Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine

7/18/08

The sound of numbers crunching could be heard all over the city last week. Mayor Bloomberg agreed to pick up Merrill Lynch’s 20 percent stake in Bloomberg LP for $4.4 billion — which values the company at $22.5 billion and jumps his estimated net worth to somewhere around $20 billion. Wacky Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad estimated that September was a good time for a return visit to the Big Apple. A $52 million fund-raising month helped Barack Obama recover from being offended by The New Yorker’s controversial cover cartoon. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke bailed out troubled mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while news broke that the consumer price index is rising faster than it has since 1982.

More: It Happened This Week

Intel

7/18/08

5:35 PM

Anderson Pooper Also Has a ‘360°’

So remember earlier in the week when we introduced you to Anderson Pooper, the silver-maned cat who looks an awful lot like a certain cable-news personality? Well, turns out his owner has been experimenting with the boundaries of the Cooper-Pooper parallel for a long time now — and he's learned that the human Anderson Cooper is not the only one able to perform an on-camera "360°." Above is Anderson Pooper's take on his alter ego's popular show. You'll be confused, you'll laugh, and then you'll wonder if it's really okay to do that to a cat for so long. Enjoy.

Anderson Pooper 360 [OMGblog]
Related: Introducing Anderson Pooper

More: Intel »anderson cooper, anderson pooper, cats, cnn

Neighborhood Watch

7/18/08

5:05 PM

‘Real Word: Brooklyn’ Will Not Be in BellTel Lofts After All

Bushwick: Poor Janet Corona. The Prudential Douglas Elliman broker e-mailed BushwickBK that they were in a "hep of poop" for posting her "exclusive" condo listing, and then the blog went and published her crazy all-caps e-mail, and now everyone's piling on, making fun of Janet and her self-tanned, MySpace-y picture. Get in on the action! [BushwickBK]
Chinatown: This hood and the Lower East Side, both lacking enough parks, will get more "social public spaces" transformed from "underused streets." That's cool, but you gotta put some trees and shade up in that joint. Peeps don't wanna be sitting on the hot, bare street! [Villager]
Clinton Hill: Speaking of underused public space, are swaths of CH so desolate and weed-rich that they qualify as "urban prairies"? And that calico-clad chick with the blind baby sister we just spotted on Lafayette: Wasn't that Laura Ingalls Wilder? [Clinton Hill Blog]
Downtown Brooklyn: After all that hoopla, MTV's Real World gang won't be coming to the BellTel Lofts after all. Seems like they couldn't get the permits they needed to build out the space as they wanted. Guess where it's looking like those crazy kids will land (as of today, that is)? Yep, that's right, Le Hook Rouge. [Brooklyn Paper]

More: Neighborhood Watch »bushwick, chinatown, clinton hill, downtown brooklyn, real estate, rockaway beach, upper east side

Ink-Stained Wretches

7/18/08

4:30 PM

David Carr Answers Our Burning Question: Why Are Some Junkies Fat?

Carr, in his husky stage.Photo: Nytimes.com

Among the many, many things that David Carr reveals in his drug-addiction memoir, The Night of the Gun, an excerpt of which will appear in The New York Times Magazine this weekend, is the fact that there was a point during his addiction where he weighed close to 300 pounds, or, as he put it, he was "a touch on the amazingly obese scale." Reading this earlier today, we found ourselves wondering something that we have wondered before: Cocaine is a notorious appetite suppressant. People sometimes do it to lose weight. So what's with these junkies who gain weight, such as John Belushi, Chris Farley, and Jim Morrison? Aren't you, at that level of addiction, so tweaked out you no longer care about food?

We probably could have Googled, but instead we e-mailed David Carr to ask. And he had a theory! Sort of.

Unsurprisingly, potatoes are involved. »

More: Ink-Stained Wretches »david carr, fatness, new york times, night of the gun

Cultural Capital

7/18/08

3:45 PM

You Didn’t Actually Want to Use Your iPhone to Communicate, Did You?

Lots of reception displays, but not a lot of reception.Images courtesy of Nytimes.com

As New Yorkers continue to wait in two-to-four-hour-long lines to get their hands on the sweet, sweet magic that is the iPhone (if only we had some HTML code to put a halo around that very word), the Times has moved forward, covering the best offerings from the iPhone app store. You know, so you have something to look forward to while you bake in the sun, waiting in line. They have a nifty slideshow with iPhone screen shots demonstrating all the cool new applications. Those screen shots also happen to show the phone's service level at the time the images were captured — and what you see at left is a compilation of the service levels on all the iPhones that the Times showed off. Hmmm. Not so good. At all. And AT&T doesn't exactly have the best reputation for stellar reception anyhow. Sigh. God: After all this, please don't tell us the damn thing is going to end up being little more than a tricked-out Fabergé egg. —Jessica Coen

Slideshow: Trick Out Your iPhone [NYT]

More: Cultural Capital »apple, iphone, technology

Intel

7/18/08

3:00 PM

Donald Trump Jr. Gets Into Mixed Martial Arts

Photo: Getty Images

Just when you thought there was absolutely nowhere else to go beyond the towers, the TV show, and Tara Conner, the Trump empire is expanding once again. This time, the Donald & Co. have bought a portion of Affliction, the new mixed-martial-arts league, which will face off against Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the realm of televised, no-holds-barred beatings. In case you didn’t know, this is the blood sport that John McCain once called "human cockfighting" — pretty little Miss USA it ain’t.

