Andy Cohen (Getty Images)

El Museo del Barrio is New York’s leading Latino museum and cultural institution. Its yearly gala is a who’s who of Spanish-speaking society figures, thanks to gala chairs like Valentin Hernández, Fe Fendi, Marie Unanue and Valentino D. Carlotti. This year’s black-tie 20th-anniversary bash honors Raúl Esparza, the Cuban-American stage actor, singer and Broadway star, with the Excellence in the Arts Award. Dinner music is by the staid Bob Hardwick Sound, and then DJ Honey Redmond pumps up the volume so guests can cha cha cha.

Bravo’s funnyman Andy Cohen and fashion plate Allison Sarofim, along with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, present the Hero Fund, a scholarship founded by Hunter Hill in honor of the late author and filmmaker Perry Moore (who wrote the book Hero). The host committee includes many of Mr. Moore’s friends, like Paper’s Mickey Boardman and Kim Hastreiter, Maura Egan, Julianne Moore, Oberon Sinclair and Mary Alice Stephenson. There will also be a special performance by Angela McClusky.

El Museo del Barrio gala, Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 East 42nd Street, (212) 557-5088, cocktails 7pm, dinner 8pm, tickets from $1,250. Hero Fund fund-raiser, 60 Thompson Hotel, 60 Thompson Street, (212) 431-0400, 8-10pm, $100.

Mark Consuelos, Kelly Ripa, Andy Cohen.

There was a horn of plenty for Shindigger last week, as invite upon invite boasted gastronomic splendors and choice libations—and none disappointed, from savory amuse-bouche at Monday night’s after-party for Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep to a lavish cornucopia at the AIPAD Photography Show’s Wednesday night opening gala at the Park Avenue Armory. But the most mouthwatering night of all, Tuesday, was sandwiched in between.

The evening began at Food & Wine’s Best Chefs event, as Shindigger embarked on a culinary adventure inside Pranna, the Flatiron District eatery. There, April Bloomfield of the Spotted Pig served haddock fritters with herbed spaetzle, parsnips and mint; WD-50’s Wylie Dufresne offered popcorn soup with shrimp, jicama and tamarind; and Godiva tempted attendees with triple-threat dark-chocolate mousse.

Shindigger indulged foremost in a Santa Lucia Highlands pinot noir.

“Hello! It’s so nice to see you,” yelled celebrity chef Anne Burrell over DJ Harley Viera-Newton’s dance beats. (Just the day before, we had seen Ms. Burrell cooking alongside Michelle Obama.)

Shindigger yearned to gobble more gourmet goodies with the other acclaimed chefs in attendance, like Angelo Sosa and Tom Colicchio, but we had another dinner engagement a few blocks away, and we had almost missed all of cocktail hour.

At the American whiskey bar and restaurant Maysville we found a jubilant Lucy Sykes and a handful of boozy men’s magazine editors littering the bar area. What was the occasion? Gilt Groupe was hosting a rather intimate dinner in honor of Bravo’s Andy Cohen, celebrating the recent release of his book, Most Talkative.

“What a lovely dress,” Shindigger told Kelly Ripa of her blossomy silk frock.

“It’s old. It’s a little old thing. I like to recycle,” she giggled, before telling us about a recent getaway she took with husband Mark Consuelos. “We were in the lower Grenadines. It was beautiful.”

“We should sit down!” interrupted a bubbly but determined Mr. Cohen. (Cocktail hour was now approaching cocktail hour and a half.)

“He is the best,” Ms. Ripa cooed of the evening’s guest of honor. “I feel like we grew up with him, even though we were in different states and we never met. I’d work with him in a heartbeat.”

But Shindigger had gotten distracted while Ms. Ripa sang Mr. Cohen’s praises.

“What’s the deal with the ceiling lighting?” we asked, looking up.

“This is the grid of wherever this is in Louisiana—no, Kentucky,” Ms. Ripa corrected herself. “There is a town in Kentucky that this restaurant is named after.”

