Graydon Carter, who was the founding editor at the Observer, noted that Kaplan lasted far longer than he thought he would: "I think it's one of his great accomplishments that he managed more than a dozen years with Arthur (Carter)...My version was the black-and-white sketch of what he did, but he gave it color and vibrancy that I never got a chance to."

New York Times rich people reporter Alex Kuczynski couldn't get an in at the place for a while: "'I was like 23 or 24, and I kept sending these blind pitches to the masthead, signing them Alex Kuczynski. And, finally, after a year, Peter apparently stands up in a meeting and says, "Somebody call this guy Kuczynski.'" He also put a little bit of juju on Kucznski's tenure at the Times: "When I left for the Times, he kept smacking his forehead. "Alex! Alex! Alex! You're making a huge mistake!" He has this habit of smacking his forehead. "You'll never write in the first person. You'll never write about yourself. You'll never write with color. You'll never use any interesting language. Or at least I highly doubt it."

Finally, former Observer senior editor and (as of recently, former) Rolling Stone deputy editor Jason Gay remembers one of Kaplan's more distinct skills: "His gift for headlines is unmatched. Do you remember the piece George Gurley wrote about Ann Coulter, where she joked about Timothy McVeigh neglecting to bomb the Times? Peter stared at the screen for hours trying to come up with the exact right line. We'd settled on a pretty lame headline, but at the last minute, Peter's face looked like it was about to explode. "COULTERGEIST!" he said."

Kaplan's on his way to Conde Nast Traveler, where his first day as creative director is Monday. He served as a mentor to many a New York reporter, "many of whom now populate the city's more remunerative newsrooms," writes Oxfeld, and it's true - even current Gawker managing editor Gabriel Snyder is among them. Snyder's tribute to Kaplan's legacy on this site is here, Oxfeld's piece is here. Both are must-reads for New York Media junkies. The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Kaplan - who oversaw the Observer's flimsy entry into the Internet Age - is inevitably going to have to work with Traveler's digital strategy; he claimed in the aforementioned Snyder post that he's excited about this, but really, you gotta wonder what's in it for him other than a steady paycheck, and more time with his family (the original reason he gave for leaving the Observer before speculation arose that owner and heir-about-town Jared Kusher pushed him out). That could well be enough for Kaplan, who nobody's ever accused of being lazy or phoning it in. He's worked for a long, long time, and he's probably tired. But for a guy who spends that kind of time in the newsroom, reporting on a world he loved as much as he influenced and covered, isn't he going to get restless? Kaplan's story in New York's media timeline, and his reach on it, can't quite be over yet. Not like this, anyway.

Peter Kaplan at the Observer: An Oral History [Daily Intel]

Cindi Leive, Glamour editor-in-chief, denied she could be one of the book's funhouse mirrored versions of Manhattan media fixtures. It was Leive who playing host at Da Silvano's wine bar to a mix of unnervingly relaxed gossips, writers, and flacks, which meant she invited guests to pet her fur purse — "No, I don't even know what kind of animal it is, but you don't really want to know, do you?"

Froelich, in fishnets, advised that really, "If you can eat it, wear it." She had her own arm-candy: a bouquet of tiny violet roses, compliments of (former?) gossip and one-time Gawker editor, Alex Balk.

Also in the gallery, shot by the unstoppable Nikola Tamindzic: Erica Jong, George Gurley, Sloane Crosley, David Carr, Rachel Sklar, Elizabeth Spiers, Kate Lee, and Neel Shah's hat.

Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Page Six's gossip columnist and Mercury in Retrograde author Paula Froelich

Cindi Leive (editor-in-chief, Glamour), author Erica Jong

Elliot Furman, former Defamer writer Molly Friedman

Glamour's Cindi Leive, Rachel Sklar of Abrams Research

Neel Shah (gossip writer for Page Six, and former Radar), Chris Wilson ("the Neel Shah of the late 90's" he explains), Steve Garbarino (the survivorman of the magazine world, now working with Playboy)

Classing it up, old-school publicist Bobby Zarem

The next generation: omg omg omg

Sloane Crosley (book publicist, author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake), Cindy Eagan (head of teen lit imprint Poppy) Caroline Waxler (writer)

Mediaite Rachel Sklar with Ron Perelman's spokeswoman Christine Taylor

Neel Shah shortly before hatting Sloane Crosley

Alex Balk (The Awl, former Radar executive editor) shows his face with Paula Froelich

A barely debauched George Gurley (New York Observer, Vanity Fair)

La Froelich's fishnets

Paula Froelich, with snappy flack Marvette Brito

Morgan Spurlock

ICM agent Kate Lee with client and Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers

David Carr (star Twitterer and media columnist, New York Times)

Sara Bernstein, of HBO's documentary operation, and Jesse Angelo, New York Post managing editor, who claims to have only ever drunk-bought one domain: yourwifeisonmyblog.com

Sloane Crosley, Neel Shah's hat

Paula Froelich just wants you to go home now

His:

GEORGE: I decided that day we'd go to Zarela because I knew they had waiters who come over and sing opera and stuff, so I set that up, and right before I left to meet Hilly, I checked my favorite Web sites and there were some really negative, mean comments on one of them-about me. And it really jolted me. Here I'm about to go give this ring to Hilly, big moment in my life, in her life, and I have to read that I'm a selfish, narcissistic loser: "I've always considered George Gurley to be a complete loser." And someone else compared me to the guy in Out of Africa who gave Meryl Streep syphilis.

DR. SELMAN: This was based on the column?

