Dan Stevens

After an all-too-brief West Coast jaunt to Palm Springs and La Jolla for spicy juice cleanses and grueling workouts, Shindigger returned to the New York scene just in time for what one exhausted publicist called “official gala week,” which happened to coincide with the social-calendar assault that is the Tribeca Film Festival.

“It’s going to be a schizophrenic monster,” another publicist griped

The mere thought ruined any lingering benefits of Shindigger’s detox. Nonetheless, the highbrow and jam-packed show must go on.

On Monday night, we toasted Mandy Patinkin at the National Dance Institute’s annual gala and sipped Qui libations beside 50 Cent at the Cinema Society’s screening of Pain and Gain. On Tuesday, Shindigger popped over to Pier 60, where we joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Yoko Ono at Riverkeeper’s Annual Fishermen’s Ball cocktail hour. But we couldn’t stop there.

“I’m starting rehearsal for Shakespeare in the Park next week,” actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson told Shindigger inside the Calvin Klein Collection boutique at a cocktail event benefiting the Human Rights Campaign’s “Americans for Marriage Equality” effort. The Modern Family star explained that he and his fiancé, Justin Mikita, were also busy planning the wedding.

“I am getting married in July,” he said. “We’re Californians right now, but we’re doing the wedding in a state where we’re considered an equal and that’s New York.”

Will you be wearing Calvin Klein Collection? Shindigger wondered.

“We just had our tuxedos made by a great designer. Band of Outsiders,” he said.

We milled about the event along with Christine Quinn, Lloyd Blankfein, Uma Thurman, Neil Patrick Harris, David Burtka, Allison Sarofim, Alan Cumming and model Carolyn Murphy, before striking up a conversation with Downton Abbey leading man Dan Stevens.

“Who’s this?” Mr. Stevens said grabbing Shindigger’s three-piece suit.

“Ted Baker and Armani. Are you in Calvin Klein?”

“I am in Calvin Klein tonight,” he laughed. “I’ve been working with them for a little bit, and I’m thrilled that they were behind HRC. I was involved in Human Rights Watch back in London. It’s nice to continue that involvement now that we’re living here.”

The dashing Englishman went on to explain that, since he began acting in Broadway’s The Heiress and filming a new movie in the city, he and his family have settled nicely into life in Brooklyn.

“We’re sort of New Yorkers now,” he said. “It’s very nice to be out with my wife tonight, without the kids, but I’ve been working pretty hard. It’s that type of place.”

Indeed it is.

By Friday, Shindigger was desperate for a poolside nap in Malibu. Alas, we had Bomb Magazine’s 32nd anniversary gala auction to attend at Capitale. There we spotted art world star Kyle DeWoody, who was being honored along with her mother, Beth Rudin DeWoody. Like us, the lanky social bee yearned for a moment to recharge.

“Tomorrow I leave for L.A.,” she said. “But not for relaxation—for work.”

Sigh.

“There’s a lot competing events between the art and the film worlds,” Ms. DeWoody went on, describing how she was trying to navigate her regular VIP agenda with the added wrinkle of Tribeca. The night before, for instance, we had bumped into her at the premiere of Nicholas Wrathall’s Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.

“Nicholas was always talking about this project, and we all thought it was a joke—a made-up thing. It just never came to fruition,” Ms. DeWoody said of the documentary, which seemed especially relevant in these trying times of troubled political leadership and terrorism. “I had no idea what an interesting man Gore Vidal was. I was blown away.”

But not everyone was in an educational mood by week’s end.

It became clear that some of the genteel folk were getting exhausted at Youth America Grand Prix’s “Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow” gala, which took place at the David H. Koch Theater, as the commentary from some of the city’s social set had sharpened.

“She holds a grudge worse than an Armenian and a Turk,” sneered one diva in an Oscar de la Renta gown to another doyenne about some other attendee.

Thankfully, at the table of co-chair Heather Georges, decorated by the likes of Darren Henault, Michael Bassett and Adelina Wong Ettelson, things were considerably more upbeat and witty. The coterie was quite impressed by ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, who recently fled the Bolshoi in fear for her life. On this night, to the joy of ballet aficionados, she was dancing for one of the first times since.

