Jay McInerney

The label Juicy Couture is perhaps best known for outfitting young girls (and sometimes their moms who should know better) in cotton candy-bright velour sweatpants with the word "Juicy" written across the buttocks. Its clothes are often decorated with rhinestones and lots of hardware, combining the image of daddy's uptown little girl with a little bit of punk. Or, as Cintra Wilson wrote in the New York Times last month: "The girl for whom Juicy Couture is designed, I determined, is Lady Veruca Salt: the imperial tween in the candy store who screams: 'Daddy says only weak people have recessions. I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!'"

The organizers of Thursday evening's opening party for the label's new, 12,000 square foot flagship store at Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street had taken  Ms. Wilson's words to heart. Outside the store, a small army of male models dressed in tight black Levi's, tuxedo shirts, ripped blazers, marching boots, bowler hats, and pink flowers in place of bow ties stared at guests through their emo eye-liner with monotone facial expressions. Inside, professional ballerinas in tutus twisted into ballet moves along the steps leading upstairs. Violinists scratched away at their instruments. Colorful little cakes were passed out. A gospel choir performed. And the publicist Leslie Sloane Zelnick was nearly responsible for a few broken limbs when she entered with her client Penn Badgley, accompanied by his Gossip Girl co-star and real-life girlfriend Blake Lively, Sex and the City hunk Jason Lewis, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Gretchen Mol, sending gaggles of lip-glossed tween girls in a stampede towards the door.  read more »

Brooke Geahan, the 20-something founder of the Accompanied Literary Society, has made a career of throwing scruffy readers and writers together with scenesters and socialites, and using the dim light of glamorous venues to make them look significantly more attractive than they might elsewhere. She was up to her old tricks on Wednesday, Sept. 25, when the Accompanied Literary Society threw a party in conjunction with Diesel, in the penthouse of a new luxury condominium in Tribeca called One York, at the intersection of Canal and Sixth Avenue.

The gathering was in honor of "Flash Fiction," a public art project of sorts in which 10 short stories—commissioned from authors such as Jonathan Ames, Colum McCann, Sloane Crosley, Jonathan Lethem, and Jay McInerney—were screened on the side of the building.  read more »

“While we haven’t pulled in blockbuster ratings, we have helped create an identity for the network—or rather, an identifying show for the network,” Josh Schwartz, the 32-year-old creator of the CW network show Gossip Girl, told the Transom via phone from his office in Burbank, Calif., the other day. To New Yorkers’ alternate delight and horror, the new season of Mr. Schwartz’s show began on Monday evening with guest appearances by Tinsley Mortimer and Jay McInerney, who played Dan Humphrey’s “literary mentor.”

“The challenge last year was when I was telling people, ‘Oh, I have this new show on the CW,’ and they were like, ‘What’s the CW?’”

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Hamptons residents who paid up to $2,500 a plate to hang out with Gwyneth Paltrow at a benefit for the Amaryllis Farm Equine Rescue Organization at Steven Klein's Bridgehampton farm (read Daily Transom's account!) were upset when the actress refused to come out of the host's house for most of the evening. [NYDN]

Maybe she was just saving her energy? Ms. Paltrow later attended at party at Def Jam Chairman L.A. Reid's house celebrating Mariah Carey's recent marriage to Nick Cannon. Mary J. Blige, Kelly Ripa, Samuel L. Jackson and Star Jones were also there. [P6]  read more »

Tomorrow evening, the East Hampton Library will host its fourth annual Author's Night benefit, Page Six reported today. All of the proceeds will benefit the library (though an Authors Only summer share might be kinda fun too!). Over 80 writers are expected to attend, including E.L. Doctorow, Jay McInerney, A.M. Holmes, Marie Brenner, Malachy McCourt, Steven Gaines, Barbara Goldsmith, Robert A.M. Stern, Fareed Zakaria, Tom Clavin, Sidney Offit, Philip Schultz, and Nelson DeMille.

The Daily Transom called up Sheila Rogers, the library's spokesperson. "It's just one famous writer after another!" she exclaimed. (We long for the days when a writer could have a house on the East End.  read more »

Last night at an after-party for a private screening of Step Brothers on the roof of the Empire Hotel, 38-year-old Matthew Settle, who plays the young Brooklyn Dad on Gossip Girl, wanted to bum a cigarette. (He was obliged.)

"Well, Rufus is probably going to run into some trouble with his daughter," he said when The Daily Transom asked him about the future of his character. "The show is about kids finding their identities, and she begins to find hers through her designing. She's going to have to choose between her trade and her schooling, for which Rufus has sacrificed so much."  read more »

Ooh, interesting.

A long-lost short story by Jay McInerney, stolen from the author’s apartment about twenty years ago and recently returned, will be published next week on the Web site FiveChapters.com. The story, entitled "If Wishes Were Porsches," will be serialized over the course of the work week, starting next Monday October 22, with a new installment appearing every morning.