GEORGE: I think so. Maybe some other things, too. So I had these commenter comments in my head and this was terrible timing. Here I am, an hour away from getting engaged, and I have these comments in my head. So I had to push these thoughts out of my head, and get into a better mood to propose to Hilly. I had to come up with something fast, so I thought about when I was that age-because I picture these commenters, they're 25 years old, graduated from Wesleyan and now here they're here in New York and no one's paying attention to them, no one cares about their degree in comparative literature or herstory, and then they'll read something like this column and something goes off in their brain-"Heyyyy, wait a second, I'm smarter than that guy! What about me? It's my turn. Why do I have to work at this crappy job, and he doesn't even have to go into an office? He goes out every night and sits around all day in his pajamas. …" So then I started thinking, that's real power. I took it a little farther, and thought, I'm probably one of the most powerful people in New York. Don't have to get up in the morning. Don't have to go into an office. Can Mayor Bloomberg do that? No.

Silence.

Hers:

HILLY: Where's the Effexor? Get the Effexor. Immediately. Give it to him.

DR. SELMAN: Why?

HILLY: Well, George has been a mess and-bless his sweet heart-he's been really sick. He's had shingles. We went to Florida for a long weekend-we stayed in the most gorgeous house you could ever imagine in your life, right on the beach. It was the most idyllic weekend in the whole entire world. The day after we came back-I had to go on a business trip for two weeks-George developed shingles. He was on all of this medication, and it worsened his stomach problems; he was on painkillers and antibiotics and he couldn't eat, because of the pain in his ear and mouth. It's just been lingering. I think the stress from the illness worsens his day-to-day stress. It just doesn't stop. He can't even speak-he sits there, almost in a fetal position. In addition, he spent the last five nights in a hotel, because he can't take the air in the apartment, can't sleep.

It's the next Sex and the City! [Pic: NYO]

My creepy questions I never really planned on asking her are staring me in the face. Ricci looks at my notepad, and sees this lad-mag question: "If you're with a guy, how many times a day?" I'm mortified for even writing it down.

"Oh," she says dismissively. "All men think that women who don't drink are obsessed with sex. It's a male fantasy. If you don't drink, then you must be a sex addict. Like I haven't heard that one before."

"Harmlessly predictable," she continues, noticing I've turned a shade of red even more crimson than usual. "Not predictable," she corrects politely, "but a harmlessly stereotypical belief."

Just don't stand up and run out, I beg her.

"I won't yet," she says.

And she doesn't.

Bonus—Ricci on Vincent Gallo: "He's crazy, and he's an asshole. He's not... nice."

Gurley is engaged to his longtime ladyfriend Hilly, who recently said in their therapy sessions, "You know what I'm sick of? I hate the stigma of feeling like one of these sucker-punched spinster loser Manhattan hags with a million cats and a stack of New Yorkers. I'm sick of it! I just want it done."

Well, sister, it's done! Or is it? According to one source, Gurley says the ring was just a gift and that they're not actually engaged. But at least Hilly no longer looks like a sucker-punched spinster loser Manhattan hag! We're sure we'll read allllll about that soon enough.

Our sincere congratulations to all the young lovers.

Coulter Culture [NYO] [Image: Getty]

First he takes me to the Waverly Inn....And that's the foreplay...Then we walk right into Gramercy...And then, just when it gets really hot, he takes me to Beatrice! And just when I'm about to explode, we go back to his Park Avenue apartment and have tea."

The other striking feature of the sexual interior life of these women is that there isn't much of it. Despite the teasing, not one of the ladies could come up with more than three fantasies. And these mostly involved at least one having to do with skinny dipping, one having to do with shopping and one having to do with lesbians. After that though, the fantasies devolved into having long hair, a kiss on the cheek and a night home alone with the Rabbit. We're finally thinking that Maureen Dowd has been right all along.

The responses were predictably... you know what, sometimes there just aren't any words. Well, except these, from 40 year old beret-wearer Jacqie Venable:

I don't see myself as an American," she said. "I see myself as a child of a higher being, and I feel privileged to walk this earth with my daughter and my family. The war in Iraq just reminds me of my everyday war. The only way that I can make a difference is being really grateful for the good, the bad, the ugly—what I can do for me. If I'm straight and I love everybody in a grateful world, that's the only contribution I can make. And I can teach that to my daughter."

I asked what she'd rather be talking about.

"My daughter. Shoes. Handbags. Fashionistas to laugh at. Waxing the undercarriage—from your poonnany to your back door. It's fucking painful."

A few choice selections from her Socialite Rank Q&A:

• Her fave travel locations are Gstaad (whither the commoners?) and London.
• She loves mani-pedis.
• And we quote: "I love that there are different sections of New York and that each is very different from one another. You can go from uptown where its a little bit older and more conservative, to somewhere such as Greenwich Village with a sense of trendiness and youthfulness to it."
• And: "I'm the biggest jock. I play tennis two times a week at the River Club, and my brother and I are extreme skiers, I played on a girls national ice hockey team and an all star lacrosse team."

  Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

  Olivia Palermo, Debutard? [Socialite Rank]

In this relationship, my life force is crushed. What happened to my freedom? What happened to my balls? Where d they go? My balls are in her purse. She has confiscated them.

Overshare! (Unless, of course, he's talking about a different type of ball. Which he may be.) The piece continues with a transcript of Gurley's therapy session with Hilly, during which he mostly cringes — as do we, especially when Hilly speaks of Gurley's manly time spent loafing about in his boxers. Next week, perhaps Gurley will find his balls and, God willing, cover them with a nice pair of pants or something.

Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me in Couples Session [Observer]