"Our family has always been into sports," Don Jr., who is Executive Vice-President of Development and Acquisitions for the Trump organization, explains to us. "Granted, my dad wasn’t exactly the kind of dad who would take us outside and play catch.…I grew up watching boxing matches, mostly at the [Trump] properties in Atlantic City, and once mixed martial arts developed, I got really into that." True to Trump form, the bottom line is never far from mind; he adds, "Plus, it’s a phenomenal growth sport."

We’ll see this Saturday night, when Affliction airs its first pay-per-view fight card. "To the non-fighter, extreme fighting can appear to be excessively violent," says Don Jr., who assures us the fighters are always in control. So in control that the Little Donald himself would consider jumping in the ring? "At best, I’d give myself fractions of a second with a real mixed-martial-arts fighter," he laughed. "If I could do even that it would probably beat the oddsmakers’ expectations." —Leanne Shear

More: Intel »donald trump jr., martial arts, violence

The Sports Section

7/18/08

2:30 PM

The Yankees’ ‘Voice of God’ May, in Fact, Turn Out to Be Immortal

Living proof that, in America, even a mummy may
attain his greatest dreams.Photo: Getty Images

If you’ve been to Yankee Stadium this season, you’ve likely noticed that the PA announcer hasn’t been the legendary Bob Sheppard — who’s held that position since 1951, earning the nickname “The Voice of God” — but his backup, Jim Hall, who essentially announces names in a half-hearted Bob Sheppard impression. Sheppard, 97, has been on the PA-announcers’ disabled list since last season with an illness, and he’s said that he isn’t sure if he’ll be able to return at all this season. At the risk of sounding morbid, we have to wonder if he’ll ever return to the mic. After all, he’s 97. Which is why we were excited to see this CNBC article detailing text-to-speech technology that could allow Sheppard’s voice to announce lineups in perpetuity.

The team need only make a pact with the devil. »

More: The Sports Section »bob sheppard, sports, yankees

White Men With Money

7/18/08

2:00 PM

The Blame’s on Thain

"What? I'm not tense."Photo: Getty Images

"First of all, I take exception to the 'you guys' comment. I did not create these CDOs," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain told the analysts heaping blame on him in yesterday's conference call, after the firm announced a startling $9 billion write-down and $4.95-per-share loss for the second quarter. "These are legacy positions." But protest as he might that the blame lies with predecessor Stan O'Neal, the mob is growing louder. They are coming for him. They are beating their drums and chanting and growing wild from the smell of blood in the air!

Or, at least, they are writing skeptical things in places. »

More: White Men With Money »business, finance, john thain, merrill lynch

Early and Often

7/18/08

1:35 PM

Small Army Advising Obama on Foreign Policy, Worrying Some

Getty Images

One of Barack Obama's main objectives as he ~~charms the globe into submission~~ tours Europe and the Middle East next week will be to narrow the gap between himself and John McCain on foreign-policy credibility. But, of course, Obama's been working toward that end at home, too. According to the New York Times' report today on Obama's vast foreign-policy advising apparatus, there are actually very few people who aren't advising him on this stuff. (Well, there are 300 helping out.) Some wonder whether a presidential candidate should really need this much help.

Though maybe McCain should borrow a few folks. »

More: Early and Often »barack obama, campaigns, elections, europe, foreign policy, iraq, john mccain, politics

Ink-Stained Wretches

7/18/08

12:45 PM

Go Ask David Carr

Photo: Patrick McMullan

We don't think we're alone when we admit that, in the past, addiction memoirs have kind of made us want to do drugs. Like Go Ask Alice. Remember how our heroine did drugs that looked like candy, got thin, ran away to San Francisco, and opened a hippie store? That sounded pretty cool to us, although that was not the intention of the teachers who handed it out with anti-drug pamphlets in junior high. And we didn't read A Million Little Pieces, but suffice it to say that we're clearly not the only ones who've thought that the redemption-after-rock-bottom-drug-addiction narrative makes for a more heroic, more interesting existence. But David Carr's memoir, which is excerpted in the Times Magazine this weekend, adamantly does not make addiction sound remotely glamorous, because his addiction was actually real. "There is nothing romantic about being a crackhead and a drunk," the Times reporter says at one point, and then goes on to prove it, by reporting out the events of his life back when he was a 300-pound, Nova-driving thug with pus-oozing track marks and a dealer called Kenny. He once left his twin babies in a car while he shot up cocaine. For several hours. In the winter.

