As many people know, broken-footed gadabout Jay McInerney is currently upholding his title as Prince of Downtown Debauchery by blogging about wine for House and Garden. His columns follow a familiar routine. He goes to the Waverly Inn, sees some faces, drops some names, drinks some wine, and says some stupid stuff. This week he tells Meg Ryan ("whom at first I didn't recognize," maybe because her lips have taken her face hostage!) that Tom Hanks (sitting nearby) "would meet her at the top of the Empire State Building." Get it? But in recent weeks, another element has been thrown into the mix: Unnecessary mentions of his stinker of a movie adaptation of Bright Lights Big City.

Speculation has been rampant on how Jay McInerney broke his foot. How could he who carries the mantle of downtown literature do his job when hobbled by a mangled gam? Dana Vachon weighed in unhelpfully when Radar nosed around. And finally McInerney himself explained. We should have known, it happened at the Waverly Inn. It involves summer truffles and for some reason, the dropping of 16 names and nearly as many acute accents. (Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French TV fellow named Frédéric Beigbeider.) Did you know that the Waverly is something of a buffet of literary-star-fuckers?

• He's cute, okay, but he's no Brad Pitt. [People]
  

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• The dairy-concoction wars heat up yet again; Yolato is coming to Grand Central. Yo-Yo-Yolato! Take that, Pinkberry!
  

The four avid readers of puppy-eyed cirrhosis-livered author Jay McInerney's blog on House and Garden might be aware that the author was planning on leaving the Upper East Side apartment he shared with his wife, Anne "The Man" Hearst. More than kin and less than kind Braden Keil reports the duo have now bought their own home and garden over in what we like to call N.Y.U. Village, at 25 E. 9th Street.

The author needed to meet some very important person from the world of publishing, and his tightly-wound editor let him know it by waving frantically and then physically dragging him over to the corner of the bar. Dana Vachon had been born wealthy and healthy and handsome and he was right to view himself as entirely blessed, especially considering that his first novel, Mergers & Acquisitions had already gone to a second printing that very day. No one wore costumes on the night of his book party at Felix, that Eurotrash magnet on West Broadway, but there was no need for costumes to have a masque ball. Everyone knew their role and played it.

Yesterday we were invited to a Fort Greene dinner party by the Brooklyn Food Group, which features cuisine they like to call "free-range Brooklyn." As it turns out, those guys are wusses. Today's Times teaches that free-range Brooklyn is something much more exciting and darkly awesome. Meet Steven Rinella, there holding a cute little sparrow in his hand. That is, the hand that will later behead it and serve the still-twittering body to the likes of Jay "I Heart Jay McInerney" McInerney, Bill "I Heart Ramsay" Buford, and other foodie literati at, you guessed it, a Fort Greene dinner party.

The kind folks at Vogue Hommes International (French for Vogue International Hommes) sent over a copy of the latest issue, a redesigned number celebrating the publication's tenth anniversary. Nestled near the back, appropriately following "Gangbang: Exploring the Theory" (which is so not as exciting as it sounds), you'll find an interview with ancien terrible Jay McInerney. It's pretty amazing: It starts off with the question "Why do you keep getting married?" and progresses from there.

The wine list was fairly impressive, with some treasures like Melville's Vioginier and INOX Chardonnay alongside the usual suspects. I had very nice Cheverny by the glass which was listed as a Vioginier, though it was, like most Loire whites, a Sauvignon blanc. I liked my tempura-style Prince Edward Island mussels. Anne found her oysters bland. I was pleasantly surprised to find coq au vin on the menu—very retro and perfect winter comfort food—and it was a nice version, served on mashed potatoes, if somewhat lacking in bacon.

Dear Jay and Anne,
We didn't have time to do a card, so unfortunately this will have to suffice: congrats! We're sure the 4th and 3rd times, respectively, will be the charm. And we just have to say something about how our hearts melted when we read Jay's take on your ultra-romantic meet cute story in the Times announcement:

Last time we checked, the Gramercy Park area was the epitome of everything that is wrong with Manhattan. This means it's the perfect place for Sex and the City scribe Candace Bushnell and screenwriter Jay McInerney to read steamy sexcapes in front of a gaggle of media folk, socialites, and debutards. We sent GawkSlave Stephanie along with photographer Kate and tipsy videographer Richard Blakeley to make an official record of the blatant debauchery. Waste an additional 20 minutes of your nonproductive day by checking out the Gawker gallery of love, plus Kate's full gallery. After the jump our "I'm only here for the free drinks" trio enter a roomful of a Blue States Lose, with bonus Paula Froelich naughtiness transcription feature.

