Well-known suit-wearer Gay Talese is scheduled to release a book in two weeks. The book is about a man, Gerald Foos, who says he purchased and maintained a motel in Colorado for several decades specifically for the purpose of spying on his customers as they did such private activities as having sex and using the bathroom. Part of the book was adapted into a long New Yorker article published April 11, which revealed that Talese had, at one point, peeped along with Foos, and potentially concealed the existence of a murder that Foos said had taken place at the motel.

The Voyeur’s Motel, Gay Talese’s book-length profile of alleged peeping tom and hotelier Gerald Foos, comes out in less than two weeks, but according to The Washington Post, Talese has “disavowed” the book after being confronted with new doubts about the truthfulness of its subject.

All the best people in the world love cats. But even the most fervent cat lover admits that they are, as a rule, useless. A cat with a clear job in life is a rare and wonderful thing. Hence our collective love of the bodega cat, whose lives are documented for us by the kind people at WNYC today.

Gay Talese annotates his 1966 masterwork profile, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Turns out, Ol' Blue Eyes, who famously refused to sit for the Esquire story, may have secretly liked the piece.

In your cloudy Friday media column: a journalist murdered in Brazil, the latest Matt Taibbi uproar, Timesmen are momentarily glamorous, Gay Talese's reading material is so Gay, Newsweek's big positive news, and an illustrated NYT paywall hack.

In your misty Monday media column: Michael Wolff vs. David Carr continues, as does the HuffPo's hiring spree, as does the growth of the class action suit against HuffPo, Gay Talese gives the NYT props, Time magazine has an apocalyptic "brand image," and AMI is for sale.

"Those rewrite men—some of them were so drunk!" So begins Gay Talese's entertaining reminiscence on just how drunk the New York Times was, in his day. Mad Men? "Hell. The drinking that went on in journalism was beyond that."

An intern at the Colorado Springs Gazette has been fired for lifting passages from the New York Times and placing them in stories she wrote for the newspaper.

Jay McInerney's latest book, How It Ended, was feted at the 21 Club on Wednesday night. On hand for the occasion: McInerney's wife, Anne Hearst, Brooke Shields, Candace Bushnell and Charles Askegaard, Gay and Nan Talese, Morgan Entrekin, Nina Garcia, Pamela Fiori, Bob Colacello, Richard Johnson and Sessa Von Richthofen, Peggy Siegal, Muffie Potter Aston, Bettina Zilkha, Cornelia Guest, Debbie Bancroft, Valesca Guerrand-Hermes, Nina Griscom, Somers White Farkas, Patrick McMullan, Robert Couturier, George Farias, Tatiana and Campion Platt, Kimberly Rockefeller, Pamela Gross, Harry Slatkin, Dana Hammond, Harry Benson, and Deborah Norville. [PMc, VF, P6]

It was Drew Barrymore's big night at the Ziegfeld yesterday when the new HBO movie, Grey Gardens, had its premiere. On hand for the occasion and afterparty at the Pierre: Drew's co-stars Jessica Lange and Jeanne Tripplehorn, as well as guests like Justin Long (left), Jimmy Fallon, Rudy and Judi Giuliani, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi, Gay Talese, Arthur Sulzberger, Dan Abrams, Roger Friedman, Hilary Rhoda, Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone, Peter Som, Jason Wu, Erin Fetherston, Kristin Wiig, Tony Sirico, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Aerin Lauder, Albert Maysles, Ashleigh Banfield and Howard Gould, Monet Mazur, Debbie Harry, Selita Eubanks, the Beastie Boys' Mike D, Ad-Roc, and MCA, Aleksandra Baryshnikov, BD Wong, and the film's director, Michael Sucsy. [PMc, Wireimage, Getty, LAT, 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 no surprise that legendary author Gay Talese has yet to fulfill the three-book contract he signed with Knopf in 1991. He's spent the past few days crafting signs for homeless people so they can panhandle more effectively. Really. As he told one of the men he encountered on the street, "the big bankers and industrial leaders the government was bailing out had lobbyists and public relations companies doing their bidding," and if the men on the street had any chance, they'd have to "tap into the topicality of their plight." So he went home and made up a bunch of signs referencing President Obama and the stimulus bill, handed them out to people, and then "took down names and phone numbers," so he could follow up to see how they did. We're not sure how it is that homeless people now have phones, but perhaps that's just because Talese is already making a difference?

