Before we forget. New York Magazine is running a big piece in this week’s issue about “Scandals.” A regular compendium going all the way back to 1700. It’s a riot (and some of it’s not so funny).
But, for example: 1927 reads: “Mae West “Sex” Capade! Plays prostie on the Great White Way, wears silk undies in jail!” Imagine, her show got her a night in the slammer. The show was called “Sex,” not so incidentally. I think she wrote it herself, since she would know.
Or how about this: “1906: Star-Crossed Starchitect Shot Right in the Façade! The Very First Trial of the century. The story of the shooting of architect Stanford White by the nutty husband of a young woman, Evelyn Nesbit -- the Girl On the Red Velvet Swing (Joan Collins played her in the movie) -- who had once been his lover (when she was a teenager and he was far from it).
The piece [1] leads with a “game” about the last four years and four “first-class” New York scandals. The editors asked several people including Yours Truly to rate them. The subjects/scandals they chose were: Astor, Madoff, Spitzer and Wiener. We were asked to speculate on which of the four would be most memorable a hundred years from now (assuming that anyone has a memory that long).
This was my offering:
“Spitzer’s story will be forgotten first because it’s basically just a man lying to his wife about sex. Same with Brooke Astor, because it’s axiomatic: Where there’s a will, there’s a war. Madoff’s story will have long legs because swindlers tend to be immortalized. But the Weiner scandal may go down in the books because it’s the only postmodern one. In olden days, he would have been arrested for being a public nuisance and that would have been that.” — David Patrick Columbia, editor/co-founder, New York Social Diary
Meanwhile, on a more serious, joyous, scandal-free note, beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, April 4th, the irrepressible, most distinguished girl reporter of Broadway, Hollywood and all points east, west, and in between, Liz Smith will be joining the NYSD with her daily column running
It was a beautiful night last night and down at 583 Park, Save Venice hosted its annual Un Ballo in Maschera; A Night on the Lido. When Adelina Wong Ettelson, one of the co-chairs told me about it, she said: “think Chanel Cruise Collection Show 2009/2010, Death in Venice, Cabana stripes ...” Also, I would add: Cole Porter, Peggy Guggenheim, the Beistegui Ball at the Palazzo Labia.
New York Manhattan on the first of April seems eons away from the Adriatic waters of Venetian sons and daughters, but I know this is a good party anyway because the women dress up, the boys look proper and elegant in black tie and the masques can be fantastic, and everybody gets into it. Furthermore, a guy named Nicky Balestrieri turned the Delano and Aldrich early 20th century religious sanctuary in a “Lido inspired masked wonderland ....” And it worked.
Save Venice raises money to repair and restore antiquities from that center of world commerce in the Renaissance. And they celebrate it with trips there and thereabouts, and with a couple of applicable costume events a year here and in Boston and Los Angeles. |
