Jazzy Forever
Jazzy is dead; long live Jazzy Jr. As Off the Record’s Sridhar Pappu reported last month, New York Post columnist Cindy Adams’ beloved Yorkshire terrier, Jazzy, died this past summer. But his memory persists, both in a new Saks Fifth Avenue boutique and in the name of Ms. Adams’ replacement dog, Jazzy Jr.
“He meant everything to me. So that’s why I am continuing his name-in his memory,” Ms. Adams told The Transom.
On Nov. 9, from 1 to 5 p.m., Saks Fifth Avenue will celebrate the opening of its eight-floor Jazzy Couture boutique with “Jazzy on Fifth,” a street fair for pet owners and their pets. According to the press release announcing the shindig, it “will mark the first time a city block was closed for a dog-related event”-including the lane of traffic on Fifth Avenue closest to the department store. And if you wonder how Ms. Adams pulled off such a feat, you’ve never seen Mayor Bloomberg cowering in her presence.
But that’s beside the point. Open to the public, the street fair will feature hot dogs, cotton candy and artists sketching portraits of people with their pets. On sale will be select items from the Jazzy Couture line of upscale pet apparel, carrier bags, ceramics and accessories. Among the items that will be featured in the Jazzy boutique (though not necessarily at the street fair) are doggie sparkle tees with removable marabou collars, a leather doggie trench coat and a leopard faux-fur jacket. (A part of the proceeds will benefit the ASPCA.)
The center of attention at the street fair will no doubt be Ms. Adams and Jazzy Jr., the Yorkshire who replaced the original. Although the press release makes no mention of the fate of Jazzy, Ms. Adams told The Transom that Jazzy, who would have been four in September, “was with his trainer in the country” near Albany “when he suddenly started to lose everything. He was throwing up, bleeding, everything.” He died on Aug. 17. Ms. Adams declined to name the trainer because “I don’t want to put this heavily on her”-but, she said, she did have an autopsy performed, and the results showed that Jazzy “had E. coli in his system.” However, Ms. Adams added, the medical examiner’s reports offered no answer as to how or where Jazzy might have ingested the bacteria. “It’s something that does not give me any closure,” she said.
Ms. Adams said that not only was she devastated-“I was sucking my thumb for two months”-but so was Juicy, the Yorkshire terrier pup she had obtained as a playmate for the original Jazzy. “After I lost Jazzy, Juicy was upset,” Ms. Adams said. “She went under.” Ms. Adams didn’t explain what this meant, but she did say that “I had to get another puppy to annoy Juicy,” who is now 14 months old.
Enter Jazzy Jr., who, according to Ms. Adams, comes from the same bloodline as Jazzy and Juicy.
When The Transom asked Ms. Adams if the procurement of Jazzy Jr. had anything to do with the business venture behind Saks’ Jazzy Couture line, she replied: “No, no. The logo is there-Jazzy Couture. It’s like Lassie: There were 400 different Lassies. We have Dior, and Dior is gone a long time,” Ms. Adams continued. “This is doggie Dior: He’s going to have a couture line. And then there’s going to be Jazzy Cruise. I mean, have a little respect here.”
The original Jazzy entered Ms. Adams’ life unannounced, as a bereavement present from New Millennium Press co-president Michael Viner following the death of her husband, comedian Joey Adams. The Evian-lapping Yorkshire later became the subject of Ms. Adams’ 2003 book, The Gift of Jazzy.
Ms. Adams said she has recovered enough from her loss to write about Jazzy, Juicy and Jazzy Jr. in a Post column that will probably appear on Friday, Nov. 7. She also said that she wouldn’t be seeking any kind of legal redress over Jazzy’s untimely death-an interesting decision for someone who announced at her husband’s memorial service that she would “never forget” those who had not done right by her Joey.
As the gossip columnist explained, however, proving any kind of negligence regarding Jazzy’s demise would be near-impossible. For another: “What you can get back only is the price of your dog. I don’t want that. I want my dog,” Ms. Adams said. “So there’s no litigation. There’s just my tears.”
