At the cocktail party preceding the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses spelling bee last night, former Star editor Joe Dolce was rubbing up against cheetah-sheathed Page Six editor Paula Froelich. Was he here to spell, like Paula? "God no." He was here to cheer on his boy, HarperCollins VP Jonathan Burnham. Joe has been mostly occupied by cheering Jonathan on lately, though he hasn't been completely at loose ends during his year of unemployment: "I was working on a web-based project about design, but I had to pull back from it recently," he said, as a very tall, beautiful woman in a houndstooth skirt and enormous diamond earrings came up behind him and mischievously grinned at everyone. It was Alex Kuczynski, who has been described by this website as a "pervert," a "body modification expert," "somewhat plastically-reconstructed," a "facially-reconfigured semiotician," and most often, "Times rich lady beat reporter." "Hi Bunny!," she said. "I looove your bangs! You look like a person on the 'Brady Bunch'!" Did she mean Cousin Oliver? Whatever, totally charmed! Nikola Tamindzic documented this.

Today's Times has a piece about Amazon Connect, which allows authors to blog on their Amazon.com retail pages. Meg Wolitzer is prominently featured as an author utilizing her Amazon blog — she serves as the story's lede and primary example, plus there's a nice photograph.

Bob Morris, vacationing with his brother and 8-year-old nephew Ian in sometime celebrity hangout in the Turks and Caicos, Parrot Cay, turns young Ian into a celeb-baiting mercenary after spotting a former supermodel and her son. "I told Ian...that I would give him a dollar to make friends with the famous woman's son." I'm all for using people to get to celebritiesespecially small unwitting children (suckers!) There was, however, a very strange quote in the article: "'Celebrities can cause anxiety among parents,' said Meg Wolitzer, whose new novel, The Wife explores the negative effect of proximity to the famous. 'And the seductiveness of fame can make some adults act even worse than children.'" No idea what she's talking about.
At a resort, an invisible wall [NYT]