She's Not the Bad Guy: Erin Kaplan Clears Her Name
by Betsey Morgenstern
PRWeek.com

Have you heard of Elle magazine? Well, of course you have since it's been a knockout on the newstands for years as well as the main prize for winners of America's Next Top Model and Project Runway (before the magazine was kicked to the curb for Seventeen and Marie Claire). Still, the reason it was there in the first place is due to Erin Kaplan, the young PR maven who has taken the magazine world by storm by turning the magazine brand into something that even Anna Wintour must respect.

But with the increased publicity for the publication comes an increased profile for Kaplan, who some think is only a tan and a set of SUV keys away from being the next Lizzie Grubman.

"Really, I'm not that bad," Erin told me during a recent interview outside of Magnolia bakery, where we indulged in sweet treats and threw pebbles at tourists. "It's just that everyone who I work with really sucks. Especially Olivia Palermo. Make sure you get that right, it's P-A-L-E-R-M-O. And yes, I said she sucks. I hate her. I almost quit my job because of her."

The feud between the socialite and the PR star become noticeably public when they were heard bitching at each other in the background of a recent Today show segment.

"I knew something was amiss when I got all the looks together to go to the studio and there was nothing that Olivia and I had pulled the week before," said an Elle magazine intern named Bryn who asked her last name not be used because she does not talk to fake reporters. "Erin told me that she went and redid all the looks. She really has it out for Olivia. I just don't want to get fired. But, yeah, I'm totally scared of Erin."

And that is with good reason. Not only is she in charge of getting the magazine's name out there, but also, apparently, in overseeing the duties of junior editors, a very different responsibility for someone who specializes in communications.

"Look, I'm not a fashion editor and I never claim to be," Kaplan said after her third vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. "But Olivia Palermo is so bad at her job that I had to step in and do something or else my segment would be ruined and Elle would look stupid. I can not have that happening. I have no social life, my last boyfriend dumped me for another guy, and no one wants to talk to me at parties. Without this job, I have absolutely nothing. When Olivia put that in jeopardy, I had to fight back."

She explains that at the Today show, Elle creative director Joe Zee asked Palermo about the prices and designers of the dresses he was about to talk about on air. Since Kaplan vetoed Palermo's looks and inserted her own, Palermo had no clue what was going out, and out of spite, wouldn't brief Joe. He had a short flub on the air with Hoda Kotb, but was able to recover. Good thing Mr. Zee was on his A game.

After they show, Kaplan and Zee tried to confront Palermo about what happened. "I'm sorry, but I did a whole afternoon of hard work before going home to do bong hits and then attend a Twilight screening," Palermo says. "Erin never thinks I do anything right. She has horrible style, can't dress, is poor, and doesn't respect me. She makes it impossible for me to do my job. And have you seen what she wears? She shouldn't be picking out clothes at all. But she is impossible. Until she shows me some respect, we can't work together."

Kaplan was more than happy to respond to her comments. "Of course I don't respect her, she doesn't know what the fuck she's doing!" Kaplan screamed while brushing her hair out of her face and scowling—a look that should be familiar to anyone who knows her. "And the worst part is, you can't talk to her. Whenever I confront her about something, she is either too stupid or too stoned to care and just doesn't get the message. Unless it's news about a sample sale or the opening of a new bottle service club, she just can't retain any information. She is completely useless. I told Joe Zee that it was either her or me."

And what did Joe Zee say? "Erin is a consummate professional," Zee says from his Midtown office. "She is great at her job and I trust her implicitly. I like Olivia a lot—mostly because she's pretty. But I am not a guidance counselor, I don't want to be deciding who wins in a fight between Erin and Olivia."

Now that the ultimatum has been placed—Kaplan says that she even awkwardly stormed out of Zee's office!—who is going to hit the road and who is going to stay? "Well, let's just say that the magazine needs PR more than it does socialites, but sometimes socialites are what brings the PR," Kaplin says cryptically giving her signature sly smile.

No matter what, we have a feeling that Kaplan will end up on top.

You Say You Want a Revolution: Kelly Cutrone Talks about the Help
by Betsey Morgenstern
PRWeek.com

One of the biggest challenges for any PR agency is keeping the stable of young communications majors in check. Between all the swag, the nights out in New York, and the boy drama, it can be more difficult that pleasing clients and getting them good media placement. To find out how to do it the right way, we talked to Kelly Cutrone, the saucy boss at People's Revolution PR and the star of the new reality show Kell on Earth, which starts in February on Bravo.

"I can't stand these fucking girls," Cutrone screams in her office, pushing her hair back and bugging her eyes out that signals she is about to go off on one of her famous, expletive-laden tirades. "They come in here and they think that they know everything and they can do whatever the fuck they want. I've been doing this for decades. I started this whole company on my own. They better learn some fucking respect and learn it quick."

Most recently she has had completely opposite experiences with Whitney Port, an aspiring designer, and Roxy Carmichael Olin, a girl who seems to have no skills, no drive, and doesn't do much of anything. Still, Kelly sees something of herself in Olin.

"That is what really pisses me the fuck off," she says. "She's just like me. She's brash, an outsider, likes to wear black, isn't afraid of what people think. But then she just fucking sits there. And when she's not sitting there, she's making things difficult for everyone and pretending like she knows more than she does. Yes, she may be like me, but I know when the dresses should be ordered. I know how to set up a photo shoot. I know what a look book is. She just knows how to get drunk and dance on banquettes."

Asked to defend herself Olin says that she doesn't really need Cutrone. "You know, my parents are rich, so I only do this for fun and so I can hang out with my friend Whitney," she says in her voice that is a strange mix of a drawl and a rasp. "Maybe that's why I don't give a fuck what Kelly thinks. But yes, she can yell, and that keeps people in check."

Olin tells a story where she recently went into Cutrone's office to ask why she was being left out of a meeting between Port and the buyers of Bergdorf Goodman. Olin has nothing to do with the line whatsoever and knows nothing about retail, marketing, fashion, or merchandising, but for some reason thought it was a good idea to stand by Whitney at her meeting. "Kelly totally snapped on me," Olin cackles. "She was going on and on, spouting all this jargon, and all I could do was get up and leave."

Cutrone is still worked up about the meeting. "I got Whitney, who I love and adore, a meeting with the big shots at Bergdorf Fucking Goodman, the most important department store in the world," she rants. "We're talking Linda Fargo, Ginny Hersey-Lambert, Sunni Spencer. These are people that will make or break her career. And she wants to take her little sour-faced drinking buddy? Get real! I was so pissed I didn't even go to the meeting. Let those bimbos fend for themselves."

For what it's worth, Port seemed to think the meeting went well. "They said some nice things, and they looked at my clothes. I don't really know what I'm doing," she purred while twirling her hair on her finger.

Cutrone disagrees. "Went well? It was a fucking disaster," she screams. "We're talking Marc Jacobs 1993 grunge line for Perry Ellis disaster. They hated it. She wasn't ready at all. Some of her dresses had crap all over them. And then she had that chucklehead Roxy there undermining her. She only has one shot left and that's a fashion show I'm putting together for her."

That's right. Cutrone may be a fierce disciplinarian and makes her stances known, but she has "the old ball and chain" with her employees, as she calls it. If they go down, she goes down with them. She also helps to raise them up by giving them as many opportunities as they can in the industry. She is including Port in a group show she is organizing for fashion week in the spring.

"She said something about it being not a baby step of faith but a leap of faith and if I don't do it, she'll slit my throat and fire Roxy," Port cooed. "I'm not quite sure what is going on, but she says it's a big deal so she must be right."

While Kelly certainly has this whole thing under wraps, the biggest lesson she has to teach is never hire anyone as smart as the boss.

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No Room and an In
By Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Society Editor

Miami International Fashion Week is in full swing, so there are even more parties than usual. Last night Whitney Port and Roxy Carmichael Olin descended on The Florida Room in the Delano Hotel for a pre-party for a fashion show. The party was so excellent, no one quite knew which brand they were celebrating, and the band was so bad that no one quite knew who they were.

That didn't stop Roxy Carmichael Olin from dancing on the banquette like a low-class Paris Hilton and dragging Nick Soandso up there with her. As soon as they found out they both went to Harvard, it was a deep and animal lust that attracted them. As soon as Whitney took a minute out to powder her nose (wink wink) he asked Roxy to leave. Without a second thought of her friend, she was out the door in search of the next party. In fact, Roxy had been complaining ever since they got to Miami about being put on a budget by People's Revolution boss Kelly Cutrone. All she wanted to do was lie out and eat room service and party. Luckily her cohort Whitney has her head about her and didn't let this happen.