-Frank DiGiacomo
De Niro Shuts Hudson
Robert De Niro has closed the olive curtains for good on Hudson Lounge, his Tribeca bar at 116 Hudson Street. “All I can say is that we are no longer open for business,” said one of the lounge’s operators, Ken Jowdy. The nightspot, which opened in the summer of 2001, closed sometime during the last week in October, not long after press reports that Mr. De Niro had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Although it’s unclear what will become of the space, Mr. De Niro-who recently tried to purchase a townhouse on the Upper East Side-doesn’t seem to have abandoned Tribeca. He owns the two buildings next-door, 112 and 114 Hudson Street, and is involved in opening a luxury hotel around the corner. Representatives for Mr. De Niro declined to comment on the closing.
-Alexandra Wolfe
It’s a Ghoul Thing
At the Oct. 31 Halloween Party at the Four Seasons, the most unexpected costume belonged to Martha Stewart: She came as Martha Stewart. Wearing a long black dress and a scraggly black wig, the crafty broad cunningly sported a paper-cutout mask of her face. In fact, she had two such masks-one on a stick and one with an elastic band-and the real chills came when she held up both. It was as if, like The Matrix’s Agent Smith, Ms. Stewart had replicated herself in triplicate.
“I addressed her as Martha because she was dressed as Martha, and then from behind the mask she said, ‘Bonsoir, mon ami,’ and I realized it really was her! Ingenious!” said restaurant owner Alex Von Bidder, who was in negotiations with union representatives for his staff up until five minutes before the party began. Indeed, he was fielding money-related questions from his staff throughout the evening; their contract was to expire at midnight, and there’d been talk of an impending strike.
But most guests were too busy comparing costumes to notice the management’s strife.
Partygoers included fashion designer Patricia Field, who was dressed as a large red-haired clown with pointy shoulder pads; Page Six’s Richard Johnson, wearing a polyester gangster-style pinstriped suit; and Kim Cattrall, who was dressed as something that involved pink hot pants and driving gloves. When Ms. Stewart, there with her publicist Susan Magrino, was introduced to The Transom, she wanted to know if we were a waiter. When she learned that we were something less helpful-the spooky media-she suddenly grew mute. We asked if she’d made the mask herself and a pantomime ensued, with a lot of nodding and pointing and a two-fingered motion that we think was supposed to represent scissors.
Then she held the mask so that we could see the top of it. It read: “Happy Halloween From Forbes.com.”
The mask, it turns out, was one of five downloadable ones that Forbes posted on its Web site last year. The others were of former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers, former Enron chief executive Ken Lay, the frighteningly freckly former Tyco chief executive L. Dennis Kozlowski and former ImClone Systems chief executive Sam Waksal, whose biotech company is currently at the center of the investigation into Ms. Stewart’s alleged insider trading.
“This Halloween, Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster seem positively cuddly,” the site proclaimed. “To inspire some real fear, try dressing up as one of these current and former chief executives …. Now that’s scary.”
-Anna Jane Grossman
Quentin, Crisp?
Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino sounds a little nostalgic for the wild 1980’s. At least that’s the impression The Transom got on Oct. 30, while watching Mr. Tarantino frighten the usual crowd of beer-bellied sports fans or theater-going cheapskates in the dark and musty back room of McHale’s Pub on Eighth Avenue. Dressed in a red sports jersey, Mr. Tarantino was seated at a corner booth with two stringy-haired brunettes who were a shade below middle age. From 6:30 to 8 p.m. he held court, looking at the bar’s extensive-American, Italian and Mexican!-menu, flailing his arms wildly throughout dinner, reminiscing loudly about drugs in the 80’s and not letting his two companions get a word in edgewise. “Those were the days, man!” he belted with an ear-to-ear smile and a grand, open-armed gesture. “All the coke people did back then, and heroin-that was the height of it!”
-A.W.
Slip-Slidin’ Away
At playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman’s 35th birthday on Oct. 10 at the Slipper Room, actor Ethan Hawke wanted no room to slip. Mr. Hawke, who starred in Mr. Sherman’s 1993 Off Broadway play Sophistry and also co-founded the now-defunct theater company Malaparte with him, recently split with his wife, Uma Thurman, after reportedly cheating on her with a 22-year-old Canadian model while filming north of the border.
