Nobody Messes With Karl LagerfeldKarl Lagerfeld’s bodyguard protects him and Jay-Z from a pesky pap, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will get $10 million for their baby pictures, Spencer Morgan and Alexis Bryan probably will not, and more in today’s compilation of greatest hits from New York’s gossip columns!
the sports section
Rangers Lose; New Yorkers Shrug
The Rangers’ season ended yesterday afternoon with a 5-4 loss to Buffalo in the NHL’s Eastern Conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden. You may or may not know this; it being a hockey game, you may not care. Indeed, New Yorkers seem to care about this so little that our mayor couldn’t even be bothered to bet a Junior’s cheesecake on the series. And that’s exactly why, we realized as we sat in the last row of the Garden yesterday, watching a handful of exultant Sabres fans, we were almost happy for the other guys: We New Yorkers, that is just didn’t want it. We didn’t need it. In Buffalo, the Sabres are a point of civic pride, perhaps the point. Here, the Rangers are a perpetual second fiddle. There’s football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring. Today’s tabloids tell you all you need to know: a couple of inches on the back page for the Blueshirts; the rest of the back cover and most of the front for Roger Clemens. When yesterday’s buzzer sounded, Rangers fans sighed, moved on, and shifted their attention to baseball. But in Buffalo it’s not so easy. If the Sabres lose, that’s it till football season. And we know how that tends to work out. —Joe DeLessio
the sports section
How to Pretend to Care About Hockey
It’s NHL playoff time, and your New York Rangers start their postseason tonight in Atlanta. This is good news for the Rangers themselves and troubling news for the rest of New York, which is suddenly obligated to actually pay attention to hockey. How to follow a team you haven’t watched in a while (or since 1994 or never) and don’t much care about? Simple: Just pretend the Rangers play for other New York teams, the ones you’ve heard of. So who’s the Rangers’ A-Rod? Who’s their Paul Lo Duca? After the jump, our guide to the Rangers and their other-sports analogues.
in other news
Hungry Cheerleader Claims Harassment Over Tater TotsCourtney Prince, a former cheerleader for the New York Rangers, is suing Madison Square Garden for sexual harassment. The franchise is hitting back in the usual manner: feeding the press details alleging the plaintiff is a big slut. In short, it’s classy behavior all around — and, according to the Daily News today, it gets even classier. The whole federal suit really comes down to lurid come-ons over tater tots in a bar called Daddy-O. According to sworn testimony, the Rangers VP Jason Vogel and Times sports writer Jason Diamos tricked the complainant into visiting a bar via classic high-school feint “All our friends are going to be there!” When said friends failed to materialize, “Vogel ordered tater tots and she ordered a quesadilla,” Diamos had a cocktail, and soon the two men were trying to kiss Prince and floating a bathroom-tryst proposal. The defendants don’t deny the situation but claim that Prince initiated the sex talk. Why didn’t the cheerleader leave? “Because I wanted my quesadilla,” states the deposition. We have nothing to add.
Who Started the Sex Talk at Daddy-O? [NYDN]
the morning line
Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger, Up a Tree
• Now this hasn’t happened in a while: Rapper Fabolous is in stable condition at Bellevue after getting shot in a Manhattan parking garage. The would-be assassin and his three friends, who fled in a vehicle, were quickly arrested after running a red light. Update: Now Fabolous is under arrest as well. Developing, needless to say. [AP via amNY]
• The Gubernator toured Bloomie’s turf yesterday, not two weeks after the mayor’s Cali visit. Says the Times in the vintage Times deadpan, “The two men seem to be genuinely fond of each other.” We know they’re both post-ideological moderate Republicans and all, but this love-in is giving us the heebie-jeebies. [NYT]
• You may remember Dean Faiello as the guy who allegedly (a) impersonated a doctor, (b) botched a cosmetic surgery, (c) killed the patient to cover it up, and (d) buried her under his New Jersey house. Well, feel free to remove “allegedly” from that litany. Faiello pleaded guilty in exchange for a twenty-year prison stint. [NYDN]
• Queens assemblyman and union leader Brian McLaughlin is expected to surrender today to federal corruption charges. The rap is a rather shopworn classic: contractor bid-rigging, with a side of possible expense-account abuse. [WNBC]
• Finally, in case anyone cares, and some of you must, Rangers 4, Devils 2. Oh, come on, people, it’s one of the most storied rivalries in all of sports. Or so we’re told. [Fox Sports]
in other news
Dolans to Take Their Cable Company and Go HomeThat crazy, Oedipal media-mogul family, the Dolans of Long Island, seems determined to take Cablevision private. For the second time in sixteen months, chairman Charles and his CEO son, Jim, are offering their shareholders a buyout, this time upping their offer to $27 a share. (Shares in Cablevision — which includes not just the cable company but also trophy properties like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and the Knicks and Rangers — rose on the news.)
We at Daily Intel don’t claim to be financial experts. But we’re not bad at reading between the lines of a public statement. “We continue to feel that succeeding in this fiercely competitive environment requires a long-term, entrepreneurial management perspective that is not constrained by the public markets’ constant focus on short-term results,” the Dolans said, and it seems likely that this buyout is the senior Dolan’s bid to keep sinking money into his pet satellite venture, Voom, which has already lost over $600 million and whose launch almost tore the family apart — as chronicled by Joel Siegel a year and a half ago in a March 2005 feature for New York.
Sadly for the Dolans, though, this long-term investment strategy might be a boon only to Charles’s Voom. As for Jim’s pet project — throwing maximum money at the Knicks with no discernible positive effect — we have a feeling fans will always retain their constant focus on short-term results.
Oedipus at the Garden [NYM]
Dolans Try New Bid to Take Cablevision Private [NYT]