“You’ve gotta sit down,” an organizer snapped just then, whisking Ms. Ripa off to a leather booth.

“This will be a meal that I daresay will be amazing,” began Gilt’s VP of men’s editorial and creative, Tyler Thoreson. (For starters, chef Kyle Knall had prepared several knockouts: a quinoa-spring vegetable salad and grilled quail with pigeon peas and cornbread croutons.)

Mr. Thoreson continued, “In some way, I think we’re here tonight because a strange man grabbed me by the back of my collar late one evening at the Top of the Standard. That man is to my left, and his name is Andy Cohen. We were there celebrating the launch of Gilt Man.”

“I had no idea what I was doing at that party!” the man of the hour screeched in his own defense.

“I would say the same if I was being accused of grabbing a strange person by the back of the collar at a crowded bar,” Mr. Thoreson retorted, adding that, in spite of how the two men first met, their relationship has developed into a creative and commercial collaboration.

“The leftovers from tonight’s dinner will be on sale at Gilt.com,” joked Mr. Cohen, quoting one of his snarky tablemates as he took the floor from the Gilt exec. “Thank you, Tyler. I don’t remember that night. Sometimes after my show I grab handsome strangers by the back of their necks.”

“He seems like the gropey type,” hissed one not-to-be-named fashion guru at our table. And then we dove into dinner: slow-roasted arctic char, duck breast and grilled rib eye cap with collard greens.

It was a southern feast that would have horrified even the most moderate dieter. Shindigger, unwilling to enter spring looking like a beached whale, “ducked” out before they served dessert and headed to our next affair.

“These things are too early,” grumbled Judah Friedlander of 30 Rock as we exited the lift and sashayed into the ridiculous $14 million penthouse at 497 Greenwich Street for the Cinema Society after-party for Danny Boyle’s latest film, Trance, starring Rosario Dawson, James McAvoy and Vincent Cassel. “I always miss the movie,” Mr. Friedlander added.

“So do we,” Shindigger confessed.

While the cuisine is rarely the best part of a movie premiere—that honor is generally awarded to the spirits—this event proved a marvelous exception. Shindigger, abandoning beach-body plans, devoured endless plates of Olivier Cheng Catering’s vegan dim sum and noodles as we concluded our food fest.

For a nightcap, we repaired to the rooftop terrace with a glass of red and huddled with Mr. Cassel, looking out on the lit-up city skyline.

“The last time I stayed in New York for a while was when I was shooting Black Swan, but to me the city was really happening back in the days when I was young and used to live here,” Mr. Cassel said in his cooler-than-cool French accent. “Back in the ’80s, when there was Danceteria, I was crazy about New York.”

It’s true, that multistory nightclub has been shuttered for decades. But Mr. Cassel can have his nostalgia, we thought. We’ll take the multicourse menus.

Best prank ever! (Bravo)

Ha ha. Love this. It's not even technically a "prank," so much as a very good method for finding out what former co-workers really thought about you. All you do is wait until they are on a nationally syndicated program, and then call up the show pretending to be someone named "Coco" from "New Hampshire." You don't even have to mask your voice!

Then you can ask them what it was like working with you (their former colleague), and they will be forced to say the absolute truth, lulled into a false sense of security by the thought that you (former co-worker) is not only not tuning into this nationally syndicated program, but could in no way be the caller yourself.

Pro tip: Do not do this on Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, because that man either has Caller ID flashing on his teleprompter or has memorized the voices of everyone on television. Probably the latter.

We love you, Amy Poehler. We love you, Seth Meyers. We are kind of mad at you, Andy Cohen, for not letting this joke play out a little longer, but we love you too. And let us just say, we are really looking forward to when Shia Lebeouf tries this on Alec Baldwin next month.

Top Chef Kitchen (Bravo)

Bravo has always prided itself on its ability to foster a community for its fans. Unlike traditional television, a one-way medium, Bravo openly encourages viewers to become engaged, and it's most obvious in its mascotting of Andy Cohen (an executive who turned talent after his blog about the shows he was producing became popular and he was asked to host the first Housewives reunion) as the anti-Seacrest.

