Imaginary Socialite Meets The Young Manhattanite

After reading Choire Sicha's Daily Transom post about the "Imaginary Socialite" (are any of them real?) I felt compelled to seek out my theoretical soul sister and rake her over the coals of the Young Manhattanite Interview I once did for Gothamist. These are the real replies from the person who answers emails sent to: am.i@imaginarysocialite.com -- I wouldn't make this up and yes, s/he sent that picture too.

Time travel question: What era, day or event in New York's history would you like to re-live?
I would like to see my parents' first date. It was uptown, on a racquetball court, and I imagine they both wore Lacoste, and smug smiles to match. I also imagine my mother won, though not fairly...

9pm, Wednesday - what are you doing?
Causing trouble with Boxer and The Seeker. This usually involves a penthouse, champagne, and Annie's organic dressing.

What's your New York motto?
Wait for the sample sale!

Best celebrity sighting in New York, or personal experience with one if you're that type.
Candace Bushnell once complimented my dress. This is the ultimate for me, although I did see Nick and Jessica on 14th Street yesterday!

Describe that low, low moment when you thought you just might have to leave NYC for good.
Anytime Bill Cunningham won't take my picture at a party.

Just after midnight on a Saturday - what are you doing?
Flirting with Scout, dancing with Heather, and chatting with Thomas at Misshapes!

What's the most expensive thing in your wardrobe?
I keep a gun in my wardrobe; its proven very valuable... okay, no, there are several things from Marc Jacobs that probably financed the man's entire real estate portfolio.

Where do you summer?
On other people's yachts - my estate is also imaginary!

Who do you consider to be the greatest New Yorker of all-time?
Oh, I can't answer this - too much pressure, plus, Holly Golightly is FAKE!

What was your best dining experience in NYC?
Boxer and The Seeker and I eating bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches in a Soho loft at 7 am, totally dumbstruck from the night before and watching a bootleg Star Wars marathon. Later we crashed in other people's beds and woke up, had a Pop Burger eating contest. Which I TOTALLY won.

Just how much do you really love New York?
So much that I've given up the chance at European royalty just to live here.

What happened the last time you went to L.A.?
I ate tacos with Vanessa Getty in front of her museum.

Medication: What and how much do you take?
I'm not pregnant; you take it from there.

Of all the movies made about (or highly associated with) New York, what role would you have liked to be cast in?
Kate Hudson in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." I know it's a cheesy, objectively bad movie. I don't care.

If you could change one thing about New York, what would it be?
Anna Wintour would hold open office hours. And call me back, dammit.

The End of The World is finally happening. Be it the Rapture, War of Armageddon, reversal of the Sun's magnetic field, or Williamsburg stops sucking. What are you going to do with your last 24 hours in NYC?
Kissing a boy I really love in a Chanel couture gown I stole from the Costume Institute.

Odd Jocks: Gawker vs The Onion

Gage and I made some betting odds for today's softball game between Gawker and The Onion. I apologize for the lack of "funny" here but we put as much effort into it as we imagine Oxfeld will when running up the first baseline.

Oddjack Cultural Oddsmaker: Gawker vs. Onion Softball [Oddjack]

UPDATE: Holy crap, I just went outside and it's like standing in the exhaust of a passing bus...all the time. Any chance we can re-schedule it as a swim meet at the Hamilton Fish Park? We could use the Speedo thing to our advantage.

Tonyage, Bikeage, Marriage, Myage, Cameage, and now Outage

TOP Media flagship krucoff.com is down due to exceeded traffic limit. My guess is there was a massive raid on Sewer Trout and Naked Raygun MP3s. Problem should fix itself by August 1 as I've signed up for the unmetered traffic plan. Then I'll be posting smashits like the 23 minute Genesis epic "Supper's Ready" and entire sides of Jello Biafra's spoken word albums. In the meantime, try this one on for size and see if it doesn't feel a little tight in the waist.

The Vindictives - "Dummyroom"

Video Killed The Real Estate Star

This might be the saddest thing I've ever watched. I've rarely felt more embarrassed for another human being, much less someone I consider a friend, than right now. To question Lock's intentions or ask what the hell he was thinking when he decided to do this "video magazine" feature would be an insult to our mammalian brains for it would imply an actual "thought" went into his participation. Clearly there's a reason some people were meant to sit in front of a computer and not a camera.

