Chace Crawford Is Awesome at Being SinglePlus, a Puerto Rican party for Carlos Beltran’s birthday and who the gayest man in the world is in our daily gossip roundup.
gossipmonger
Albrecht Out at HBOHBO chairman Chris Albrecht was forced to resign last night after allegedly beating up his girlfriend Sunday, likely because this wasn’t his first domestic assault. Harvey Weinstein had to explain to girlfriend Georgina Chapman that Elie Wiesel was notable for being “in a concentration camp” at the Time 100 fête. And Jessica Simpson dressed conservatively at the event to not draw attention from boyfriend and honoree John Mayer. Cameron Diaz went to a sex show at the Box the night before appearing on the Today show. Josh Hartnett and Helena Christensen sang karaoke together. Lorne Michaels sang karaoke at oil heir William Hess’s bar mitzvah. Nancy Grace is trying to get on The View now that she’s out at Court TV. NBC News’ David Gregory may be Don Imus’s replacement.
party lines
The View From the Cheap Seats at the ‘Time 100’
Judging from the seating assignments at last night’s Time 100 dinner at Jazz at Lincoln Center, we have determined that it is the sad fate of former “Influentials” (and current science honorees) to be relegated to the nosebleed seats with the journalists and advertising executives. We were seated with speed skater Joey Cheek, an Olympic gold-medalist honored at last year’s event, who was kind enough to joke about his seat placement for the record.
You just made a joke about being a has-been.
No, no, no. I’m very tongue-in-cheek about that. I made it onto the slideshow they’re projecting up on the wall tonight, so I guess I still make the cut.
Do you wear your commemorative Time 100 pin around the house just to remind yourself that you were once an Influential?
It’s kind of the same principle as Olympic medals. It’s a little-known secret that in the Olympic Village people are always saying, “Hey, put your medal on.” But no one will. You know you have it. Everybody else knows you have it. So it’s pretty lame to be the dude who walks around with his medal on in his underwear in his house.
intel
By Dogsled or HMS Beagle, Celebs Prepare for ‘Time’ 100The Time 100 dinner, to be held tomorrow night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in celebration of the magazine’s annual “Most Influential People in the World” issue, is a hot ticket, an exclusive and glittering black-tie affair. And it seems the influential people will go to great lengths not to miss it. Virgin mogul Richard Branson, on the list this year, is currently on a 325-mile dogsled journey across Canada’s Arctic province of Nunavut to see the effects of global warming. He’s rushing to reach his endpoint — the delightfully named Igloolik — by Tuesday morning so he can be whisked to New York to make the dinner that night. “Will get the husky dogs to work a little bit harder!” he e-mailed.
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.
in other news
Time Is Running OutToday is your last chance to help decide who makes Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people on Earth; polls close at midnight. The newsmagazine, as we know, thinks quite highly of You, and so it has set up a Website on which you can vote for Your favorite candidates. Who’s leading? Well, we’ll grant that Time perhaps set itself up for trouble by putting David Beckham’s picture first on the voting page, and we’ll also acknowledge that this is, of course, the Internet, but, still: wow. Currently, the leaders are Rain (a Korean singer), Stephen Colbert, hockey star Sidney Crosby, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and Dane Cook. (To be fair, the highly substantive science writer Richard Dawkins is ranking sixth — though he’s seeming vulnerable to a late-breaking challenge from Kiefer Sutherland.) Noted statesmen as Sanjaya, John Mayer, and Salma Hayek are comfortably in the top 100, while it appears that John McCain, the Pope, and Osama bin Laden won’t be making the voters’ cut. Oh, You. (Time editors, by the way, will announce their own, presumably less-top-40-focused choices in Friday’s magazine.) —Ben Mathis-Lilley
The Time 100 — Are They Worthy? [Time.com]
gossipmonger
De Niro and Bowie, Kushner and Trump, Wenner and Nye Make NiceRobert De Niro and David Bowie were cordial at Vanity Fair’s party for the Tribeca Film Festival, despite reports that De Niro is mad that Bowie’s High Line Festival comes right after Tribeca. Also at the party: “Friends” Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (as we told you yesterday). And Jann Wenner, with cuckolded boyfriend Matt Nye. Amy Sacco will open a hotel in the financial district. CBS’s Bob Schieffer and Lesley Stahl may have been behind a hit piece on Katie Couric in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Speaking of Couric, her cell phone ringtone is the Pussycat Dolls’s “Don’t Cha.” Bill Clinton is going to a party at Gabriel Byrne’s house to fundraise for Hillary. Les Moonves went to go see his son’s rock band play at the Plumm.