But even at our table, the good cheer soon gave way to snippiness.

“Is that Woody Allen?” Shindigger asked.

“Yes! Isn’t his wife Soon-Yi [Previn] on some board?” came a whisper from across the table.

“Why are there so many cameras swarmed around Karen LeFrak?” someone else wanted to know.

“She composed the music for tonight’s program,” another guest replied, unimpressed.

“Well, she does have an M.A. in music history from Hunter,” Shindigger said in her defense.

“She must have had help,” snapped a gentleman to our left with an eye-roll and a snicker.

Thank goodness everyone could retreat to their corners—if not Palm Springs—for the weekend.

James Franco: also plays guitar. (Getty Images)

– Ha, James Franco's insane ramblings on HuffPost are now showing strong signs of histrionics:

Oh yeah, I got nominated for a National Entertainment Journalism award for these HuffPost blogs, but no other outlet is going to run that story, right? Hahaha--why would Gawker or The New York Post want to publicize that an actor/Yale doctoral candidate is nominated for an award for something that they are doing themselves? I'm pretty proud of it, but I can see why they must hate me.

Of course we care, actor/Yale doctoral candidate, James Franco! And we don't hate you! We're so glad you wrote a letter to a friend named R______, where you sort of talk about your feelings about Flight and The Sessions, and then decided just to post it on HuffPost, like a real journalist! (Like Celebuzz, who was nominated for six of those awards!)

– It could happen to you: Janeane Garofalo was accidentally married for 20 years without realizing it, she recently told audiences at the New York Comedy Festival. No joke, she thought her Vegas marriage had been a joke, and wouldn't stick in the eyes of the law.

– Here are the videos of 50 Cent trying to sell his line of headphones/kiss the ladies on QVC:

http://youtu.be/Nr9_rEfyWTo
http://youtu.be/_rdvFATwqh0

– The New York Times’s profile on Jennifer Lawrence included a fun fact about the time at the Academy Awards when she didn't win for Winter's Bone:
"She did get her share of mementos, like M&M’s with her photo on them. 'That literally was probably the coolest thing that I saw,' she said. 'I was like: ‘You know what? It’s all worth it’ after I saw those M&M’s.'

La Pomme.

Thomas Monson, the founder of Bookabottle, met The Observer at midnight on a corner of Union Square in a black two-door BMW. He leaned a dress sneaker against the door, drumming his fingers on his knee and listened  to opera by the blue light of a third-party stereo system. This was actually very much in keeping with our expectations—on the website’s FAQ, the people behind the company site are described as “a group of Ivy League nerds that like to party.”

“I’m not a nightlife person,” Mr. Monson said as he pointed the car west through the rain. Next to him sat Seung Hee Kim, a very attractive woman in a short skirt and wellies. The FAQ phrase is more about the spirit in which the site was created, he said. “I don’t like going out. Like right now I really just want to go to sleep, and Friday for me is a crazy day because I literally do a 22-hour day on Friday, every single Friday.”

It was perhaps inevitable, in the Groupon era, that the frenzy for local discount sites would infect the nighclub bottle service business. Bookabottle works like this: Users select a day and a preferred environment ("upscale lounge" vs. "nightclub"), and Bookabottle allows them to pick from some 30 venues and a variety of liquors. Pre-booking means that bottles that usually cost around $350 can be had at a 20 percent discount. The purchaser then flashes his receipt at the bouncer, bypassing the line outside.

It’s a controversial concept. If you’ve ever had to watch a friend explain that you can actually save money with bottle service if you get enough people to go in on the bottle, you’ve experienced Bookabottle’s somewhat tragic contradiction first-hand. And quite possibly lost contact with that friend.

Mr. Monson is confident that there’s a large market for the customer who wants to make it rain responsibly, and at a designated time, and, more broadly, wants to change the very nature of going out. Mr. Monson is obsessive about customer service, and raises his voice only when he talks about the seedier elements of nightlife. At times he projects the air of a dorm’s RA, who, hey, guys, likes to have fun too, but just wants everybody to be safe while they’re at it.

