Cindy Adams makes the rounds. (Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center)

INT. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY — EVENING CINDY ADAMS is standing with a friend among a crowd of hundreds, surveying the black-tie attendees at the PEN Literary Gala, who include Philip Roth, Zadie Smith, Jay McInerney, Jennifer Egan, Candace Bushnell, Joanna Coles and Peter Godwin.

Ms. Adams is wearing a splashy, graphic print jacket and a bun atop her head. A stream of partygoers greet her. She is approached by the Transom and asked how to work a room.

MS. ADAMS
The first thing you do is ignore Salman Rushdie. Because there’s no party he’s not at.
THE TRANSOM
Oh my goodness. Okay. Did he do something?
MS. ADAMS
No. He’s just everywhere.
THE TRANSOM
You’ve been doing this a while. How do you identify celebrities in a room full of writers?
MS. ADAMS
I am hoping some of these people will recognize me.
I look for a few celebrities—Molly Ringwald is schlepping around here—and whoever else I see. I will tell you, however, that these writers do not dress well.
Take a look at this lady. (Points to a woman across the room.)
You see that big behind and the big arms?

LADY #1, a slender, attractive older woman smiles and heads straight for Ms. Adams.

LADY # 1
I could not believe that Nora died two months after she gave me that prize.
I mean, didn’t she look good that day?
MS. ADAMS
She did. She would not let anybody know.
LADY # 1
We were so close. We always celebrated our birthdays together.
THE TRANSOM
Were you close with Nora Ephron, Ms. Adams?
MS. ADAMS
I didn’t go to her place for Passover, but we knew each other.
THE TRANSOM
Nora Ephron is really having a moment.
MS. ADAMS
She will last for a little while. Everybody is ‘Nora! Nora!’
Which is why Tom Hanks will win something.
(Leans in toward The Transom.) I have no idea who this lady is.

In the background, writer Susan Orlean walks past New Yorker editor David Remnick, who is standing near Salman Rushdie. LADY #2, a brunette in a sparkly white dress, leaves Mr. Rushdie's side and approaches Ms. Adams.

LADY #2
Excuse me. My dad is such a big fan of yours. He’s got a King Charles Cavalier.
He told me, years ago your dog ran out, and he grabbed it, because he's such a big dog lover.
And you wrote him a thank-you note. Do you remember him? ...In a Bentley?

MS. ADAMS
Yes! Yes, I do! He never sent me a note!
LADY #2
You never gave him a return address. You just said, "Thank you, Cindy."
MS. ADAMS
I work at the Post! He could have found me there ... Whose dress are you wearing? It’s gorgeous.
LADY #2
This dress was made for me by Roberto Cavalli years ago. It fits. I’m shocked.
MS. ADAMS
Look at that figure! I hate you. Go away from me!
LADY #2
Let me tell you. I’m 45 years old. I have a 19-year-old. I’m disciplined. I’m a vegan...
I had to tell you for the sake of my dad. He’s not a public person.
He’s a private businessman. He lives in the Galleria. He’s in Fisher Island most of the time.
MS. ADAMS
When he comes back, he can buy dinner. I will have it with him.
LADY #2
He would love that... I know that Salman is my boyfriend.
He’s a good man. I'm a woman, not a child.
I'm not gossip. I'm a mother. (Disappears into the crowd.)
THE TRANSOM
That was Salman Rushdie’s girlfriend?
MS. ADAMS
I have no idea.

Ms. Adams then takes the Transom by the scruff of our silk jacket and walks us around the room.

MS. ADAMS
Look at that lady in green. With her breasts hanging out like anybody wants to touch them!
THE TRANSOM
Do you think people do or don’t want to touch them?
MS. ADAMS
No! Nobody does. I’d rather have a bagel than touch her things. Look at this one.
The pants don’t go down to the floor, and her crotch is very visible.
She’s got a bag that nobody would wear anywhere. On Pitkin Avenue they would refuse it.
THE TRANSOM
Pitkin Avenue, where’s that?
MS. ADAMS
It’s on the Lower East Side. Do you know Delancey?
Do you know Rivington? What are you, gentile?

