Mr. Ahmadinejad, although mobbed by a throng of well-wishers, thanked me rather graciously. “I heard from everyone you sounded great,” he said. “Thank you so much.” When he speaks to you (and maybe this is more relevant if you’re a fellow Iranian), Mr. Ahmadinejad is not only charming, but his tone is one of genuine friendliness—a remarkable ability to make you think he relates to you. Even his dress—the simply cut pale gray suit, one of three that he apparently owns, as well as the windbreaker and the inexpensive loafers (the better for slipping on and off for prayers)—seem less like political affectations and more a reflection of who he really is: a regular Muslim guy who happens to be the president of a now-powerful nation.
The following morning, Mr. Ahmadinejad held a 7:30 a.m. breakfast meeting, again at his hotel, with American academics and journalists. Earlier, he had expressed some interest in having Michael Moore attend, and although attempts were made to reach him (even by myself, since I was asked), they were unsuccessful. I was seated between Gary Sick (of Columbia University) and Jon Lee Anderson (of The New Yorker), and three hot issues were covered: nuclear power, Israel and the Holocaust.
Mr. Ahmadinejad didn’t seem to tire of repeating the responses he had given over and over. The participants were polite and respectful, and if they held any misgivings about breaking bread with someone seemingly reviled by a large number of their fellow New Yorkers as not only perfidious but extremely dangerous, they didn’t show it. Anderson Cooper of CNN posed the softest if not most pro-Iran question of the morning when he asked about the country’s rather under-publicized but valiant efforts at fighting the Afghan opium trade. I realized later that the question must have been intended to help land the unscheduled short interview that Mr. Cooper conducted for CNN that night.
As he left the breakfast, Mr. Ahmadinejad once again thanked me for my U.N. performance and said that he had heard from all over the world—specifying Senegal, which he had visited on his way to New York—that the speech was really beautiful.
Illustrated by Philip Burke
AUGUST 21, 2006 BY RON ROSENBAUM
THE EDGY ENTHUSIAST: Drama King
Entourage’s Explosive Johnny Drama Is the Man for This Season: Icon of Irritability, Newest Masculine Ideal in Brutal Age—Kevin Dillon’s Caffeine-Addled Loser Hero a New American Winner
JOHNNY DRAMA: WHAT A GREAT character! I’m surprised that more attention hasn’t been paid to Kevin Dillon’s brilliant embodiment of comic/pathetic irritability on HBO’s Entourage. It’s not only the best thing on that otherwise uneven show, but Johnny Drama, pissed-off wannabe star, may be the most resonant new icon of the American character on TV.
But maybe Johnny Drama’s time has come. I guess it depends on how you regard the recently announced deal for a series of special four-minute cell-phone download “Johnny Drama” episodes for Cingular.
I don’t know if competing with the ring-tone market on a four-inch square screen is a portent of cutting-edge spin-off success—or more of a Johnny Drama–like “success” comparable to his (fictional) Valtrex commercial.
But either way, it’s an exemplar of the growing recognition of Johnny Drama, Icon of Irritability. And the growing recognition of the Johnny Drama type offers an occasion to reexamine irritability itself as a characterological trait. Irritability has long been treated as a character flaw. But irritability isn’t mere anger, the same way that rock music isn’t mere noise.
And who among us, except those irritating people smugly carrying yoga mats in their ohso-special bags, isn’t at least a little irritable? You virtually have to have had a lobotomy not to be irritable in this world and this city.
AUGUST 21, 2006 BY SUZY HANSEN
THE OBSERVATORY: Fairway Day!
On weekend days, the comfortably cloistered couples of Brooklyn stroll the aisles of the new Fairway Supermarket in Red Hook, practicing a level of House Connoisseurship that would make Martha Stewart blush
ON A RECENT SUNDAY AT THE NEW FAIRWAY SUPERMARKET IN Brooklyn, a pale, reed-thin man, pointy-nosed and wearing glasses, was contemplating a Portugal Serpa. This is a spicy, strong-smelling cheese made in southeast Portugal from ewe’s milk. Here in this Epcot Center of a cheese display, the Serpa bordered on a Torta del Casar, which I took to mean “wedding cake,” but which subsequent research showed to be another ewe’s-milk cheese from the nearby Extramadura region of West Central Spain, and—lo!—a cruelly named Aged Balarina.