Remember last week, when Jay McInerney got all huffy in New York magazine about how seriously lame the Upper East Side has gotten lately? (We're talking "seriously lame" among a group of people you probably don't have the social cachet, or the cash, or come to think of it, the desire, to be a part of. But we digress.) Anyway, today Michael Gross—740 Park, etc., etc.—posted a retort to McInerney's blowharding, claiming that he had to flee downtown because it was getting overrun with not our kind of people. A snippet:

Craving even more information about things that are only relevant to Jay McInerney than you can get merely from perusing his latest thinly-veiled autobio or his House&Garden food blog? Boy, has New York Magazine ever got an article for you. In it, the leather-faced Voice Of Several Generations Ago dishes about a closely-guarded secret he's recently discovered: that the rich people whose parties he's invited to don't want to live on the Upper East Side anymore. No, they want to be downtown. But why?

Food blogger Jay McInerney reports a welcome change at uptown writer pit Elaine's:

• Katie Couric's first week is accompanied by her first blog, a rambling, 10000-word treatment on the importance of being perky, complete with Karen Carpenter lyrics. Congrats, Katie. You're really done something. [Couric & Co.]
• Kazakhastan is now denying that Borat will be a topic during meetings with the U.S. This is just fantastic, isn't it? An international debate on whether or not a fictional character will be discussed at a diplomatic summit. No wonder the terrorists hate us. [The Blotter]
• If JK Rowling has to give up the manuscript for the final Harry Potter book, then the terrorists really have won. [BBC]
• Fashion Week is all about luxurious balls. [Coutorture]
• Lydia Hearst fashion porn: scary, and yet we can't look away. [Bastardly]
• Path to 9/11 producers depict American Airways personnel cheerfully letting Mohammad Atta on the plane; it was actually cheerful US Airways personnel who did so, and it's going to cost ABC some advertising dollars. [Consumerist]
• Jay McInerney has yet to master the art of walking while tipsy. You'd think, but you'd be wrong. [Belle in the Big Apple]
• Sure is hard to make friends in this town. [NYP]
• Watching a blogger get his first death threat is like watching your child take his first steps. He's not our baby, but we're still proud of him. [Goldenfiddle]
• Read the New Yorker and live to be 102. Yay, ancient people! Yay, Conde Nast! [EmDashes]
• Critics still really, RILLY love The Wire. [Test Pattern]
• Drinking = money. No, really. Rejoice! [AP]

• Ohmahgah, the NEW APPLE STORE WILL OPEN TOMORROW THANK YOU LORD STEVE! Curbed has a sneak peek inside the new 5th Avenue cube, and reportedly the cult leader himself will be present when the store opens. Now wipe that drool off your face and work on losing your virginity. [Apple Insider]
• The Daily Mirror reports that Brangelina have already cut a deal for their forthcoming baby, reportedly to the tune of $4.9 million, all to go to UNICEF. Assuming, for once, that the UK press isn't on crack, we're thinking People won this one. [LSE]
• Lindsay is Biggie, Paris is Tupac, Nicole is Diddy, Mary-Kate is Snoop Dogg...this could go on forever. [BWE]
• State Senator Ada Smith pretends she's Tony Soprano. [The Daily Politics]
• Off the blow (we think), Jay McInerney now has his appetite back. Watch him blog about it, then recoil in horror at his use of "Babbolicious." [H&G]
• ThursGay Styles does it again. [NYT]
• Yesterday we'd thought about making a Heather Mills/missing limb joke, but bit our tongues. It's reassuring to see that the Post, on the other hand, did not. [NYP]
• 10 Things I Hate About Commandments. [You Tube]
• Naomi Campbell takes her abusive parade to Dubai (hey, Vanity Fair said it was hot) for her birthday. She's supposedly rented 18 floors of the Burj al Arab hotel, and she'll be throwing shit on every single one of them. [Made in Brazil]

At the end of Rush & Molloy's column today, a nugget of enlightenment on the manners of Jay McInerney:

• Star Jones scares her publishers into giving her $85K to promote her new book of bariatric affirmations, Shine. The budget is triple that of what was given to Nicole Richie to promote her roman clef, and God knows Richie wrote the better book. [Page Six]
• Anna Wintour is infinitely disappointed in staffer's decision to eat like a human being. [Lowdown (last item)]
• Jay McInerney knows his 11-year-old daughter is a hottie. If you can stop shuddering long enough, you might want to call protective services. [Page Six]
• More edgy analysis on the breakup of Chad Lowe and Hilary Swank: Apparently Lowe didn't like living in the shadow of his Oscar-netting wife. Really? Even if it got him free room and board in their awesome townhouse? [R&M (2nd item)]
• Scarlett Johansson is down for a three-way, so long as it doesn't include Match Point co-star Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who she outs as liking gossip, shoes, and twinks. [Scoop]

From Jay McInerney's New York mag cover story on the modern icons of NYC rock, the Strokes, we happily present you with your easy-reference cliché guide: