What will Diane discuss?

Love:

"Barry has loved me unconditionally for 34 years."

Loss:

"I did leave him, and I went with other men, but they always ended up being jealous of Barry and not the other way around."

Location-specific lack of sex:

"In New York, we don't sleep together. I like it this way. It's my decision. Eventually, we'll get a place in the city together."

All this, and more!

In a feature by Kate Torgovnick headlined "Inside New York Chicken Pox Parties," we learn that, according to the article's subhead, "A growing number of New York parents are scheduling chicken pox playdates where kids share lollipops and trade germy pajamas to spread the disease and avoid vaccinations. But is it an ill-advised idea?"

Good question. Also, is it really growing?

You're Invited To Get Chicken Pox, The Today Show, March 21, 2007.

CHICKEN POX PARTIES. Kids spread the illness to avoid vaccine, by Tracy Conner, The New York Daily News, August 20, 2006.

Docs Pan 'Pox Parties', John Easterbrook, CBS News, September 30, 2005.

A Pox On Your House? Please Call! Chicken pox parties may be back in vogue, by Valerie Soe, The SF Gate, January 29, 2004.

The return of 'pox parties', by Hilary Shenfeld, The Daily Herald, January 14, 2002.

You're invited to: chickenpox party! (no gifts, please), by Dan Nephin, Associated Press, October 19, 2001.

The Chicken Pox Party (book), by Sharon Dennis Wyeth and Heidi Petach, Bantam Books, 1990.

The Chicken-pox Party (book), by Delia Huddy, Nicole Goodwin, Hamilton, 1973.

Boy with Chicken Pox Still Has Birthday Party, The Hartford Courant, June 1, 1964.

(Full disclosure: This reporter has had chicken pox.)

- Gender Bender: "More women are drinking, and the women who drink are drinking more, in some cases matching their male peers. This is the kind of equality nobody was fighting for," by Alex Morris, New York Magazine.

- Childless for 50 yrs, mother at 70: "Last week, Rajo Devi, from Alewa village in Haryana’s Jind district, became the proud mother of a baby girl — after 50 years of marriage. Rajo Devi became the world’s oldest woman — she is 70 years old and her husband Bala Ram is 72 — to have a child, thanks to In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF)," by Devendra Uppal, The Hindustan Times.

- Study Reports Anal Sex on Rise Among Teens: "Lack of Sex Education, Virginity Pledges, Ignorance Contribute to Risky Behavior," by Susan Donaldson James, ABC News.

- Bush is Back!: "Not in the White House. But thanks to the recession, women are skipping the Brazilian and finally growing a little hair down there," by Lisa Germinsky, Salon.

- Even in Recession, Spend They Must: Luxury Shoppers Anonymous: "Just because the sun is going down on the economy doesn't mean well-heeled women have to stop shopping. But it doesn't mean they're proud of it," by Ruth La Ferla, The New York Times.

- How Sexy is The Beast?: "Can Tina Brown salvage the dilapidated print news industry?" by Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry, and Teresa Valdez Klein, The Huffington Post.

A spokesperson for the Rose Bar told the magazine, "The Rose Bar is extremely vigilant in preventing smoking by our patrons. There is a full-time staffperson whose sole responsibility is to monitor and prevent smoking within the bar." But Page Six's Sara Cardace, visiting the bar on a Thursday, spotted several patrons puffing, and quoted other sources pointing fingers at celebrity-hosting places like Citrine, SubMercer, and GoldBar.

Mayor Bloomberg is either clueless or willfully ignorant, Ms. Cardace concludes:

But a rep for the mayor's office contacted via email by Daily Transom, had this to say:

Page Six's Jennifer Rose quotes a parent named Brett Hauser, who pays $395 for his 6-month-old son to take 10 sessions at The Language Workshop for Children saying, "Mandarin is the language of our future. With China poised to become the world's leading economy sometime this century, I'm doing the only responsible thing. It's like reading to your kid or making sure he gets all the right foods. I'm helping him prepare for his future. Thirty years from now these kids are going to be translating for all of us."