But that didn't stop Roxy from leaving Whintey all alone and defenseless in the club. A reporter tailed Roxy and Nick as they left. First it was more drinks at Mynt Lounge, but Roxy was way too antsy for the sedate crowd. Nick took her over to SET to dance the night away and after they bumped into well known man-about-town Pookie "Candyman" Collins, they were bumping all night long (wink wink take two). They caused quite a scene, especially when Roxy popped a bottle of Cristal and poured it all over her body like she was living in a rap video fantasy world. Nick got down on his knees and wrung out her champagne-drenched skirt and drank the nectar as some of it oozed down his neck. He then started kissing up her thigh, his head disappearing underneath the soggy seam of her drenched dress. Roxy let her head fall back as her eyes closed and her mouth opened. It looked like she was moaning, but the new remix of Shakira's "She Wolf" was so loud, no one could hear a thing. After pushing his head out from underneath her skirt she grabbed his arm and ran for the exit.

They gave me—I mean, a reporter—the slip but it sounds like they were headed back to Nick's to continue the party. No wonder poor Roxy was late to work the next day!

Bathing Beauties at Mara Hoffman
by Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Fashion Editor

Miami International Fashion Week isn't just about world-famous designers like Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Munib Nawaz, and Amato Couture but it's really all about the fashion shows. Today it was time for the biggest bash of them all: The Mara Hoffman collection was presented at Soho Studios. Everything was glorious.

Show director Kelly Cutrone, the head boss at New York's trendy fashion PR firm People's Revolution said she had a hard time at the casting, but what do you expect from a pasty New Yorker who wears all black to the beach! After making fun of the model's faces and walks, she had a nice stable of hoofers to walk Hoffman's swimwear down the catwalk.

Before the show started, we saw Erin Kaplan and Olivia Palermo of Elle Magazine giving each other a chilly reception in the front row. After sauntering back to her seat from behind the stage, Kaplan peppered Palermo with questions: "Why aren't you taking notes? Are you going to the trade shows? Why don't you like me? God gave me brains, but why didn't he make me as pretty and rich as you? Is that fair?" Olivia just stared blankly at her shoes, moving her toes ever so slightly to watch the way the light reflected on her pedicure. It was as if she could just ignore the questions away.

It was then that we heard the sound of an argument coming from backstage, and it sounded like People's Revolution PR girls Roxy Carmichael Olin and Whitney Port (who just broke up with my boyfriend Freddie Fackelmayer, full disclosure!).
"Where were you last night?" Whitney shouted.
"I thought you left," Roxy slurred back.
"No, I didn't leave, I said I'd be right back."
"But you didn't come back, so I didn't think you were coming back. Nick and I left. That place was boring."
"Yeah, it was real boring without you. And you're late. And why do you smell like stale champagne?"
That's when Kelly Cutrone walked by, slammed their heads together and just kept walking.

Her intervention must have worked, because the show went off without a hitch. There were lots of one-piece suits and futuristic cuts (as Olivia noted). Our favorite was a silver metallic, square bikini with a flowing printed caftan over it. There were lots of geometric prints, that would fit right in with the international stoner set that loves to litter Miami's beaches. The models did walk a little slow and didn't smile much. What is up with that?

One Elle of an Afterparty
by Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Fashion and Social Editor

With models in pink wigs and swimsuits lounging on boxes by the pool, Elle Magazine and Lycra's afterparty for Mara Hoffman's fashion show was the hit of Miami International fashion week. The W Hotel pool was transformed by the staff of the magazine and ace PR girl Erin Kaplan, who picked out the wigs herself. She said she was inspired by the time she and her girlfriends went as a pack of slutty flight attendants for Halloween and she saw the same raunchy joy in Hoffman's designs and wanted to channel that for the party's living decorations.

Loving the wigs was host Brooklyn Decker, who stole one off a model's head and was parading around with it half-cocked on her head for most of the evening. Kaplan was seen chatting with Elle's executive fashion editor Judi Sanders at the party, and it seems like she was carrying on about her favorite subject Olivia Palermo. She was bitching about how her socialite coworker didn't go to the crumby trade shows during fashion week (neither did I, because they sound too much like swap meets and that sounds like something that poor people would go to). She was also complaining that Olivia didn't take notes at the fashion show and how was she going to remember the very, very important and groundbreaking fashions they just witnessed without notes.

Olivia was off talking to designer Red Carter, who is not at all related to Red Buttons, but he does look a little bit like him. She then approached Saunders who told Palermo that bitch Erin Kaplan had been talking shit about her. No she said, and I quote, "That bitch Erin has been talking shit about you." Olivia didn't know what to do. She couldn't stare at her toes like she usually does, so she asked Saunders for advice. This is what the wise old editor had to say:

"Here's how it's going to go down. You're going to be in a meeting with Joe Z and he's going to ask about the trade shows. Say you didn't know anything about them. That's definitely going to piss Erin off and she's going to say she told you about them. Make it look like it's her fault that you didn't go. She'll hate that and take the offensive. Joe just wants everyone to get along because he's a pussy. Just agree with everything Joe says about being a team player and wanting to work with Erin while she sits there making her sour face. You don't even have to seem sincere. Being nice is Erin's kryptonite. It will render her silent. You'll look like the winner and she'll look like the mean lady who doesn't want to help out. This is the only way you can save yourself in Joe's eyes."

Olivia was nodding furiously, so we hope she took her advice. We'll know next time we check the masthead at Elle if it's missing an accessories editor! But then we just grabbed another glass of free champagne and did another lap of the party. Conspicuously absent were the People's Revolution crew. We heard that after a hard night of partying Whitney Port and Roxy Carmichael Olin ordered up $200 worth of room service! Who do they think is going to pay for that? When Kelly Cutrone gets that bill they're going to wish they ate Taco Bell instead.

Well, we're going to be paying for all the champagne we drank for about a week. But what a glorious time we had. Why can't every week be Miami International Fashion Week? We'll never know.

We Are the Longchampions, My Friend
By Betsey Morgenstern
Accessories magazine party reporter

Last night Longchamp, a handbag brand that has given us so much joy over the years, decided to give back to the community by holding a benefit for KiptonART Foundation, which introduces poor, poor artists to all the rich gallery owners and collectors that are going to be buying their work. Oh, they give some money for needy kids who want to make art, but no one was talking about that, because it's a downer. Apparently, this costs a lot of money, and Kipton Cronkite, founder of the organization was very thankful that Elle magazine, Longchamp, and People's Revolution PR would throw him this bash.

In attendance was socialite and Elle accessories editor Olivia Palermo, a close personal friend of Cronkite's. She wore a black dress that looked like the molted skin of a rare snake and was slithering around mumbling about what a nightmare she was having. At one point, we saw her talking to Roxy Carmichael Olin, sometimes Brothers & Sisters guest star and daughter of Patricia Wettig and Ken Olin. For some reason, Palermo was introducing Olin to the photographer for Patrick McMullan and then told her to "go do her job." I was going to go ask Doug, the photographer, what the tiff was about, but he's still mad at me for that time I made out with him at Marquee and then wouldn't go home with him. It was a bad time for me, and I just wasn't ready for something other than a hair-mussing romp next to a bathroom attendant.

Roxy Carmichael Olin did not take this too well, and instead of making sure she was doing her job in front of her boss, People's Revolution honcho Kelly Cutrone, she instead went to Erin Kaplan, who isn't Olivia's boss but thinks she's is. They both think that Olivia has a bad attitude and can't do her job. Erin said she wants to get Olivia fired so bad, but she can't because their boss, Joe Zee (who couldn't make it because he was at the 20th anniversary party for the Rawhide leather bar in Chelsea), really likes Olivia. Erin was all squinty in her pink ruffley party dress, but Roxy Carmichael Olin had a real look of crazy deviousness on her face in a short dress that looked like she had to twist Magnum PI's bedsheets around her body and jump out the window just before Higgins barged in.

The only one who seemed to like Olivia at the party was her old friend (and, full disclosure, my ex-boyfriend) Freddie Fackelmayer, who looked as good as ever, but was woefully underdressed in just a robin egg shell blue shirt without a tie or jacket. Social gay Kristian Laliberte was telling me how tacky he thought Freddie looked and I told him to shut up, because the shirt really brought out the color of his eyes. When Freddie entered and greeted Olivia, I hovered near Roxy Carmichael Olin and Whitney Port, the aspiring designer that he is currently dating. They were abuzz about how much they couldn't stand Olivia and they both worried that Freddie might be a socialite just like her. They said it as if it was a bad thing. If only Tinsley Mortimer were here to smack some sense into them.