The money-for-nothing shot? I'm pretty sure blogging's coffin is polybagged, sealed shut, and buried in a lumber yard the moment Lock starts toe-tapping. Please, try to look away...or cover your face with your hands leaving just enough space between two fingers to cop a squint. After that, you're on your own to cope with reality and deal with a week's worth of mental scars.

Lockhart Steele, Big Apple Blogger [Inman Stories]

Vinally More Music

In a bit of cross-promotion throughout the TOP Media network, YM asks you to check out the digitized vinyl over at Krucoff.com and TheOtherPage.com with songs by Sewer Trout and Blow-Up, respectively. Now that I have my audio/pc gear back in order, expect more crap-punk coming through the pipeline and speed-metal being mainlined at a steady rate of 45 resolutions per minute.

YM At The Movies: Pretty Persuasion

Caught a screening of Pretty Persuasion last night. High hopes, kinda sucked. Re-tread of Election, Heathers, Wild Girls, etc. Attempts at "edginess" include 15 year olds masturbating, engaging in oral sex, and fudgepacking. Awkward, strained (not unlike 15 year olds fudgepacking) dialogue and plot. Doesn't work. James Woods is amusing, not enough. The website is better. Grade: D+

Eater Takes Bite Out Of Gothamist

The man who has turned in his stripes for flower-patterned shirts, Lockhart Steele, expands his citizen service journalism empire with the launch of a Curbed-branded sub-domained blog called Eater that will focus on food, restaurants, and the people who eat food and go to restaurants.

Piggy-backing New York food aficionados on the real estate obsessed is a natural move as market research studies have shown that those who buy or rent apartments also buy and eat food in restaurants, even sometimes in the apartments they own or rent.

Now cover your ears to protect yourself from the cries you hear bellowing from Thompson Street and the bowels of Jake Dobkin. Lock just needs to add someone who can rip (and I mean, rip) headlines from the daily papers, Pitchfork, and an arts/movies buff with bite to produce what everyone has always wanted: Gothamist, but actually good.

Madonna, She's A Dick

Here's a re-cap of Chuck Klosterman's book party from the other night that I was commissioned to do for Gawker. In true Denton/Steele fashion, they refuse to pay me or even reimburse the taxi rides and late night San Loco meal I needed to get the job done properly. Maybe that's why I unconsciously took one too many books and ended up with an extra copy of Chuck's first book, Fargo Rock City. I don't want to profit from this drunken act of deceit, mainly because I'm sure the street value ain't what it used to be; rather, I'm offering it free to the reader who leaves the best comment on the general (interpret-as-you-like) topic of heavy metal. Please don't make my only choices result in a Sac and Gage flames-a-plenty codpiece shoot out.

UPDATE: Stacey H. has won the book contest with "I slept in an Iron Maiden t-shirt last night." (I'll give you a $100 iTunes gift certificate if you get Dave to wear the shirt at your wedding.)

Citizen Media Critic: Justice Magazine

Chris Gage and I re-invent ourselves as magazine reviewers for Mediabistro and for our first victim, we demonstrate how the world would be better off without Justice.

The co-founders of Blottered.com take on a magazine about celebrity justice [Mediabistro]

Last Night I Had McDonald's At 3am

You Are What You Eat, Andrew Krucoff [Eat, Drink, One Woman]

Save the Retail Environment

Last quippie from the teen marketing conference, courtesy of new friend and double super secret source who was kind enough to fill me in on the sessions I missed. I assume she'll be writing it all up for an article but this is too good to not preview.

Inside the Broadway Ballroom, Cohen flashed a screen shot of an online profile designed by gothish Bolt user apex_of_maelstrom:

“I just want to pause on Apex of Maelstrom for a second here." He paused. "To just let you think how much she’s been influenced by her retail environment.”

Showalter: Unlikely Teen Idol

I went to a teen marketing conference yesterday and among the microtrends listed by Catherine Stellin, Vice President Marketing & Trends at Youth Intelligence, "Michael Showalter" was mentioned between "apache dancing" and "fruit sushi."