But there are other ways Bravo interacts with its fans: it has online forums and live chats with the stars of its shows, and unlike other reality programming--in which characters appear on the screen and nowhere else--Bravo essentially forces its reality stars to mingle with actual people. And it was with this concept that the Top Chef Kitchen was born.

On Tuesday evening, The Observer raced downtown, already late for our dinner at Bravo's pop-up restaurant on West Broadway. From mid-October to mid-November, the restaurant will rotate two Top Chef winners every week to design a menu for which anyone can book a reservation for a standard, four-course meal. It's $95, and that's without wine pairings. Or, as the website for the restaurant mentions, "for a super-foodie experience, there will also be a Chef's Table, which will boast an eight-course tasting menu with wine pairings and the chance to be up close and personal with the Chef’testants." (The network also tries to distinguish its stars from reality-show stereotypes by branding them with awkward titles like "Bravolebrities," "Chef-testants," and "Housewives.")

Entering into the red, glowing leviathan of the Tribeca restaurant, we couldn't help noting that the space has a TV history already--its last incarnation was Iron Chef Aarón Sanchez's Mexican eatery, Centrico.

"Oh, we had to totally gut the place, " one of Bravo's extremely BFF-friendly PR ladies told us, crinkling up her nose slighty at the thought. "It was a mess when we got it. We had to totally rip everything out, add new lighting, furniture, redecorate, redo the plumbing, the floors ... everything."

"So it cost a lot to redo the place as a Top Chef kichen?" we asked.

"Ha, you wouldn't believe."

"But the restaurant will only be open for four more weeks? And then what?"

She wasn't sure, but she had to go say hi to someone else now.

Every table occupied by the press (some regular people had made reservations as well) had a little Bravolebrity of its own. Our group, which consisted of a Page Six reporter, a writer for Mashable and his female friend, was headed up by Ben Huh, the creator of I Can Has Cheezeburger and its various meme sites, which raised $30 million in venture funding last April. He is the latest Bravolebrity, with a show about the Cheezeburger offices in Seattle, LOLWORK, premiering November 7.

"I was the first person to use the term 'internet culture,'" he told us.

"But mainly you make macro images of FAILS and cats," we said. "How do you make a show around that?"

Apparently the answer was that it would be a drama-free reality show, which makes about as much sense as pouring money into a restaurant whose purpose was to serve as a five-week synergistic branding of a popular TV series.

Our chefs that evening were Tiffany Derry and Paul Qui, who both came by the table to say hi, along with Mr. Bravo himself, Andy Cohen. Another PR rep had to explain to us that Mr. Qui, who had won Top Chef: Texas, wasn't a top chef of just Texas, but that the "cycles" moved from city to city.

"Like Real World?" we asked.

"Yeah, like Real World."

Except, of course, that Top Chef is a reality meritocracy, which means that it is ostensibly more highbrow than Housewives or Miss Advised or Gallery Girls, because the people involved are talented in some arena. And even though there were no cameras filming in the restaurant ("We considered it," our first PR bestie told us,) the chefs were still keeping "score" by tallying up how of their dishes were ordered throughout the evening:
(Click to enlarge)
Although we were allowed to mix-and-match our courses from both chefs, our waitress timidly informed us that Mr. Qui really thought it would be best that if you picked his menu, you ordered everything off of it, since every course represented another stage in the life of chicken soup, or something.

Since no one really wanted to do that at our table, we started with Mr. Qui's onions, then moved to Ms. Derry's snapper, then her pork belly dish and her banana pudding. Everything was very good (especially the onions and the pudding): A++ dining, would eat there again.

But unless we hustle, we might not have a chance to.