Nervous about being associated with any more lithe young things so soon after the break-up, Mr. Hawke ducked out of all photos at the party-even ones being taken by Mr. Sherman’s friends. One partygoer who was in a crowd that included Edward Norton and Sam Rockwell reported that Mr. Hawke could be heard saying: “Oh, man, I can’t get my picture taken with girls! I’ll get in trouble with the press!”
-A.J.G.
Fear of Fattening
“I’m huge!” author Molly Jong-Fast told The Transom on the evening of Nov. 1, as she plopped down in a plush chair at the New York Palace. Ms. Jong-Fast, the 25-year-old daughter of Fear of Flying author Erica Jong, had just exchanged vows with Matthew Greenfield, 39, an assistant professor of English at the College of Staten Island, and she did indeed look rather large and a little uncomfortable in her white lace strapless gown. But there was a good reason: The bride is expecting her first child-a boy who will be named either Max or Elijah-on Jan. 15, which may have had something to do with her vehement refusal to be lifted in a chair during the traditional horrah dance, and with her decision to go barefoot during the wedding ceremony. But she slipped on green Puma athletic shoes during the reception. “My foot is now a size 12,” she said, pausing for effect. “These are all I can fit into! These, and Ferragamo’s. Uck!” Ms. Jong-Fast put her finger in her mouth and mimed gagging.
The wedding, which was planned by Claudia Hanlin of the Wedding Library, featured D.J.s playing klezmer music, black and white M&M’s (Matt and Molly, get it?) at each table and a Ron Ben-Israel–designed wedding cake created in the shape of a stack of great books, including As You Like It and The Odyssey. Another unintentional part of the cake’s appearance were a number of tiny indentations that resulted from numerous wedding guests poking their fingers into the eight-tiered wonder to determine whether it was really made of just frosting and cake (it was).
Ms. Jong-Fast, a freelance writer whose novel Normal Girl (Villard, 2000) is currently being adapted for film by Bret Easton Ellis, is the only child of Ms. Jong. Her father, divorced from Ms. Jong since 1983, is science-fiction novelist Jonathan Fast and the son of the late, renowned author Howard Fast, writer of Spartacus. As might be expected, a bevy of writer types were among the wedding’s 330 guests, including Naomi Wolf, Daphne Merkin, Anne Roiphe and Joan Collins, who looked like her taut author photo come to life. Singer Judy Collins, a family friend, wore what appeared to be pink silk Chinese pajamas and serenaded the couple during the ceremony.
Talking to The Transom via cell phone two days after the event, Ms. Jong-Fast discussed the evening. She and Mr. Greenfield had taken an early honeymoon-with their parents-over the summer, and she was spending her first weekday as a wife doing grand-jury duty downtown.
“Someone asked Joan Collins if she was Judy Collins’ sister!” she said. “She didn’t think that was funny.”
She then mentioned another wedding guest, doe-eyed actress Sophie Dahl. Ms. Dahl and Ms. Jong-Fast attended Trevor Day School together-the same Upper West Side school whose principal was arrested last week after being charged with pedophilia.
“I was just so shocked,” Ms. Jong-Fast said, “by how bad he looked in his mug shot! I mean, in comparison, Lizzie Grubman looked gorgeous!”
Ms. Jong-Fast is currently at work on a memoir called Sex Doctors in the Basement, which is more or less about growing up as the daughter of the woman who invented the term “zipless fuck.” If Ma Jong had had her way, her strawberry-blond daughter would have done the vow-exchanging between contractions.
“She thought it was so adorable that I got pregnant-she was two and a half months pregnant when she married my dad,” Ms. Jong-Fast said. “But she wanted me to be even more pregnant at the time of the wedding. She thought it would’ve been even cuter.”
-A.J.G.