Related: Stella, The Baxter

Fly Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a B-Lister

Open Letter to Jason Calacanis
CC: Dell, President Bush, Karl Rove, Michael Moore, Lindsay Lohan, Mr. and Mrs Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Brothers Weinstein, Jose Canseco, the chick who does the This Is 14th Street blog, and all candidates in the NYC mayoral race

Seriously JC, what's the deal with defending the ethics of BoingBoing over an innocent error (which, btw, I totally agree with you on) while you still haven't posted a correction to this entry on your blog where you claim Engadget made Time's 50 Coolest Websites list? It's time for you to swallow the medicine ball or we're gonna have to go extra rounds and trust me you don't want any of this. Just ask Jarvis's cut-man if you crave some mental scars before I deliver the physical ones.

You can run from responsibility but you can't hide the facts. You can wait all you want, but it's gonna be another year before Time's list is updated so I suggest you do the right thing and come clean now. Use that towel in your corner one way or another. You know that I know you know because you commented here when I pointed this out before. There's been no effort on your part to set the record straight or even do a strike-through on the original post. That's a lot of talk, man. Now is not the time for more words. Try action, it can be so much louder.

To paraphrase the great Muhammad Ali, you need to run on the road long before you dance under the lights. So get those sneakers on pronto, this ain't no roller disco.

Shouted and Outed

Remember that whole Gawkerist thing? I surely don't. Many victims of head trauma, like one caused by a nasty collision at the intersection of desperation and obsession, have a hard time recalling the "accident" and the moments right before it. So yeah, this helps to piece it all together.

Also, the gays think I'm ugly. Now that hurts.

Ashkenazi Jews: The Choosy Ones

Jewish moms, sit back and feel free to rejoice with rugelach and hamantaschen, for we now see that hereditary science explains the motives behind your passive marital suggestions. Or alternately, this confirms why Jews control the world, probably from an Upper West Side apartment overlooking the Park.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that “Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler.” The same principle must be invoked in explaining Einstein himself. We evaluate the hypothesis that the high intelligence test scores observed in the Ashkenazi Jewish population are a consequence of their occupation of a social niche over the last millennium that selected strongly for IQ. We summarize the evidence of high intelligence test scores in this population, approximately one standard deviation higher than the northwestern European average, and then the relevant social history. We suggest that there was an increase in the frequency of particular genes that elevated IQ as a byproduct of this selective regime, which led to an increased incidence of hereditary disorders.

There are several key observations that motivate our hypothesis. The first is that the Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group, combined with an unusual cognitive profile, while no similar elevation of intelligence was observed among Jews in classical times nor is one seen in Sephardic and Oriental Jews today.

The second is that the Ashkenazim experienced very low inward gene flow, which created a favorable situation for natural selection.

The third is that they experienced unusual selective pressures that were likely to have favored increased intelligence. For the most part they had jobs in which increased IQ strongly favored economic success, in contrast with other populations, who were mostly peasant farmers. They lived in circumstances in which economic success led to increased reproductive success.

Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence [Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, Henry Harpending, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah]

Gawker Media Sumthin' Summit (aka Denton's Buying)

All Photos © 2005 Nikola Tamindzic ♥ www.ambrel.net

"You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Wonkette. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up... 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad."


Q: Which one doesn't... a) blog b) belong c) hide from the sun
A: a) center b) right c) left

Jonno demonstrates what to do when encountering bears while Jessica fakes faking it.

Tonight: Ass Sex at 12"

A barber-shaved quartet of girls are DJing at 12" Bar tonight starting around 10pm. Get some ass on Essex right below Houston.

Four On The Floor

I could try to explain this by saying "The Other Page" print issues (right column) were all one big joke, like I did in high school to a reporter for The Capital to explain our "underground newspaper" The Alaskan Elephant, but that ended with a shaved head and nearly getting expelled on the last day of my senior year. That's not the case here at all.

Let there be no doubt that the current endeavor is completely serious as a quarterly journal of scholar and skull bongs. In response to Gawker's ass-hatted assertion that "there’s only been three issues" in under a year (the first one was published last September), I will personally hand-deliver issue #4 and a definition for "quarterly" to their headquarters next month to inform them we're not just sticking a pinwheel in the ass of the blogosphere and pushing them off a cliff.