Jane Fonda (Getty Images)

With so many ballyhooed movies coming out this fall, it’s hard to keep up with the classics on our “To Watch … Someday” list—who has the time to sit down with the Criterion Collection when there are so many premieres of flicks we actually want to see? Tonight the Darby celebrates the odd coupling of classic cinema and a downtown party as Jane Fonda hosts a tribute to her Oscar-winning film Klute. The paranoid drama features Ms. Fonda as a call girl on the run—but don’t fret, tonight’s klatch is all about fun. Celebrity ringleader Andy Cohen is billed to emcee the evening, interviewing the featured icon as well as stand-up raunch-tress Sandra Bernhard, who will be leading an auction for Ms. Fonda’s Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

The Darby, 244 West 14th Street, 8pm, tickets and information can be found at gcapp.org/klute.

Sarah Jessica Parker (Patrick McMullan)

“Sarah Jessica invited me,” said television personality Amy Sedaris. “I’ve never even been to the ballet!” The actress, who played Sarah Jessica Parker’s publisher on Sex and the City, was standing alone in the midst of a crowded cocktail party before the New York City Ballet’s Fall Gala at Lincoln Center last Thursday. Ms. Parker, one of the evening’s co-chairs and a friend of the guest of honor, tan and glam designer Valentino Garavani, had yet to walk the red carpet.

“I love the sets, though,” said the ballet neophyte, in a tea-length dress as starchy as a tutu. “But he just told me”—she gestured at a nearby party guest—“that the stage is very bare tonight!”

Ms. Sedaris had slightly more knowledge about the evening’s program than did broadcasting icon Barbara Walters. We asked her what her favorite ballet was. “Tell me what the ballet is tonight,” she told us gamely, “and I’ll tell you it’s my favorite!”

We inquired about the just-announced joint interview with Barack and Michelle Obama on The View the following week. Would Ms. Walters go hard or soft on the president and first lady? “Both hard and soft!” she told us. “We’ve been writing questions all day!

“You know, there are five women asking questions, and two interview subjects—both of them,” she continued, before the conversation was interrupted by a magenta-clad, jewel-bedecked interloper. “The bar would not serve me!” she shouted. It was Princess Firyal of Jordan.

“This is a reporter,” said Ms. Walters.

“So write that!” the princess cried. “Write that they are closed, that they would not even serve me two sips of water!”

We promised we would denote the bar’s closure at the very moment we glimpsed Iman snapping pictures with well-wishers. “Let’s do a prom photo!,” said a male friend of hers. We caught her as she entered the crush of people in the entryway to the bar area. “Follow me,” she exhorted, leading us to the quieter balcony, which overlooked a slew of people rushing through the lobby to claim their seats. Who were we to argue? We asked about her relationship with Valentino, the designer who’d crafted the costumes for the evening’s ballet. “He’s a great host. He makes sure a huge party feels like an intimate gathering. He has staff that helps him—but it feels as though he’s doing it all himself! There are people doing it, but he’s very involved.”

Anjelica Huston paused in her conversation with Ron Rifkin (who’d played one of Carrie Bradshaw’s Vogue editors, and who we later saw embracing Ms. Parker—she knows how to gather a posse!) to speak to us about Valentino, for whom she’d worked as a model in the 1980s. She was not wearing Valentino this evening. “The dresses were a bit small for me!” she explained. “These days, he’s designing for small Italian women.”

We’d gotten caught up chatting and had little time to tarry before the ballet began: rushing up the stairs to the first circle, we realized we were behind a group of men gathered around Ms. Parker herself (husband Matthew Broderick was absent, likely performing in his Broadway show, Nice Work If You Can Get It). The group moved as one—to a closed bar station so that Ms. Parker could grab a napkin to spit out her gum—then headed to the center of the first circle, where, all in a row, Iman, Valentino, Ms. Huston and Ms. Parker formed one very glamorous cheering circle. The ballet was preceded by a video in which celebrity friends who couldn’t be present testified to Valentino’s genius. Hugh Jackman, in a maroon henley, talked about how Valentino criticized his wardrobe; Meryl Streep read his name in an exaggerated Italian accent; and Rita Wilson commented on his impressive tan.