New York City's unofficial first lady, Diana Taylor, is celebrating her 54th birthday today. Hope Mike got you something nice! Others celebrating: Tom Brokaw is turning 69. Former Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove is 54. Henry Blodget is 43. Chef Marc Murphy is turning 40. Axl Rose is turning 47. Journalist/author Michael Pollan is 54. Natalie Cole is 59. Rich Astley is turning 43. And Zsa Zsa Gabor is 92. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

Peggy Siegal invited a media-heavy crowd to the Oak Room last night to watch the Super Bowl. Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell was in attendance (apparently, budget cuts prevented him from flying to Tampa in person); and some folks, such as former HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman, left, even donned 3-D glasses to fully appreciate the commercials. Others on hand for the festivities: Richard Johnson, Ron Perelman, Dan Abrams, Dave Zinczenko, Joanne Lipman, Charlie Rose, George Rush, Richard Meier, Cece Cord, Kate Betts, Gay Talese, Rocco DiSpirito, Chuck Scarborough, Francine LeFrak, Andrew and Nancy Jarecki, Ron Delsener, Ken Auletta, Larry Gagosian, Lewis Lapham, Steve Kroft, Lloyd Grove, Morgan Entrekin, Ann Dexter-Jones, Harry Smith, Liz Smith, Cynthia McFadden, and Felicia Taylor. [PMc, NYO, GoaG, Fox 411]

1) The first New York benefit of the Young Patrons Circle of the Friends of the Louvre took place Tuesday night at Espace: Devoted socials like Olivia Chantecaille, Fabiola Beracasa, Alexandra Papanicalaou, Lisa Anastos, Annabel Vartanian, Melissa Berkelhammer, and Devorah Rose bid on photographer Candida Hofer's pictures of the Louvre's galleries. [Park Avenue Peerage/PMc]

David Blum laments the internet and romanticizes Gay Talese in a story too long for anyone to read in this fast-paced modern world. [NY Press]

If Gay Talese had a blog, he'd be all about promoting Last Call at Elaine's, Brian McDonald's memoir of bartending at the legendary old-school New York intellectual hang-out. Elaine's was to the '60s and '70s what the Magician was to three years ago. That means that McDonald is as connected to old-school media types as you can get without a masthead position at the New York Review of Books. So even though this book appears to be an account of an era only a few dozen people could care about it, it's the right few dozen people. Brian McDonald is Sloane Crosley for The Olds. At a reading last week on the Upper East Side, the book sold out, presumably to its entire audience.

Be forwarned, youngsters: the magazine industry has no room for you any more. Also, it can't find you! You're all out there working on the blogs and not learning how to do real journalism. Which makes you suck! "These people don't leave their fucking laptops," says elderly writer Gay Talese. "It used to be, you would go outside." My, how things change for the Gay. The Observer's attempt to capture the magazine freelancing zeitgeist in article form is written by former Gawker blogger Doree Shafrir, a fact which does not seem to register with the irony-proof older generation quoted therein. So the aspirational young magazine crowd either succeeds quickly or withers away into bitterness at the closed doors of the industry, while old veterans of top-tier magazines grow increasingly out of touch and bemoan every little change since their golden days. Isn't this how things have always been?

Talese is an author and one of the pioneers of "New Journalism," a style of reporting with a literary flourish that emerged in the 1960s. Talese is known for his ability to interview and profile intensely guarded public figures, such as Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.

I recently started receiving Esquire magazine! (There were air miles to be disposed of, so why not?) And so one came the other week and I sat down and read it. Not sure which issue it was, I think the new one, they all look alike—as in, I just looked at every cover this year and I can't identify which one I read from either word or pictures (what with their covers being a weird corporate last echo of Ray Gun). It was okay! Slightly irritating was that the whole magazine was one long listicle, with "bits" crammed into every corner of every page. The winky hetero-laddishness was a little irksome too, but I know I'm not their target subscriber, not being a credit-card loving, manscaping, overcoat-buying fathead, so I can brush that off. But then yesterday the magazine went and did themselves so wrong. They republished the classic 1966 Gay Talese piece "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold" online.