Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Saturday was a beautiful day in New York. I had dinner Saturday night at Sette Mezzo with Kathy Sloane, Raul Suarez and Martha Stewart. Kathy and Raul are old friends of mine although they’d never met. This was one of those nights in New York where dates merged. Kathy a major private residential real estate broker here in New York and also long active in national politics (her husband Harvey Sloane was once mayor of Louisville as well as Congressman from Kentucky). She and Martha are great friends. Raul, who is an old friend of mine, is an art consultant at Sotheby’s and lives here and in Miami. They all love Miami. I was the only one at table who doesn’t know Miami. Martha and Raul had never met and it turned out they both have traveled widely and know many of the same people and places. I didn’t know this but Martha has devoted many of her TV shows to travel pieces. People ask me what Martha’s like off-camera. I can’t say I know her well but I’ve been in her company a number of times and seen her at events scores of times. At table, she’s just like she is on television. She’s a natural teacher because everything she approaches is with curiosity. She grasps it all, and can relate it in the simplest terms. The personality, as you already know, is centered and intense, but calm, and pleasant. The businesswoman is genius. Most outstanding to me is her stamina. She came in from East Hampton for the dinner. That’s a good three hour plus ride. It turned out that she’d left her house in Westchester in the morning, with three of her dogs and was driven out to her house in East Hampton (three hours plus) where she spent the day removing the plantings in her garden and shipping dozens of rose bushes to Westchester because she’s doing a new garden in EH." (NYSD)





"Modernism, especially in architecture, is bleak and sterile and incomprehensible and a panacea for the talentless and the phony. Urban architecture that draws on the decorative style of previous eras is beauty personified, whereas functionalism, as the gimmick is called nowadays, is the very stuff that has made architects and city planners turn their backs on what makes a city beautiful and livable. And speaking of modern life, the takeover by the Internet has sealed our fate, and it’s not for the better. Porn is king, but leave it to the New York Times to run a major article debating whether porn has an influence on the young. How can anyone debate this? Well, if you saw what some of the people who work there look like, you might well ask the same question. What David Cameron called 'the corrosion of childhood' is a fact to anyone who recognizes the difference between day and night, but porn is very, very big business and I don’t give a damn what neuroscience tells us. Young people exposed to porn are malleable to extreme behavior, and teens need protection from the porn merchants of not only the Internet, but of Hollywood and the TV networks." (Taki)






"Barbara Walters‘ final day co-hosting 'The View' will be May 16, ABC News announced this morning. Walters, who announced her retirement last year, will also be celebrated that night with a two-hour primetime special highlighting her life and career.In a statement, Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger said it is 'hard to imagine television without her.' 'In this business there are legends, there are icons, and then there is Barbara Walters,' Iger said. 'She’s a dear friend and colleague as well as someone I deeply admire, and it’s impossible to fully convey her impact and influence on television. She broke barriers, defied convention, made history and set the standard for journalistic excellence for more than 50 years.'Walters will continue to executive produce the view and will contribute to ABC News as news warrants. She will talk about her final broadcast on 'The View' this morning." (TVNewser)





"It’s tempting to begin with the fist-pumpingly awesome (if morally troubling) sequence starring Arya and the Hound, but instead I’m going to take a cue from David Benioff and Dan Weiss and save the best for last. Instead, we’ll start where the show does, with the mostly miserable Lannisters of Casterly Rock. Tywin is, understandably, feeling pretty impressed with himself right now. He’s beaten back Stannis Baratheon, melted down Robb Ned Stark’s sword, and neutralized most other rival families through a series of arranged marriages. Unfortunately, the atrocities committed in his name, and the fact that none of the actual participants in these marriages is remotely happy, means that today’s hard-won peace is hardly sustainable. And that’s not even taking into account the twin threats from Daenerys Targaryen in the east and Mance Rayder in the north.Having been around the block and acquired some underdog perspective along with that Valyrian steel sword and 24-carat Luke Skywalker hand, Jaime is far better attuned to the fact that Joffrey’s reign is still seriously vulnerable. ('The war’s not won—not while Stannis lives.') And Tyrion is a nervous wreck. Everyone he talks to seems to be harboring a well-founded grudge concerning the Lannister family’s habit of murdering high-born rivals and desecrating their corpses. Meanwhile, Cersei is drowning her first-world problems in a river of chianti. (I assume she’s a chianti drinker, don’t you?)No wonder nobody in this family is getting laid. Cersei is too bogged down by booze and self-pity to indulge the old incestuous itch with Jaime. It also sounds like she may have some kind of medical condition, judging from her hushed words about 'symptoms' and her line to Jaime about it being 'too late.' And Tyrion is afraid—rightly—that any grunting and moaning he and Shae produce will wind up getting them both killed." (VF)