Ms. Adams nods toward a guest in a loud summery print.

MS. ADAMS (CONT.)
Look at that one.
THE TRANSOM
It’s like Lilly Pulitzer died or something.
MS. ADAMS
Very good! That’s one in a row for you.
Look at that bag. They carried those during the war!
THE TRANSOM
What are you wearing, Cindy?
MS. ADAMS
It’s old Armani. It’s $4,500 three years ago. Look at my pearls.
I don’t believe in poverty. It’s not my thing.

Dinner bells begin to chime. Guests make their way to their tables. The Transom starts to part ways with Ms. Adams. We thank her for her time.

MS. ADAMS
Just don't quote me being too vicious!

Jared Kushner, Katie Holmes and Mike Bloomberg (PMc)

- The intimidatingly assiduous Peggy Siegal greets people at the door; thanks us for coming to celebrate party with The New York Observer. "We are The New York Observer!" We cry. She doesn't even pause. "Well, it's great to see you anyway."

-Terry McDonell: I've always loved the Observer, I have great respect for Peter Kaplan. The coverage of everything I was interested in New York in the past 25 years was reflected in The Observer at the highest level.

- Ray Kelly recalls the last time he was at the Four Seasons. "[We] feel like you never leave," we tell the Police Commissioner. His reply: "A lot of people feel that way."

- Spike Lee keeps on puffy coat all evening, talks to Katie Holmes, Donald Trump. Catch tail end of his conversation with Mr. Trump: "Well, that's one thing we agree on."

- Mayor Bloomberg gets onstage, proceeds to riff about slipping Harvey Weinstein a script (Bloomie on Bloomie), Cory Booker ("The handsomest mayor West of the Hudson") and The Observer ("It's OK when you needle somebody else, but not me.")

- Michael Shannon confounds half the party with his celebrity status. "What famous person is that?" we are asked more than several times. We finally after give up and refer them to Boardwalk Empire after several of our "the Future General Zod" joke receives blank stares.

- Nick Denton refuses to take photo with Rupert Murdoch because it's "too obvious."

-Chuck Close: I love the Observer almost in spite of myself. At first it was a guilty pleasure. When I go to Europe and can't read you, I get really upset.

- Mayor Cory Booker meets Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s press secretary/Girls actress Audrey Gelman. Mr. Booker finds a way to bring the conversation back around to Star Trek.

- Game Change’s Emmy-winning screenwriter Danny Strong still getting recognized for his years on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But he's a good sport, and challenges fanboy to name the one episode of the hit show that was nominated for an Emmy. (Answer: "Hush.")

-Former editor Peter Kaplan begs off with the excuse that he is trying to wean himself off of anti-anxiety medication.

-Ronald Perelman: I love the publication! I think everybody here is great. I think this is the best collection of New Yorkers I've seen in 20 years!

- Jay McInerney inquires about the after-party; never shows up.

Jay McInerney at Observer's 25th Anniversary party. (PMc)

"Are you sure?" We prodded.

"Well," he amended. "In the sense that most [stories] are The Great Gatsby, then yes, I'm working on a book that's like The Great Gatsby." Currently involved in several projects--both fiction and non--the author cited Fitzgerald as a major influence on his (and most people's) writing style. He also mentioned that he had once spoken in a PBS documentary about Fitzgerald. Not mentioned was the fact that he has written on the subject several times, or that his novel The Last of the Savages was once compared to Gatsby by The New York Times. (You can see why we'd be confused.)

"Is Brightness Falls also The Great Gatsby?" We joked.

He laughed. "Sure ... no, no. Maybe it is."

And before we could ask if he saw himself as more of a Gatsby or Carraway, he had switched gears. "So, what do you think of that Baz Luhrmann adaptation?" he asked, referring to the summer release of The Great Gatsby movie.

