A touch of rain

Central Park. 1:30 PM. Photo: JH.

November 20, 2009. Yesterday grey and not very cold in New York, with a touch of rain (hardly), but more of it in the evening.

At one I went down to Michael’s to meet Nicky Haslam who has just published his memoir, Redeeming Features [1] (Knopf).

Michael’s was buzzing. Lynn Nesbit the uber-literary agent came in and told me that I had been expected at the National Book Awards last night. This happens to me sometimes. If I don’t write it down right away I forget. It is always something that’s regrettable too. The National Book Awards, for example, is the most writerly event of its kind for this writer in New York. Because for a moment, all writers are equal. Except for the year’s winners. And you can cheer them on.

DPC and Nicky Haslam at Michael's.

Wednesday night Gore Vidal was introduced by his old friend Joanne Woodward who presented him with a special award. He didn’t have a planned speech so his talk uncharacteristically wandered a bit. Gore (whom I don’t know but that’s how I think of him) has been in bad health for quite sometime but he’s continued to be productive, having come up with another memoir, another kind of memoir – a photo album with reminiscences and anecdotes. It has the familiarity of a family photograph album but the owner of this album isn’t just any family member.

I loved the book. It provided a new insight for me into the man. Right or wrong (about my insights), his stuff is always stimulating and often entertaining. So I missed all that on Wednesday night.

Nicky Haslam. I wrote about him in yesterday’s Diary and the day before. And now this?

Joan Collins, Nicky and Andy Warhol at a party he gave for Warhol at Regines's in London.

Ther recent, briefly new Nicky with Mick Jagger at a London party in 2004.

I hadn’t intended to read his book so carefully. I’m in the middle of two others and a biography, not to mention my limited time for reading. I opened it up so I wouldn’t be a complete dunce when we sat down to talk.

He describes things with a decorator’s, or an artist’s eye. This is impressive, like an artist’s rendering. The colors, the textures, the lines, the angles, the moods, the fabrics, the elements. He does this with the buildings he is writing about – his childhood home, for example, its rooms. He does it with the people he is telling us about. His life reads like a movie because it’s so visual and energetic.


	With Francois-Marie Banier and Paris Hilton at his party at Bessborough House, an ancestor's pile in Roehampton, South London, 2008.

It looks like a very sunny playground but it has an unmistakable whiff of Serious Business to it. His interior decorating business, he told me, is going great guns; very busy. Meanwhile he wrote this entire book himself, mainly in long hand because he doesn’t type. He had polio as a kid and the doctor said he’d never walk again IF he lived. Ha! I didn’t ask him about his most recent affairs but I’m sure there would be another chapter there.

He has many friends and he is Nicky Haslam everywhere he goes including Michael’s yesterday afternoon when several of the clientele came over to greet him (including Joan Collins and Percy Gibson who were on their way to the airport and London).

Nicky is almost a-hail-fellow-well-met. I say almost because he’s really a special breed of cat. He’s of an Age but it could be any Age. You could imagine this character in the 18th Century Court of Versailles. Say around the time of Marie Antoinette. He would have known her. And liked her. And vice versa.

He knows just about everybody from the top echelons to the lower case characters, two and three generations of them. And he moves comfortably in many different situations although he prefers the glitterati by genetic inclination.

I’m already a third of the way on with the book, and he’s only in his early twenties. But he’s got around more than most of us do in a lifetime. And he’s very good at telling about it. He likes people, incidentally, and every new one is a potential adventure (or at least some interesting sight seeing).

He’s matter of fact about his sex life (he’s a gay man) in a way that is not shocking but at times (only slightly) astonishing. He can be equally matter of fact about other’s sex lives too. Nothing prurient, however; just there. Redeeming Features it is.

Last night AMNH Gala program.

The Origami Holiday Tree outside the Blue Whale room.

Last night over at the American Museum of Natural History, they held the annual Museum Gala This is a very big fundraiser evening for the AMNH. By cocktail hour (there were 600 guests) they’d taken in $2 million. The auction that followed dinner brought in another six figures although I left before they finished (Tom Brokaw and Jamie Niven conducted the auction).

The AMNH came into being around the same time as the Met and sits not accidentally on similarly located ground on the western side of the park. It has been the most popular museum in New York for children almost as long as it’s been in existence. In many ways it’s the most important museum in New York because it engages the children and their creative imaginations early on, often making a profound impact.

A closeup of the handmade decorations of the Origami Holiday Tree.

The cocktail hour in the dinosaur hall of the American Museum of Natural History. That's George Farias looking our way.