At some point in the night, a customer service representative will swing by to check up on each customer. Ms. Kim usually handles this duty, Mr. Monson explained, because customers are around 80 percent male and would “much rather be greeted with a beautiful woman” when it comes to customer service. Ms. Kim stared out the window during the compliment, and after it.

“I stay up until about four just in case there are any issues,” he said. “[Ms. Kim] has my phone number, the mangers have my phone number, the customers have my phone number.” He demurred on the topic of what goes wrong at 4 a.m., referencing hypothetical mischarges. “For the most part things run very smoothly, but we’re still in this beta stage where I still haven’t gotten things perfect, and not to say that everything will ever be perfect, but we can do a lot better than what’s going on right now in nightlife.”

It’s hard to say what exactly appealed to Mr. Monson about the first stop of the evening, La Pomme on 26th, which seems like a fairly standard nightclub and shares the block with two barbeque restaurants and a place that teaches Israeli martial arts. Nostalgia perhaps—the room is purplish and glossy in the way things were on TV shows at the end of the ’90s.

“We booked the bottle service because one of our girls is engaged,” said Bookabottle user Reno, a tiny woman in a tight dress who falls in the just-under-30 age range. She waved at the group of friends dancing in place around their table. The shin-height table held their liter of Ketel One and chasers. “It’s a pretty good deal.”

“She’s taken, she’s taken!” one of the friends shouted, trying to wave the Observer away. Reno shot her a look.

“We don’t even do bottle service much, but we do party a lot and we were looking on-line, and we saw this stuff it was like, Ah, Bookabottle what’s that?” said Reno (her name comes from Indonesia, not the place where you shoot men just to watch them die). They’re regulars at R-Bar, but this was their first time at La Pomme. “We wanted to try this place out. We go all over the place, our girls do, and we party a lot.”

How frequently?

“Once a month,” she said, then considered. “In the summertime, we go out every weekend. Especially on rooftops, because it gets too hot.”

“Exactly!” her friend Helena agreed. She’d scooted around the miniature table because she heard someone discussing partying, or discounts. “I’m Yelper,” she said. “I do a lot of research, I try to save money. I’m Chinese, so I’m cheap, but I like to spoil myself.”

The conversation transitioned, seamlessly, to the women trying to convince the Observer to take a shot. Other members of the party, who’d been otherwise involved in bounce-dancing or chatter, fell into the chant almost reflexively.

“Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots,” they said. The Observer said and did nothing, and the chant died down.

The Observer piled back into the BMW with Mr. Monson and Philip Kennard, the site’s CTO and co-founder, who’d met us at La Pomme. Ms. Kim had been waiting in the back seat.

Mr. Monson used to be a business vice president at Hopstop—at his insistence, let’s just say he’s around 30—and, he explained, there are some things about nightlife that he doesn’t understand. He goes out of his way to pick the clubs with only the finest reputation and the most stellar customer service around, so who would want to go anywhere else? Conversely, what club could turn down the guaranteed market he’s offering when the mark-up is already so obscene on a $40 bottle of Grey Goose?

“If you know that you can sell your inventory, and you’re not making a 1500 percent markup but you’re still making a 1200 percent markup, common sense says do it,” Mr. Monson said, pounding the wheel with a palm on the last two words. He is, he explained, an “entrepreneur down to the bone.” This is not his only venture, but he clearly thinks it’s among his more promising ones. He says there have been several hack attempts on the site and his email, in an attempt to steal his business model. He’s lost 40 pounds developing it.

Ms. Kim also decided to wait in the car at R-Bar, just below Houston. R-Bar is supposed to be strip club-themed—there are enough oddly placed poles to wear out even the most space-creative ecdysiast—but with its red lighting and gold-framed paintings, the an overall effect of the place is “Haunted Mansion meets an erection.” The waitresses, and the manager, all wear red t-shirts.

We found the shaved-bald Bookabottle customer Sanjay not far past the entryway stripper poles. He gave his friend Anup’s shoulder a hearty slap.

“He just settled down a little,” Sanjay said. “But this man here was single-handedly supporting the New York nightlife industry for a while. He was far more notorious that I was.”