Moments later, the thin man’s girlfriend was beside him, just checking in, just saying hi, just seeing what he was up to. He pointed to his purchase, tentatively, which was being carefully sliced and packaged behind the counter.
“A quarter of a pound of Portugal Serpa,” he told her, in a whisper, as if not to disturb this bit of cross-cultural commerce. She nodded, or said “good”—whatever, she was satisfied—and left him to his further responsibilities, perhaps somewhere in “Ham, I Am” Land, or toward the giant round fish station, mobbed all around by a heaving, panting mass of Brooklynites.
Even a couple months after it opened in May, the pious whispers can still be heard on the F train, recounting visits to the Fairway like pilgrims bearing witness: “Have you been to the new Fairway yet?” As though the Cathedral of Notre Dame had just been erected in their backyards.
A visit to Fairway on a weekend day in Brooklyn these days is a redundant proposition. A weekend day is Fairway day. And in the religious calendar that has formed among the Brooklyn faithful, for whom a certain connoisseurship of groceries serves as a stand-in for the contemplative life, Fairway Day is a holy day of obligation.
APRIL 25, 2006 BY REBECCA DANA
Illustrated by Victor Juhasz
NYTV: Life of Brian
NBC Anchor Williams, Bronzed, Burnished, Brokaw-Bred, Contemplates Big Battle: ‘Go Ahead, Touch My Peabody’
“TOUCH MY PEABODY,” BRIAN Williams said.
The award sits on a small glass table by the door of the NBC Nightly News anchor’s third-floor office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Mr. Williams won the prize this year for NBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the national calamity during which the boy-journalist personally groomed by Tom Brokaw demonstrated that he was finally an Anchorman: the mature face of a major network, a manly monument around which the chaos of the day’s news swirls.
Mr. Williams was discussing his work on the afternoon of Aug. 21, before the 2:30 story meeting. The one-year anniversary of Katrina was on its way, and so was Katie Couric. On Sept. 5, Ms. Couric is due to make her debut on CBS, facing off against Mr. Williams and ABC’s Charlie Gibson in the evening, backed by a multimillion-dollar promotion budget and the belief that the nation is ready for something new to replace the figure of the old, stiff anchorman (emphasis on man).
Mr. Williams’ oft-repeated reaction to the hubbub about the evening news is: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” He wore an eggplant-colored tie that offset a deep tan—a tan acquired on a recent trip to the Middle East. He has a well-calibrated seriousness, leavened by periodic visits with talk-show funnymen. He is not so self-important that he couldn’t joke about his Peabody, the highest honor in broadcast journalism. He wasn’t bragging about it. He was merely mentioning it—offhand, a little lewdly—as it sat there, inconspicuous but unmissable. Katie Couric, if you’re counting, has one, too, for her 2000 series on colon cancer.
NBC’s official position on Ms. Couric’s debut, and the year-long multimedia rollout that has preceded it, is unqualified joy.
“Our philosophy has been that, look, we’re thrilled to have such strong competition,” said Steve Capus, Mr. Williams’ old friend, former producer and the president of NBC News.
“I feel terrific,” Mr. Williams said. “I’m a very competitive animal.” (Growl!)
“Walter Cronkite called us a headline service,” Mr. Williams said. “He called us the supplement to a good daily newspaper. Well, add to that a good selection of Web sites and other sources of information and he’s sti
ll right.”
OCTOBER 25, 2006 BY GEORGE GURLEY
I AM CHARLOTTE BOCLY: LIKE, DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA!—MEET ’06 GIRL OF YEAR
ON A RECENT SUNDAY NIGHT, CHARLOTTE BOCLY, WHO IS A 19-YEAR-OLD sophomore at Marymount Manhattan College and lives on Park Avenue, swept into the bar at the Carlyle Hotel. She laughed, ordered a chamomile tea, and said that Matt Dillon had just tried to pick her up.
This past July, her partying had gotten out of hand and Charlotte checked herself into the Silver Hill rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn.