Whitney didn't want to go say hi while he was talking to Olivia, but once she left, she walked over and gave him a big hug. He should have told her how fat she looked in her too-short sparkly getup and how she mumbles and chews on her words like a three-day-old piece of Hubba Bubba. But he didn't. He apologized for bringing his father to meet her at dinner. And then—wait. He brought his father to meet her? We dated for months and he wouldn't even mention his parent's name in front of me. What gives, Freddie! What does Whitney have that I don't, other than a fleet of television cameras hanging around her?

Seething, I floated over to see Erin Kaplan and Kelly Cutrone deep in conversation, and they actually seemed to be making nice with each other. Who thought that two mean, unattractive, career-driven PR girls would have anything in common? Kelly was telling Erin how she started in magazine PR but then started her own company and now she only reps things that she thinks are awesome like Greasy Brand Hair Products, the color black, and Slankets.

Then Erin told Kelly that she doesn't know what it is about Olivia that she hates, but it seems to do with the fact that every time Olivia comes into the office Erin is on the phone. "Does she show up while I'm talking to someone hoping that I won't talk to her? And why won't she turn all the way around at her desk to talk to me? She only talks to me over her shoulder, like I'm some kind of colossal bother. If she spent as much time doing her job as she did doing her make up, she might get ahead in this business. But she doesn't. She's Horrible."

I was ready to leave, but Freddie was still talking to Whitney and they were laughing and giggling and making plans to go to Nantucket together and for some reason, I decided it would be a great time to call Jay Lyon, Whitney's ex-boyfriend.

"Hey, Jay, it's me, Betsey. No, Betsey Morgenstern. Remember, you held my hair once at that huge party at Billy Joel's in the Hamptons. Yes, that girl. No, I don't want to show you my bra again, I wanted to call and tell you something about your ex-girlfriend, Whitney. You're getting back together? She texted you and you two hooked up? Well, guess what—she's dating someone else. Yes, his name is Freddie Fackelmayer and he is a Wall Street boy with a golden tan and the bone structure of a German infantryman. I know, he is totally the opposite of you. And guess where they met? At a barbecue on your roof while you were away on tour. Can you believe that! Yes, you should totally call her up and have dinner with her. You're right, she is totally going to hate being called out on meeting a boy at your house. But don't tell her you heard it from me, I had nothing to do with it. No, not Betty. It's Betsey. Betsey Morgen—whatever, I don't care if you know my name, just break them up! Talk to you soon."

Sure, a handbag party might not have been the best place to make that call, but I scooted out the back door, so that Freddie and Whitney wouldn't see me and suspect that something is up. My mind spinning with a night full of celebrity spotting, cheap champagne, and some fumes from the glue donated to the little kids of the KiptonART Foundation, I hobbled home along the cobbles of SoHo, to a full night of dreaming of being with Freddie once again.

Back to the Beach: Lifeguards Took Over Bergdorf
By Betsey Morgenstern
Guestofaguest.com Contributor

Last night everyone who was anyone under the age of thirty was at Bergdorf Goodman for Matt Albiani's photo book Lifeguard on Duty. Of course plenty of the lifeguards decorating the pages with their prodigious pectorals were in attendance and that brought out all the girls who were looking for a little piece of meat. As always with in-store shindigs, things got a little messy, especially when Tinsley Mortimer tripped over Fabiola Beracasa's wedge heel and spilled her vodka and cran all over a white baby seal gown that was hanging nearby. Let's hope she pays for dry cleaning!

By far the most interesting person in attendance, or at least the one attracting the most attention, was Whitney Port. We went over to the shoe department and she told me how earlier in the day, she and fellow PR girl Sammie Somethingorother were in Jeffrey boutique in the Meatpacking. They were talking about the party that night and how they needed a different pair of shoes for the type of guys they wanted to pick up. She even gave me a demonstration: white booties for hipsters, gold strappy gladiator sandals for the metrosexual, and boring flats for the Wall Street boys.

We wonder what kind of heels attracted Greenwich hottie and Nantucket lifeguard Harry Fackelmayer, because he was sniffing around Whitney and Sammy all night. Apparently, Sammie is friends with Harry's brother, Freddie, so she invited him and his friend to a barbecue later that week. She invited me too. Left off the guestlist is Roxy Carmichael, Whitney's friend and coworker who Sammie is not a big fan of. We wouldn't know what it's like to be slighted, but when you're a at a party as hot as this, it's gotta burn.

One Elle of a Party
By Betsey Morgenstern
Guestofaguest.com Contributor

It was an intimate affair for about 100 people at the book-strewn home of Elle magazine publisher Carol Smith, who stunned everyone in a pink gown that she must have borrowed from the fashion closet. I'm not entirely sure what the party was for, and I was too busy eating delicious sliders and french fries in tiny white paper cones to even care! In attendance, the usual Elle crowd, EIC Robbie Meyers, creative director Joe Zee, and Hachette EVP Pilippe Guelton. There were supposedly some designers in attendance, but I didn't see any. Either that or I didn't recognize them because I was looking for more delicious tiny hamburgers.

The person really working the room was socialite and Elle accessories editor Olivia Palermo. Everyone was introducing themselves and wanted to get to know her. She looked stunning, with her blond hair pulled back into a bun and this huge gray necklace that would only be more delicious if it was made of french fries. Erin Kaplan didn't like it too much, because she was giving Olivia the stink eye across the room all night. Maybe if she didn't have such a shitty attitude someone would ask her where she got her ugly blue dress. Oops. Did I say that?

Anyway, she left in a huff before the party was over. We bet the next day she gave Olivia a hard time at the office, telling her that the party was really work and asking when all the designers Olivia met—wait, we mean all the designers Olivia already knew who she ran into at the party—were going to send exclusives for Elle. Olivia is a girl of many talents, but reading the future is not one of them! But you don't need a crystal ball to know that everyone had a blast—even those of us who were really at the party for work!

Raising the Roof with Adam Senn and Jay Lyon
By Betsey Morgenstern
Guestofaguest.com Contributor

It was a little hard to get to, but the barbecue on the roof of Adam Senn and Jay Lyon's apartment building that Whitney Port and Sammie Whatshername invited me to earlier in the week was totally worth the trouble of hiking up all those stairs. First I was introduced to Senn and his girlfriend Allie. I asked what they did and Adam said "I'm Allie's boyfriend," and Allie said, "I'm Adam's girlfriend." Well, it looks like we're dining on Tautology Rooftop tonight, folks. It wasn't odd at all for Port, the ex-girlfriend of Lyon to show up at the party, because Lyon wasn't in attendance. Boy, she was lucky not to run into an ex and have him stolen right from under her nose. That would really suck!

Port was also fortunate that she could show up at all. People's Revolution boss Kelly Cutrone needed someone to work late on a Bluefly proposal for product integration into this show called The City, and Roxy Carmichael agreed to take the shift so Whit could go and get her party on. We're surprised that she still has a job, when she shows up wearing oversized T-shirts, tattered leggings, and hooker heels. That can't do anything to improve Cutrone's reputation.

But thanks to Roxy, Whitney got to meet Freddie Fackelmayer, who is a dreamy finance type with a George Hamilton tan, Antonio Banderas hair, and a Ron Jeremy dick. Yes, I know that because (full disclosure!) we dated for a bit. I wasn't jealous that Whitney and Freddie hit it off so well. It was almost as if it was predestined, like someone arranged for them to meet and fall in love and go out for a very romantic dinner a few nights later where they smile into each other's eyes and laugh and giggle. No. I wasn't thinking about the summer plans they would make or how he would slip his arm around her waist while walking down the street after dinner or that enormous knit tent poncho thing that she would actually wear on a date and think was flattering. No. I was very calm and not drunk at all. And that was not me running out of the party with mascara streaming down my face. I am a party reporter and it is fun. Fun! We all had fun!

[PS—Betsey Morgenstern is not a real person and does not work for Guestofaguest.com. If you didn't figure that out, then you aren't bright enough to watch The City, and that is sad.]

