"Consumed," a "fashion short" written and dirtected by Bradley Young—former photography director at Interview, GQ, Instyle, Talk and Radar—and shot on the roof of The Standard Hotel, features socialite and model Lydia Hearst looking her most gorgeous and bored. She vamps for the camera in various killer outfits and interesting tableaux while subway busker Luke Trumble croons "St. Louis Blues" in the background.

There is a sad and gritty undercurrent to the action that reminds us a bit of what life in New York is really like. Sure, there are plenty of glamorous things here in the city, but often attaining them isn't worth the trouble to get them, and sometimes those fabulous parties are just full of lonely people waiting to pounce on a Rubix cube on a silver platter. Still it reminds us of the wonderful luster of the city, and the danger of being swept up in it. Be sure to check out the whole video (and the surprise ending!) at Gravure Mag.

Yeah, it's funny because she sort of looks exactly like the weird hooker in the actual movie. (And Fisher is pretty much a deadringer for a Psycho-era Bale.) So, like her doppleganger, Hearst has a creepy threesome with Patrick Bateman and some doomed socialite. There's lots of bouncing.

Look! Screencaps! I've embedded the video itself down in comments if you want to hear the surprisingly good song. New comments are good for something after all.

MSNBC's David Shuster lamented the lack of a spectacular and public end to a high-speed car chase.

After chatting with actor Ben Stiller, cyclist Lane Armstrong confirmed to a grateful public the existence of Dodgeball 2.

Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis explained to TechCrunch's Mike Arrington exactly how grating Arrington is; the positively scientific observation included a citation.

Business Insider's John Carney discovered financial politics had made heiress Lydia Hearst his strange bedfellow. He didn't seem particularly annoyed.

Time's James Poniewozik spent basically all day trying to pronounce the name of Dan Abrams' blog, Mediaite.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Yeah, the buildup in her gallbladder or bile duct caused her to miss the party, which was attended by other bile-related buildups like Kellan Lutz and socialgay Kristian Laliberte. In fact Laliberte was the one who spilled the beans about Ms. Hearst's painful condition, and we're sure Lydia's thrilled with him. ("Couldn't you have said a migraine, Kristy?")

Hopefully she spent her recuperation time at home writing a new Wealth of Nations.

[New York Observer]

Socialite Hearst has, until now, been careful not to go this far; when she did the cover of French Playboy, she was careful to note there was "no nudity for me" and that the publication was "very high fashion." Similarly, the model-heiress emphasized the "high fashion/couture" aspect of her lingerie shoot for an "upscale" panty brand.

Hearst's new topless spread is wrapped, of course, in the same sort of market positioning: She's in an upscale fashion glossy, GQ, and the Italian edition to boot. The model's poses are as stiff as ever, but they're also "low key [and] artistic," according to the blog Drunken Stepfather.

Well, we guess. She's still taking off her shirt, which is way more than her otherwise shameless protocelebrity competitor Julia Allison had to do to get a big Condé Nast cover. How is it the willowy Gotham heiress has been outclassed by a brassy social-climber from the Midwest? By making the same mistake as so many luxury retailers: responding to hard times by cheapening the product in the mind of the consumer. Not necessarily by taking off her shirt — you're only young once, and you might as well take your racy pictures then — but by doing so in such a marginal venue.

UPDATE: And, of course (we should have known), Hearst has gone topless before in an even more obscure venue, which you can see here or here (NSFW links, duh). So she's actually shimmying her way up the stripper pole of minor fame into ever-slightly-classier outlets. Dutch Esquire next? Hearst will make money on both sides of the deal.

(Pics from Italian GQ via Drunken Stepfather)

First, Sean Avery sexed up the waifmatron-of-a-certain-age Anna Wintour's Vogue, then Ryan Adams Blackbook-ed in exchange for free publicity for his new record. Then, author James Frey voluntarily asked to intern here.

For Lydia, however, this is the next step on the media-ladder after you quit your Page Six column in a snit over an item about your family's company that you allegedly didn't write.

Meanwhile, the disgruntled Blackbook worker Foster (to her left) blogs that he's "trying to explain to her how our backend listings system works." Something tells us it's gonna be a loooong Monday.

Update: "I am Lydia's PR. don't you get it? She is being Britany !!!! that was her costume? can't you tell that they are wearing the same outfit? Duh Gawker!!!!" (When we finally get the juice to hire a PRgay, we're gonna go with one who uses periods and questions marks properly?)