“I’ve never really liked alcohol in general until I started drinking, you know, and then, you know, smoking a joint,” she said. “You find a level and you like it and, like a lot of kids growing up in New York City, you find it appealing, because it’s so easy to do it.”
The summer of 2006 had started out quietly enough. At her family’s house in Bridgehampton, Charlotte floated around in the pool, played tennis in a bikini, had lunch with her friends at the Maid-stone Club. Then, one evening, she had some friends over…then more friends. Then it was off to a nightclub.
“It was just a crazy, crazy time,” she said. “Somehow, everyone ended up at my house, and everyone’s in my pool, everyone’s naked, Paul is naked—this is at 5 in the morning, by the way—then Alexandra drove up. Out of nowhere, there are like 20 cars. Alexandra disappeared with a house guest, and I disappeared with this boy I thought was cute—a good-looking boy who I found out was in high school the next morning, but looked much older. And then Emily goes off with Paul—Paul!—and I’m in my underwear and a bra and I’m chasing after this guy, and I’m on the lawn—this is a little scandalous. My father comes out in his underwear, and he was yelling in French and everyone was out of there. The world was shaking. Then I passed out in bed. That was a great night, for the Hamptons.”
NOVEMBER 6, 2006 BY CHOIRE SICHA AND JOHN KOBLIN
Obama in Orbit
Illustrated by Robert Grossman
BARACK OBAMA—DELIVERED FEET-FIRST ON OPRAH’S COUCH AND tickled on Meet the Press and then highly buffed by New Yorker editor David Remnick before the magazine editors of America—has enjoyed the best-orchestrated product reveal since the iPod.
Now Mr. Obama is the only author with two books among the top 50 sellers on Amazon.com. Two weeks after the release of The Audacity of Hope, it is in its sixth printing, with 725,000 books in print.
America can’t tell the difference between the book and the candidate. That may be because the book itself is the perfect campaign speech, and is one of the reasons why everyone keeps talking about Mr. Obama and ’08.
“Primaries are 13 1/2 and 14 months away, and there are full teams in New Hampshire and Iowa already,” said pollster John Zogby. “And Hillary, who is a household word, and Kerry and Edwards and Gore, who have run before—this is the time to get the word out, and this is the trial balloon.”
The Obamamania trial balloon has gotten oohs and ahs from wonks and dreamers alike. But, with so many donors locked down by Hillary Clinton, and with a few hopelessly devoted to various non-celebrity candidates, is there affection—and wallet—enough for Mr. Obama to raise real money for a campaign? Why, yes! Yes, there is. Sort of.
“I think the execution of phase one of this rollout is obviously a huge success,” said Tom Ochs, of McMahon, Squier and Associates. (Mr. Ochs did Howard Dean’s D.N.C. chair campaign in 2005.) “He has people talking about it, and in a way that diminishes all the other candidates—except Hillary.”
So far, the book, and the accompanying publicity campaign, has worked very well. “I would say it has fulfilled our most optimistic best-case scenario,” said Steve Ross, senior VP and publisher of Crown.
The escalating talk of a presidential run “was more like icing on the cake,” Mr. Ross said.
NOVEMBER 6, 2006 BY SARA VILKOMERSON
Beneath Their Stations
While Connecticut snobs bask in Grand Central’s marble glow, New Jersey and Long Island commuters have to brave dingy Penn Station. But, as SARA VILKOMERSON reports, this delicate caste system may be facing a rail revolution
DURING A RECENT AND RAINY RUSH HOUR AT PENN STATION, dripping umbrellas and dirt tracked in from squeaky sneakers and soggy loafers added to the standard feeling of despair among New Jersey Transit and Long Island Rail Road commuters trying to get home. The air was thick and humid with anxiety, and it smelled like a combination of wet hair, hot dogs and defeat.
Meanwhile, across town at Grand Central Terminal, Metro-North crowds moved easily beneath the aquamarine astronomical ceiling, so high and domed that all sounds below took on a civilized hush.
The chasm between rail-rider identities is already a natural caste system deriving from where one commutes from: scrappy/trashy New Jersey and Long Island versus WASP-y old-money Connecticut. John Updike as opposed to Bon Jovi, Peyton Place compared to The Sopranos, and so on.