The trouble with Heidi and Spencer began with a visit from Stephanie to their glass coffin when Heidi confessed that she had eaten the poisoned apple and wanted to fall into the deep, deep sleep of motherhood. Spencer only cares about himself and hates kids. We find him to be deplorable but his decision not to spawn with Heidi means to be one of his smarter decisions, like every time he takes off one of his ridiculous hats. But Snow Heidi has enlisted Seven Dwarves of the Apocalypse, and their names are Giuseppe, Luigi, Antonioni, Malfi, Anthony, Vincente, and Enzo, and they are brought over to the house by their parents Caroline and Seth, who are Speidi's new neighbors.

This is all just a plan to get Spender (as Enzo calls him) to get hip to giving her some babies, because she is tired of shopping for clothes for herself and has been banned from just about every clothing store in the greater Los Angeles area, so for her to continue shopping, she must have a baby and enter into the untapped maternity/baby wear retail market. Hey Big Spender (duh da duh nah) is not down with this plan and when Heidi volunteers to babysit for the Seven Dwarves, Spender says "Hey, ho, it's off to work you go," and tells Seth and Caroline to go back to the queen with a deer's heart in a box.

Later, little Enzo escapes the witch's clutches and runs to the embrace of another harpy, Heidi, who puts him under the spell of some video games. The wee thing wails on the Wii and when Spender comes home, he refuses to babysit for free. This is what happily ever after looks like, ladies and gentleman, and we wish that Heidi would just slip back into her coma and leave the rest of us alone.

Once upon a time, Kristin was across town having a conversation with the producers that went something like this:
"Hey Mary from MTV, with your little clip board and denim miniskirt, why am I sitting at this restaurant to have lunch with Audrina and she's not here. Is she coming?"
"No, she's not. How do you feel about that? Are you angry? Show us angry."
"Yeah, I'm angry. At you for wasting my time! Did you know she wasn't coming?"
"Did you know she wasn't coming?"
"I thought she was coming because you set up this lunch and told me to be here. So, is she coming?"
"Well, no. We told her to, but then she went shopping and decided that she didn't want to."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"We were hoping you would throw a scene and make some angry phone calls when she didn't show up. And your cell phone is right here, why don't you pick it up and..."
"I don't want to talk on the phone, I want to have lunch. I'm starving, and I got my hair done all nice and now I have no one to eat with. Don't make me waste good hair on footage we can't even use. Who can you get here?"
"We can probably get Lo. She never has anything better to do."
"Alright get Lo over here."

Twenty minutes later, Lo arrives. They talk about something and we get a few good shots of Kristin's good hair. All is not lost.

Audrina was too busy worring about her new career as a medium. She figured that she looks like Jennifer Love Hewitt and that means that she has magic powers. Her first case was to help the lead singer of Vedera, who is possessed by the spirit of Natalie Imbruglia. The spiritual infestation caused her to cut her hair and play the piano and sing while coyly eyeing all the boys in the audience. Audrina thinks that by bringing her friends to the show, she can cure Natalie of her horrible condition, but it doesn't really work, because Audrina is soon possessed by the spirit as well, swaying back and forth and blinking at the stage with her big wide eyes of wonder. Until she feels a disturbance on the spirit plane.

Yes, across town Justin Bobby—who shaved and now looks like Vincent Chase's stunt double from the set of Aquaman after he had that concussion when a giant piece of kelp fell on his head—has arrived to Playhouse, a club where women are suspended from the ceiling for the enjoyment of spoiled L.A. teenagers. It's much like the movie Hostile, but the only hostiles here are everyone when Kristin shows up. She tells Justin Twonames that she just wants to be friends, but she really wants to take sweet revenge on Audrina by shaving her name into Justin Twonames ample pubic hair.

She does this by taking him off in the corner to secretly make out in front of everyone. Stephanie sees and she thinks "Aw shit, I'm going to have to tell Audrina and she is going to try to possess me with her new voodoo powers and make me go over to Kristin's house and cut off her pretty hair." Brody sees it and he thinks, "Damn, that really turns me on. I never realized just how hot Justin Twonames is. No wait, I can't be gay. I'm going to have to round up ten guys and go sit in a hot tub with them, because that is the straightest thing I could possibly do. Miss Female Illusionist Superstar 2006 Jayde sees it and, if she could think, she would think, "Wow, my tuck is really starting to hurt right now."

And then Maleficent turns into a dragon and devours them all and flies off to New York City, where her leather turds land on Canal Street and are shaped into fake purses on The City.

The light from the blinking neon signs of Times Square filters through the Venetian blinds and casts shadows across the face of femme fatale Erin, who goes to private dick Joe Z because she's having some trouble. Her man is seeing another lady called Olivia Palermo. "Not only is she a horrible person and bad at her job, but she looks better than me, with all her money and designer clothes and Rapunzel hair. We need to take her down. I don't have much money, but..." and she presses her manicured nails against Joe Z's well-tailed suit and leans in for a kiss lifting one stockinged leg up in the air. Joe Z turns away, lighting a cigarette and says, "I just don't swing that way, kid. You're going to have to try harder."

Madge Palermo has to go into the seedy underworld of Canal Street to buy some fake bags so that Erin can save her hide from an evil mob boss by producing a segment for the Today show. She got the idea by looking at Madge, who is a real Louis Vuitton, whereas she is the plastic kind that ladies fresh off the Sex and the City bus tour pick up in Chinatown. She hopes no one notices the difference. And if they do, she will slap them and they will say, "It's real." Slap. "It's fake." Slap. "It's real." Slap. "It's fake." Slap. "It's real and it's fake!"

Madge gets in a town car and rides downtown, where she walks down the steps of the subway so that a film crew can film her walking up the stairs and fool everyone in America to think that she rides the underground railroad. She may not take the J/M/Z, but she is on the underground railroad for counterfeit handbags where she meets singing folk hero Fucci Prado. This magical agent of cheap fake leather goods is on the lam from the authorities so he has encoded messages into a song which he sings while walking up and down the sidewalk with a magical menu of his wares. If his tune isn't loud enough, he has also figured out an intricate system of messages in his clothing that displays just what he has for sale and how much it costs.

Madge is wooed by his song and buys his goods, rushing away, but turning around to blow Fucci Prado a kiss and he ambles into the crowd, crooning his city ditty and happy at another good deed performed in the service of market capitalism. She takes her spoils back to the seedy motel that Elle is using for a headquarters, and Private Dick Joe Z is finally seduced by her haul. Erin grabs his crotch and squeals, "But Joe, we had a deal!" and he says, "I don't care, kid. The grass is always greener and you're put out to pasture." She turns on her heel and storms out grabbing her purse and mink stole off a wooden chair on her way out and then she quickly pivots and looks back at Joe Z and says, "You may want her now," and the camera closes in on her face, as a single tears rolls down her cheek from underneath her veil, "But just who is going to take you to the Today show?"

Across town, two other femme fatales are dealing with Whitney, who is like the boring good girl on the show that is written out after the first act, because watching villains is so much more fun. In this case it's Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael and Kelly Cutthroat. Roxy Carmichael wants to be everyone's friend and she's trying really hard, even though she is mean and slutty. There's some sort of photo shoot for jeans and Whitney and RC have to drive a bunch of shit over. They don't bring the clips that they are supposed to, and Kelly, looking less haggard and puffy than usual, doesn't yell at them too much.

Then RC tells the client that he should have the model take her top off, because that is what she did after her senior prom, running along the beach with her boyfriend chasing her. It was night and dark and she stripped off her top while he chased her with camera in hand, and she held her ample breasts with one arm as she turned around doe-eyed and gazed into the lens, her eager Cassanova snapping away. As she feel backwards into the dunes, he kissed her so deeply. And in the morning, Cassie had slapped a Guess logo on the photos and sold them for millions of dollars, and all she had was a heart full of hurt and her hair full of sand.

The client loves the idea, and so does Kelly, but she wishes she had her own post-prom fantasy, and later, back at the office, she tells Roxy Carmichael that she is a very good slut, but next time, run her porno inspirations by her so that she can take credit for them. After all, she is the heroine of her own fairy tale, even though most people see her as the monster.

The big news for the sixth season is that Kristin Cavallari of Laguna Beach fame was returning to bitch it up after LC, the show's grand dame of drama, left for greener pastures. And those pastures are green with big money. Today it was announced that the Twilight team will adapt her novel into a movie. Earlier this year Audrina Partridge decided to call it quits for her own reality show and today Stephanie Pratt, the prattling sister of reality über-goober Specer Pratt, said she was quitting the show because she's sick of it.

