Bits and Pieces

Body Language: Will They Last?
In the world of celebrities, socialites, and reality stars, relationships are more often "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" than "long-term." That's to be expected, of course. Think of all the temptations when countless other beautiful people are around! To size up the potential of a handful of newer and more high-profile couples on the New York City scene, we turned to Patti Wood, the "Babe Ruth of body language experts" who has evaluated unspoken signals for hundreds of media outlets over the years. Join us below as Wood breaks down which twosomes are destined for eternal bliss—and which are bound for a break-up.

SHOP-A-MATIC Last-Minute Gifts
Handheld sewing machine__$15
Herb keeper__$20
Poison flask__$40
Espresso set__$90
Custom 5-ft subway sign by Underground Sign__$310

Cool Hunting Gift Guide
Woman As Design: Before, Behind, Between, Above, Below
Designer, writer and cultural commentor, Stephen Bayley views how women have been portrayed in art and design throughout time.
Available from Amazon for $31.50.

New York Cooks: 100 Recipes from the City's Best Chefs
Step into the kitchens of some of NYC's most popular restaurants with this book, which features brief stories and multiple recipes with each chef. Highlights include The Little Owl/Joey Campanaro, Annisa/Anita Lo, Allen & Delancey/Neil Ferguson, and Casa Mono/Andy Nusser. By Joan Krellenstein and Barbara Winkler.
Available from Amazon for $20.

Hi-Ya Zapi
We've about had it when it comes to all the H1N1 hysteria. That is until we came upon this little guy and knew he was the perfect ninja addition to any bathroom. Simply stick a toothbrush into the Hi-Ya Zapi, and wait seven minutes for germs to be zapped away, including E.coli and the viruses that cause common colds, and yes, even swine flu. It's a gift anyone will appreciate this season.
Available from Violight for $30.

Dead or Alive: 100 Gifts for 100 Cultural Icons
We've selected our picks for the top 100 cultural personalities in 2009... and then we went shopping for them
#82. STEPHEN COLBERT: Chocolate pie chart, $10 from Chocolate Editions

#16. Chuck Klosterman: Void LP Player by Rhea Jeong, price upon request

#20. Damien Hirst: Pig's Skull High Tea Pot by Wieki Somers, price upon request

#50. KATE MOSS: Cocaine/Heroin Salt and Pepper Shakers by David Shrigley, $125 from the New Museum Store

#97. WOODY ALLEN: The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You, $14 from Amazon

TOMMY HILFIGER Global Flagship Opening Spring 2010
Elsa Pataky

Fug Girls: The Career of Up in the Air's George Clooney, From Charm to Smarm
As red-blooded women, we've always found George Clooney's grin irresistible, but naysayers have long dismissed his smirk as smug. Since Cloons is extra-omnipresent this fall thanks to The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and this weekend’s Up in the Air, we foraged through his filmography to gauge how his signature expression has varied over the years. This handy field guide rates George's smirks and smiles using our highly scientific Smarm to Charm scale, from zero (infuriatingly cocky) to ten (unbearably delightful). Warning: Contains mild spoilers, and may cause light-headedness.

Art Basel: The Works That Sold - and Sparked Conversation
All revelry aside, the art that’s shown — and, especially, sold — at Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite fairs sets the tone and tastes in the art world for months to come. New stars arise, power reshuffles, and deals are done. And while there weren’t many deals in the seven-figure range this year, there were a lot of deals in general. [...]

Fight Germs With These Hand Sanitizers
We're not trying to promote mass hysteria, but bottom line: It's flu season. Fortunately, hand sanitizers are being installed in various office buildings (ours being one of them). Of course they're not available in the subways, where most of us feel contaminated after touching that grimy pole. Here, six germ fighters to help fend off winter colds.

Does Natalie Portman's Beauty Eclipse Her Talent As an Actress?
You know, we'd never really thought much about it until we read the following paragraph of Dana Stevens's review of Brothers over on Slate:

Here I come up against what I'm fully willing to admit may be a personal limitation: I can't stand Natalie Portman. I've never believed her in a single role. She evokes no emotional response in me beyond, "Oh, there's Natalie Portman." She doesn't overact or underact; she just stands around with whatever the appropriate expression for the scene seems to be on her sweet, pretty, childlike face.