NOVEMBER 27, 2006 BY REBECCA DANA
NYTV: If They Did It
But They Didn’t: Rupert Pulled the Plug on O.J., Regan Long After Barbara Walters Considered It, Passed; Fox News Team Trounces News Corp. Boss Chernin
IN APRIL 2006, CELEBRITY PUBLISHER Judith Regan began working on what she called “Project Miami.” It would be a book by O. J. Simpson in which he would not not confess to the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Four months later, Ms. Regan began to shop an interview with Mr. Simpson around the broadcast networks.
She approached Barbara Walters at ABC.
Ms. Walters was intrigued, but needed to know exactly what revelations the book, called If I Did It, would contain.
Ms. Walters was sent an excerpt, which she read, sources said.
She spent no more than 10 days, by one informed account, in consideration, weighing these factors as well as a personal distaste for the enterprise. Ms. Walters declined the interview. So Ms. Regan set out to find a less ideal host.
Spy Guys, in Ties: Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen fete book
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
Illustrated by Philip Burke
2007
Life in the fast Lohan: star Lindsay’s daddy Michael vows to make good
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama begin epic presidential campaign
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter opens Waverly Inn, the Village’s answer to Elaine’s
Condé Nast percolates Portfolio: hyped-but-secretive biz mag; Tom Wolfe steps up
The boho-cialite! Hippie heiress Arden Wohl is Manhattan’s answer to Paris Hilton
High-end designers, celebs produce “masstige” lines for Target, Kohl’s, H&M
Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan gridlocked by Shelly Silver
The New York Times leaves 229 West 43rd Street for swank new Renzo Piano digs
New York loses longtime fixtures Brooke Astor, Norman Mailer and Linda Stein
2007
JANUARY 1, 2007 BY REBECCA DANA
NYTV: Balmy Weatherpeople Fête Toasty Winter as the World Burns
DEC. 18 WAS ANOTHER TERRIFYINGLY mild day in New York City. At noon, the temperature in Central Park was a toasty 58 degrees. Somewhere near the North Pole, another giant hunk of ice may have been melting off into a swelling Arctic Ocean, but over on 10th Avenue, the Channel 2 afternoon news team was busy wrapping up a package on holiday hassles.
After a few seconds of cheerful nattering about long lines at the post office, they kicked it over to meteorologist Audrey Puente for her forecast.
“If the line extends out the door, no problem!” said a glowing Ms. Puente. “Because the temperatures will be nice and comfortable for everyone waiting on those lines, whether it’s at a store or the post office today!”
Global warming may be turning the earth into a shriveled, flooded, lifeless swamp faster than Al Gore can jet around the country trying to stop it. But then also, the sun is shining; the skies are clear. There are no blizzards, no rain and no snow for the TV weath
er folk to report. Manhattan has all the balmy imperviousness of Venice before the plague.
On Dec. 11, the National Center for Atmospheric Research released findings showing that because of greenhouse emissions, the retreat of Arctic sea ice is increasing so rapidly that there won’t be any ice left in the Arctic Ocean in the summertime in 2040. On Dec. 19, government and private researchers projected the heat spell will last well into January. Someone named Mike Palmerino of the private firm DTN Meteorologix pronounced the chances of anyone in the Northeast enjoying a white Christmas “very unlikely.”
So put away those parkas and go for a stroll, New York! The only thing better than last-minute Christmas shopping is doing so on the eve of the apocalypse.
“In terms of people being out and about, shopping for the holidays, looking at the tree in Rockefeller Center, this is great weather, especially for tourists,” said Janice Huff, a meteorologist for WNBC. “I know some people are wondering, ‘Oh, is the world coming to an end?’ I say, ‘Enjoy it while you got it.’”
JANUARY 8, 2007 BY SPENCER MORGAN
THE TRANSOM: MS. HEDBERG PRESENTS
“HELLO, I’M ASHLEY BUSH,” said a fresh-faced brunette, extending an arm sheathed in white kid. A native of Houston, the granddaughter of former President George H. W. Bush, 17, was among those chosen to represent the United States at the 52nd Annual International Debutantes Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on the evening of Dec. 29.
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 62