"Oh, every generation has to have its own Gatsby," we replied. "Ours just involves more Kanye West music."

Screengrab. From left: Andrew Warren, Serena Marron, Peter Brant II, and Nick Gruber.

Friday, opening night at pop-up club Chez André at The Standard, East Village, found teenage dandy Peter Brant II and ex-porn star Nick Gruber, who was apparently taking a night off from writing a book and developing a TV show about his two-year relationship with Calvin Klein, on stage. The duo, joined at the mic by Andrew Warren and model Serena Marron, sang and mumbled their way through a live-band karaoke rendition of "Born to Be Wild." We have the video evidence. Arguably, it is the best version of the song ever performed. Arguably!

(And have the five grand a month to do so.)

Earlier today, Ellis took to Twitter to announce his East Village abode's rental availability: "My place in New York at The American Felt Building is available to lease. [..] Very cool building..."

If you've been looking for the perfect place to take out your ennui about your father by dreaming up psychotic investment bankers and writing 5,000 consecutive words on the merits of Genesis' "Mama," then this is the place for you. Of the apartment—located in a prewar building on 13th between 3rd and 4th, right below Union Square—Warburg Reality's site notes:

The apartment features maple floors, double sinks, 14' ceilings, oversized windows, and a washer/dryer. Building amenities include a common garden off the lobby and a roof deck. Topping it off is a private, exclusive, 400 square foot terrace. This is an open loft. There is no separate bedroom [Ed. Have you read the last few pages of Imperial Bedrooms? Have you?] - but lots of open space where you can live the life you love.

Sure, five grand may sound like a lot to live in 950 square feet right below what's essentially Manhattan's most prominent strip mall next to Herald Square, but the guy who inspired Victor Ward has probably been to this apartment at one point or another. If anything, you can always hit up the open house to gawk this Friday, June 15 (from 6 to 7PM) or on Sunday, June 17 (from 2:30 to 3:30PM).

If you do, by all means, we'd be fascinated to know what he left in the drawers.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Either way, Mr. Ellis isn't talking, but maybe someone could wring the truth from Brat Packer Molly Ringwald:

Gah, no! She is ruining our John Hughes' fantasy of the 80s! (We just hope she's referring to James Spader or something.)

Hitchens hadn’t even finished reading Brightness Falls—it was late afternoon and he was de-icing the silver cocktail shaker preparatory to some old-fashioned, feet-up literary immersion—when his telephone trilled its urgent summons. A brisk voice inquired in a friendly but more than just inquisitive tone what precisely he meant by “profiling” Jay McInerney and what, in any case, he meant by reviewing a novel before its official publication date. This was Hitchens’ first ever call from Gary Fisketjon—he knew of people who had waited in vain for such a call from such a one—and the emotions of flattery and curiosity contended for mastery in his finely but oddly chiseled features. Cupping the mouthpiece, he whispered to the languid presence of Carol Azul, the exquisite screen-writer and Angeleña tour guide who had recently enhanced his happiness and undergirded his waning bicoastal appeal by consenting to become his bride, “Angel, it’s Fisketjon.” “Sometimes, pussy,” she purred, “you do say the strangest things. And don’t get me wrong, but isn’t it the teensiest bit early for that martini?”

Girls, of course, often didn’t understand. Ruled as they were by tides and zodiacs, they found the filiations of power and influence and networking to be obscure and even tedious. (They also failed to see the fuel-bearing character and possibility of gin and vermouth.) This was going to be man’s work. Stalling the power call from Manhattan—Fisketjon cared so little for the nation’s capital that he had allowed McInerney to describe the New York-Washington shuttle as operating from Dulles airport instead of National: a typical piece of Empire State solipsism—Hitchens dialed Julian Barnes in his London snooker speakeasy. The trans-Atlantic static gave place to the gruff, authoritative tones which had, to the wonder of many, infused the playful lightness of Flaubert’s Parrot. “Call me collect one more time, Hitch,” he quipped, “and I’ll break your arm.”