Both were a-bit-over-30. Anup looked left and right out of humility. “My doctor said I need to calm down!” he said.

“He also just got married recently,” Sanjay said. “That’s the big reason. And my girlfriend’s leaving me so I’m going to start going out more.”

He added, “It’s a mutual understanding. I’m just not the guy she wants to spend the rest of her life with.”

Their cramped table was only a few steps from the bar, making its convenience factor low, but they’d attracted a few friendly females, including another bride-to-be, this one in a veil, wearing a ring with a flashing plastic jewel. She said she wasn’t sure whose table this was.

The two work in finance (“Don’t mention that too loudly because we’re not a very popular bunch right now,” Anup said seriously. “We’re having fun but nobody’s asked me what I do for a living. As long as I get them drinks, things seem fine.”) They weren’t attracted to Bookabottle for the discount, then, but for its guaranteed entry.

“You know how it is with New York City nightlife,” Anup said. “You’d have to know the bouncer who would let you in and you’d have to sort it out with them. This way you don’t have to worry about the hassle because Bookabottle is at the club beforehand. If your bouncer’s on vacation or whatever you don’t need to worry about that shit.”

It's important to keep the glamour in perspective, Mr. Monson said repeatedly. “It’s so easy to get sucked into nightlife, if you’re working in that business.”

This was on an earlier phone call, where he’d dropped the RA act to adapt the tone of a burned-out rocker. “The second you forget the party is not yours is when things start to go wrong.” If he ever seemed tempted by the nightlife game himself it was at Cielo in the Meatpacking District, which has a great reputation in nightlife “the same way Goldman Sachs has a great reputation in finance,” he said.

After a businesslike frisking by the giant manager George, Mr. Monson and The Observer entered the club to stand at the back of the room as green lasers scanned just above head-level. The walls were some kind of gray leather upholstery, segmented like an airline seat, or a padded room. George sidled up and crossed his arms, indicating the DJ, someone famous to people who follow that kind of thing. There were no customers here. Mr. Monson just wanted The Observer to see the place.

“My goal is to go through life completely unnoticed and unspoken of,” the Cornell grad said later, growing philosophical as he drove The Observer to the A train around 2:30. “Ultimately I hope to end up somewhere completely isolated, maybe in Montana or something.”

At the subway, he asked that Ms. Kim step out of the car so that The Observer could see her wellies. They’re part of his latest venture Zoubaby.com, which offers a patented way to monogram rain boots.

Update 3:40 p.m. Corrected Mr. Kennard's title, and added his name.

In November of 2009, 50 Cent filed a lawsuit against the site for using his image and content without his consent, according to All Hip Hop.

"I have lawyers on retainers and I have to pay them so much money anyway, so we'll go back and forth to court until (they) can't afford a Subway sandwich," he then said. "It's already too late for (them)."

Today World Star Hip Hop tweeted, "WE WILL BE BACK!!! CAN'T SHUT US DOWN."

50 Cent tweeted a 646 area code phone number supposedly belonging to World Star Hip Hop where readers could send their "condolences," but when The Observer called the voicemail was full.

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel

By the New York Post's reckoning, yesterday's trading netted the entertainment mogul somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.7 million.

Meanwhile, 50 Cent remains on Twitter, encouraging his millions of followers to continue the conversation he's started. "I only want entrepreneurs on my time line. We gonna talk money trade ideas and make it big," he tweets. Looks like he's taking a page out of the Stockpickr or StockTwits playbook.

He's also getting a little more defiant, retweeting one fan's comment: "those who dont take your ventures serious are silly haters & must be poor business people." This is a departure from last night's broadcast, during which he urged investor caution.

We're still a little concerned about the fate of H & H Imports, which has been losing money since it started doing business. We put in a call to H & H for comment, whereupon a secretary told The Observer "Everyone's in a meeting right now. Things are a little crazy." We will, of course, update when we hear more.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

In a recent tweet, 50 cent cautions his followers, "I own HNHI stock thoughts on it are my opinion. Talk to financial advisor about it." Also: "HNHI is the right investment for me it may or may not be right for u! Do ur homework." This follows the stock's meteoric rise today and a likely profit for 50 Cent, who along with G-Unit Brands made a $750,000 investment in the company last November. 