At intermission, we joined the crowd swarming outside—including Anne Hathaway, in near-transparent embroidered green Valentino. She recalled for us a Valentino party of past vintage—she’d been one of the attendees at his 40th anniversary celebration in Rome. “It was a very good party, with aerial ballet dancers,” the Les Miserables actress told us crisply. She’d first met the designer on the set of The Devil Wears Prada, at which time, we posited, she must have been relatively green.

“Quite,” she replied, turning away.

The curtain rose upon the magical second act, the world premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Bal de Couture, with elaborate black-and-white tulle gowns with hidden fuchsia lining. Valentino himself came out after the ballerinas’ bows to adjust a tutu’d black swan’s crown and announce, “The most important thing is that all of you came to see my clothes—but what is very important is being a part of the New York City Ballet.”

Immediately afterward, as patrons noshed on a dinner of lobster and salmon—and Valentino circled past our table declaring “Oh, I’m so happy!”—Ms. Parker addressed a small circle of reporters (she’d left her matching cape at her dinner seat, next to Bravo executive Andy Cohen, in order to accept thanks for hosting the event and circulate). Asked whether she wished to wear the Valentino ballet costumes she’d seen onstage that evening, she noted, “We all spend a lifetime looking at things we can’t have—that’s the beauty of having eyes. That’s why there’s museums, theater, music!” She said Valentino had first invited her to dinner five or six years ago, and that he was, indeed, a wonderful host.

Julia Allison, on a date scene from "Miss Advised" (Evans Vestal Ward/Bravo)

Julia Allison is not dead. But you could be forgiven for thinking so, since everyone talks about her in the past tense.

“Julia represented the industrialization of self-promotion,” said Jason Tanz, who profiled Ms. Allison for the cover of Wired’s August 2008 issue. “People were going to start using the Internet as a personal branding platform, and Julia was one of the first to get there.”

“I mean I met her like twice?” said Choire Sicha, editor at Gawker as Ms. Allison emerged as a favorite subject on the gossip blog.

And writing about Ms. Allison’s new reality series, Miss Advised, for the Atlantic Wire, a former Gawker writer noted the nascent TV star “disappeared to the West Coast and has not been heard from since.”

Ms. Allison, the former relationship columnist for Time Out New York, Gawker hobbyhorse, TV talking head, and leader of her would-be business, NonSociety, was once the poster girl for New York bloggers pursuing fame or infamy. She sat—or rather whirled like a dervish—at the nexus of tech-world geekery (as she was nominally a “founder”), good old-fashioned media-baiting (she rose to her sort of fame after wearing a bustier made of condoms to a Gawker party full of journalists), and New York’s fizzy hangover from a decade of Carrie Bradshaw

“I remember the first piece Gawker wrote about me. They criticized me for being ‘too nice,’” Ms. Allison told The Observer. “But that’s who I was! That was the beginning of my tenure in New York. The way I knew I needed to leave was that I wasn’t like that anymore. I was cynical. I was bitter. I saw a couple holding hands and I thought ‘just wait. That won’t last.’”

Nor did her New York celebutante life: her fame, emblematic of the period, had an expiration date.

“The internet felt smaller,” said former Gawker editor Jessica Coen, now at Jezebel. “The social guide of that internet scene in New York was a lot smaller, intimate. There were certainly less blogs then and less prominent blogs then, it felt smaller, individuals who were kind of out there stood out a lot more.”

The post-mortem tone is understandable: one of the pitfalls of constructing your entire existence around being famous is that once you are a nobody, you might as well be dead.

So, Ms. Allison  must now undertake a resurrection, in the form of a reality TV show. (Surprise!)

“I tried being microfamous, she explained to us recently. “That stuff is super empty. It would be really nice to try it in a different way.” Call it macrofamous.

Julia Allison at the height of her web-centric microfame, in 2009. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Burda Media)

Since her days on the New York tech/media scene, Ms. Allison indeed moved to Los Angeles and is in the process of shutting down NonSociety, which never meaningfully distinguished itself from Tumblr. In so doing, she has taken away a favorite spectator sport: following her career (read: her attention-seeking antics). For a while, things were quiet. But with Miss Advised, launching on Bravo on June 18, Ms. Allison is staging what will either be her comeback or, like Lisa Kudrow’s embarrassing fake-reality series, her The Comeback.