Pretty in Pink Onesies
Molly Ringwald, the Titian-tressed 35-year-old actress best known for being a Titian-tressed 16-year-old actress, is now a mom. On Oct. 22, Ms. Ringwald gave birth to a girl, according to her agent, who reports that both mother and baby are healthy and resting at home. Although the baby’s hair color was not disclosed, her name is Mathilda Ereni Ringwald Gianopoulos, which is about one syllable for every year since Mama Ringwald has had a hit film. Last year she starred with Christopher Lloyd in The Big Time, a TNT made-for-TV movie, and in Broadway’s Cabaret.
The baby’s father is Panagiotis (Panio) Gianopoulos, a swarthy, handsome editor at Bloomsbury U.S.A., where he edits J.T. LeRoy, among others. Mr. Gianopoulos is also an aspiring novelist and has written both fiction and nonfiction about sex for Nerve.com. Earlier this year, his nonfiction work earned him a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. In the late 90’s, he was an editorial assistant at Talk. “He was extremely outgoing and smart, very outgoing and popular,” said his former boss there, Jonathan Burnham, now president of Talk Miramax Books.
The star of many of the 1980’s iconic John Hughes films, including Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, Ms. Ringwald spent most of the 90’s living in France and was married from 1999 to 2002 to French novelist Valery Lameignere.
Ms. Ringwald and Mr. Gianopoulos declined to comment, but earlier this year Ms. Ringwald announced to the press that she and Mr. Gianopoulos have dated since 2001 and have no immediate plans to marry.
“I think I’ll go the Susan Sarandon– Tim Robbins route,” she said.
-A.J.G.
All-American Trannie
On Oct. 30, Montblanc North America’s dapper chief executive, Jan-Patrick Schmitz, stood on the promenade of Rockefeller Center, at the unveiling of the public art exhibit commemorating the opening of the company’s flagship store on Madison Avenue and 57th Street. “Montblanc pens have been used for decades to sign contracts, make laws, hire people, fire people,” he said in his refined European accent, before popping the cork on a bottle of Krug champagne. “They’re used by world-renowned writers, famous politicians …. ”
At the opening that day, however, there were no heads of state extolling the virtues of Montblanc penmanship, no Richard Holbrookes or Norman Mailers signing autographs with snow-capped pens. Instead, crawling on all fours in front of the row of six larger-than-life shopping-bag displays was transsexual Amanda Lepore, the “muse” for David LaChapelle, one of the exhibit’s artists.
Mr. LaChapelle’s shopping bag, All American, was one of six 10-foot-tall, 882-pound bags that Montblanc had commissioned for its Rockefeller Center exhibit, The Art of Shopping in New York. On the front of the bag was Ms. Lepore’s face, made to resemble Marilyn Monroe’s in Andy Warhol’s famous silkscreen. On the other side was an enormous cheeseburger crushing her, leaving only her flailing legs peeking out from underneath. “My dream was always to work for Andy Warhol,” Mr. LaChapelle said, standing near the platform where his bag was displayed. “This bag is a tribute to him.” Ms. Lepore, in a snug black mini-dress, climbed down from the side of the bag, where she’d been posing for photographers. “Amanda has always wanted to be Marilyn Monroe,” Mr. LaChapelle continued. “She’s the Marilyn Monroe of transsexuals. She never wanted to be a woman in the traditional sense.”
As the artist stared admiringly at Ms. Lepore, she covered her exploding bosom with her black stole and tossed her platinum blond curls out of her face. “I was more into the idea of a woman, the drawing of a woman,” Ms. Lepore said through lips as big as bananas. Then, in a voice even deeper than Mr. LaChapelle’s, she added: “I’m the ultimate fantasy of a girl.”
Ms. Lepore pranced past the isolated clump of Montblanc execs, who looked like they had just walked out of Sulka to the other side of the promenade. Mr. LaChapelle considered the picture of the cheeseburger flattening his companion. “It’s actually anti-food,” he said.
Anti-food? The Transom asked him.
“I’m a vegetarian, and the idea is that we spend so much time shopping and consuming that it’s a never-ending cycle.” Asked what the meaning was, he said: “It could mean different things for different people. You can have it your way.” For example? “Well, if you like the idea of a giant hamburger crushing you, then it can be a good thing for you. But I don’t want to define it. That’s too literal.”
-A.W.