I can understand why. Last night, I decided it was finally time to cave in to the peer pressure of the pop culture machine and finally watch an episode of this show. Yes, last night Kristin Cavallari popped my Hills cherry and it was excruciating. During the episode, she returns and attends a welcome back party for Spencer and Heidi Pratt (nee Montag), the amalgamation of everything insipid that is known and self-promoted as Speidi. It was less of an excuse to have a party and more of an excuse to have Kristin show up and start some shit, which she does. Because the show exists in its own beautiful snow globe of wealthy white people who only interact with each other, because Kristin wasn't on the show it's like she fell into a wormhole and was transported clear into the Alpha Centauri galaxy never to be heard from again.

Brody Jenner (who I find horribly dreamy in spite of myself) isn't tense about his ex-girlfriend Kristin being teleported back into their tiny sphere by a black hole the producers created out of money and Kristin's failed acting career, but his girlfriend Jayde (who spells her name like a drag queen) is afraid she's going to steal her man. And so is Audrina, who recently broke up with Justin Bobby—who looks like the punchline of a Joaquin Phoenix performance art piece, except he is totally missing all the irony. So they all sit around and talk about this with the sort of tepid trepidation of a year book committee that doesn't want the cover of their magnum opus to be maroon, but navy blue, because they have always dreamed about having a navy yearbook on their coffee table for the rest of their lives, but the school colors are maroon and white, so they have to deal with the color scheme even though it's ruining their lives.

Anyway, Kristin shows up at the party and starts some retarded fight that I don't understand, probably because I haven't had enough Patron shots and don't speak the spoiled patois of the Malibu faux-lite but it had something to do with Kristin talking to Justin Bobby's beard and that made Audrina upset. She yelled a lot and cowed the Year Book Committee to scurry back to the cafeteria to regroup and talk about whether or not they were going to go to some birthday party. Where the same drama is repeated, except without as much yelling.

I watch a lot of really trashy television, but I just don't get The Hills. I understand that it's fun to watch these little wind up toys sputter and twist when faced with the petty squabbles and slights of an insular social circle. I understand that the characters have been made into heroes and villains and that they're all so stupid that there is a certain pitiful superiority one feels while watching them try to navigated massaged reality before the cameras. Yes, I understand it, I just don't get it.

The City, though, I not only get, but totally love. While The Hills feels like regression, The City feels like a progression. It's a similar sort of snow globe, but one where characters actually have goals, things are actually happening, and the fights have real-world consequence.

Whitney Port, a refugee from The Hills, tries to play like she's the poor girl taking on the big, bad city, but she's got a fat pad in the West Villiage and a boss—PR maven Kelly Cutrone—who is encouraging her to work less so she can start her fashion line. Last night, Whitney's old friend Roxy shows up in New York and needs a job and a place to crash. Whitney hooks her up with both, but how does the affably daffy Roxy repay her? By throwing a giant party in her apartment that is so noisy the neighbors call the cops. This sounds just like the Jane Hotel, but it's happening on our TV screen. It's a fun arc that easily plays out easily over 30 minutes and really illustrates the trouble of starting a professional life in the big city in your early 20s—well, if you have a camera crew following you around and a big fat check from producers for just allowing your burgeoning life to be the entertainment for the masses.

The real star of the show, however, is socialite Olivia Palermo, who has been given a job as an accessories editor at Elle and faces off with the magazine's PR chief Erin Kaplan. This is real reality. Everyone knows only privileged and connected white girls get the plum jobs at fashion magazines. And when she gets there, Olivia has the sort of attitude you could expect to find in a girl with a prep school education who probably doesn't have to work for a living. And when she gets in a fight with Kaplan, it's not about who might have flirted with who in front someone's exgirlfriend at a party at the Pink Taco or who didn't say hi to such-and-such because they thought they had bad body odor. It's about a segment on the real live Today show. It's like an actual something. And if Olivia fucks it up then Kathie Lee Gifford is going to track her down and beat her like she's a Chinese sweatshop worker who won't sew fast enough. What's the worst thing that's going to happen to Kristin? Audrina isn't going to like her? Aww...

Yes, I love trashy reality television, but I want there to be real stakes along with the drama and I want it to have some sort of reflection on the world we all live in—that The City it has a reflection on the very specific Manhattan media world I live in probably makes me love it a little bit more. Earlier this week, when Lauren Conrad was asked if she would still watch The Hills she said, ""Probably not, I'll watch The City." Finally, someone from The Hills had something intelligent to say.

• Robert Pattinson's going out partying in Vancouver with Kristen Stewart. So, all you crazy, insane teenage stalkers, get your Canadian visas ready, go forth, and when you're deported for being fucked up and insane Robert Pattinson stalkers, at least pocket some of that BC Kush on your way home for me. I did, after all, tell you where he was. [Ed. Okay, no, but really: the Showbiz Spy item was about a "low-key" party in Vancouver. The title of the Showbiz Spy item was about Pattinson "partying hard" in Vancouver. You know why Robert Pattinson gets written about at all on the internet? Because teenagers use Google, and SEO Sandwich Making Magic is wonderful. Robert Pattinson could take a shit and I'd get at least 12,000 hits about it. Actually, probably far more than that, because we have yet to breach the fourth dimension where we report on Robert Pattison's bowel movements, which, yes, his fucked-up bloodthirsty teenage fans would be interested to know. To Mr. Pattinson, I suggest you eat as many segmented vegetables in the following months as you can. Specifically, anything that would go in a hearty winter soup.] [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Michael Jackson didn't like Pepsi. No shit. As the sole proprietor of Jackson's only assassination attempt, I wouldn't expect Jackson to be anything but a Coke fan, either. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Some guy saw Mike Myers at a basketball court in New York and was like, hey, you're Dr. Evil. Which, well: yes. Correct. [Page Six]
  
  
• Chelsea Handler and her network exec boyfriend are still very much together. They were spotted in Atlantic City—Atlantic City?!—being together. Why, of all places?....Jesus. [NYP]
  
  
• Erin Lucas from The City and Leven "Sister of Mary" Rambin (from Days of Our Lives or whatever shitty soap she's doing these days) went out to Goldbar and saw cameras and Kelly Cutrone and freaked out and ran away. Cutrone, who's hysterical and awesome, had this to say to Page Six: "I think people were partying too hard to pay attention, because those cameras weren't there for me." Which basically translates to "If those bitches weren't so coked up they would've realized that I was just there to get a drink, sans TV crew." [Page Six]
  
  
• Lukas Haas and Miranda Kerr were dancing for an entire night at the Jane Hotel while the dude from Kings of Leon kept staring at them, and oh yeah, she's supposed to be dating Orlando Bloom, whoops. [Page Six[
  
  
• Amy Winehouse got her teeth fixed because in the great tradition of British Teeth, they were sincerely fucked up. Of course, they gave her really strong drugs to deal with the pain, so while she might have nice teeth, now, she's still very much a crackhead, this time, with a doctor's endorsement. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• One of those Real Creatures from Dirty Jersey, Danielle Staub, told Jennifer Aniston not to judge New Jersey and make jokes about it smelling, which she did on Chelsea Handler's show the other night. Honestly, though, most people from New Jersey know that New Jersey smells. But it's like a bog out of which emerges wonderful creatures like Bruce Springsteen, Danny DeVito, and seminal emo bands like Saves The Day, who actually have a song about the smell of New Jersey reminding them of their mediocre lives. If anything, Staub can't smell New Jersey because she's had her nose buried in something—the shit? Blow?—for far too long. [US]
  
  
• Ouch, Ashley Dupré: you got sold down the river for Tommy "Agent Nilla" Hilfiger by Russell Simmons. Simmons was going to take Dupré to Hilfigah's party and Tommy dis-invited her. Simmons, who's not famous for anything other than once inventing Def Jam and nowadays, doing yoga and possibly young men, dis-invited Dupré to the party. But really: who wants to a Tommy Hilfiger party? Oh. Wait. It was at the Jane Hotel. Well, Dupré: sucks! [Page Six]
  
  
• Broadway gossip: Chris Rock was supposed to be in David Mamet's new play, Race, but the word being preemptively put out on the street is that his schedule had too many conflicts. Which, note smirky husband and wife gossip duo Rush & Molloy, is not at all about his wife hating Kerry Washington, or trying to deal with the threat of Kerry Washington on her mans. Not at all. Meanwhile, Chris "Smack Her With The Dick" Rock has a new book coming out, and it's probably pretty good. [NYDN]
  
