WITH BENJAMIN NUGENT
Kiefer K.O.’s Santa!: Unholy Night
The Christmas spirit seems to have eluded Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald; ex-fiancé of Julia Roberts). We hear the star of Fox’s 24 recently had a bah-humbug moment while on a ski vacation in Park City, Utah. “He stayed up all night getting trashed at a bar,” says our spy, adding that Sutherland’s baggy pants were slipping, revealing BVD underwear. Then, in the morning, rumors were furiously circulating that he’d punched a Santa Claus on Main Street in the face. Filled with horror (and, okay, a wee bit of admiration) at this seemingly random act of holiday violence, we called Sutherland’s publicist for the real story. “It was a stuffed Santa,” she informed (and reassured) us. “It was a joke.”
The Trials of Denise Rich: I Want “Candy”
The unofficial Denise Rich Defendant’s Chair in Manhattan Civil Court (if it doesn’t exist, it should) may once again be occupied by its eponymous honoree. We hear the socialite songwriter may be sued again, this time by the regrettably named songwriter Jive Jones, whom she took under her heavily gilded wing a few years ago. Jones tells us he’s considering legal action against Rich and her former business partner Ric Wake for allegedly refusing to pay him producer royalties for songs he wrote with Rich, including Mandy Moore’s hit “Candy.” Rich’s publicist says, “She does not owe Jones any royalties. There’s absolutely no truth to it.” But Jones insists otherwise. “It’s really funny because she’s so rich,” he carps, bravely availing himself of the obvious pun. “I made Mandy Moore from the song,” he adds. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m about to get paid!’ … And I never got paid.”
New Yorker’s Road Trip
Thieves with irrepressible literary inclinations would have struck gold last week if they had encountered the two New Yorker staffers who drove a sixteen-foot Ryder truck with two issues of every New Yorker (founded 1925) from 4 Times Square to Kansas. The truck, which was supposed to transport the magazine’s library index cards, too, was allegedly going to be insured for a whopping $11 million. (After all, you never know when someone’s going to show up with a gun and demand cartoons from the June ’48 issue just to see if they were ever funny.) The price was, however, reduced substantially when the cards were axed. The purpose of the trip was to get the magazine digitally archived. And the drivers, Matt Dellinger (Website manager) and Willing Davidson (fiction department) were a tad anxious about the precious cargo. Some of their precautions drew the kind of suspicion reserved for, say, Robert Durst. “At a motel in Pennsylvania, I think a desk clerk thought I was kind of weird,” says Dellinger. “I said we needed a room on the ground floor with a view of the parking lot.”
And Publishing It Too: The Cake Book
With Sex and the City on the way out, the Manhattan-based women’s group Cake is rushing to fill the guiltless-casual-sex void. The organization, which typically invites women to parties where they receive detailed instructions on how to use vibrators (which we didn’t realize were notoriously difficult to operate), just signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to write It’s My Party—a Joy of Sex tailored to the needs of contemporary women. It should hit bookstores in 2005. Cake also recently finished producing Cake Presents the Pleasure Club, a reality-TV pilot for Showtime in which members of the club go about their everyday libidinous lives in New York. (We assume this will include multiple references to inaccurate Friendster photos and the hookup scene at Howard Dean rallies.)
“When the kids marched after Halloween to return their M&M’s, because they’re made by child labor. ”
Cyndi Lauper, on her favorite moment of 2003.
Boyle’s Jaybird Flies Off: Painful Tattoo
Less than two months ago, unemployed actress Lara Flynn Boyle got a tattoo of a little bird on her bony shoulder to show her devotion to her much younger boyfriend, hunky auto heir Jay Penske, 24, who has the nickname Jaybird. But now we hear Penske dumped Boyle over the holidays, citing “high maintenance” as an irreconcilable difference. (She may want to contact Angelina Jolie’s dermatologist about laser removal. But hey, it could be worse—she could be stuck with a tattoo of a Penske rental truck.)
Code Annoying: Blaine to Hit NYC
We hear that magician David Blaine’s next stunt will take place in the Big Apple (which is great news, since New York’s number of publicity whores per capita has decreased recently as Paris Hilton and friends have been spending more time on the West Coast). Shortly after exiting the glass box in which he suspended himself over the Thames for 44 days, Blaine told Larry King that he planned to free-fall hundreds of feet into a river from a helicopter. The “dive of death” would occur on his birthday—April 4—at an “undisclosed location,” which we’ve since learned is the East River. (We assume he opted not to dive into the Thames for fear of being pelted with tomatoes on the way down.)
Star search
Celebrities were conspicuously absent from the usual A-list New Year’s parties. (The White House will be happy to learn that some people took Code Orange seriously.) Boy George D.J.’d at the Hudson Hotel (no “Karma Chameleon” and the terrorists would have won), but while we were at the Social Club, promised guests Maggie Gyllenhaal, Moby, and Sting didn’t show. Erika Christensen, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Noth, Mark McGrath, and Zac Posen made Marquee their post-midnight party. Donatella Versace had her security guys check out the place before arriving around 3 a.m., bodyguards in tow. The bottle-blonde chain-smoker proceeded to shake her well-aerobicized booty. “And,” says our spy, “she was with three random good-looking Italian guys.”
Busta Rhymes Puts the Hip-Hop In Hipster ’hood
We hear rapper-actor Busta Rhymes (known to Mama Rhymes as Trevor Smith Jr.) recently bought three adjacent condos in the Gretsch Building, a new twelve-story luxury tower in Williamsburg. (Hipsters + hip-hop stars = irony-laden bling-bling?) The 31-year-old Brooklyn native spent well over $1 million to live in the former musical-instrument factory at 60 Broadway. Perhaps he’ll have some time to enjoy it when he’s back from his world tour.