Fudge Does Film!
The turtle-swallowing 5-year-old on whom author Judy Blume based her character Fudge Hatcher has grown up. Lawrence Blume, Ms. Blume’s son, now in his late 30’s, has gone from digging up worms to an even grittier enterprise: directing his first feature film, Martin and Orloff, a comedy about a marketing man recovering from a suicide attempt, whose shrink leads him into a series of misadventures.
The low-budget movie, which will premiere at the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street on Nov. 7, stars Upright Citizens Brigade members Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts, who co-wrote the script. And the two told The Transom that Mr. Blume’s pedigree had something to do with his hiring. “Ian’s a big fan of Judy Blume novels,” said Mr. Walsh. “He has written The Annotated Fudge, Fudge Cliff’s Notes,” and “has those Web sites where you ask questions and Fudge provides the answer.”
Well, not really, but then Mr. Roberts said something we did believe: “I’ve read all her adult-erotica books. They make great Sunday-afternoon reading.”
Mr. Blume characterized his mother’s influence a little differently. “She was very helpful for me, to see somebody who could be an artist on her own terms and succeed,” he said. “You see a lot of artists’ kids being artists-part of it is, you see that you can make a living out of it.”
And though Martin and Orloff is his first directing gig, Mr. Blume is no stranger to the movie business. He first made a living editing films and writing scripts, and he directed the film adaptation of his mother’s novel, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. He also co-owned Post Works, a post-production house. “I don’t think I’ve accomplished anything particularly incredible,” he said of his directing job on Martin and Orloff. “So I just treat it as blue-collar work.” Blue-collar work that may soon involve co-producing (with Mariah Carey) a film adaptation of Wifey, his mother’s novel about a bored suburban housewife in the late 60’s who lets her freak flag fly.
And Mr. Blume did a little of that in Martin and Orloff. “I like being a little risky, a little bit politically incorrect,” he said. “It’s like the killing of little girls on a bridge.” He was referring to a scene in which three Girl Scouts dressed in a spareribs costume may or may not fall off a bridge into a vat of barbecue sauce. “People think, ‘You can’t kill little girls!'” he said. “There’s something kind of risk-taking in that scene.”
Mr. Blume’s expectations for Martin and Orloff are decidedly more modest. He said he hopes the movie will draw viewers by word of mouth and will ultimately expand to more theaters throughout the city. In the meantime, he said, “I’m just a single guy looking for a job.”
-A.W.
The Transom Also Hears ….
That lobbyist Sid Davidoff placed a winning $2,100 bid on a 166-gram white Tuscan truffle at an international auction for the fragrant fungus on Nov. 1. The New York portion of the auction took place beneath distractingly hot klieg lights at Le Cirque, where those in attendance included author Jay McInerney, Martha Stewart, gourmand financier Roger Yassin, Joan Collins, Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini, Gourmet publicist Karen Danick and Moët and Chandon’s international on-trade manager, Charles de Pontevés. When restaurateur Drew Nieporent learned that Mr. Davidoff doesn’t cook, he offered to have his chefs at Tribeca Grill cook up a dinner for eight using the truffle.
Mr. Davidoff’s truffle ended up being a trifle, however, compared to the pungent load-weighing close to a pound-that brought $35,000 from a trio of Left Coast bidders: Michael McCarty of Michael’s, Barbara Lazaroff of Spago and Piero Selvaggio of Valentino. According to a spokesman for the auction, the sum tied the world’s record for the most expensive truffle purchase.
-F.D.
· Actor Steve Schirripa, who plays Bobby (Bacala) Baccalieri on HBO’s The Sopranos, gave The Transom a brief lesson in how to spot a goomba on Oct. 30. Mr. Schirripa, who has just published A Goomba’s Book of Love, the follow-up to his 2002 A Goomba’s Guide to Life, joined Knicks Keith Van Horn and Antonio McDyess at Madison Square Garden for the Read to Achieve organization’s Halloween party, and-out of the earshot of the 50 third-graders who also attended-he told us, “One thing you will never hear a goomba say: ‘Two tickets to The Vagina Monologues, please.'”
-John Gallagher