Come to think of it, Stevens might be onto something! [...]

The Worst Excesses of Art Basel 2009
At Art Basel Miami, nothing succeeds like excess. With sales surprisingly strong — Pace Wildenstein sold virtually its entire booth, while LES's Lisa Cooley, at the nada fair, moved more than half of hers — the mood was giddy. For good or ill, millionaires (and billionaires) brought home art almost like vacation souvenirs. And the only question that people asked more than "Is it an edition?" was "Is there an open bar?" With it all ending yesterday with the Scope Art Fair's party at the Standard’s Mud Room, we look back at the top ten moments of excess. [...]

12 Days of 144 Gifts: Winter Fashion Gift Guide
The Knee Jockey
When you’re not jetting, legroom can be difficult to find. But not when you have a Knee Jockey—the holster for your knees. Just strap on the Knee Jockey to lift and tuck those knees to your chest, giving your legs the extra centimeter of freedom they deserve. From the Flyer’s Collection- gifts for when you can’t be on JetBlue.

Gaga, Lambert Perform at Star-Studded Launch Party
Lady Gaga debuts a super-sized version of her hair bow for her performance to a star-studded party that came out to celebrate the launch of music Web site Vevo in NYC.

Tom Ford's 'A Single Man' After Party
Madonna drinks dirty martinis with "A Single Man" director Tom Ford at the after party for the designer's new movie at Monkey Bar in Manhattan.

Bits and Pieces

Face Your Pockets

From Cityfile: New York
Jolie Palm dessert

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
If you love Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, you'll be pleased to hear that a third iteration, Top Chef: Just Desserts, will debut on Bravo next year. [via]

Mikhail Prokhorov

Nello Balan Strikes Again
[10-23-09]
The Post reports that Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire close to sealing a deal to buy the Nets, stopped off at Nello's on Wednesday and dropped $19,000 on lunch. What did he spend all that cash on? Miraculously, a crack reporter at the paper managed to obtain the bill:

$825 for three orders of truffle tagliolini
$600 for four orders of truffle carpaccio
$210 for three orders of veal chops with mushrooms
$72 for six large waters
$15 for a bowl of chicken soup
$5,000 for a bottle of vintage 1998 Chateau Petrus
$3,600 for two bottles of 2002 Montrachet Latour
$3,750 in tips

Of course, Nello Balan, the restaurant's bleached-blond owner and one of the city's most relentless publicity seekers, had absolutely nothing to do with revealing any of these details: [...]

Nello Balan: Call Your Lawyer
Nello Balan is the owner of Nello, the exceedingly mediocre Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. He's also one of the city's most shameless—and most notorious—publicity hounds. Balan's latest attempt at drumming up attention, however, now appears to be exploding in his face. Last week, a receipt "surfaced" indicating that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich had spent $52,000 on lunch. (The bill was for $47,000, but TMZ, which first reported the story, said the billionaire had tacked on a $5,000 tip.) But a spokesman for Abramovich tells us the bill wasn't his and the mogul may pursue legal action against Balan for suggesting otherwise. [...]

COMMENT
Why compliment Nello's by saying the food is mediocre when we all know you can get better tasting pasta at a church social in rural Appalachia. The owner of Nello's obviously needs mental counseling and seems to be a compulsive liar. What's really more telling is the stupid people who eat there. It speaks volumes about them. When will Madison Avenue be rid of such a greasy shit hole run by an equally slimy creep?

