Culture | The New York Observer

Plan for Fun! Comedian to Host 'Roe' Benefit Monday Night

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:54:41 -0400

Planned Parenthood commemorates Roe v. Wade's anniversary with the fourth Roe on the Rocks benefit Monday, April 4--the title is a simultaneous reminder of the peril family-planning services face in America and an invitation to make some bad decisions! The evening's emcee, comedian Sara Benincasa, told The Observer she'd relied on Planned Parenthood in the past: "When I first moved to New York, I thought I was in Sex and the City like all...

Jordan Scott 'Cracks' Moviemaking Code

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:51:21 -0400

Jordan Scott's forthcoming debut film, Cracks, is a psychodrama set at an all-girls' boarding school from which no one may leave-picture a British The Facts of Life with a murderous super-hot lesbian in place of Mrs. Garrett.

Yes, it's that good.

Ms. Scott cited the The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as an inspiration. The director, who had never made a feature film before Cracks, pulled together an impressive hodgepodge...

Ayelet Waldman vs. Katie Roiphe: A Twitter Battle With No Winners

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:08:02 -0400

Katie Roiphe better watch her step. Ayelet Waldman does not take even indirect criticism lightly when it involves her husband (you know, the amazing writer and lover, Michael Chabon).

As part of the new tradition of referencing famous husbands through twitter, Ms. Waldman is using the medium to air her grievances against Ms. Roiphe.

"I am so BORED with Katie Roiphe's 'I like the sexist drunk writers' bullshit. She happily trashes my husband, but guess what bitch?... He...

You Must Remember This: Mention Us at the Debate Edition!

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:49:08 -0400

Plenty happens each day—how to keep up with it all? Time to test your memory!

--What's Slate's #slatepitch-y response to the question "Is Libya like Kosovo?"

--What twentysomething political daughter thinks she'll be mentioned in the 2012 Presidential debates? (This shouldn't be too tough...)

--What two caustic comedians now say that it's wrong to be offensive for offensiveness's own sake--flying in the face, it would seem, of their career thus far?

--What cinematic topic is the next "vampires"--with...

Chef Michael White, Post-'Divorce' Is Mr. Pop-ular

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:16:59 -0400

Last week, one of the hottest chefs in New York-hell, in America-turned a plastic crank, demonstrating a strawberry-red Tupperware hand mixer, the Whip 'N Prep, for a crowd of diners at a pop-up restaurant dubbed the TupperClub, in the penthouse of the Setai Hotel.On the menu? Nova Scotia lobster with burrata and eggplant al funghetto.

You might not expect to find Michael White at a Tupperware party, even a swanky one. Not with...

You Must Remember This: Every Day Is Like 'Friday' Edition

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:57:27 -0400

Plenty happens daily in this town. But the devil's in the details. Let's see what you remember!

--How much is Rebecca Black making off the nation's scorn?

--...and what's the deeper meaning of it all?

--What demanding New York icon likes shirts "freshly ironed and warm to the touch"?

--Which famous baby-daddy "comes off as a bit of a highbrow pawn"?

--How is Good Morning America reacting to Chris Brown's window-shattering escapade?

--...and to which anti-gay group is the show...

Paz de la Huerta's Arrest and the Triumph of Celebrity

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:25:03 -0400

Paz's problems started with a stiletto.

"Oh I'm sorry..." the endlessly leggy Ms. de la Huerta cooed, or rather warbled, to The Observer. We were standing with her at a Playboy party, under the High Line, and with one shoestrap broken she leaned on us, palms flung around the nape of our neck. She had given a reading that night from Madame Bovary, during which she crossed and uncrossed her legs and cradled the hardback...

Two Art Galleries Play Monopoly on Park Avenue

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:54:11 -0400

Every few months, a fussy cabal of art dealers, philanthropists, lawyers and museum curators meet in the Upper East Side offices of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation "over bad sandwiches," said one. They are the Park Avenue sculpture committee, and they decide, by and large, what art gets showcased on one of the pricier streets in the world.
Currently dotting the avenue are the 25-foot-tall stainless-steel roses of Will Ryman (minimalist painter Robert Ryman's son)...

Why Did Andy Borowitz Cross the Park?

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:52:47 -0400

On Monday afternoon, supreme satirist Andy Borowitz delivered one of his many daily missives on Twitter: "My wife just asked me to take out the garbage, and I said, 'Honey, can't hear you--I just put up a pay wall.'"

Funny stuff, though the truth is Mr. Borowitz and Olivia Gentile will never have to worry about tossing out the trash again. The authoritarian couple has just bought a two-bedroom near the top of Merritt House...

Raging Bulls of the Renaissance Scam: Larry Salander’s Dupes Clash in Court

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:23:04 -0400

The private jets made Robert De Niro nervous. The Salander-O'Reilly Gallery was putting on a show in Rome that included his father's paintings. The gallery's owner, Larry Salander, told him they'd fly to Italy in a private jet. Mr. De Niro wasn't sure whose jet it was -- he vaguely thought it belonged to Benucci, the Roman gallery hosting the event that would later claim ownership of his father's paintings

"I did think it...

At the DIFFA Gala, if You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Sit Down With Us

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:02:24 -0400

Rough-hewn wood, deer antlers, sagging back-porch screens. Call the hot new look in design early Beverly Hillbillies.

On Monday, the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) hosted its annual gala at Pier 94--the final of five days of events built around elaborate tables created by interior designers, event planners, architects and fashion designers. For the keenly competitive "Dining by Design" event--the interior decorating trade awards a Best in Show--the three dozen competitors who enter have...

A Talk With Vanity Fair's Larry Fink, Snapper of Drunken Starlets

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:39:30 -0400

What are the ethics, if there are any, of photographing a dead-drunk starlet? Try running that question by Larry Fink. A successful photographer of boxers, jazz musicians and the 1970s Studio 54 scene, he has had retrospectives at MoMA and the Whitney, and a breakthrough well into his career. In 1999, he was lured by Graydon Carter to photograph Vanity Fair's annual Oscar party. (He was put under contract to keep him from joining...

Movie Review: Sobering White Irish Drinkers Is a Gritty and Gratifying Debut

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:38:09 -0400

White Irish Drinkers is a thoughtful coming-of-age story with bracing performances, solid writing and direction by John Gray and inescapable take-home values that give you a feel-good lift. Set in 1975 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, it tells the story of a bright, sensitive 18-year-old named Brian Leary (a superb job by charismatic newcomer Nick Thurston) from a working-class family grappling to make ends meet and find purpose in a bleak existence. It was a...

The Offal Truth: Stuart Brisley at Algus Greenspon; 'Proofs and Refutations' at David Zwirner

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:38:09 -0400

Once, during a serious conversation in a friend's apartment, my friend's 1-year-old son wandered into the room, listened to us talking, and then carefully squatted down between us and defecated on the floor. I forget what we'd been talking about, but I've never forgotten that final word.

Since the 1990s, inspired by a reference in The Interpretation of Dreams, the English performance artist Stuart Brisley has been constructing a "Collection of Ordure." Several prime examples...

Anne Roiphe: Sex, Art and Booze Back When Writers Broke Taboos

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:37:15 -0400

In 1956, before Anne Roiphe set to work on any of her eight novels, the rising senior in college lay naked in a Parisian attic with a Fulbright scholar she'd met earlier that day. "Terror clamped me closed," Ms. Roiphe, a former columnist for The Observer, writes in Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason, "and no amount of eager pressure could open the gate." Crying, she went to the doctor. The...