  
• Uh oh. As cool as Jay-Z kept his shit when Lil Mama burst on stage with him and Alicia Keys at the end of the VMAs, he apparently freaked out when he got backstage, screaming at producers about security. I like that Jay-Z's biggest security threat these days is now Lil' "Lip Gloss" Mama. My, rap community, how times have changed. "He went ballistic. He was screaming at the MTV producers about the lack of security. He apparently thought at first she was just a fan. Beyoncé finally calmed him down." [NYDN]
  
  
• Same R & M item: did you know Warren Buffet drinks five cans of Cherry Coke a day? I'll be attempting to do this over the course of the day in order to make more money than I did yesterday. By drinking ten. We'll check in on me around 4PM, when I'm out cold from the meanest sugar high crash ever. [NYDN]
  
  
• Celebrities doing nice things: Sienna Miller apparently did really, really well in her first day on the job, not only impressing theatergoers, but greeting her fans outside the theater to sign programs and be generally nice. [NYDN]

• Did you know that Martina Navratilova is a lesbian? A big hairy tennis lesbian. Who does lesbian things with other lesbians. Lesbians like Toni Layton, a lesbian. Lesbian. Thank you, Page Six, for clearing that up with your awesome headline. [P6]
• Shockingly, Jason Statham feels uncomfortable having public sex in shopping malls. For me, it takes an international airport terminal to get bashful. [P6]
• Whitney Port, of The City, no longer works at Creaky Tallulah Pants' Slack Shack Diane von Furstenberg, which was the reason she moved to The (New York) City in the first place. The wicked Decepticon Olivia Palermo beat her out for a fancy fashion job at Old Lady Puffenstuff's Hosiery Concern DVF, so Whitney mooped back over to Kelly Cutrone's People's Revolution for the second season, currently filming. There she'll play the tambourine, Melody-style, in Joe Zee's Pussycats band. [P6]
• Did you know that Alice in Wonderland is "perverted" and "all about Ecstasy"? It is. Noted historian Miley Cyrus recently took off her reading glasses and leaned over the desk and informed us of this fascinating fact. Never mind that Ecstasy was invented like a hundred years after the book was written and some forty after the movie was made. That's science history, not Jesus history. And Billy Ray says Jesus history is the history of the Cyrus clan. West Side Story is about lasers and the original Parent Trap is about incest space twins who do each other in a black hole. [P6]
• Uh oh. Lady-beater Chris Brown has reportedly started dating again. His new squeeze is a college student from Virginia who Chris had blow him in his trailer after a concert met while visiting home. She's apparently "no Rihanna", plain but "cute", "solid", and has "a good head on her shoulders." Such a good head, in fact, that the student—who should be in school!—was spotted with Brown, trotting around LA and going to tattoo parlors. Brown reportedly just got a tattoo that said: "Your name here." [NYDN]
• Like Imelda Marcos hungrily eying a pair of shoes just gleaming there in the window, baby-mad raven-woman Angelika Jorlee has set her sights on the children of the Philippines. She tried recently to adopt a baby from Burma Myanmar wait, Burma? but was shut the hell down. Luckily Jolson speaks Tagalog and was a member of the Flipmode Squad when she was in high school. So this oughta be a snap. [NYDN]
• Speaking of baby snatchers, the terrible Maddona witch has taken a stick, black as coal, and scratched it on an old piece of parchment. The script appeared blood red on the paper, and spelled out an impassioned letter to the people of Malawi, pleading them to let her adopt baby Mercy. "I want to provide Mercy with a home, a loving family environment and the best education and healthcare possible," the letter insisted. Then it took a terrifying turn. "I also want her to eats worms and sing Bonobo songs backwards and I want her to carry little sachets of bones on her belt and sometimes she will appear to float and other times her eyes will glow, dark black, and she will whisper to you when you are asleep and a thousand miles away and she will tell you to do wicked deeds and when you wake the next morning you will do them. Your neighbors' chickens will die, their wives go barren. And it will be all the doing of the, ironically named, I know, Mercy. Then, when she comes of age, I will eat her, while cackling and moaning, gristle and blood and hair and bits tumbling out of my snarled, fang-filled mouth. So, you know, please Malawi, please just try to see it from my side. Thx!! xoxo, Maddy." [Us]
• Gross on toast. That horrifying Duggar family—the horrid religio-nut hillbillies from Arkansas with 18 children—are reproducing again. Though this time it's oldest son Joshua who had a furtive, shame-filled, sweaty fucking and gurgle-wept into a pillow afterward. He's gone and gotten his new child bride Anna, 20, pregnant. They were on the Today show this morning and your dedicated gossip roundupper was maybe putting his socks on and dry-heaving. Sometimes when Joshua is driving down the road in his enormous, stupid, needless pickup truck he'll get quick flashes of that night—the boobs and the precious opening and other pink, mealy things, the slapping and squishing, the sighs and grunts—and he'll suddenly burst into giddy, worried, farting tears and have to pull over to the side of the road, put his head between his knees, take deep breaths, and pray. It's just too much. [People]

Incidentally, the New York Observer's Eight-Day Week columnist Meredith Bryan, who met Cutrone after writing a flattering profile last year, is co-writing the book. So there's that lesson right on the cover.

Cutrone, who has risen to prominence as the owner of People's Revolution, a company that organizes fashion shows and stuff, but more significantly as a frequent mentor/berater on MTV's twin-moon docusoaps, The Hills and The City. On those shows she's given scary, sober advice to stars Lauren and Whitney, who both nodded gravely while trying not to pee themselves.

This book will be much the same, but, you know, in book form. Plus, she's talking to you. The Observer writes of the ladybible:

Topics covered, she offered by way of example, will include how to get your first apartment, why it's important to leave a place if you feel like you're going to cry, how to buy lingerie and how to tell the difference between a slant six and a V8 if you're in the market for a muscle car.

Sounds good! The last part seems very impractical for New York City, but still. Sounds good! (Don't hurt us.) Basically what Cutrone wants young women (or reinvented old ladies) to do is chuck out that old Rules or He's Just Not That Into You bullshit. She barks:

Sex and the City was a lot of frosting. I like Candace, and I think she's a good writer, but this isn't four girls holding hands running around New York. It's the real thing.

Hopefully there's a chapter towards the end called "What to Do When the Recession Has Eaten All Your Job Prospects and You're Living Back at Home." That would certainly be the 'real thing.'

• On Valentine's weekend, Alex Rodriguez went out with Madonna's friend Ingrid Casares, a model and "three hot chicks." Not that he's trying to prove anything to, say, Madonna and her Brazilian boy toy. [P6]
• Lindsay Lohan may be skinny, but she insists she's eating as much as she always has. But then the starlet added, cryptically, "everyone goes through something, and everyone can relate to something." Try that sentence again after a cheeseburger, doll. [Daily Star]
• Sad, broke Michael Jackson is auctioning his signature gloves, a Rolls Royce limo with 24-karat gold "embellishment," a golf cart with a Peter Pan version of himself spray painted on the hood and an oil painting of himself dressed as a king. Also, the gates to his estate. [Mail]
• Heidi Klum on being called "too heavy" for the runway: "Do I look like I care? I really don’t think about [it]." [Gatecrasher]
• The publicist fired for taking Ashley Dupre to Yigal Azriel's fashion show, Kelly Cutrone, is being nice to the former hooker out of the goodness of her heart, and not because Cutrone has a reality show forthcoming on Bravo. Although if you want to go ahead and plug Dupre's forthcoming album, the flack certainly won't object. [P6]
• Tom Cruise spent time with ex-wife Nicole Kidman and her current husband Keith Urban at the Daytona 500. [ET]

You would think this "Yigal Azrouël" would be happy for the free PR that up-and-coming singer Dupre brought to his show. But he wasn't:

A no-nonsense, late night press release announced the news: "Following the showing of his Fall Winter 2009 Collection, Yigal Azrouël has decided to fire front-of-house PR Company, People's Revolution, for mismanagement."

That PR company is run by Kelly Cutrone, star of The City. And she couldn't care less about that crappy fashion label client, frankly! Nobody named "Yigal" will come between Kelly and her friend, Ashley Dupre, singer.

"When I met her I was like, you know what, I really like this girl," said Ms. Cutrone. "I'm vehemently opposed to morality, and I think that people who are insistent upon propelling morality ultimately hang themselves."

Got that? She's vehemently opposed to morality. Okay. So anyhow let's get right down to brass tacks and find out from Ashley Alexandra Dupre, hey Ashley, tell us about your upcoming music album will you?

Over pasta and salmon at L'Ulivo in the West Village, Dupre opened up about her hoped-for music career, her love of fashion and how she's dealt with moving on from the Eliot Spitzer scandal. "It's pop-rock, it's going to be deep, not bubblegum. It's definitely a personal record," said Dupre, 23, of the album she is currently recording...But don't expect any Spitzer-related songs. "I think I'll stay away from that, it would be pretty tacky," said Dupre, who is petite, gregarious and blessed with a flawless complexion. "I don't want to sing about it and I don't think anyone wants to listen to it."

Well you are certainly wrong about that! [NYDN, NYO, WWD]

It's hard to tell what exactly is contrived and what's the real deal, but that doesn't stop people from trying. Today, the New York Post reveals that Whitney's day job on the show—doing in house PR for Diane Von Furstenberg—is fake, with one source saying "She doesn't really work. She is hardly ever in the office." And that comes as no surprise, given Whitney's employment history on The Hills, "stylink" at Teen Vogue, and PR at People's Revolution, when in real life, she's actually designed her line of clothing Eve & A.

In The Hills episode that sets up the premise for Whitney's spinoff, she's alerted to an opening at DVF through Kelly Cutrone, her boss at People's Revolution, and while she's in NYC on business, she goes to a bar and meets a musician who will be her love interest on her own show. Perfect coincidence or perfect casting? It all seemed too perfectly suited for tripod camera-captured moments to actually be real moments.

However, Cutrone insists to New York magazine (in a very lengthy new article about the show) that Whitney was a "very real" employee at People's Revolution, and that she played no part in MTV's machinations in inventing a new ingenue. "It wasn’t like I did all that for Whitney thinking she’d get her own show,” she says. “It’s not like I’m in secret cahoots with DVF here. I mean, I don’t even represent her.” However, New York notes that Cutrone is currently pitching her own show about her own life with the working title Kell on Earth. So is everyone just playing along with this manufactured reality in order to achieve the new Paris Hiltion-esque American dream of creating a career out of participatory self-exploitation?

As for what's real and what's fake, it looks like Whitney's relationship with Jay Lyon, the Australian musician, is indeed for real. And that's weird for a number of reasons because she's reportedly been dating similarly named E! News' Ben Lyons for a while now.

As for whether or not she's even really living in NYC, that's up in the air. She tells New York, “I’m living in either midtown or the Gramercy area—I don’t really know, to be perfectly honest. I’m in a tall building, way up high.” Who doesn't know what neighborhood they live in? And as for the "supporting cast," well, they consist of the usual suspects of NYC's climber-y circle, namely Olivia Palermo, a self-professed socialite who told producers she wanted to be on the show "because I want to be a brand.” Ew. Olivia was originally supposed to be featured on a different show about glamorous NYC twentysomethings pitched by Devorah Rose, who made a memorable appearance on the reality show The Fashionista Diaries.

To sum it up, Whitney says of The City and its cast: "It’s a really wonderful opportunity for all these kids," recognizing that her "reality" is less of a life, and more of a vehicle. However, it may be one that's stalled. The most recent Hills season finale (which aired December 22) averaged 2.6 million total viewers, down from 3.8 million for the previous season finale. Maybe viewers finally realized that in order to follow the lives of these people, Us Weekly is a much more accurate source. And how fucked up is it that we just referred to a tabloid as being more accurate than what's captured on tape?

Run for the Hills [NY Mag]
Holidays Hurt "Hills" As Finale Ratings Fall [Reuters]
HARD LABOR [NY Post]
Whitney Port talks 'The City,' and drops a major 'Hills' scoop! [EW]
Earlier: 'The Fashionista Diaries': Devora Rose Gives Mandie "Cunt Face" Erickson A Run For Her Money

I have a bizarre experience with The Hills. I'm a mom and I have a six-year-old, and when my daughter was a year and a half, my mom was trying to give her Disney princess stuff and I was really opposed to it, because I thought the messaging was very negative in the setup for little girls. It's always some poor village girl, and something happens to her, and then poof, this guy shows up and they move to the castle and everything is great.

I just really didn't want my daughter to get into that. I mean so much to the point that I was looking at a Waldorf or city and country type gender-free school because I just thought that it was negative imaging. By the time my daughter was two, she knew every Disney princess, every name, even though we didn't have it in our house and I just totally succumbed to the fact that Disney had gotten my kid and there was nothing I could do, so I mind as well join them and celebrate that aspect of imagination and femininity with her.

And now she's six and she's really into Miley Cyrus, who I think originally the core concept was developed for a tween market, but what's happening is TV and media are sexualizing kids so quick and everything's moving so fast that a five-year-old is now into what a 12-year-old used to be into because of the way things like Disney edits and paces their show.

People like Zach and Cody, That's So Raven, and then Miley, so it was like my daughter just turned six, she just finished kindergarten and she knows all about High School Musical, which is really a tween Grease, if you think about it.

Then what happens for these girls, their next installation is, guess what, The Hills. And they're just old enough to start watching MTV, they're hormonally in place, and they see these four young, beautiful girls who really in my mind are a continuation of a Disney princess, because they live in a world that most people will never live in. And, on top of that, you pick up the extra market of people who do live in that world who want to see themselves reflected back, like the fashion and entertainment people who kind of watch it like it's something like they can't really believe that they're watching, but they are watching and they're enthralled because they can't believe they're watching what they're watching but they're also narcissistic because they see their own world reflected back to them.

And then there's a sub-group of people that are drawn in by their wives. And I know this because when I go out of town or something, people come up to me, like a 40-year-old guy who's an engineer who is like, "Oh, are you on The Hills? I told my wife that was you, I knew that was you." And I say, "Well why do you watch The Hills?" And he says, "I don't know, I like to watch TV with my wife and she started having me watch it."

Being from upstate New York and not being born in New York on Park Avenue, I think I have an interesting perspective because I come from one world and I live in another, and I think for most young people who watch that world, it would be amazing if you're 21 and get invited to go the Crillion Ball in Paris. That's my take on The Hills and that's why I think it is so successful.

• Cutrone lives in a "spacious loft" in SoHo with her daughter, Ava, and a male model named Demian. Though, she's not necessarily involved with him. (In fact, she's trying to set Demian up with Whitney). She's dating a music producer in LA and was once married to "Warhol affiliate" Ronnie Cutrone. Ava's father? "An Italian she met in Paris and left three months into her pregnancy, shortly after leaving her second husband, an actor."
• She's also a pal of Factory member and filmmaker Paul Morrissey, whom she's trying to persuade to film an episode of The Hills.
• She was a Syracuse born-and-raised 21-year-old who moved to Avenue C in the East Village and became a party girl. A delightful anecdote from the article: "'She was an accident waiting to happen,' recalled Mr. Cutrone. The couple first met at a club called Carmelita, in a former whorehouse. 'She was wild, ambitious, volatile, sexual. Sex and the City looks like a ridiculous joke compared to what Kelly was! Plfffffft!' Early in their courtship, Mr. Cutrone found a gram of coke in a jacket Ms. Cutrone had borrowed. He himself was clean at the time, he said. 'I'm like, what the hell! Kelly tracked me down at my building and woke up two gay guys, looking for the coke or me, and then eventually she did find us, but there it was—sex and drugs in one pretty picture.' ('I was out that night,' admitted Ms. Cutrone.) They soon moved in together, and got married. She was 22.
• She once represented Eartha Kitt.
• At one point she quit her job in PR and became a tarot card reader on Venice Beach.
• "'I would never rep Versace, I can't stand her, I think she makes disgusting clothes. Calvin [Klein] is like, snore! Who wears Calvin Klein? I'm not dissing him. I think he's built an amazing, respectable business, but I would never want to work for Calvin Klein, ever.' Her own stable of clients is heavy on up-and-comers and not the most high-end in the business, but she said it was consciously curated based on whom she thought deserved 'a voice.'"
• "Ms. Cutrone suddenly blared "Rapper's Delight" from her laptop and lit a cigarette at her desk."
• "'You're so pretty,' said Ms. Cutrone softly to a 19-year old intern who walked in with a phone message. 'What's your major?'"
• So why don't I go marry her already, right? I mean, she's probably a total monster in real life, but whatever. I'm excited for her increased presence on the next season of The Hills (I'm excited about The Hills! Amazing!) And, of course, any appearances she'll make on Whitney Port's upcoming spin-off series.
  

New Yorkers have a love-hate relationship with the fashion industry, which culminates to quite a crescendo during these special ten days in September. As Guy Trebay notes, "fashion remains the most culturally potent force that everyone loves to deride." While proud of the global cosmopolitanism and attention that fashion brings to the city, New Yorkers still remain skeptical that all the fuss of Fashion Week may amount to nothing.

This sentiment is not unique to New York, and it's arguably worse once one is off the island. At least in New York many people actually know designers, models, and PR people who work in the fashion industry. For a majority of the country's population, fashion is regarded as frivolous and superficial, the icing on the cake that adds to the culture of global cities such as New York, Paris, London or Milan, but doesn't drive their economies. Then there's the general envy and resentment towards the models who strut down the runway wearing a real size two—not the size two in Banana Republic or Dress Barn. People hate the elitism of the fashion world itself, the members-only club that requires excessive skinniness and insouciance, all the while presciently knowing what's "in fashion," which means it's certainly not at any department store in the Midwest. Without a doubt, it's a member's only club you must be invited to join, not dissimilar to the Skull and Bones society.

Its elitism is what makes fashion simultaneously fascinating and annoying. As much as the naysayers like to say fashion doesn't matter, most wouldn't mind an invite to a runway show, but even better to the after party. And this is not irrational: Fashion Week looks really fun and everyone who's anyone gets to go. But more importantly - and this is why Fashion Week has real economic implications - the potential to access those who shape fashion and dole out jobs is extremely high.

All those who matter to fashion or in fashion are in attendance, bringing limitless possibilities. Aspiring young designers get the chance to meet top editors, while celebrities attend the shows and after parties dressed in designer X, which gets reported in US Weekly and Vogue, instantly increasing value and sales. Celebrities talk to fashion houses about establishing their own clothing line, while the music played on the runway of Marc Jacobs or Diane Von Furstenberg may become popular among the bohemian chic set. Fashion Week is far more than the clothes and celebrity reportage: It's where the business of fashion gets done, even if it's conducted with a cocktail in hand.

My colleague Gilad Ravid and I wanted to quantify the potential of important interactions that could emerge from Fashion Week. Using Getty Images data from September 2006 Fashion Week, we analyzed the network of people photographed during the course of the week attending fashion shows and related events. We looked at approximately 212 clustered events (meaning that some events included pictures of backstage, front row, runway and arrival of attendees) and 1318 people photographed at the events. What we found is that Fashion Week is easily one of the most critical nodes for mixing business and social. The most important people within the industry attend the events, along with many leading cultural gatekeepers in other industries. Further, the actual potential for one person to interact with many other attendees is extremely high (what social networkers call "diversity of network size").

An example: in analyzing the photographs, the director of Fashion Week, Fern Mallis and the socialite and hotel heiress Nicky Hilton lead with regard to network size. Each has the potential to shake 355 people's hands. Socialite Tinsley Mortimer isn't far behind at 329 potential handshakes, while the Queen Bee, Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, can shake 315 and Mischa Barton 279. Wintour and Mallis make sense—as fashion is their thing they will be attending the most events and interacting with the most people. Hilton and Mortimer can be chalked up to ladies who lunch and party an awful lot, and Fashion Week has plenty of that. Mischa Barton is, well, Mischa Barton. She's a darling of the fashion industry and the media (which means that Getty photographers would tend to photograph her more than most at any event she would attend).

While Hilton and Mortimer's ubiquitous presence at the shows and after parties can be expected (they are socialites after all), there are a few others that emerged out of the top ten that are surprising candidates. For example, 1995 Former Miss Massachusetts Teen USA and sometimes Today Show correspondent Maria Menounos is a bit of a random outlier with a network of 250, as is R&B superstar ("The Boy is Mine") Brandy at 245. These scenesters may be actively cultivating their popularity or media presence (in Brandy's case she may be gearing up for her soon-to-be released album), or they may have nothing better to do than go to runway shows all day.

But what's the point of potential if it doesn't actually happen? We used a measure called "density", to see how many people within one particular network end up interacting with one another. For example, Nicky Hilton is photographed at events with 355 people, of these 355 people density measures how many potential interactions between those in her network occur, including interactions at events at which Hilton doesn't even attend. In other words, density measure the ratio between the actual connections to the potential ones (which in Hilton's case would amount to hundreds of different possible interactions given that her network is so large) . We found that within the echelons of the "most connected", those with a network size of more than 100 people, the average density is 27%, which means that on average those within a most-connected network end up in photographs (e.g. meeting and interacting) with almost a third of those also in the network.

There are some people, however, that translate every potential encounter into an actual interaction: Fashion designer Oscar De La Renta and fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone have networks of over 100 people and a density of 100%, meaning that every possible connection between people within their network actually occurred, including events in which Cutrone and De La Renta weren't in attendence. The people at events De La Renta attends may just be social and gregarious, while Cutrone is clearly doing her job well. You don't become a top notch fashion publicist unless you're doing high level networking (Though it might be noted that one can do their job a little too well: Just last year, Gawker reported that Cutrone barred reporters from her clients' runway shows because she didn't like what they wrote).

Equally important, if you do want to meet (or be photographed) with any particular person attending the same event as you, it's as easy as pie: The average person attending a Fashion Week event is only one degree of separation away from others in their network. You just have to go talk to someone you do know and they will likely be able to introduce you to the person you actually want to talk to. It goes without saying that those with the highest density also have the least degrees of separation (or they maintain the highest "closeness"). Overall, all measures of connectivity correlate with one another: If you have a high closeness measure you also tend to also have short degrees of separation and high "eigenvector centrality" (an unnecessarily complicated term which means you are an important node in the network).

A few outliers are model/actress Carmen Electra and musician (better known as father of soon-to-be released Nicole Ritchie spawn) Joel Madden: Both of these celebrities are not particularly close to those in their networks but are important as linkages in paths between other people. In other words, they're good people to know if you want to meet someone else.

It's not just the people that are important connectors; getting into the right events counts too. For example, last year, Zac Posen, Marc Jacobs and Heatherette's runway shows were strongly connected, meaning that those attending one of these events tended to attend the others and that these events are central nodes for Fashion Week with regards to the closeness and the degrees of separation between those who attended. In general, getting into the tent at Bryant Park indicates a much greater possibility of getting into the runway shows, a somewhat obvious conclusion. Though actually procuring a ticket may be next to impossible.

So as it turns out, getting into Fashion Week isn't just fun. It might actually be the most important thing you can do for your career in fashion or in any other creative industry. Since it's not just that everyone is in attendance but everyone is interacting with one another, the chances of meeting exactly who you want to - important gatekeepers who will offer you a job, editors who will write up your work or even Carmen Electra suggesting you two collaborate on a own clothing line - spikes way up. So instead of grumbling about the big, overwhelming tents taking up Bryant Park and the excessive security at Stereo or Bungalow 8, you might just want to smile at the bouncer and security guards and get yourself in so that you can party your way into a brand new Spring 2008 fabulous life.

Elizabeth Currid is assistant professor at University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development and the author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City, (Princeton University Press).

Gilad Ravid, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Israel, assisted with this column.

Previously: When The Art Bubble Bursts Into A Splash

While Palermo has denied sending the note, insiders claim that she sent it specifically to SR as part of her diabolical bid for notoriety at any cost. This is some Edith Wharton novel on crystal meth shit, and Wilner's piece should constitute the oddest chapter yet.

For starters, we hear that some of the socialites who declined to be interviewed were told that, if they didn't go on the record, they wouldn't like what the article said. We also were told that at least two more of Isaiah's sources "didn't know they were being interviewed" and are now awaiting the article's publication with some trepidation. But if the payoff is a juicy scoop about, say, who's behind Socialite Rank or something, well... absolutely any ends justify the means, right? —Emily

[Isaiah Wilner]
[PHOTO: Carrie Elston]

Huntington wrote about the incident, we linked, and today Cutrone writes Gawker:

HUNTING SEASON WITH PATTI CUNTINGTON
It is a really sad day when designers from the land down under are trying to emerge on the international fashion arena and are so poorly represented by members of their own media.

People's Revolution is filing a law suit against Ms. Huntington for her disparaging and false remarks.

People's Revolution will continue to support Australian members of the media like Sharon Krum of the Australian and fantastic world-renowned brands like Tsubi.

Sincerely,
Kelly Cutrone

So when Cutrone's dad files those legal papers, will the defendant be named as "Cuntington?" Because name-calling always leads to a quick settlement.

UPDATE: Cutrone sends word that her father isn't anywhere near to being a lawyer, contrary to what Huntington wrote. Hence the lawsuit. But still, "Cuntington?" Brilliant.

Earlier: Kelly Cutrone, Questionable Masster of the Dark Art of PR