And there's more. »

More: Ink-Stained Wretches »david carr, drugs, go ask alice, media, new york times

Company Town

7/18/08

12:15 PM

Citigroup Posts $2.5 Billion Loss

FINANCE
• Citigroup kingpin Vikram Pandit thinks his firm's $2.5 billion second-quarter loss is...progress? "We cut our second-quarter losses in half compared to the first quarter," he said. [NYT]
• In the wake of a senate inquiry, UBS will no longer offer secret offshore accounts to Americans. [NYP]
• Freddie Mac is considering selling as much as $10 billion in new shares to investors. And since the S.E.C. announced new regulations to curb naked shorting, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares have already jumped several percentage points. [WSJ & NYP]

More: Company Town »andrew cuomo, brooke astor, citigroup, dan rather, dow jones, fannie mae, freddie mac, hollywood reporter, jeff zucker, john thain, lincoln center, merrill lynch, nbc universal, new yorker, sec, ubs, unions, variety, vikram pandit, wall street journal

In Other News

7/18/08

11:37 AM

Guidos and Guidettes of Staten Island Fight Back Against Mayor of Belmar, New Jersey

From today's Post.

Earlier in the week, Belmar, New Jersey, mayor Ken Pringle opened up a whole can of Dep 7 when he lamented the influx of "guidos" and "blondes" who invade his shore town every summer from nearby Staten Island. Cracking about a recent bar fight, he wrote in a real-estate newsletter:

As the Staten Island girl was pummeling the Boonton girl's face, she used the hand she was still holding her drink glass in. Now, we're not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand cause of all the hair spray or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies, but we are thankful she left her brass knuckles and straight razor in her other purse.

Okay, that's not even funny. And it sure as hell pissed off all of the good people of Staten Island who vacation in Belmar. In news reports late yesterday and this morning, they battled back! Here's what they had to say:

• “I’m a guido – I have no problem with that word – and I used to go to the Jersey Shore,” said Vinnie Guadanino, 50, an Italian-American hairdresser at Unisex Palace hair salon in the Staten Island Mall. He had on a snappy print shirt and a pair of sharp brown loafers. “My daughter goes to Belmar – she’s a guid-ette.” [NYT]

"What, am I supposed to have a 'goumada'?" »

More: In Other News »beach, guidos, ken pringle, new jersey, staten island, vacation

In Other News

7/18/08

11:00 AM

Raffaello Follieri to Make A Deal?

Raffaello FollieriPhoto: Getty Images

Raffaello Follieri has been in jail since June 24, and one would expect he's getting kind of antsy — a man accustomed to bespoke Italian suits and truffled macaroni and cheese is probably none to comfortable with prison-issue garments and Kraft. So it's understandable that, as assistant U.S. attorney Jennifer Burns told the Post yesterday, "Follieri is in plea discussions." What's weird is that his attorney doesn't seem to know anything about it.

Follieri's lawyer, Flora Edwards, expressed surprise upon learning the prosecutor had mentioned plea talks. "I'm certainly not saying that, and I'm not sure it's appropriate," Edwards said, adding that the only thing she'd agreed to was an extension of time for Follieri's next appearance in Manhattan federal court. "As far as I'm concerned, we're looking forward to our day in court," Edwards said.

Wait, so is Follieri trying to do a Patricia Duff type of thing and represent himself? If so, we hope he repurposes his ceremonial robes into barristers' robes, because that would be awesome.

ANNE EX WANTS TO DEAL [NYP]
Intel's coverage of Raffaello Follieri

More: In Other News »anne hathaway, flora edwards, raffaello follieri

The Sports Section

7/18/08

10:29 AM

Mets Slide Into First, But Is It Too Soon for Hope?

We've always thought this was his best side.Photo: Getty Images

Thanks to a two-run homer by David Wright last night against Cincinnati, the Mets have pulled into first place in the NL East — tied with Philadelphia. Their record at this point in the season is 52-44, with an 18-9 record since new manager Jerry Manuel took over for the ousted Willie Randolph.

Last year at this time, the team was in a much similar place – they had a small lead in the NL East coming out of the All-Star break, and a 52-42 record. They would go on to build on this lead until late September, when they legendarily experienced one of the greatest collapses in late-season baseball history.

Fans have every reason to be psyched — the team is playing steady ball, and Jerry Manuel, for all his verbal hilarity, is a reason for hope. But for Shea regulars, reckless exuberance is something they've learned better than to indulge in. Johan Santana's exciting gamble as a starting pitcher hasn't panned out — and last season's nightmare is weighing heavily on everyone's mind. Now that the team is pulling itself together, there are two choices: Do we get our hopes up? Or do we just steel ourselves for disappointment yet again?

Mets, With Late Push, Pull Even With Phillies [NYT]

More: The Sports Section »baseball, david wright, jerry manuel, johan santana, mets, mlb, sports, willie randolph

Gossipmonger

7/18/08

10:00 AM

Fabian Basabe Goes in the Back Door

Fabian, not so fabulous.Photo: Getty Images

Ryan Adams signed a contract to put out a collection of prose next year. Former "It" boy Fabian Basabe threw a fit when he was denied entrance to a Rock & Republic party at the Chateau Marmont. (He ended up sneaking in the back door.) Derek Jeter was "all over" a gorgeous brunette who wasn't girlfriend Minka Kelly while having a late-night snack with her at Geisha on East 61st Street. Uma Thurman and Jennifer Garner both may be pregnant.