When you are a professional rumormonger, people want to tell you things. They corner you at parties and shout other people's secrets. They call your telephone and whisper. They write urgent emails.
Like any retiree, Calvin Klein has a lot of time on his hands, and like any retiree he gets to indulge in his hobbies. Apparently his main one these days is going to glam parties with his ex-porn star boyfriend Nick Gruber in tow. Here's the sad display the duo made this past Saturday at The Standard when they attended hotelier Andre Balazs' Halloween party at the swinging club atop the hotel/exhibitionist hotspot.
Scarlett Johansson isn't pregnant, but maybe she wants to be? Matthew Perry returns to rehab. Lindsay Lohan hires a new publicist. (As if that will help.) Friday gossip is optimistic.
Lady Gaga breaks a nail and flips off a bunch of rich people. The royal wedding made Fergie feel "totally worthless." Heidi Montag warns that reality stardom is "hard." Wednesday gossip triumphs over adversity.
Courtney Love's history with Twitter is, like her history with everything, a rocky one. She vanished from the site in January after being sued for defamation by fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir over a tweet. You'd figure the fact that she paid out $430,000 to settle that lawsuit would have kept her off for good.
Lindsay Lohan gets a "tripped out effect" from sunglasses lined with flashing lights. James Franco has a sex tape. Rihanna's purported lesbian lover speaks. Montana Fishburne pretends to drink bleach. Tuesday gossip is a rave.
Did he leave because Sandy left him? Tiger's security guards against Uchitel. Charlie Sheen can't afford to quit his terrible TV show. Jessica Alba plans to adopt. Easter Sunday's gossip roundup will rise again.
• Amy Sacco's Bungalow 8 closed a couple of months ago, but now she says "the grand reopening of the new Bungalow 8" is planned for February. [NYM]
• More on the rumored return of Beatrice Inn, if you're interested. [Gawker]
• Le Pain Quotidien is expanding to Rockefeller Center and Central Park. [NYO]
• Govind Armstrong has left Table 8, but the eatery is still open, FYI. [NYT]
• Andre Balazs's Boom Boom Room will host a very special affair on New Year's Eve. For $250-750, guests will get to watch Courtney Love "perform." [Eater]
• A Hamptons real estate broker has filed a lawsuit against Bobby Flay. [N'day]
• If the 2007 Times article about what restaurateur Drew Nieporent does in his spare time at his New Jersey home didn't satisfy your obsession for all things Nieporent, here's pretty much the same info from yesterday's Times. [NYT]
• The New York City Wine & Food Festival is underway, although if you haven't secured tickets by now, you can forget about attending any of the events. [GS]
• What should Andre Balazs call the Standard's Boom Boom Room now that legal issues have forced a name change? "Mile High Club" gets one vote. [NYT]
• Buddha Bar has been sued over 400K in unpaid legal bills. [Eater]
• There's a pasta renaissance taking place in the city, apparently. [NYP]
• A Q&A with Katie Lee Joel, who has a new cookbook (and who says she'd be just as well known today even if she'd never married Billy Joel). [TONY]
• The Times Magazine's "food issue" is now online. [NYT]
• The club atop Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel won't be known as the Boom Boom Room for much longer. It looks like it will be renamed "QT" instead, possibly because another venue by the same name raised objections. In other Standard news, the as-yet unopened bar across from the Boom Boom Room is going to sport a plunge pool and condom machine. [BlackBook, GS]
• Former Fiamma chef Fabio Trabocchi has been tapped as the new executive chef of the Four Seasons. He's succeeding Christian Albin, who died in June. [NYT]
• Openings: Gansevoort 69 opened today in the meatpacking space formerly occupied by Florent. And Motorino's first Manhattan outpost is now open in was once Una Pizza Napoletana. A few more openings today are here.
• Also open, but just for private parties for the time being: The Boom Boom Room, the new bar on the 18th-floor of Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel, which will open to the public on September 22. [DBTH, UrbanDaddy]
• Michael Psilakis and Donatella Arpaia are parting ways at Mia Dona. [Eater]
• Times Square's era of sleeze may soon make a return. The Box, the club co-owned by Simon Hammerstein, takes over China Club for two weeks next month to create Club Purgatorio, a "multi-level world of macabre fantasy." [GS]
• Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had lunch today at Il Mulino. In case you're wondering, the duo dined on "fish, pasta and salad." [NYT]
• Last night wasn't a great one for John Mayer. It seems he was forced to flee GoldBar after a guy at the bar was stabbed in stomach. [Page Six]
Christine Quinn has been slacking, clearly. This week the City Council speaker denounced the nudie show at the Standard Hotel, a faux scandal cooked up by the tabloids during a slow news week, and one that wasn't even newsworthy considering the existence of the sex shows —and the fact it was largely a publicity stunt to drum up interest in the hotel—were reported, like, ages ago.
The Standard's campaign to make the hotel synonymous with sex appears to be backfiring. The Post caught on to shenanigans over the weekend, and in an "exclusive" today, breaks the big news that some of the Standard's neighbors in the meatpacking district are being routinely exposed to hanky-panky in the hotel's windows. And some of the witnesses to these acts have been innocent children! Even more outrageous: The hotel even appears to be encouraging this behavior on its own website!
Andre Balazs' quest to make the Standard the official hotel of visiting nudists seems to be paying off. (Either that or the hotel's adult-themed promo campaign continues.) A blogger spotted a naked man in the window over the weekend, and it didn't require much waiting around either: "It took less than 20 minutes into my first visit to the High Line, on Sunday, to capture it," he says. [Restlus via Curbed]
Hotel owner Andre Balazs has been busy the last few weeks trying to convince people to strip naked at his Standard Hotel. Today the mini-chain launched a line of swimwear with Quiksilver. The boardshorts are supposedly designed for "late-night impromptu pool parties" and will be sold via "high-tech vending machines." But does this mean the hotel's l'âge nu is finished? Developing! [Cool Hunting]
• Is Andre Balazs the latest man to fall victim to Kelly Bensimon's feminine charms? Life & Style reports the hotelier and the "housewife" were seen getting cozy in Miami recently. [L&S]
• Kiefer Sutherland is in the clear. Prosecutors have dropped charges against him in connection with his assault on Jack McCollough back in May, since the designer has proved to be an "uncooperative witness." [NYDN]
• Mischa Barton is still in the hospital and may lose the role on the TV show that she was supposed to start filming this week. So what made her snap? In addition to all the drug stuff, she may be suffering from body image issues, too. [Sun, People]
• Ruth Madoff was supposedly spotted at LaGuardia en route to visit her husband in jail. And she was supposedly wearing ripped jeans, too. [P6]