Because of this the museum’s supporters tend to be people who are family-minded or at least have a sense of the bigger picture (the children). The museum’s supporters also include many wealthy and prominent members of the community. I was told last night that the members of the Board are very generous with the museum which needs to raise about $60 million annually to operate.

However, it is an institution for learning for everyone in the sciences. The result: it is the only museum in America from which you can earn a degree. Furthermore there is an Environmental Lecture Luncheon held every Springtime which should be heard by millions every Springtime.

The table centerpiece at last night's dinner.

The dinner hour in the Blue Whale Room, In the distance against the black you can barely make out (the white) Jamie Niven, Sotheby's Executive as auctioneer and (right, white) Tom Brokaw assisting by describing the items for sale.

Last night’s black tie event Chairs were Jodie and John Eastman, Kathy and Tom Freston and Alice and Lorne Michaels. Because of Mr. Michael’s participation there was an SNL table and SNL participation in the auction.

After dinner and after the auction, there was a special musical performance by Dave Matthews.

Jimmy Fallon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt meet and greet ...

AMNH development director (now retiring) Lynn Debow

Patrick Durkin, Judy Cox and George Farias

Arie and Coco Kopelman

Chappy and Melissa Morris

Ellen Futter, President of AMNH with Chairman Lewis Bernard

Shelly and George Lazarus

Silda Wall Spitzer and Eliot Spitzer

Karen LeFrak and Peter Lyden, who is the incoming development director of AMNH

Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley

Peter Lyden and Peggy Siegal

Connie Spahn

Marlene Hess

Diary Notes. Also last night in New York:

Room to Grow hosted its annual benefit gala last night at Christie's in Midtown. The organization focuses efforts on enriching the lives of babies born into poverty throughout their first three years of development. Some of its actions involve one-on-one parenting support and providing toys, books, and clothing to needy families.

The event was chaired by Uma Thurman and Cristina Cuomo. A cocktail hour was followed by a ceremony and live auction. Between the cocktail hour and the start of the ceremony, which Thurman was slated to host, this reporter ran into the A-list actress as she was rehearsing her lines and smoking a cigarette outside Christie's on 49th Street. As we headed out, Thurman was standing alone, saying her lines out loud to herself, a healthy reminder that celebrities really aren't that different from the rest of us.

Dr. Edward F. Zigler was presented with the organization's Founder's Award, and Hassania Alkhaddar, a Room to Grow program graduate, received with the Client Inspiration Award.

Among the crowd: Uma Thurman, Cristina Cuomo, ABC News Correspondent Deborah Roberts, and documentary film director and producer Ken Burns and his wife Julie (the founder and CEO of Room to Grow). The live auction included items like tickets to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver in February, dinner for 12 with Danny Meyer, and a round of golf at three of America's most exclusive golf courses: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Sebonack Golf Club, and Atlantic Golf Club. — SD for NYSD

Mary Cannon and Uma Thurman

Ken and Julie Burns

Elaine Chow and Eric Kidhardt

Lindsay Tomenson, Ned Carlson, Jon Barnes, and Colbert Cannon

Christina Panos, Mary Cannon, and Mike Douglas

Wally Tomenson and Nina Patterson

Matt Stehle and Peter Hafner

Deborah Roberts

Renee and Stuart Copperman

The spread

While down at Gotham Hall on Broadway and 36th Street, our photo-correspondent Ann Watt took in the 5th annual Opera News Awards. The Opera News, if you didn’t know, is a monthly magazine published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild. The magazine is a winner of three ASCAP-Deems Taylor awards for excellence in Journalism.

Like its fellow supporters and participants up at the AMNH, the Metropolitan Opera Guild works to bring the community, especially the children and young people into the realm and culture of opera.

Phillip Wilder, Deborah Voigt, Alan Gilbert, Joyce DiDonato, Albert Imperato, and Jessica Lustig

F. Paul Driscoll, Editor-in-Chief of Opera News and Susan Braddock, President of the Metropolitan Opera Guild opened the ceremony. The hosts for the Awards ceremony were 2005 Opera Award winner, Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, and Baritone Thomas Hampson, 2008 Opera News Award winner. The winners of the 2009 Awards were Soprano Martina Arroyo, whose Award was presented by Deborah Voigt, 2006 Award winner; Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, Award presented by Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, 2008 Award winner; Baritone Gerald Finley, presented by Alan Gilbert, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic; with Paul Simon presenting to Composer Philip Glass; and Mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett.

In the crowd: Barbara Cook, Luca Pisaroni, Terrence McNaly, Isaac Mizrahi, Susan Baker, Richard Braddock, Jean Harvey Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, Ira Siff, Shirley King, James Robinson, Charles MacKay, Mignon Dunn, Catia Chapin, Margaret Juntwait.