“Listen, Jules, I need a soundbite. Your mate McInerny seems to have a lot of protection. His Roman is very good, but it’s not as much à clef as I’d been told. Please advise.”

“The thing to notice,” said Barnes, “is that Jay’s literary development is completely disconnected from his social curve. I think the real curve—the writing curve—goes steadily upward. Whereas in terms of the literary-social melodrama, he’s seen as someone with a terrific early success who then wrote two dogs.”

Random Location

Abandoning his drink-sodden attempt at a pastiche, Hitchens decided to give the thing a straight review. “Early success,” of course, puts one in mind of Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote a haunting passage by that name in which he said that those who had experienced it were touched by a unique grace, and would never quite lose the idea that somewhere there was “a great carnival by the sea.” Mr. McInerney’s critical interest in Fitzgerald is now quite highly developed, and his new novel revolves around a doomed Scott and Zelda pair who strive for different kinds of happiness during the pseudo-gilded age that was the moral squalor of the Reagan era.

Russell and Corinne are a sort of coalminer’s canary couple. People watch them, in other words, as if they were a gauge or register of how the career and marriage mixture is working. Russell’s place of work is described as being “located in one of those interstitial regions of the city which until recently had been nameless . . . south of midtown but not properly downtown.”

“Haphazard might be a word for this placement. “Random” might, perhaps, be another. Julian Barnes may be right in decoupling Mr. McInerney’s fiction from his life, but anyone who knows the publishing racket is still going to be spotting the members of the real-world literary bestiary. There is what could be a misprint in my copy, where a reference is made to the industry of “Proesy and pose.” Mistake or not, it ought to stay in. Here we meet cynical ex-radicals on the make, Jewish paranoid belletrists who spend a Borgesian life-time constructing unreadable fictional labyrinths and cool black dudes who lend cred, absorb the diss and split the diff. Also, since this is set in the age of the arbitrage casino and the reign of funny money, there are some lycanthropic Bonfire ingredients lying combustibly about the place.

The public clef therefore organizes itself around the general rancid hubris of the 1980’s, with a rather stilted nod or obeisance to matters like the Tompkins Square homeless and the parallel immiseration of whatever we agree to call “the less fortunate.” Corinne, Russell’s wife, is the one who cares about all this while working on Wallstrasse, so it takes a while for us to realize that she is a venomous pain in the ass: “Corinne was getting so tired of parties: dinner parties, birthday parties, publication parties, housewarming parties; holiday and theme parties . . . ”

This, with its semiconscious echo of Nina in Vile Bodies, makes us wonder what may come to be the point of the divine Corinne. She likes to kvetch about how Russell is too pooped to screw, but she also wants to make murmurous noises about motherhood. This parallel narrative, with its awful acuity about what happens when, as Shakespeare has it, you may discern a hot friend cooling, is the major rather than minor clef in the story. In other words, private miseries in obscure places—a desperate friend’s room is described by Mr. McInerney as looking “like a campground that has been worked over by bears”—play out much better than public faces in public places.

Still, there are some good period and contemporary insights. I clapped my little flippers together and exclaimed in praise when one of the characters observed that: “If figures of speech based on sport and fornication were suddenly banned, American corporate communication would be reduced to pure mathematics.” In general, though, the epochal context is mannered, and plays to what people already believe themselves to know. Bernie Melman, the fat, vulgar shark and LBO artist, is a no-sweat portrait to anyone who has gone so far as to see Danny DeVito in Other People’s Money. The depiction of little-mindedness in male-female and husband-wife teasing and nagging, however, belongs to all ages.

These two tracks of the story never quite converge well enough (except insofar as spouses are famously jealous of the loved one’s work life) and have some trouble finding their resolution. The phony Jewish “novelist” is merely killed off after the joke about his circular productivity has worn thin. A tremendously charged French babe is introduced, shoes high promise of giving Russell a hard time, and disappears. On some sun-drenched Caribbean hell-spot where they go for running repairs, Corinne promises Russell some quality time and the blowjob of a lifetime and then apparently forgets all about the idea. I myself—do you ever feel like this?—have a tendency to resent plot-teasing of this sort.

In its public dimension, the story is building toward the Big Crash of junk money, and the parallel or related eclipse of the epicene “mutual friend” Jeff, who has the faculty of being adored by men and loved by women but who has a better idea, namely chemical and narcotic self-destruction. Again, the end of poor old Jeff is more affecting by far than the stripping bare of the poor old asset market. And let’s hope for everybody’s sake that the scenes from rehab life are not drawn from anything but the literary imagination.

‘Perfect Pitch’

“Notice,” said Julian Barnes, “how Jay has perfect pitch. His ear is almost infallible.” Especially in the mature repartee this is true, and in the in-your-face exchanges between Washington Lee and both his white-boy friends and homeboy critics hilariously true. Mr. McInerney knows that gross expectations lead to gross encounters, and he can let the characters trip over the fact themselves without too much rib-nudgings. I understand that he once gravely disappointed a wife of his, and if this is so then I am impressed by the way in which he can write from the wounded female’s point of view. Now that does make a call upon one’s pitch, to say nothing of one’s perfection . . .

Ignoring, or perhaps better say resisting, a heavy-lidded glance from Carol Azul, Hitchens gave the silver shaker a gelid twirl. Encouraging sloshing noises proceeded from within (from within the shaker, that is). “Look here,” he said grandly to Fisketjon, “I can’t believe you’re holding this book until June. I bet it’s in the stores before then. But if you do have time, let me save you from a blunder. Victor Propp the fraud is described as being in his 60’s and also as having a father who claimed descent from Isaac babel. Now if Babel had lived he could still technically be alive, so if you’re going to make not one but two learned references to Russian Jewish letter, you had better . . . Hullo? Hullo? Hullo . . . operator?

This year the Rita Hayworth Gala will be held Tuesday, October 25 at the Waldorf Astoria. Since its creation the annual  gala has raised over $31 million dollars for Alzheimer's care and research. Somers Farkas will receive the Rita Hayworth Award this year for her outstanding contributions to the cause.

IN 2008

By my dad.

I had just been laid off after the literary agent I worked for was poached, but was lucky enough to find a job and not have to file for unemployment only days later. In the interim between paychecks, however, I’d be broke.

“Well, you’ve got those coins lying around,” he suggested.About ten years prior, as a bar mitzvah present, a relative gifted me with an ounce of gold in Australian Roo coins. I had two options: I could borrow the money I needed and pay it off, or trade my father the coins to sell (or do whatever he wanted with them) for the best price I could get quoted.

I needed drinking money. I didn’t need Kangaroo Coins. Who the hell did? Not the 23 year-old who responded:

“SAHARA COINS in Vegas off of Sahara and Teneya. $862.89.”

The email came back:

“Consider it sold--Love, Dad.”

On January 14th, 2008—the next day—gold broke $900 for the first time.

In March, it would break $1,000.

A little over three years later, gold has come close to doubling what it was when I sold it for a bunch of cab rides to Brooklyn, a nice dinner or two, a pair of jeans, and some truly awful nights at the Cherry Tavern. On July 23rd, 2011, gold broke $1600. As of this writing, it’s at $1637.50.

Maybe it’s time for Dad to sell.

“GOLD AIN'T LIKE NOTHIN' ELSE,” Dennis Gartman—famed trader, economist and author of The Gartman Letter—explained over the phone from Suffolk, Virginia.

“Whatever it is, for whatever reason, it is embedded in the DNA of human beings to admire and hold gold. And if you try to ascribe rationality to gold, you’re wrong.”

And what Gartman characterized as irrational human admiration appears to be at an all-time high. Gold prices are rising and may continue to defy the typical physics associated with the success of any asset like it. As long as the market continues to believe in its intrinsic value.

What was simply a Wall Street go-to inflation hedge—or: an investment that theoretically protects against the decreased value of a currency, like the dollar, which has seen better days—has become a pop investing phenomenon. It’s of interest to people who could care less about the goings-on of Wall Street, many of whom can barely distinguish a stock quote from a stock recipe.

And inasmuch as media enthusiasm is a barometer for investment popularity, the headlines have been accumulating faster than a goldbug at the end of a rainbow. A May cover story for the yuppie-centric New York Times Magazine detailed a surveyor: “Gold Mania in the Yukon,” was the headline. On the cover: “The hunt for the world’s most primitive form of wealth starts here.” An April headline from the front page of the Wall Street Journal: “World is Bitten by the Gold Bug.” On Monday, in the Accessories section of Women’s Wear Daily: “New High for Gold Prices.”

Gold even had its own celebrities now, the kind less famous for their investment ideas than they are their mugs. For a period of time, Glenn Beck so relentlessly shilled for the yellow stuff both on his show and in commercials for consumer gold trade-in service Cash 4 Gold that it merited a December 2009 segment on The Daily Show. This was almost a full calendar year after Cash 4 Gold purchased a 30 second ad during—what else?—the Super Bowl.

It was the same month the Journal reported on a woman named Margaret Petrucell, the founder of It’s a Gold Mine Party, LLC. In the great tradition of Tupperware and Mary Kay and Avon, suburban housewives were having parties to sell their gold and walk away with shopping money. The founder, who before starting her business, was laid off by Goldman Sachs’ mortgage division, joked that “What happens at a gold party stays at a gold party.”

But it doesn’t. If anything, gold mania has spread like a contagion.

A few months ago, at a small fete for Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s new book, the party’s host, Bright Lights, Big City author and Manhattan gadabout Jay McInerney—swaying about in a white tuxedo jacket—joked to The Observer that he had started his own hedge fund. “I think I’m just going to be a goldbug!” he said.

In the unlikely event Jay McInerney was, in fact, a goldbug, he would have made a small profit in the intervening months. Same with Glenn Beck and Cash 4 Gold, or one of the many multiplying outlets you’ll find to sell off your gold like it, now with brick and mortar locations in strip malls across America. Even in Chinatown, among the district’s famously sketchy wares—the cheap, fake approximation of Prada clutches and rainbow-stamped Louis Vuitton bags—there are signs that note in flashy capital letters WE BUY GOLD. In late May, Utah legislators frustrated over federal economic policy legalized the use of gold and silver as currency. From uptown to Chinatown to Provo and beyond, everyone’s going for the gold. And it seems that anything the economy does could potentially be good for it.

“Everything through the gold window is like a house of mirrors,” said CNBC reporter and NetNet editor John Carney. “If because of the bad economy it looks like we’re headed towards a period of deflation, that should be bad for gold. But it could be good for gold. We’ve been in a period for a while where everything is good for gold. “It’s actually a joke on Twitter,” he continued. “#BuyGold. ‘Rabid squirrel bites girl in town. Buy Gold!’ And literally, if you had followed that advice all along, you would’ve made a lot of money!”

“Gold has proven to be a superman investment. It can leap over buildings and do things that investments aren’t supposed to do. And it’s laughing at us.”

But there are some very un-funny implications. In 2009 at the Davos Economic Summit, Yale Economist Robert Shiller read off a checklist of Bubble Behavior, among which are: soaring beyond the economic and culture saturation point at which other hyper-inflated markets have crashed (check), sharp increases in value (check), envy-inspiring stories of those earning money among those who aren’t (check), and “new era” theories explaining why now is the time to get in (check). Despite all of this, gold has continued to rise.

And as a function of that, some people are still laughing their way to the bank.

Last November, David Einhorn—the Greenlight Capital wunderkind who started his fund with less than $1M and who just acquired a stake in the New York Mets (if that isn’t a sign of money to burn, what is?)—revealed in an interview with Wealthtrack that gold was the biggest position in his fund (Mr. Einhorn declined comment for this piece). According to the New York Times, hedge fund all-star John A. Paulson netted $5 billion in 2010 thanks to securities that represent a chunk of gold larger than the holdings of the Australian government or the whole of Bulgaria. Even after billionare George Soros shifted his position on gold this year, Mr. Paulson stayed the course, putting more money into AngloGold Ashanti, the world’s third-largest gold producer. Employee capital reportedly represents 42% of his Paulson Gold Fund, which deals exclusively in gold-related or gold-backed investments.

Even the great state of Texas—ever famously oil money—is bowing before the golden gods: the University of Texas Endowment Fund currently has somewhere under $1 billion of gold bullion stored in a New York City vault.

From Mr. Carney’s vantage point, the value of gold has been driven by the realization of its potential not just as a diversification asset, or an inflation hedge, but the inherent value it holds against shakier propositions.

“Gold isn’t subject to political currents. Even if someone makes a big discovery of gold, the size of the amount of gold in the world, that won’t affect the price, whereas if you take a discovery of something useful—like energy—it could hurt the price of other known sources of natural gas in the world. That doesn’t happen with gold. The price of gold isn’t a price of discovery,” he said, “but the size of demand.”

Which brings us to the unique creature known as the Goldbug—a being consumed by demand and unmistakable even in an already frothy market. That creature for whom there is one answer for light, life, and wealth in the universe: the yellow, shiny one. They move in packs, and can generally be found vehemently defending their sworn protector and source of wealth against anything that stands in its way. They sometimes sound unhinged.

“I am not a goldbug,” Mr. Gartman is careful to emphatically note. “I don’t like the goldbugs. I think they’re wrong. The goldbugs think the world is going to come to an end,” and some of them, he explains, are real “black helicopter folks.” But that hasn’t stopped him from owning gold. He just doesn’t have to be excited about it.

“It doesn’t make me happy to own gold,” he noted, “but the trend is up. Fight that trend at your own peril,” he explained.

Some have.

Warren Buffett, the king of value investors, would rather invest in a good company with solid yields than gold. He didn’t buy the gospel, telling shareholders at the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting this year in Omaha: “You can fondle it, you can polish it, you can stare at it. But it isn’t going to do anything.” (This of course caused Mad Money host Jim Cramer to go typically ballistic, calling Mr. Buffett a “grey-beard” investor, and asking why he wouldn’t “give other people a chance to make some money here”.)

Warren Hatch, a partner and strategist at financial research firm Catalpa Capital Advisor, published a position on gold’s long-term look on July 22, noting that the shiny stuff’s underlying look historically and in this instance isn’t so great. In speaking with The Observer, Mr. Hatch compared it to bubbles of past that should serve as more than obvious cautionary tales: “Gold isn’t going up because of a fundamental reason,” he noted. “Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Five years ago at a cocktail party, people more likely than not would’ve been talking about all the real estate they’re buying.” As for the apocalyptic theories, he conceded that “there are a lot of people who are lobbying more who want to go back to a gold standard, but that argument is completely separate from what gold prices are doing now. For that to even be seriously considered, we would have to be in a far different situation than we are today.” The odds of that happening, he explained, “are miniscule.”

Many of Wall Street’s major institutional investors were still reluctant to get in on it, explained Mr. Carney. “It kills them to think they’ve passed up a profit, but they’re worried that anything that’s gone up 200% over two years could go down 200% over two weeks. It doesn’t make sense that every piece of news is ‘buy gold.’”

Dennis Gartman agreed. “Ask the average Wall Street wiseguy if they’re bullish on gold. They’ll say ‘yeah, you gotta be, we got money problems [with the dollar].’ If you ask them how many hold gold? Very few,” which is where he sees a weakness and potential for an overvalued asset. “It’s a bubble in interest, not in owning. It’s fascinating: everybody’s bullish, but very few are long.”

If they are few, they are prominent, and as convinced of the value of gold as ever. Ben Davies, CEO of London-based investment fund Hinde Capital which maintains the Hinde Gold Fund—the core investment of which is physical gold in a Swiss bank—sees gold hitting $2,000 in four months, and then some. To him and others like him, it’s not just an inflation hedge, but a way of life you’ll soon be adopting.

“This will go beyond popular culture,” Mr. Davies wrote over email from London. In his writings, he didn’t sound apocalyptic. In fact, he was frighteningly, cuttingly rational in his thinking.  The way he saw it, the global economy was in a transitional stage, a maturing phase, the same way one’s voice got deeper as they got older. There were no apocalyptic undertones, but there was a distinct New Age-y feel. “The internet reformation has reconnected individuals with the truism that ‘the desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and knowledge.’ Sounds earnest, doesn’t it? Well,” he wrote. “it’s meant to be—a sound monetary system based on gold is not subject to confidence of the faith and credit of anyone.”

“It cannot be printed or subject to some (mis)interpretation of accounting rules. Neither is it subject to bankruptcy of banks or governments. The physical is not subject to the rules and subversion of exchanges, regulators, ratings agencies or clearing systems ... Money is a serious business, and gold is money.”

For all of the mystical intonations, he was simply saying that it’s not a fiat currency.  As Mr. Einhorn cracked wise in November, gold is “the one kind of money [Fed chairman Ben] Bernanke can’t print more of.” So where is it going?

For Mr. Davies, nowhere but up. Gold being celebrated at cocktail parties, “whether for the right or wrong reasons, is not signaling an end, but a beginning.”

Mr. Carney is less sanguine. “Pigs get slaughtered,” he said.

And Mr. Hatch even more so. “It’s going to be a textbook example of the Greater Fool theory: when the price of something becomes divorced from its underlying fundamentals, and the reason the price is going up is because you can find someone else who’s willing to pay a higher price for it. What you’re doing is finding a greater fool than you to buy it. And eventually,” he said, “the fools run out.”

At one point in our conversation, Mr. Gartman stopped me. “Write this down,”

He grew quiet.

“Gold will stop going up when it does,” he exhaled. “That’s it. That’s all there is to know.” Okay.

As for Dad, it was unlikely that he was parting with the Roo I sold him anytime soon--but not because he was pursuing a new career in gold speculation. “Your dead cousin gave it to you,” he said. “It’s a keepsake.”

It was as good a reason as any to go long.

fkamer@observer.com |@weareyourfek

Mr. McInerney recalled early memories of Ms. Bushnell, back before her Observer column made her rich and famous: "She was always the funniest person in the room! I couldn't predict for sure that was going to lead to international fame. I used to take her home at 3 a.m. and carry her up the stairs to her walk-up apartment!"

And what of Ms. Bushnell's new tome? "I don't think it was really written for me," he said, then backpedaled. "I'll read it, but it's a young adult novel!" He might want to, as a youthful version of a Sex character supposedly based on Mr. McInerney appears in the book. "I'm flattered to be a source of inspiration for someone as astonishing as Candace," he proclaimed, going on to lament those who take issue with being a source of literary inspiration. "I can't tell you how many people have dined out on saying that I've based this character on them and then somehow bitching about how I didn't get it right. Frankly," Mr. McInerney poked the Transom in the chest, "I think most journalism is more full of shit than fiction is."

Asked how his life at The Wall Street Journal as a wine columnist is working out, Mr. McInerney laughed: "Beats having a real job!"

At one point, a distinctive smell wafted by. "The pot-smoking section's on the other side of the balcony if you want to check it out," Mr. McInerney noted helpfully.