RELATED
Nello
You might think that a restaurant where $26 buys you four slices of roasted beets and a dollop of baked goat cheese would be a gastronomic paradise, whose heavenly dishes demand sky-high prices. But if you thought that about Nello, a perennial redoubt of the Upper East Side's rich and occasionally famous, you would be wrong. While the food is excellent—not only those beets, perched delicately between sweet and savory, but also pastas like a penne rigate with brightly anise-flavored sausage—eating is not a particularly important activity. What counts at Nello is being seen at Nello: seen in your Chanel, your St. John's knits, your tailored Italian suit; seen canoodling on the banquette with your co-star; seen escorting your grandson to a lunch he'll ignore in favor of watching Spy Kids on his personal DVD player. Not that there's anything wrong with any of this. The culture of celebrity (and of money) is the culture of Manhattan, and if dropping upwards of $100 per person lets you experience for a few hours the life you desire, then a night at Nello can't be, well, beet. — Matt Gross

Cafe Bruxelles fries

DAILYFILE
[10-22-09]
Star chef Alain Ducasse weighs in on New York's best french fries. [via]

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
Jennifer Aniston is reportedly close to signing a deal to host a weekly talk show on OWN, Oprah's long-delayed cable network. Go figure. [via]

DAILYFILE
[10-26-09]
Bad news for CNN: The network now occupies fourth (and last) place in the cable news ratings. Not only did it fall behind Fox News and MSNBC in October, it also dropped below its sister network HLN as well. [via]
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NOTEWORTHY
Georgina Chapman
WHO
The arm candy of film producer Harvey Weinstein, ex-model Georgina Chapman is also one-half of eveningwear label Marchesa and a small-time movie actress.

OF NOTE
Because the notoriously pushy Weinstein is her husband and backer, Chapman's quick rise to the top has been controversial, to say the least. The movie mogul has pressured the actresses in his movies to wear Marchesa on the red carpet, it's claimed—a charge he's denied. (Although a number of women in Harvey's extended circle, including Cate Blanchett, Renee Zellweger, Sienna Miller, Anne Hathaway, and Jennifer Lopez, have all walked the red carpet in Marchesa gowns.) It also emerged that Weinstein had attended a meeting with Anna Wintour and promised to help Vogue land covers with his actresses if she provided the fledgling label with exposure in the mag.

Jared Kushner
WHO
The son of real estate developer Charles Kushner, Jared is also the proud owner of the Upper East Side's favorite weekly, the New York Observer.

TRUE STORY
Jared's application to Harvard is discussed in detail in Dan Golden's 2006 book, The Price of Admission, which explores the system by which the extremely wealthy donate millions to universities to secure admission for their kids. Cited as one of the most egregious cases of pay-for-play, Golden revealed that Charles pledged $2.5 million to Harvard to gain admission for Jared, despite the fact his academic record hardly warranted it. "There was no way anybody thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen," Jared's high school English teacher told the author.

Shepard Smith
WHO
Fox News Channel host Shepard Smith is famous for his rapid-fire delivery, weird eyebrows, and ambiguous sexuality.

ON THE JOB
Smith consistently performs well in the ratings game—The Fox Report is the top-rated newscast in its slot cable—but he also has a reputation for being blunder-prone. He notoriously jumped the gun on announcing the death of Pope John Paul II, making the proclamation a day before the holy man actually passed away. In another slip-up—one that later became a YouTube sensation—Smith said that Bronx residents were more likely to give J. Lo "a curb job than a blowjob." (He meant to say "block party.")

CRIME FILE
During the 2000 Bush-Gore debates, Smith was arrested in Florida and charged with aggravated battery with a motor vehicle, after brawling with a fellow reporter over a parking space. The charges were later dropped.

PERSONAL
Smith has repeatedly dodged the question of his sexuality, but in 2005 he was outed in a column in the Washington Blade. Kevin Naff, the managing editor of the gay weekly, said that Smith "chatted me up in a New York City gay piano bar, bought me drinks, and invited me back to his place." He lives in a two-bedroom West Village loft that he purchased for $1.87 million in 2004. Fashion designer (and fellow gay) Michael Kors lives in the same building.

Padma Lakshmi
WHO
An ex-model and the ex-wife of novelist Salman Rushdie, Lakshmi is an author, the host of Bravo's Top Chef, and an aspiring brand name.