Here's the website for TV Goods, whose parent company is H & H Imports. From the "About Us" section:

H&H Imports is the parent company for TVGoods, Inc., a Direct Response marketing organization. The company identifies, develops, markets, and distributes consumer products for global distribution. Our strategy employs three primary channels: Direct Response Television (Infomercials), Television Shopping Networks and Retail Outlets. TVGoods offers entrepreneurs a turnkey solution enabling entrepreneurs to introduce products to the consumer market.

50 Cent's caveats come on top of several caution-inducing attributes of the company, including a loan to the company from its CEO, Steve Rogai, and a loss of $1.3 million in the most recent quarter. The company's chairman and founder, Kevin Harrington, is an infomercial pioneer and "an investor 'Shark' on the ABC television series Shark Tank," according to H & H's website. 

Of additional note: 50 Cent appeared on CNBC Friday to talk about investments, and mentioned a new line of headphones he's endorsing. A putative press release notes the increase in H & H's share price thusly:

The Company that had acquired worldwide marketing rights for its new product line believed to be designed by 50 and engineered by Sleek and will be the first headphones ever to offer 'Wireless Hybrid' technology with military-grade metals. The endorsement will be personally carried out by Curtis, having an ownership interest in Sleek, through his company G-unit.

One more Tweet from 50 Cent around the time of his stock discussions: "You can lead a horse to water but you force it to drink. lol."

Earlier: Get Rich Or Die Tweeting: 50 Cent Plugs Sketchy Penny Stock, Shares Skyrocket >>

mtaylor@observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• During the fiscal year ended March 2010, H & H lent $141,000 to "an entity in which our Chairman's brother is an officer and owner." 
• The company claimed losses of more than $1.3 million dollars in the most recent quarter and $3.3 million since its inception.
• The CEO of the company "loaned the Company funds to meet short-term working capital. These loans totaled $107,000 and $107,513, with related accrued interest of $4,494 and $2,321 at September 30, 2010 and March 31, 2010, respectively."

Mr. Weisenthal of Business Insider says the company distributes headphones, but this Bloomberg company profile, published today, tells a slightly different story:

As of May 28, 2010, H & H Imports Inc. was acquired by TV Goods, Inc., in a reverse merger transaction. H & H Imports, Inc., a development stage company, engages in the wholesale purchase and sale of women's handbags. It focuses to sells its handbags to beauty salons, nail salons, beauty supply stores, and women's health clubs. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Plantation, Florida.

The Yahoo! Finance profile offers a similar characterization. Here's an SEC filing dated Dec. 9 disclosing 50 Cent and G-Unit Brands' Nov. 30, 2010 transaction with H & H, in which the rap mogul bought $750,000 worth of shares and warrants in the company. If he were to sell today, it's likely he would have made quite a handsome profit.

Update: 50 Cautions Investors His Penny Stock May Not Be Right For Them >>

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• The always promotional Andy Cohen shills for his Real Housewives of D.C. series. It's deeper than you think? Right.
• Fellow Bravo spokeswoman Alex McCord was awake till 3am writing blogs. We saw her and Simon out earlier in the night at a U.S. Open-related event getting her drink on.
• Also at the event were Andy Roddick and John Legend, who apparently enjoyed FatBooth together. (FatBooth is an iPhone app that makes your face look 100 to 200 pounds fatter.) Brooklyn Decker (Roddick's wife) wasn't there, but she noticed the shenanigans that occurred. This happened before midnight, but I thought it ought to be shared.
• Social-media expert Rachel Sklar retweeted a funny comment about fashion faux pas.
• Idiosyncratic punctuater 50 Cent was tweeting up a storm, as is his wont. The two best ones: he rages against a "funky bitch," and then he calms down.

That's all I've got for today. Follow the Observer on Twitter, please. Thanks.

“Our understanding after talking with 50 Cents is he has no plans to perform whatsoever. He might go but he is not going to perform,” Bloomberg said.