The show follows three soi-disant dating experts in three different cities: a high-powered New York matchmaker whose ex calls her just as she’s enjoying a solo glass of Champagne, a San Francisco radio personality who’s willing to shock you with her opposition to monogamy.

And Ms. Allison, the ostensible star of the show.

Only nominally a “dating columnist” since wearing out her welcome at Time Out in 2009, Ms. Allison ends up with the most screen time because she’s the most voluble, the least canny about managing her self-presentation. While the two mating-and-dating professionals onscreen seem in-control, if a bit eager to find their mates, Ms. Allison is unvarnished. At one point, we see her trying on tutus (and strapping one on her dog). Later in the season, she forces herself on one date in the back of a limousine, only to ask another if he’s ready to get married immediately.

In the early going of Miss Advised’s months-long taping process, Ms. Allison says she attempted to construct an America’s-Sweetheart persona, but that the constant presence of cameras broke down her obsession with persona. “At a certain point,” said Ms. Allison on a conference call with her castmates, “I did give up trying to be charming. I failed so miserably, I just gave up. If you call that forgetting about the cameras, that’s forgetting about the cameras.” The other two women had said they forgot about the cameras immediately. “They beat me down. I had no idea I was so self conscious. I found it to be the most nerve-wracking experience.”

Ms. Allison had reason to be wary. She had been the object of derision on Gawker and targeted hate sites. She had also lost faith in love—a troubling turn for a relationship columnist.

“The worst thing that happened was that I was dumped a couple times,” she explained. “I never thought once during my tenure—that I might not find my person. Or my husband. I never expected that I wouldn’t find lasting happiness. In the last year, I thought, Oh, shit. I might have totally fucked this up.”

This realization—that she had aged out of eligibility, and that her Google results are full of her critics mocking her—coincided with allowing Bravo’s cameras into her life. “I felt like the Rodney Dangerfield of journalism, I felt like a victim, and I did the show, and my conclusion after the show was—I have to figure out a way to not say this in a cheesy way: I think I have a message now.” That message, she says, is to show people how to love themselves: “I think moving forward, the irony is that my goal for myself is to be genuinely open and genuinely transparent and not worry about what people think of me.”

It’s an irony in part because Ms. Allison’s extreme, blithe openness—turning up at a party in a condom-covered bustier; spilling the details of her every relationship, including, recently, a dalliance with John McCain’s son Jack—in the exact behavior that engendered criticism from sites devoted to savaging her.

An email exchange with the anonymous proprietor of Ms. Allison’s most prominent (and frequently unhinged) critics, the site Reblogging Donk, yielded some information as to why, exactly, Ms. Allison is such a flashpoint. “She provides a very extreme, contorted glimpse of a generation that's gone right off the rails in terms of narcissism, seeking fame for no reason, the reality show/Facebook generation that wants to to put everything out there and expect to be adored and envied for it. We all have those people in our Facebook feed—she's the Incredible Hulk version of that.”

Indeed, Ms. Allison’s form of extreme openness has long manifested itself in both her outfits (each Time Out New York column came with a glam photoshoot) and in an ethos of sharing when it came to her personal life. One relationship, with Vimeo co-founder Jakob Lodwick, got its own website; the McCain moment was duly chronicled across social media. But Ms. Allison claims that her old brushes with fame saw her acting out a part. “I was still attempting to make a good impression. If you do that you will be devastated by their reactions. “

“I have such mixed feelings about it,” she said of the show. “It was a painful process for me... I feel more free now, though, because it’s like, ‘You’re going to see this shit anyway!’ So that is freeing.”

While Ms. Allison admits she felt somewhat “out of control” when dealing with Gawker, she was able to manage her image to an extent, via her blog. She chose what was out there. Bravo’s editors, who have ended the marriages of many a Real Housewife, are less forgiving.

