA California-based company recently introduced a ‘Sex and the City’ themed blow-up doll called “Sarah Jessica Porkher.” Great pun, right? They don’t all work so well.
gossipmonger
Judi Giuliani, Puppy Killer?Vanity Fair’s forthcoming takedown of Judi Giuliani paints her as “opportunistic, puppy-killing homewrecker.” ABC News employees were reminded not to surf for porn on company time after it was discovered that an intern had nude photos online. Married cosmetics heir William Lauder may be the illegitimate father of a child with nightlife honcho Howard Stein’s daughter. Mets pitchers John Maine and Aaron Heilman partied at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone. New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane might not technically be married to the mother of his two children, journalist Allison Pearson. Penélope Cruz and Bono were spotted holding hands in St. Tropez. Star Jones claims women on TV get a raw financial deal. Rachael Ray and Ron Jeremy were in Saratoga for the opening of the racetrack.
gossipmonger
Oh, J-Vanka!Jared Kushner was caught making out with Ivanka Trump while bowling. While hanging with some ex-CIA spies, Robert De Niro hit the sauna with KGB colonels and fired guns with Taliban warriors. An aide in the Israeli U.N. mission quit after being outed as a DL gay-porn star. NBC paid $2.5 million for the rights to air a Princess Di tribute concert in July, which may have been the reason they also scored an interview with the princes. Surprising Time “100 Most Influential People” includee John Mayer will also perform at the party. Paris Hilton appears in court today for her DUI charges. Jon Stewart and Tom Brokaw helped raise $72 million from hedge-fund bigwigs at a Robin Hood Foundation charity event.
the morning line
Go West, Young Man
• Oh, no! Gay-marrying New Paltz mayor Jason West, not yet 30 and the closest the upstate hamlet has to a national celebrity, has been defeated by an ex-ally, 514 to 379. West reportedly alienated the town with a “heavy-handed” governing style. Well, he is a puppeteer by trade. [NYT]
• This should keep conspiracy theorists occupied for the next decade: A laptop with “sensitive” 9/11 info, including photos of newly unearthed human remains, has been stolen from a medical examiner’s SUV parked next to ground zero. [NYP]
• Bloomberg’s Spanish is improving. The mayor, whose tenuous grasp of the language was a reliable joke for years, delivered a ten-minute speech in Spanish during his Mexico visit and even took questions. [amNY]
• The Daily News catches Con Ed in a bizarre practice: The utility giant is hiring limo drivers to guard electrified grates and manholes. The drivers (sorry, “site-safety personnel”) simply park next to the stray-voltage area and sit there, sometimes for days. On it, indeed. [NYDN]
• And some New Jersey children tuning in to the Disney Channel were exposed to an accidentally aired bit of hard-core porn this week. The program they thought they’d see? “Handy Manny,” about “a bilingual Latino handyman and his talking tools.” The cable company, Comcast, had no comment. [WNBC]
the morning line
Edward Egan, Landlord
• Cardinal Egan made parishioners cry when he pulled a brusque landlord trick to get rid of a tenant. He summoned the pastor of the crumbling, doomed Our Lady of Vilnius for a meeting, then ordered guards to shutter the church while the priest was out. Smooth. [NYP]
• Hey, you know where else we can fit a 50-story condo tower? Before you come back with something obscene, here’s where: South Street Seaport. If built, it will be the first building of its sort to the east of the FDR Drive. [amNY]
• Hizzoner rarely makes us remember that he’s a Republican, but one reliable reminder is his distaste for garish court settlements. The city just tried to cap the awards to the victims of the 2003 ferry crash at $14 million, citing a dusty maritime law. A federal court said no dice. [NYT]
• Just days after reports that the westward extension of the 7 line was in jeopardy, the MTA has thrown the $35.8 million contract open to bids. The city is forking over $2.1 billion. Until the next time we hear that it isn’t. [MetroNY]
• And a Queens man was arrested for selling porny versions of copyrighted costume characters, including Barney and Scooby-Doo, to furry fetishists. In the words of the News, “Kinky Costume Caper Crushed.” (Weak. The Post would have gone with all Ks.) [NYDN]
company town
Fake-Lawyer Jokes Better Than Real-Lawyer JokesThe big news today in the city’s big businesses.
LAW
• Paralegal who claimed to be a lawyer (and was treated as such by Anderson Kill & Olick for two whole years) to be arraigned on Wednesday. [NYT]
• Aaron Charney, the gay associate suing his former firm for discrimination, hasn’t gotten the support he expected from New York’s Lesbian and Gay Law Association. [Above the Law]
• Alan Dershowitz gives his two cents on the Pentagon detainee debacle to the Times’ opinion page. While sharing the editors’ outrage, he smells just the faintest whiff of McCarthyism. [NYT via Law Blog/WSJ]
intel
Columbia Delivers Pornless Porn MagWhat good is having sex if you don’t, like, talk about it? So asks Outlet, an online magazine that proves Columbia students not only work hard, they play hard — or at least think about playing hard — too. Though the kids of Morningside Heights are a little late to the Ivy League sex party — recall that H-Bomb, “Harvard’s Magazine About Sex,” came out in the spring of 2004 — the editors of Outlet claim their approach to the dirty is different. “H-Bomb is an erotica magazine as such, meaning that its main purpose is titillation,” says Outlet editor-in-chief Kimi Traube ‘08. “Outlet seeks to focus more on cultural, sociological, and political issues surrounding our generation’s experience of sex and sexuality.” A tad more titillation might have done some good: Visitors who click on the site’s “Porn” link expecting to see Columbia students in various states of undress instead encounter 38 pages of vaguely intellectual undergraduate musings on topics from the faux feminism of the Suicide Girls to the shortcomings of sex ed in American schools, all set in a decidedly un-sexy Courier New type. Unlike H-Bomb, Outlet is currently a Web-only venture — it soft-launched earlier this month and filtered into student consciousness this week — though Traube hopes the magazine will generate enough publicity to make a print version financially viable. One hopes Traube and her team haven’t forgotten the golden rule of marketing: Sex sells, but only when you show it.
— Neel Shah