The magazine calls this phenomenon "NYC's New Baby Talkers."

Talkers, yes; new, no.

New York Parents have apparently been trying to teach their kids Mandarin via classes, nannies, au pairs, and other means for years to judge from a cursory search.

In March 2005, Alexandra Wolfe wrote about well-heeled kids learning Mandarin for New York Magazine because, according to one school's headmistress, "We were thinking, How do we prepare them to be citizens in a global economy?... I would argue that if they can say bonjour in French, they can say 'thank you' in Chinese."

In April 2005, Sarah Baxter of The Times of London also looked at this trend, quoting a parent as saying, "China is going to be the next great country in the world... We thought we should start to prepare her at birth for what will be the most important language in her lifetime." (Not surprisingly, this parent was a banker; Mr. Hauser, quoted by Page Six "works in private equity for an investment management firm.")

Germany's Der Spiegel also caught wind of this trend in January 2006, as did Crain's New York Business. The BBC also got in on the action, all of which prompted blogs like Daddy Types and Mediabistro's FishbowlNY to each cast a skeptical eye on the trend.

And yet, The New York Times kept it going in September 2006. And it wasn't just New York: The San Francisco Chronicle's Jill Tucker reported in April 2007 that kids were taking immersion classes in Mandarin, a story that CNN's Anderson Cooper also reported in June 2007.

By November of 2007 (that would be a year ago), The Economist had had enough, calling all of this a "False Eastern promise" and declaring, The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad.

Maybe. But it appears not to be going away anytime soon.

In the column, "Blood Dispute," it seemed as though Ms. Hearst was turning on her family's empire:

Yesterday afternoon, the Daily Transom received a letter from the socialite claiming that she never wrote the above statement.

Ms. Hearst ended her letter on a polite note, writing, "This was an amicable separation."

But Ms. Hearst has not yet learned that crossing Page Six always comes with consequences. In today's Post, Page Six published an item,"Lyin' Lydia," in which the editors of Page Six (the magazine) say that Ms. Hearst did not write her column herself--it was written for her as she was interviewed by a reporter who put her thoughts into "cohesive paragraphs." (There was never an "as-told-to" credit on the page.)

The Post claims that Ms. Hearst's exact words were: "They're having events every night and shutting down magazines. I think it's excessive . . . People should focus more on work. It's a lot more important than parties at the moment."

Then when Hearst canceled their Christmas party, Page Six went back to Ms. Hearst for comment and she emailed a reply: "I do think they should cut back on events, but it is a bit sever [sic] to cut back on the Christmas party, that's like the joke in the Scrooge films where the holiday parties and bonuses are canceled."

The magazine didn't run it because it seemed "too harsh" towards her family, and they felt they had to edit it out to "protect her." But now, as the item ends on a chilly note, "With Hearst falsely accusing her editors of fabricating, she no longer deserves such protection."  

But according to Guest of a Guest, Ms. Hearst says she never wrote the statement above, which prompted her to resign from the magazine.

Her letter to The New York Post:

Ms. Hearst's publicist had "no comment" for Daily Transom as to how Ms. Hearst statements were misinterpreted or rewritten to possess an entirely different meaning from what she had intended. Perhaps one reason that Ms. Hearst's column didn't seem entirely unbelievable was because the socialite often expresses her contrarian views in the press, disapproving of her peers. Then again, we're not so sure Ms. Hearst is the type to bite the hand that feeds her.

As "The Hearst Chronicles" come to an end, the Daily Transom has assembled some of the best of Ms. Hearst's work for the magazine below.

On the election (June 22):

On celebrity divorce (July 20):

On her skin cream (August 31):

You could've saved that dollar for laundry by reading most of the magazine's features in other publications. Here's a guide to how the Serpentor of weekend supplements was made:

Cover Story: Kerry Washington, by Suzanna Zuckerman.

Read instead: Party Girl in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, January 6, 2008.

Hot Fuzz: Why Full Beards Are In, by Joshua David Stein.