PERSONAL
Lakshmi met author Salman Rushdie at the 1999 Liberty Island launch party of Tina Brown's Talk. She introduced herself to Rushdie, and he stunned her by proceeding to rattle off a list of facts he already knew about her. (As it turned out, he'd been infatuated with her since he'd read a magazine profile of her years before.) Padma became the fourth Mrs. Rushdie in April 2004, when Rushdie was 56 and she was just 32. Three years later, after months of rumors that their marriage was on the rocks, the couple announced they were divorcing. She's since been linked to a series of older billionaires, including Ted Forstmann—the buyout mogul who also happens to own IMG, the agency that represents her—and Adam Dell, the venture capitalist and brother of Dell founder Michael Dell.

Stephen Colbert
WHO
Adored by smug blue-state yuppies everywhere, Stephen Colbert is the host of the second most popular fake news show on Comedy Central.

BACKSTORY
Colbert could hardly avoid a comedy career, given the laugh riot that was his childhood: He grew up in South Carolina, the youngest of eleven children in a strict Irish Catholic family, and lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash at age ten. [...]

IN PERSON
Speak loudly into his left ear, he's deaf in his right one. He's also a religious Catholic, notwithstanding the fact that his audience consists mainly of godless heathens. He claims to keep Lent, attend church regularly and teach Sunday school.
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NEW POSTS
Mile High Club
Hollywood Tan
Hollywood Fake Out
Something Borrowed
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LINK
Close to Home
It's the Upper East Side. This isn't supposed to happen here!
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Bits and Pieces

Face Your Pockets

What's REALLY in Your Bag?

Links that have been gathering dust on my computer...

Bill Moyers Journal: Wendell Potter
With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

Blind Women Help Detect Breast Cancer
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Blind women are being trained to use their sensitive touch to help detect breast cancer earlier and more precisely than doctors.

Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle
Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won't sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

Off the Deep End: A Look at the Decline of Dubai
Deserts have a way of reclaiming whatever is built upon them. In the case of Dubai, the global financial implosion has sent that process into overdrive. After six years of frenzied expansion, during which the emirate's population grew at 7% annually and nearly $600 billion went into construction (the world's tallest building! the world's largest shopping mall! the biggest man-made island! an indoor ski resort!), reality has come rushing into view.

Brand Yourself and 4 Other Tips for Success From The Sartorialist
Starting in September of 2005, Scott Schuman became The Sartorialist, a fashion blogger with a lot more up his tailored coat sleeves than street shots of pretty people. He has created a thriving street style blog, not only accrediting himself as a guy with a great eye for fashion, but as a world-recognized photographer, and as a brand. This August, he released a compilation book of his photos aptly titled, The Sartorialist. In honor of Mercedes-Benz Spring 2010 Fashion Week in New York City, we share with you his nuggets of wisdom, as well as a few peeks at his book.

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

Fan-Made Music Video Restores Hope in Music Video Kind
Remember music videos being important, and good? Neither does anybody I know, because our memory's been wiped by MTV and VH1's current slate of programming. And then there's this beautiful, fan-made music video of indie band Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks."

Hollywood's Best Actors for the Buck
LOS ANGELES — In today's recessionary Hollywood, studio executives are no longer looking to cast actors who will demand upward of US$15 million just to appear in a movie and then a hefty portion of the film's revenue. Instead, the ideal package is a big concept with low-paid stars.

RealAge Test
Your RealAge is the biological age of your body, based on how well you've maintained it.

The Gold List 2009
THE BEST HOTELS IN THE WORLD
Welcome to the fifth annual Gold List, our selection of the hotels around the world that have the best rooms, service, food, location, ambience and design, and leisure facilities. To compile this ultimate guide to the world's greatest hotels, we have combined our editors' choices with the highest-ranking hotels in the Readers' Travel Awards 2008.

24 Ways to Exploit Chaos
Economic crises can lead to fear and paralysis within executive boardrooms, not to mention a shortage of capital or credit to act on good ideas that do emerge. But they can also create opportunities. In Exploiting Chaos (Gotham Books, 2009), Jeremy Gutsche—an innovation consultant and the founder of TrendHunter.com, a site that tracks emerging trends—offers, as the book's subtitle says, 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change.

