Michael Caine: Will do anything for $10 million. (PMc)

Has everyone read Melena Ryzik's crackerjack profile of prolific actor Sir Michael Caine in The New York Times? It's pretty great! He explains his "eye trick" for looking at both a camera and subject simultaneously, the weird back-story he made up for Alfred in Nolan's Batman series (though it's pretty inconsistent, since he talks about Bruce Wayne meeting Alfred in a military mess hall, when we all KNOW that Alfred has been with the Wayne family since before Bruce was born, no d'uh), and how he slept with all of Hollywood and everything before falling for his wife after seeing her in a commercial for Maxwell Coffee.

But there was one specific quote of Caine's, seemingly benign, that made us believe both he and the Times were in on the most famous joke about the actor.

The last line of the piece ends with Sir Michael Caine talking about his future roles. "For $10 million I’ll do a movie. But nobody’s offered me that yet. I look at e-mail every morning to see."

Which reminded us of this ubiquitous British joke that actor Cary Elwes told during a Loveline episode in 2004, when he was promoting Saw.
(Clip starts at 1:02)
http://youtu.be/maHAQdl4CvY

Cary Elwes: One day his agent calls him and says "Hey Michael, I have a script for you."
And Michael said, "Oh yeah, what's it about?"
And the agent says, "Well it's about a million dollars."
And Michael went, "Right, I'll do it!"

Obviously, Sir Caine has now moved that number up to account for inflation.

A man on the South Bronx's Park Avenue. (Lisa Rinzler)

We received a press release yesterday heralding the release of a new film. It read: "740 Park, the bestseller by Michael Gross, becomes Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream."

This struck us as odd because we had, in fact, heard about this documentary before, but described in a very different way: the famed building would be used as a foil for Park Avenue in the South Bronx, as a means of discussing income inequality in America. This had seemed to us like a very good idea. Not that we wouldn't also like to see Michael Gross's engaging social history become a movie (or an inspired-by Dallas-style TV show that would blow 666 Park and its many real estate inaccuracies out of the water), but that would be a very different movie indeed.

This was, of course, the same movie we had heard about, a movie that is described more accurately and evenhandedly, we discovered through some extensive googling, on the Independent Television Service website. But back to that first release and how its spin got under our skin.

To be fair, The Observer would seem to be the ideal recipient of such a release. We spend most of our time studying the habits, particularly the real estate purchasing habits, of rich people, mostly extremely rich people. We live in a glass house and we are standing here before you with a stone in our hand and we are going to throw that stone. But this isn't about us, or the movie, or any particular person. This is about systemic, structural and pervasive income inequality and how, even in promoting a movie about income inequality, it is all too easy to (and we're discovering this as we write this post) manifest the inequality between the rich and the poor.

See, we just did it by using the common construction "the rich and the poor." Why do the rich get to come first? Because they always come first? And we just did it again. Why didn't we ask the question of "why do the poor always have to go last?"

It's a good question. One that we hope director Alex Gibney's Money, Power & The American Dream will answer. To a degree, we suppose, the movie has already answered the question with its title. We feel a surge of excitement when we read that title, a surge we would not have felt were it titled Poverty, Impotence & The American Dream. We like action. We like bootstraps and pulling. We like to hear about it when people take things; most of us would like to be the kind of people who take things. Control, money, America!

Even if those people take too much and ignite our outrage, we still want to hear all about it. Who doesn't love a good, filthy rich villain? Which helps explain our worship and focus on the haves rather than the have-nots. We like to look at what the richest people have and do because we ourselves would like to be those rich people. And who knows, given the right lucky break we could be those rich people. We identify with the rich, even if they don't identify with us. The poor, well, who wants to identify with the poor? And no one aspires to poverty (although some do aspire to asceticism). It's the whole What's the Matter With Kansas problem.

In any event, the release for movie, which looks very good by the way, and which we have not yet seen, and which in aggregate with many other such movies might, we hope, change the way we see these things and through that, society, illustrates just what an uphill battle this will be.

First off, the release informs us that this movie is based off of Michael Gross's 740 Park, which is a favorite of this newsroom. The problem is that the movie is about inequality, so it's only partially based on 740 Park. The other half is based on Park Avenue in the Bronx. Which is a much larger and harder-to-describe in pithy press release terms. It does not, to our knowledge, have a definitive text written about it. And certainly not a bestselling definitive text. But we digress... the point is, we completely understand why this release is so 740 Park-centric, but there's something unsettling about promoting a movie about these two very different Park Avenues via a release that tells us, in the headline, it is about only one of these Park Avenues. The rich one.

The release goes on to tell us that the film focuses on three residents of 740 Park: Stephen Schwarzman, David Koch and John Thain, "and investigates the link between their great wealth and American poverty as represented by Park Avenue in the Bronx, which runs through the poorest Congressional district in America."

The rest of the details in the release focus on PBS's Why Poverty? "a multi-million-dollar series of films examining issues surrounding global poverty" rather than telling us more about the filmmaker's exploration of the Park Avenue no one ever talks about in the South Bronx.

To the filmmaker's credit, it's a fascinating juxtaposition, and displaying the connection between the divergent fates of the two Park Avenues is a big step toward lessening that divergence. The movie, as described in the ITVS write-up, is said to examine these very things. Wealth concentration means that one side of the story is almost always more engaging and easy to tell, with its big personalities and sexy properties, whereas the other side's story is harder to pin down and tends to be told in dull and wonky ways. But if you have a movie that, at least from everything we can tell, focuses on the latter as well as the former and at least attempts to do it well, why not celebrate that?

kvelsey@observer.com

"In this newly-created position reporting to me, Jed will be responsible for all ad sales and marketing for TIME, TIME.com, FORTUNE, FORTUNE.com, Money and CNNMoney.com, allowing him to harness the collective power of these tremendous brands to provide smart, creative and scalable solutions for our advertising partners across every print and digital platform," Todd Larsen, Time Inc.'s executive vice president and group president, wrote in a staff memo.

Full staff memo below:

October 10, 2012

To:       News and Business Group Colleagues

From:   Todd Larsen

Re:       Group Publisher

Mr. Amis.

A mediocre book by Martin Amis is better than most books by anyone else, but unfortunately, a bad book by Martin Amis is just as bad as any other bad book. And Lionel Asbo (Knopf, 255 pp. $25.95) is a bad book.

The mention on the cover of Mr. Amis’s previous masterworks—Money and London Fields—does Lionel Asbo no favors by calling to mind its better-realized predecessors. As in those books, the protagonist is a morally bankrupt, misogynistic menace to society—which for Mr. Amis is a promising start. Unfortunately, Asbo reads like a first draft of an Amis novel, before the linguistic pyrotechnics, trenchant wit and cosmopolitan insight have made it in.

Lionel’s surname is a play on the acronym for England’s Anti-social behavior order, a legal mechanism devised to deal with chronic disruptive behavior—things like repeated public drunkenness or playing music too loudly. The term morphed first into a verb—one could get “asbo-ed,” or more gratifyingly, “asbo” others—then became a noun once more; one could be “an asbo”—the British equivalent of “white trash.” Thus, Lionel Asbo is an asbo. You can see how clever that is.

The plot, as far as it goes, is fairly simple. A violent, ignorant man wins the lottery, becomes rich, is oddly adept at keeping and even making more money, and continues to behave badly. Meanwhile, his nephew Des is a well-meaning young man with journalistic aspirations and the desire to make for himself a livable existence with a normal girl. (There is some incest and mayhem thrown in, but it feels oddly incidental.)

Des and Lionel hail from Diston, a fictional neighborhood of council flats and housing estates where “nothing—and no one—was over sixty years old. On an international chart for life expectancy, Diston would appear between Benin and Djibouti (fifty-four for men and fifty-seven for women) ... In Diston, everything hated everything else, and everything else, in return, hated everything back.”

When Mr. Amis tells us that Diston is “a world of italics and exclamation marks,” it is an artful enough way to characterize working-class life and to elucidate the novel’s theme of class and language—and the particularly British nature of the relationship between the two, which Mr. Amis returns to repeatedly.

“Lionel pronounced ‘myth’ miff,” reads one passage. “Full possessive pronouns—your, their, my—still made guest appearances in his English, and he didn’t invariably defy grammatical number (they was, and so on). But his verbal prose and accent were in steep decline. Until a couple years ago Lionel pronounced ‘Lionel’ Lionel. But these days he pronounced ‘Lionel’ Loyonel, or even Loyonoo.” And later, “The first time he said brothel he pronounced it broffle, and the second time he said brothel he pronounced it brovvle.”

“I’m a wealthy man and it’s a worthy cause.’ Welfy, wervy.” We get it. You can take the chav out of the council estate, but etc. However, these linguistic signposts never seem to do anything other than remind the reader, over and over, that Lionel is lower-class. After about the 10th instance, it starts to be come unclear whether Mr. Amis is observing how language acts as a class indicator or if he’s actually using it as one. The whole thing gets a little “U and non-U,” and not in a self-aware way.

The most marked characteristic of Lionel Asbo is its joylessness. It doesn’t seem that Mr. Amis has any affection for his characters, even the despicable ones. In the past, real social monsters have been his forte. There is a palpable glee in his descriptions of Keith Talent’s infidelity and John Self’s alcoholic implosion. Lionel Asbo, in contrast, is a nasty enough creature—beating women, assaulting random passersby and drinking olympian amounts of liquor are among his pastimes—but there is none of the vivid squalor of those other louts.

As Philip Roth put it in his essay “Writing American Fiction,” “The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.” And while this is, of course, a persistent concern, Mr. Amis has in the past done reality one better on a consistent basis. It is apparent that the world has, by now, matched and surpassed his most squalid projections. While he is certainly a disturbing specimen, Lionel Asbo is less appalling than what one would see on, for example, The Only Way Is Essex, or even High Street on a given Saturday night, not to mention any one of thousands of places on the internet. To wit, at one point Lionel advises Des to check out some internet porn. “Des did, in fact have a quick look at Fucked-up Facials. And the site, he found, was accurately so-called: he had never seen anything half so fucked-up in all his life.” The thing is, Fucked-up Facials actually exists in reality, and that’s the problem. Mr. Amis has lost his ability to be predictive about the degradation of society and its actors, as he was with, say, the murderous house party of Dead Babies, the television addictions of London Fields, or any of the other depravities that made him the bard of the “new unpleasantness.” There can be no sense of foreboding when the worst has already come to pass. Here, one can almost imagine Mr. Amis bleating, “You kids get the hell on my lawn!”

The moral turpitude is rote, and the violence lacks the grinning menace of Mr. Amis at the height of his talents. Lionel Asbo is a daunted and tentative work that suffers from exactly the syndrome Mr. Roth diagnosed. The dulling of this edge may also be a function of Mr. Amis’s age, which he himself has acknowledged as a concern for a writer’s ability to corral the prevailing culture on the page. In a recent interview with New York magazine, he lamented, “Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing ... I don’t see many exceptions to that rule.” That he would so publicly point out such a thing in advance of his own highly anticipated book either indicates a man who is so confident as to believe himself immune, or one who is too anxious about his own diminution of powers that he can’t help but mention it. The latter seems more likely.

But the true problem seems to be his lack of interest in his subject. The book is subtitled “State of England,” but it’s exactly this that seems to have lost its hold on Mr. Amis.

In that same interview, he declared, “No one cares about what happens in London anymore.” This is a tough case to make, however, considering the recent deluge of Olympics coverage, and last year’s riots, as well as the 2005 bombings. And the catastrophic JP Morgan trade of last spring. The recent revelations about misreported financial statements by Barclays. And of course there is the constant battering of the public with news of the royals, their in-laws, the hats at Prince William’s wedding, Kate Middleton’s recent Vanity Fair cover, and the various comings and goings of Pippa Middleton and her world-famous backside. That no one cares about what happens in London anymore is simply a bizarre notion, and sounds like nothing so much as projection. No, it seems only Martin Amis doesn’t care what happens in London anymore. And you can tell from this bloodless book.

At one point, Lionel himself inveighs, “I love this f***ing country. It’s England, my England, for Lionel Asbo.” But perhaps no longer for Martin Amis.

bgallagher@observer.com

If you are a sentient human being, you have no doubt heard by now that tonight the New York Knicks are playing against the Miami Heat tonight, in Miami. This is basically a euphemism for "LeBron James and Jeremy Lin: The Title Fight."

It's exciting because LeBron James is a polarizing figure who people love to hate, or love to love because of all the people who hate him, and because Jeremy Lin is the most exciting thing to happen to the NBA since Ron Artest got beer all over him. Also, seeing as how LeBron James turned down both the New York Knicks and the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets to go to Miami, fans of Tri-State Area basketball have quite a bit invested with this. Figuratively speaking.

But for those who truly want to take something away from this evening, and the entire Jeremy Lin craze, which will reach a new level of fever pitch tonight?

Option A:

• BOVADA: Miami Heat -9.5.
• BOOKMAKER: Miami Heat -10.5.
• TOPBET: Miami Heat -9.

 
Basically everyone thinks Jeremy Lin and Co. are going to be used to mop the floor of American Airlines Arena , by somewhere from nine to eleven points. If you want to "short" the Miami Heat, well, mortgage your house, put it on the Knicks, and hope Jeremy Lin gets passed the ball enough so that they don't lose by 11 points or more.*

Option B: Buy some ridiculous Jeremy Lin gear on Etsy and vaccum seal it.*

Option C: Watch this game instead. Way more exciting, and Jeremy Lin isn't going to leave either team in a year for California after he gets sick of stupid New York Post headlines about him.

[*This is not actual investment advice.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Via Getty.

John Carney at CNBC's NetNet notes that, from what he hears, many at Goldman Sachs aren't exactly happy with what they're getting. It's ""really ugly," apparently. For example:

"One girl was actually crying, I think," a trader at Goldman said in a text message.

And:

"My number was so low I thought I was fired. My director had to convince me that the firm still wants me to stick around," said one person at Goldman.

Well, 99%: Are you happy now?! Look what you did! Someone is crying. Or they're just suppressing a huge grin:

"You don't want to walk out of your comp meeting with too big of a smile. People will think you took money out of their pockets," one midlevel Goldman employee said.

Briefly: Consider how waitstaff at restaurants often make minimum wage ostensibly because the meat of their salary comes in tips. This is how many an investment bank salary goes, except instead of making a bonus daily, they get theirs once a year, near the beginning of the new tax cycle (thus giving them a full year to come up with and catalog as many tax write-offs as they possibly can).

Investment banks didn't have the best year. Over at Dealbook, where they describe the bonus day process, they note Morgan Stanley, for example, taking the "drastic step" of capping their bonuses at $125,000 this year. As they explain, it wasn't always this grim: In 2006, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein raked in $68M for his Bonus Day takeaway. And yet, even on a bad day, some note that—hold on to your hathos—it's really not that bad.

"The worst fears haven't materialized. People are not receiving donuts. Base salaries aren't being cut. A lot of us thought it would be worse," said one person at the firm.

Like being burned at the stake by the quite-upset masses? Nope. Think they're just talking about not getting a solid bonus.

UPDATE: Bess Levin at Dealbreaker is hearing numbers. "First years: 40k annualized (base: 70k) Second years: 40-56k (base: 80k, 10k bump in August)."

Yup. Still making more than most of you their first year on the job.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Or at least any capital-m Money.

The New York Times Economix blog posted the results of combing through the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The survey compiled individual income data against each respective polled person's income. And guess who was at the bottom of the 25 most popular majors?

Well, that was actually "Miscellaneous Biology" majors, who are probably all P.E. teachers (no offense to our nation's great physical education specialists). But right above them:

English majors. Specifically, "English Language and Literature."

They were the second most popular majors: 1,938,988 of the respondents, exactly (the most popular major polled was actually Accounting, responded for to the tune of 2,296,601 undergrads).

Only 3.8% of the English majors were One Percenters; interestingly enough, only 3.8% of the One Percenters polled were English majors. Compare that to a degree like International Relations: 6.7% of those polled were One Percenters, but as only 146,781 respondents polled as International Relations majors, they accounted for only 0.5% of the One Percenters. But the Times did us the favor of noting the odds by profession of getting rich:

Newspaper writers and editors? One in 62.

Sounds about right, if actually quite generous. Might be time to decamp for the Golden State, as one in nine Hollywood screenwriters are one percenters, and one in fourteen television or radio writers are richer than everyone else, too. Next time the WGA goes on strike, you might want to keep in mind how healthy your reserve of empathy is.

The degree most likely to make you Rich People: Health and Medical Preparatory Programs, but only 142,345 polled graduated with Pre-Med degrees. They make up only 0.9% of Rich People Polled, which means it's among the least likely for you to choose.

So where's the money really at, then? Ask an economist. Literally. Economics majors were the sixth most popular among respondents, as they accounted for 5.4% of all the One Percenters polled. 8.2% of them were in the top 1% of earners, which means if you major in Economics and you're the betting type, you basically have a 8:100 chance of becoming a Rich Economist.

Wonder what the people who write the New York Times Economix blog majored in (and/or how bitter they are that they abandoned their original calling).

What the Top 1% of Earners Majored In [NYT Economix]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

And then you walk out $500 poorer.

Looking to spend a gratuitous amount of money at one place this weekend? Bundle assembled a list of the nation's most expensive clubs and, naturally, many are in New York and the Hamptons.

Topping the list is SL East, the glitzy Southampton destination made so guys with fat wallets can look desperately for a celebrity, or someone to dance with. It opened this June, and Russell Simmons came by on the first night. The study takes into account the bills and tabs dropped at SL East's previous incarnation, Lily Pond, in addition to sales made since Sl East opened.

What kind of money are we talking about here? Real money. Over the last year, the average tab at Lily Pond/SL East was $474, edging out New York's Provocateur by $30.

Other area clubs on the list include Dune (in Southampton), The Box, Riff Raff's, Greenhouse, The Griffen and Avenue.

Congrats, everyone!

(Joel Kimmel)

Besides being well-known, well-heeled New Yorkers, what do Henry Kravis, Jessica Seinfeld, Donald Trump, Lewis Lapham, Lizzie Grubman, Peggy Siegal, Nina Griscom, Ira Rennert and Nicole Miller all have in common? They don’t know it yet but Tiffany & Co. owes them money. How about Jerry Seinfeld, Matt Dillon, Michael Nouri, Sigourney Weaver, Julia Stiles, former Observer editor Peter W. Kaplan, Glenn Close, Joey Ramone’s heirs and Madonna? Cold, hard and abandoned cash from Walt Disney could be coming their way very soon.

Want more?

Unless they’re reading this, Thomas Pynchon has no idea about his unsettled account with Putnam Investments, Harvey Weinstein is similarly clueless about some buckaroos from Prudential Financial Services, Fisher Stevens, Ron Perelman, Mr. Seinfeld and Mr. Lapham are all ignorant about what Bergdorf Goodman owes them, and either Goldman Sachs neglected to tell its former big cheese, Robert Rubin, about a little handout or he’s pretty flush these days.

Same goes for Graydon Carter, who has a windfall with his name on it from Western Union Financial Services, a sum that’s been gathering dust since the days of 350 Madison. Condé Nast is also completely in the dark about 78 unclaimed funds, which is just another slice of a nearly $11 billion pie that New York State desperately wants to return to its rightful owners and heirs. You too may have a fortune waiting if you were ever too busy or lazy or forgetful to claim health insurance, interest and dividend checks; trust funds, mutual funds and mortgage insurance refunds; money from estate processes, savings accounts, utility deposits, a last paycheck before leaving a job, a rental security refund before moving.

According to the Office of Unclaimed Funds website, if there has been no activity in such an account for two to five years, the money is considered lost. State law requires banks, insurance companies, utilities and other businesses to turn over inactive holdings to the state comptroller’s office, which has acted as custodian of abandoned assets and property since 1943. Unlike Florida, which pockets lost loot after three years, New York holds the funds indefinitely.

“We don’t spend any of that money, and if anything we even give interest,” said Vanessa Lockel, a media rep at the comptroller’s office. “Sometimes it’s better than a bank, depending on the type of fund it is. If it’s a utility bill obviously, there’s no interest in that but there are interest-bearing accounts that are handed over to us, and they will continue to make interest for up to five years when we hold the account. So we’re not taking any cut out of it.”

And there’s no fee for this service! Not only that, Ms. Lockel’s department and regional reps do their best to get the word out with press releases and events around town where they hand out literature and put names into their database. At one recent event upstate, a man learned that had a claim worth $800,000. Not as easy as it sounds.

“Sometimes people say, Why don’t we do more marketing?” she continued. “We’re limited by tax dollars, our staff is limited, there’s budget cuts, as you can imagine, especially during this difficult economic time. So in order for us to promote the program we have to almost be patient and wait for the media to care.”

When pressed, Ms. Lockel estimated that perhaps 20 percent of New Yorkers had heard of the Office of Unclaimed Funds and a “very low number” knew of the website, which gets about 10,000 visitors a day, with 300 or so submitting claims. (About 70% of all claims are submitted via the web filing system, which started in March 2010 and has produced over 100,000 new claims, generating over $30 million.)

“New Yorkers tend to be busy,” Ms. Lockel explained. “They’re busy with their lives, doing what they’re doing, and we tend to sometimes be cynical, because I’m sorry, free money? You’re telling me there’s free money out there? O.K., yeah.”

She added that while most claims are under $100, some are in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Currently, the largest unclaimed account for an individual is $1.7 million. In 2008, $4 million was returned to an individual, from a stock claim.

I was down to my last $700 in July when I had a conversation with my friend Bruce Owen that changed my life and saved my neck. Bruce told our high school email group that he had just received a letter from Heirfinders Research Associates informing him that he owned 3,128 shares of stock now worth $37K.

After we mocked him for a while (“Dream on; that’s obviously a scam”), he plugged all our names into various unclaimed funds websites around the country.

“George, you may have some action yourself,” his next email read, followed by a link to a website. It turned out that Daimler Chrysler tried to send me a letter six or seven apartments ago. I’d forgotten all about this stock bequeathed by my grandmother in the early 1990s. “Don’t spend it all on pinball and beer,” she’d advised.

I filled out the requested info (name, current address, social security number, etc.) and imagined receiving a dividend check for $1.98. Another thought occurred: Bruce deserved more than a “Thanks, man.” He said he’d be delighted to take a cut, and he agreed to my offer.

“I’ll take 5% unless it’s a shitty dividend check.”

“Deal.”

Less than a week after I filed the claim, hundreds of dollars went missing from my checking account. Staring into space for half an hour, sensing doom, envisioning a return to dishwashing and caddying, I waited for my fiancée to return from Zumba class, then called an emergency meeting to discuss her extravagance and the tough times ahead for us.

We had barely enough to get by until her next payday, most of which would go to rent. Where had it all gone? Huh? Another Peter Hidalgo dress from the Dressing Room?

She stormed outside but then returned seconds later with a big smile and stack of mail. “We have three checks from the government!”

Hers was for $159, something from her health insurance provider in the late ’90s.

After tearing open my first check, I began to tremble. There were four figures. It couldn’t be. The timing, right after our money chat, was too bizarre.

“How much is it, how much is it?!” she shrieked.

A lot. The second check wasn’t bad either. But we didn’t rejoice, jump and down, and hug each other. We sat in silence, unable to process this miracle. It was like an O. Henry story or winning the lottery. No, it was divine intervention.

After the initial shock wore off, we allowed ourselves to feel pretty good about things.

Then cynicism kicked in. Were these real checks? Were they sent by identity thieves buying some time after having snatched my Social? Was this a prank committed by my email group, like in Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July, when Dick Powell’s co-workers trick him into believing he’s won a coffee slogan contest’s first prize of $25,000, which he wants to use to support his mother and marry his girl?

“Of course they’re real. They’re state-certified checks with a hologram,” my fiancée insisted. “Let’s go to Blue Ribbon or Peter Luger!”

Skepticism and paranoia prevailed. Making the deposit at Chase, I worried I’d be apprehended and charged with counterfeiting. Instead, the JP Morgan Chase checks were happily accepted and $5,587.70 was made instantly available. Like magic, our net worth had increased 11-fold. I felt like a newly minted multimillionaire in the big leagues.

My high school e-mail group wondered what I was going to do with the five large. “Ibiza!”

Bruce, gracious as ever, declined his finder’s fee (“Keep the Benjamin”). I sent him a documentary about Luna and a great memoir by the band’s leader, Dean Wareham. (Luna’s other genius guitarist, Sean Eden, has an unclaimed fund from Broadcast Music, Inc.)

The next day, while plugging in rich, famous New Yorkers’ names into the magical website (http://www.osc.state.ny.us/ouf/index.htm), and noticing that almost every other one had some lost money, a bright idea occurred: Hey, maybe I could shake ’em all down for 5 to 10 percent? I would donate a portion of the commissions to KittyKind rescue and adoption, and the rest would go to resuscitating Manhattan nightlife. Tracy Westmoreland (who has an unclaimed fund) would receive a stipend for his bar, Siberia. So would Mars Bar’s owner Hank Penza, Bungalow 8’s Amy Sacco (who has an unclaimed fund) and the Beatrice Inn’s Paul Sevigny (whose sister Chloë has an unclaimed fund). Then I’d help reopen Ruby Fruit and the Village Idiot, my fiancée would get her two-bedroom, two-bath apartment and perhaps we’d have a lavish wedding reception on Liberty Island, with Van Halen and Luna playing.

I called Ms. Lockel at the comptroller’s office, who told me it was perfectly legal to ask for a finder’s fee of 15 percent. Among those with unclaimed funds I planned to contact were Jay McInerney, James Gandolfini, Alec Baldwin, Sean Combs, Rudolph Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, Denise Rich, Gordon Sumner, Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, Tina Brown, Charlie Rose, Amanda Burden, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Lorne Michaels, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Conan O’Brien, Denis Leary, Marisa Tomei, David Dinkins, Liv Tyler, Larry Gagosian, Aby Rosen, Larry King, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Lou Reed, John McEnroe, Russell Simmons, Diane von Furstenberg, Richard Fuld, George Soros, Alfred Taubman, Tiffany Dubin, Roger Ailes, Dick Gilder, Billy Joel, Barbara Walters, Rosie Perez, Al Pacino, Lauren Bacall, Bianca Jagger, Isaac Mizrahi, Julianne Moore, Matt Lauer, Bernadette Peters, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell—along with Hearst, Dow Jones, NBC, CBS, ABC, and the Rockefellers, who must have at least a billion missing.

Then my better instincts returned. It was time to give something back and pay it forward.

I plugged in more names: family, friends, colleagues, subjects of flattering articles. Many did not respond to emails saying they hit the jackpot. Maybe they were in Venice or St. Tropez or just creeped out. Others pegged me for an identity thief or “spam.” One former mentor simply wrote “scam” and later, “Why are you trying to scam me and Jim?”

An old drinking buddy got testy. “No offense and very sweet of u, but don’t love a reporter knowing my biz, real or not, dear friend. Drop it?” he fired back after a second notification.

“I’m sure this IS a scam and you didn’t write this,” a gorgeous socialite author informed me. “No one replies to a directive requiring a ss #. Hope you’re aware of this e-mail use.” I tried to win her over. No dice. “Don’t believe any of it!” she snapped.

The next day she sort of apologized: “Thanks, George. Now I see it wasn’t a hacker using your name. Big hoo-ha on Channel 7 [about unclaimed funds] last night. XXX….My potential windfall is probably a $2.50 refund or gift from Saks. We’ll see.”

“Shut up! Like money that is owed to me?” asked a fetching young woman friend. “What inspired you to email me about this? How did you find that old address of mine?”

Gradually her emails become friendlier: “Is there a check waiting for me?...WOW you may turn out to be my hero!” Then she had second thoughts. “Is this your new e-mail? Aren’t you on Gmail?...I am cynical and suspicious but it isn’t April 1st, so I have decided to trust you…We shall see! Thanks George! I believe in you now. XX…This is totally awesome! I found all these friends of mine who are owed money. YOU RULE GG!”

Then she started looking up friends. Then she started contacting those friends about their sudden money: “My mother is the only person so far who believes me. My other e-mails have been met with silence. Hmmm.” (A week later she received a check for 67 bucks).

“Georgie! Did you send this?” a superrich goddess wrote back after being made aware of some abandoned assets that belonged to her. She forwarded a bogus email she’d received from an offshore bank in the Caribbean saying she was owed “millions of pounds,” which she equated with my missive. After some back and forth over the next week, and a chat with the comptroller’s office that confirmed that her claim was for real, she finally believed me. Now she was certain she really did have “millions” coming to her and offered me a “present.”

“Aww, that’s all right,” I told her. “You know, for the first time in my career I feel like I’m doing some good. But you can take me out to dinner.”

Jane Pratt (Getty Images)

Magazine impresario Jane Pratt did not speak at last night's tribute to her departed magazine, Sassy--despite the presence of marquee speaker Tavi Gevinson, the youthful dynamo collaborating on a future venture with Ms. Pratt (about which Ms. Gevinson spoke last night!). Per another speaker, Marisa Meltzer, "she was out of town on vacation" from her compelling duties managing website xoJane. "She sent a video."

What does it take to command Ms. Pratt's presence? Well, in a fifty-percent markup on the rate of the supermodels Ms. Pratt's magazines once disdained, Ms. Pratt doesn't get out of bed for less than $15,000.

We called the speaker's bureau representing Ms. Pratt and told her we wanted her to deliver a brief address to a small group a month from now, in New York. We were just interested in hearing about Sassy, we said, when asked if there were any alternate speakers in whom we might be interested. We were quoted a fee of fifteen grand--because Ms. Pratt is local.

That's fine, but can we choose her outfit?