Read instead: Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol, by Eric Wilson, The New York Times, March 23, 2006.

Meet the Wagonistas, by Annie Karni.

Read instead: The Sober Bunch, by Tricia Romano in The Village Voice, May 23, 2006.

Stud on a Steed: Nacho Figueras, by Alison Rosen.

Read instead: They've Got Game, New York Magazine, August 11, 2002.

Power Playgrounds.

Read instead: New York's Big Backyard, by Helene Stapinski, The New York Times, June 6, 2008.

Food Fight!, by Beth Landman.

Read instead: It's Where You Sit, Not What You Eat, by Frank Bruni, The New York Times, September 10, 2008.

Colin Hanks, son of Tinseltown bigwig Tom, moved here from L.A. last year. In Sunday’s Page Six Magazine, the 30-year-old actor answers a few New York-centric questions, shedding light on a few of his favorite things.

Mr. Hanks, who lives in a “small but quaint” West Village apartment, has to endure lots of late-night noise from the bar downstairs. Sleeping through the drunken din is apparently no Biggie for the Orange County actor, but snoozing with the smell of bacon wafting in from a neighboring deli is another story. (His favorite city smell, admittedly “cheesy,” is that of Christmas tree stands during the holidays. His least favorite NYC odor: “the entire month of August.”)

We’d love to know the name of his neighborhood bodega, where with only $6 Mr. Hanks can pike up some “great” chicken and rice and a bottle of water. But when spending a little more on comestibles, he heads north to BLT Market for its “insanely good brunch.” Touting the joie de vivre of a real local, he says his favorite thing about the city is that “there are days when you start out bored, and then you end up doing something unexpected and cool.” What that might entail, however, is left up to the reader’s imagination.

Just when it started to seem like fresh book ideas from eager-beaver magazine assistants had all been exhausted, Anna Godberson burst upon the literary scene. The 27-year-old writer from Berkeley, Calif., who was an assistant to a literary editor at Esquire for four years after graduating from Barnard, has landed her new teen novel, The Luxe, on the Times best-seller list. Ms. Godberson’s novel, about a teen socialite at the turn of the 20^th Century, has allegedly attracted interest “from TV producers, leading to whispers that it could be the next Gossip Girl.”

There’s a new “Round Table” artists’ salon in town. But instead of meeting at the Algonquin, this too-cool-for-school crew—called Artistes Sans Hollywood-X—meets once a month at the West Village’s Pasita wine bar, where leader Cintra Wilson directs discussions on music, literature and art.

In Lydia Hearst’s column this week, the model-heiress writes that arguably-washed-up comedian Pauly Shore introduced her to the Russian and Turkish Baths on 10^th Street, where “People leave [famous people] alone and let you relax.” Her mother told her to cancel a TV news interview at a skating rink because “rinks are breeding grounds for infections.” And, finally, Ms. Hearst touts the wonders of Vichy skin crème, which keeps her from getting “wrinkles and cottage cheese.”

According to the “Sixometer,” the World Financial Center’s forthcoming Bob Dylan tribute concert on Jan. 12 is hotter than, in descending order: Daniel Boloud’s new wine bar; the BBC’s Planet Earth DVD series; designer cell phones; Barron Hilton’s naughty Facebook pictures; and the mass exodus of New Yorkers from the city.

“Six in the City”: Rumer Willis still has her credit card statements monitored by famous mother Demi Moore; Karl Lagerfeld dedicated his most recent collection to troubled musician Amy Winehouse, but Harvey Weinstein doesn’t even know who she is; Uma Thurman’s brother, Dechen, is apparently a “prominent Manhattan yoga teacher.”

“Discussions”: Former Gawker editor Emily Gould: “Just because some people can’t keep New Year’s resolutions doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make them.” Post fashion writer Danica Lo: “Offhand whims and overnight decisions rarely stick.”

Profile of Eva Amurri, daughter of Susan Sarandon, suggests that the recent Brown graduate is “ready to take New York and Hollywood—on her own terms.”

Page Six Magazine speculates on whether your neighbors like hearing you have sex or not.