One way of communicating to everyone that you're "in the know" is to refer to people not by their bylines, but by their IRL nicknames. Everyone will know you're a poser if you don't call A.O. Scott (pictured) "Tony."

writing in 2006 about the total inconvenience the shoe bomber Richard Reid caused air travelers, in a New Yorker Talk of the Town piece taking credit for predicting (or is it giving Al Qaeda the idea?!) the "underwear bomber."

Celebrity stylist Harry Josh and nightlife kingpin Nur Khan hosted "Spring Fling" at the Gramercy Park Hotel on Saturday night. A bevy of celebs and social scenesters turned up for the fête, including Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone, Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady, Kate Hudson and mom Goldie Hawn, Ed Norton, Ashley Olsen, Spike Lee, Winona Ryder, Liv Tyler, Phillip Lim, Narciso Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Karolina Kurkova, Georgina Chapman, Rachel Zoe and Rodger Berman, Kate Bosworth and James Rousseau, Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr, Josh Hartnett, Daria Werbowy, Lily Donaldson, Molly Sims, Hamish Bowles, January Jones, Richie Akiva, Peter Som, Richard Chai, Christian Siriano, Cherry Jones, Jason Sudeikis, Guy Oseary, Lake Bell, Brian Atwood, Zoe Kravitz, and Quincy Jones. [PMc, VF, FWD]

Valentino and Vogue co-hosted a cocktail party to benefit New Yorkers For Children at Valentino's Madison Avenue store last night. Guests included Fabiola Beracasa and Erin Fetherston (left), Fern Mallis, Tinsley Mortimer, Valesca Guerrand-Hermès, Maggie Betts, Paul Sevigny, Bebe Neuwirth, Jennifer Creel, Selita Ebanks, Alina Cho, Kate Schelter, Antony Todd, Tatiana Platt, Kevin Liles, Denise Wohl, Di Petroff, Felicia Taylor, Erica and Geraldo Rivera, Sylvester and Gillian Miniter, Dori Cooperman, Maggie Rizer, Allison Sarofim, Lydia Fenet, Vanessa von Bismarck, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Susan Shin, Tracy Stern, Melissa Berkelhammer, Stephanie LaCava, and, yes, "Real Housewife" Alex McCord and her husband Simon van Kempen. [PMc, Wireimage, VF, SF]

It's Amanda Lepore's birthday today! At least we think it's her birthday and we think she's 41, but she's been known to fool people before. Others celebrating today: Margaret Cho is 40. The New Yorker's Calvin Trillin is 73. Novelist Joan Didion is turning 74. Little Richard is 76. Knicks center Eddy Curry is 26. Child star Frankie Muniz turns 23. Actor Nick Stahl is turning 29. And model Shalom Harlow is 35. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

Famously harsh New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani has clearly taken a liking to prolific New Yorker writer and "Deadline Poet" columnist for The Nation Calvin Trillin's latest political book: apparently moved to write a poem, she reviewed it in verse. You know, in the style of his book, also written in verse! "Trillin recounted this all with verve and élan/Charting the candidates’ every slogan and plan." Check out the excerpt—and then you can turn the table and judge her poetic efforts.

♦ The opening of Elizabeth Peyton's New Museum exhibition on Tuesday was full of her friends and fans like Marc Jacobs (with boyfriend Lorenzo Martone, left), Glenn O'Brien, Amy Astley, Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour, Hope Atherton, Cecily Brown, Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, Gavin Brown, Barbara Gladstone, Debbie Harry, and Thelma Golden. [The Daily, PMc]

A staff writer at the New Yorker since 1963, Calvin "Bud" Trillin is the author of more than 20 books, including 2001's Remembering Danny, Tepper Isn't Going Out, and About Alice, a memoir of his wife who died of complications from heart surgery in 2001.

The women of America were shocked this week when Calvin Trillin's essay about his wife, the one that made all of them cry for a month, or maybe two, was denied a National Magazine Award. It looked like a shoo-in, for sure! We're not accustomed to reading the Georgia Review, which won for Michael Donohue's "William Russell and Mary," about a guy who found an apartment in Park Slope seven years ago and then went through his dead landlady's stuff. (Whatever. Who hasn't?) But now we know why it won: because it totally trounces Calvin Trillin in the turgid overwritten weird elderporn department.

Ex-NY Post gossip columnist Chris Nolan writes in:

We haven't done our official "Why San Francisco Sucks" issue yet (we're trying to cull the mountains of material), but the New Yorker's Calvin Trillin provides one more reason: no delivery. As we've pointed out on prior occasions, you can get anything delivered in Manhattan. Trillin, in San Fran visiting the grandchildren and the newly arrived great-grandchildren, observes that all the restaurants offer take-out, but not delivery. "Take-out," he notes, involves the annoying inconvenience of having to get in a car and drive. Manhattanites who "have expensive apartments with no kitchens" (or in some cases, use the stove to store fashion magazines,) have created a commercial environment where restaurants have an incentive to deliver, and nearly everyone does.
Local bounty [The New Yorker]