Ms. Allison certainly seems aware of the pitfalls of ceding control, and also believes this time, this run at fame, will be different. “To be famous for no reason other than your ego is a fool’s game. If you want it for that reason, you will be miserable. It’s not of value in and of itself. It’s only of value if you do something like that. And I’m not saying 'Go work for Charity Water!' I hate fakeness. Maybe Charity Water is your thing. No bashing. It’s not mine. My thing is young women like me who had no self esteem.”

Ms. Rambin, Ms. Allison’s former NonSociety business partner, said that on a recent chance encounter in Austin at South by Southwest, she warned Ms. Allison about reality television. (Ms. Rambin appeared on the short-lived One Ocean View in 2006.) “Emotionally, it’s one of the worst things you can do. That’s what makes it really entertaining!”

PC Peterson, the young villain of Bravo’s departed reality series NYC Prep, told The Observer: “You have no control of the editing process. Any conversation taken out of context sounds ridiculous. You’re there to make yourself look bad. Regardless of what you attempt to do, play with the script, you won’t be able to make your own way.”

Ms. Allison, with her newly found openness and her cause of showing women how to be really, truly honest with themselves, doesn’t seem worried. Asked to compare herself to reality stars of past vintage, Ms. Allison conflated fiction with reality: “People bring up [Real Housewives of New York star] Bethenny [Frankel] for three reasons. She tends to be quite frank, she tends to be intelligent and funny, and an entrepreneur. Honestly I don’t think I’m any of them. I’m much more spiritual, and much raunchier, and I’m a total geek. I love tech guys. I just want to roll around in Silicon Valley. I’m some bizarre combination. It’s not reality television I relate to but a combination of Zooey Deschanel on New Girl combined with Lena Dunham.”

Doubling down on her return to the spotlight, she will be writing about each episode of Miss Advised as it airs, for Elle.com.

“I thought of it myself!” she enthused.

With the reopening of the Algonquin Hotel, we must consider who will be chosen for the honor of one of the 11 seats in the Algonquin Round Table. 

Started as a practical joke in 1919 by publicist John Peter Toohey to mock  Alexander Woollcott, the Round Table soon became as legendary as the Bloomsberry Set, except American and meaner. The social satirists and cultural trendesetters included Dorothy Parker, Franklin Pierce Adams,  Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, his wife Ruth Hale, Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, Harold Ross, and Robert E. Sherwood.

Who today could live up to such an illustrious group of names? We took a stab at our own 11: tell us who you would have in your own literary draft in the comments.

Julia Allison (Getty Images)

New York media survivors, set your DVRs: Julia Allison's Bravo reality show, Miss Advised, is to launch on June 18. Therein, Ms. Allison, a "dating columnist," is to join two other advice columnists in attempting to follow her own theoretical advice. Per a Bravo release, Ms. Allison "is ready to settle into the storybook romance of her dreams." We'll be watching what happens closely--especially if she ends up on Andy Cohen's talk show with Kim Zolciak.

Sandra Bernhard (Getty Images)

“I was high when I got dressed!,” joked Sandra Bernhard at Julie Klausner’s “How Was Your Week Live” comedy showcase. The show featured a number of entertainers expounding on topics of their choice—including Ira Glass on his favorite snacks. But Ms. Bernhard chose to munch upon the hand that was feeding her: Bravo’s late-night Watch What Happens Live, where she is a regular contributor.

The host of the recurring “Sandrology” segment joked that she hoped to take over Watch What Happens in a coup (she almost did that to Larry Sanders once!). “God knows that network could use a hostile takeover.” She adopted a highfaluting, arch tone. “Bravo, the network for the arts. What the fuck happened? We needed a franchise just for these Housewives? It’s like hell, and torture!”

She recently met Mary J. Blige at a taping of the Andy Cohen talk show. “He’s dipping into actually talented people—thank God.” How’d it go, Sandra? “Mary J. Blige doesn’t like white people. Why the fuck should she? We’re the most racist country in the world.”

Representatives from Bravo "LOL"-ed us a "no comment."