Mr. McInerney could not be reached for comment this afternoon, but according to the site's editor, David Daley, the story was written after the publication of Mr. McInerney’s geisty 1984 debut novel Bright Lights, Big City and before his substantially less geisty follow-up Ransom.  read more »

The mood was festive at last night's townhouse showing/wine tasting/book signing at 310 East 53rd Street.

"Welcome to our home," a woman joked as partygoers sauntered around the 4,000-square-foot property.

Four floors above the midtown after-work happy hour scene, brokers and media types munched on figs with blue cheese and downed wine as they waited for the evening's main attraction, gad-about-town Jay McInerney.  read more »

Dana Vachon, the 28-year-old banker turned blogger turned novelist about town, was not wearing socks  read more »

• The booming home-security market now offers "super-luxe security" [above]. For example: It costs $5,000 to "monitor 20 video cameras in your Manhattan home--via PDA--from a beach in Cote d'Azur." It's a wonderful world. [Forbes]
• Gotham Bar and Grill has everything anyone could want from a Village eatery: Maine lobster, artichokes, and Jay McInerney's new wife repeatedly assaulting Ed Koch. [House & Garden]
• It's a bad time for New York music: Tonic, "one of the city's most popular small clubs," is closing on Friday the 13th. Plus, the hip Mercury Lounge may or may not be doomed, and the essential Irving Plaza is being reborn (or, at least renamed). [Time Out New York]
• The 'UWS Asian-Food Crisis' is tragically spreading, claiming three of the five Ollie's restaurants. Maybe the restaurant deserves their problems: Workers claim they were being paid $1.40 an hour. [NY Mag, D.I.] - Max Abelson
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Fresh off its lament for the days when Jay McInerney was cool, Gawker.com lashes out at Cindy Adams for her deranged claim that Michael Crichton has a history of writing best-selling books. The devastating kicker:

A column continuing to run long after it's lost any shred of coherence or even entertainment value? Only in New York, kids.

(Related)

Gawker.com poses a poignant question this afternoon:

Just out of curiosity, when one becomes a parody of oneself does it happen immediately, or is it a gradual process that occurs so slowly that one fails to notice until it's too late, at which point one neither cares nor remembers what having even the vaguest affiliation with anything remotely good or worthy felt like in the first place? Also, what wine goes with intolerable self-smugness?

Unfortunately, it is asking the question about Jay McInerney.

(Related)

Queens school daze [A.R.N.]

• Supporting an anti-gay amendment was a bad idea for Sue Kelly, who incurred the wrath of big-time developer Adam Rose. Manhattan real estate is very political. [Daily News]
• Why else is New York different than the rest of the universe? Outside, $2.5 million will buy you boxer Oscar De La Hoya's gated "mountain retreat and training facility," with a guest house and four-car garage and footbridge and putting green. Here $2,500,000 will get you approximately 2.5 beds. [WSJ]
• Only Jay McInerney begins articles with "So I was at a party on Fifth Avenue..." And only Mr. McInerney would name-drop Jacqui Safra and Jean Doumanian without remembering their recent ($53 million) sale. [NY Mag]
• Queens' Ozone Park is getting a "massive" and "muscular" School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture. The 150,000-square-foot building was once a brush factory, but now it artfully channels "the restless energy of adolescence." [Architectural Record News]
• Apparently Heath Ledger and girlfriend Michelle Williams are "a picture-perfect family when wheeling their 1-year-old daughter Matilda around the streets of Boerum Hill." Oh, Brooklyn! Luckily, Mr. Perfect is staying in the borough: "I adore it. I love my neighbors and the coffee shop down the road." (Also, he's playing the Joker in the new Batman.) [Go Brooklyn]
- Max Abelson  read more »
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Click for Yohnkuz [NYT]

• The New York Times ventures outside NYC, documenting the spread of Trump-ish luxury in New Jersey. Plus, there are some mammoth plans for Yonkers: $3.6 billion will buy 1,900 feet of the Saw Mill River, and a development nearly the size of the Atlantic Yards. (NYT)
• Keeping with his colorful history of hatefulness, Jay McInerney brags about getting into the Spotted Pig, talks parenthetically about his hangovers, and then puts down Corner Bistro. (House + Garden)
• A new Architect Magazine website has been launched! Party time. Our multi-month wait has been rewarded with three new blogs, included a doozy named "A Day in the Life of an Architect." (Architect Online)
• Remember the mysterious mansion at 11 Spring Street? It seems Lachlan Murdoch's old 14,000-square-foot digs is about to get a makeover from Soho's coolest street-art group. (Click for more pictures). (Wooster Collective, via Gothamist)
• Speaking of memories, today's Times piece on the Upper West Side's doomed P&G bar is quite reminiscent of a piece written by our very own Chris Shott. Oh well. (NYT)
- Max Abelson  read more »
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Diddy's a Winna!    read more »

Diddy's a Winna!  read more »

Diddy's a Winna!    read more »

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Jay McInerney's Latest Book DealBack in July, Nashville lawyer Larry Woods–who, with his wife, own  read more »

A Song for Mary: An Irish-American Memory , by Dennis Smith.  read more »