Later, the mayor added, “I did not plan to go to the concert because I wanted to go see 50 Cents but will not get a chance to do that this time.”

Afterward, a press aide came over to reporters, who were still laughing, and reminded them that the mayor often adds an unneeded “s” to the end of many words, like “moneys” and “anyways.”

In Bloomberg defense, he did impress some folks with his knowledge of Jay-Z's work, citing one of the rapper's lesser-known songs during an event last year about free recreational activities in the city.

He surveyed the sparsely populated bar in search of the older woman of his dreams. "Well," he said, "it's a possibility. There are some very beautiful women in here."

He glanced to his right at Shahla Husein, 40, and Henshi Gorodetsky, 46, who were sitting in a small, dimly lit alcove, directly across from the bar. They were both wearing tiny tube dresses, bracelets and bangles, and were looking earnestly at the verile young lad.

Jason, 26, had been invited out that evening by the producers of a reality TV series now under development, titled Cougars: NYC—not to be confused with The Cougar, the new TV Land network dating show, hosted by Vivica A. Fox; or Cougar Town, the upcoming ABC sitcom starring Courteney Cox. (Ever since 40-something actress Demi Moore first swooned for 20-something actor Ashton Kutcher, it seems, the tired older-woman-meets-younger-man story line from The Graduate has somehow kept scriptwriters busier than ever before!)

"It's funny," Jason told the Daily Transom, smirking. "Because I don't know how they found me." (Turns out, he received the invite through his MySpace account.) "I mean, I'm into dating older women, but I still don't know how they knew to contact me. But it worked, I guess ... I'm here."

Ms. Gorodetsky, one of five flirty 40-somethings featured on the forthcoming Cougars show, cut right to the cat-and-mouse chase: "Why is it O.K. for a 60-year-old man to be hitting on me but not the other way around?" pondered the sexy and sophisticated divorced mother of two. (Not unlike Stacey Anderson, star of The Cougar, Ms. Gorodetsky works in real estate, as a broker for the prominent firm Prudential Douglas Elliman.) "These are the kinds of questions I think the show can answer. I think it will help. Our show is not like the [TV Land] one that's out right now. That's very bad, very cheesy. Ours is not like that. It's not a dating show. It's a reality show."

"Let's make a new term for cougar, let's make it right now!" interjected her Cougars colleague, Ms. Husein. "I'm actually embarrassed by the term."

Ms. Gorodetsky agreed. "It's really denigrating, and also being a cougar implies that we're on the prowl. We're not! Guys come up to us!"

"Right. I turn a lot of guys down!" added Ms. Husein. "I'd rather be a Persian cat," she purred.

"Well, she's Persian," Ms. Gorodetsky pointed out. "I'd be a Panther."

Young Jason, meanwhile, was nonplussed by the term "cub."

"I don't need a label, it's all just normal to me," he shrugged.

Rapper 50 Cent's sexy 2005 smash "Candy Shop" blared in the background.

"I feel like most of the people that come here are very evolved," Ms. Gorodetsky said. "I mean look at this guy!" she said, motioning toward Jason, who smiled. "Plus, it's not exactly about dating younger guys on the show, it's more about the fact that we can. So, we're exploring that scenario at these types of parties."

How do they feel when the question of age comes up?

"Whenever somebody asks me how old I am, I ask them how much money they make," Ms. Husein said with a Cheshire grin.

In a nearby alcove, another Cougars starlet, Hayne Suthon, 52, huddled with a boyish Justin Timberlake look-alike wearing an open shirt—no chest hair—and black beanie.

"The reason I do all this publicity is because I'm in the restaurant business," noted Ms. Suthon, owner of Lucky Cheng's. "Whatever is good publicity for me is good publicity for my restaurants."

Still, Ms. Suthon isn't thrilled with the C-word, either. "The word 'cougar' implies a double standard," she said, "and 'cub'? We crack up about that. It's demeaning to the guy. Why can't the guy be worth his own salt?

"But," she added, "I'm a publicity whore; if you want to call me a cougar, go for it!"

Her date declined comment.