All Broads Lead to Rome
Mired in sex scandals, headed for an ugly divorce, dogged by investigators, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is a national joke. He’s also the richest, most successful politician in Europe—and has no intention of changing his ways. Will Italy change without him?

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' Hotel Room
Room 3918 - which features four huge bedrooms, a private lift, marble-lined bathrooms and state-of-the-art kitchens – takes up the entire 39th floor of the luxury hotel, and is not just the most expensive hotel room in Australia; but rather, it is one of the most expensive in the world.

The Wave of Hotel Foreclosures Sweeping the Globe
Prepare for a period of the greatest deluge in hotel loan history. How bad is the recession on the hotel industry? On a daily basis, we at Scene Advisor are hearing of hotel loans going into servicing because of default. Currently, over 80 major hotels a week are going into default or closing the doors. The Wall Street Journal reports that currently 5% of securitized hotel mortgages are currently in default, and over 4,000 hotels will default this year alone.

John Oliver: Comic Crumpet
John Oliver is certainly a funnyman of the ha-ha kind, though he's not without his peculiarities as we found out in this interview, which was conducted via email for his own safety –– did we mention he's the thinking woman's bit of crumpet from The Daily Show?

Kat Williams: Drugs in America
"Have you or one of your loved ones been killed from using our medicine? Dial 1-800-OurBad..."

Bubbies Story
As John describes the Bubbie persona, "She's the essence of the kindly Jewish grandmother who happens to be passionate about things like cooking and pickling. She stands for all Old World grannies who pamper their family with wonderful foods they've hand made using authentic ingredients and traditional recipes."

Transparency Triumph: Reviewing is the New Advertising
In fact, Twitter has established itself as the real-time snapshot of what people are thinking/feeling/experiencing and yes, reviewing, around the world. Expect numerous services to capitalize on this burgeoning ‘global brain'. One example: SkinniPopcorn provides Twitter feeds of users' real time comments about newly released films and the current US box office top ten, as well as the ten movies that are currently mentioned most often.

Pop-Up Restaurants: They're Quick, Sharp, Full-throttle, and Then They Shut Up Shop
Pop-ups are the embodiment of our high-octane, short-attention-span culture. One minute they're here - restaurants and bars opening in unexpected locations, causing a storm - and then they're gone. The temporary dining spot manages to break all the rules of what a traditional restaurant should be. Which is precisely why the trend for temporary locations dips into our whimsical 21st-century consumer mindset.

Is This London's Most Fashionable Restaurant?
Blink and you'll miss it. Flash is a pop-up extravaganza from the brains behind bistrotheque. They don't come any cooler.

Heston Blumenthal Recipes and Cooking Tips
Heston Blumenthal is the chef and owner of The Fat Duck, the three Michelin starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire. The Fat Duck was named Best Restaurant in the World in 2005 by Restaurant magazine. Heston's recipes appear in The Sunday Times every week.

Bo Burnham: Welcome to YouTube
"Before YouTube I was just a skinny white kid that thought he was funnier and cooler than he actually was..."

The World's Highest Hotel...But Not for Long!
If a gob-smacking view is your thing - and heck, it's mine - you could do worse than check in at the Park Hyatt, Shanghai, which has just taken the mantle of the world's highest hotel. See that nice pagoda-shaped building you're looking down on out the window? Yeah, that's the Jin Mao Tower, and it's about 40 meters taller than the Empire State Building in NYC.

CinemaScore's Ed Mintz: Hollywood's Secret Box Office Swami
You never see him at any fancy movie premieres or making the rounds of the talent agencies. He hasn't turned up on any Hollywood power lists. But the 68-year-old Ed Mintz has quietly emerged as a key player in the movie business over the past year, thanks to the growing popularity of CinemaScore, his Las Vegas-based market research company that provides an invaluable piece of information to studio insiders every Friday night. His reports reveal just how much -- or little -- moviegoers liked the new movies that invade America's multiplexes each weekend.
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