[Photo of Lydia Hearst by Jonathon Zieglerfor Patrick McMullan via Guest of a Guest]

There is a far different side to this city; every day is not 73 degrees and sunny, there are no beaches or accessory pets [um, what?? -ed.] and thankfully no-one drives drunk. Manhattan is a city centered on style and sophistication. The place where krispy kreme was invented and anything and everything you could ever desire from Q-Tips to Cipriani’s can be delivered right to your door.

Krispy Kreme actually started, like most delicious fried food products, in the South. In North Carolina, specifically. Serves the willowy heiress right for fancying herself an expert on junk food.

But we still look forward to seeing how Hearst transforms herself. We're betting on some kind of vanity website. Though she's probably bristle at the comparison, Hearst is already sounding like fellow protocelebrity Emily Brill:

The thing the people don’t realize is that it is a system. You don’t have to conform. It is about breaking the mold and reaching inside yourself to discover not what you are and what you are doing but who you could be and all you could accomplish.

The Post admitted today that the "Hearst Chronicles" was not always written by Lydia Hearst. Instead, the model "was interviewed by a reporter, who put her thoughts into cohesive paragraphs."

"Cohesive" being a relative term.

At least some of these interviews were conducted via email, so Hearst may still try to claim to have "written" her columns. But when one person is asking questions and another is answering those questions, there's not really any question as to which is the journalist and which is the writing-challenged minor celebrity.

Worst for Hearst is that the emails constitute written proof she was dissing her family, a fact the Post is exploiting gleefully, quoting the heiress as follows:

I do think [Hearst Corp.] should cut back on events, but it is a bit sever [sic] to cut back on the Christmas party, that's like the joke in the Scrooge films where the holiday parties and bonuses are canceled.

You know, if socialites would just content themselves with being socialites instead of insisting on pretend day jobs that help them feel modern and fulfilled, Hearst would never have sought to brand herself a "Freelance Journalist" and this whole kerfuffle could have been avoided.

Then again, a gig that combines the journalistic impulses of Page Six and the Hearst family was bound to end in some sort of explosion. If only it could have been a bit more spectacular!

“As a result of the article titled “Blood Dispute” in the October 24th issue of Page Six, I am compelled to resign from my position as Freelance Journalist for Page Six Magazine.

I did not, and would not, write such an article as the one to appear as my Page Six magazine column in this Sunday’s Post.

The item first appeared as Page Six newspaper item, touted as a "preview" to her Sunday magazine column. So they just... made it up? Who knows, but that's what Lydia is suggesting. Update! She just told Gawker that the parting was "amicable," adding

"I have always written my column, and as every writer I had an editor... If I wrote something I would stand behind it (as I have always done), but I now have to take the heat for something which was added to my work and that I did not write."

She also said in her resignation letter, "I can no longer continue my association as a journalist," to which we can only respond with an excerpt from one of her past columns:

"I’m pretty comfortable posing in my underwear. You may have seen my new campaign for British lingerie company Myla, which has spawned a bit of mudslinging on the Internet about how I’m Paris Hilton. (Remember: I am a supermodel and have the award to prove it, and she is a celebrity. There’s no comparison.)"

[Photo: Style.com]

Marc Jacobs is the only designer anyone cares about and, even though his collection was sort of cool this year, his collection has always been sort of a loss-leader funded by his insane diva behavior and that behavior mostly stopped this year. Last September Marc Jacobs started his 9 p.m. show two and a half hours late and everyone had a hissy fit about it, which in turn caused Marc Jacobs to have a hissy fit over how he was an "artist" and people should not be thinking about quotidian details such as whether their dogs had been fed. Then he dyed his hair blue, went insane and maybe also to rehab. Anyway, that is as good as it gets, in fashion. (That should tell you something.) But he is sane this year. It's all about the clothes, and no one really cares about clothes!

Everyone who isn't Russian is poor. Times Thursday Styles regular Stephanie Rosenbloom has a story about the nation's thrift stores. This is hugely significant for two reasons: 1. It is actually a story, and last year around this time Stephanie Rosenbloom was writing about horseback riding in the Hampton's, but it turns out she has been hiding out in the Business section lately, getting down to proverbial business. 2. The story is that the demand for other people's cast-off ill-advised purchases has exceeded the nation's supply of ill-advised purchases.

Cindy McCain is the new Victoria Beckham. Example: last week Us Weekly decreed Michelle Obama to have hands-down better style than Cindy McCain. This week the selfsame magazine has a whole feature on Cindy's supposed "makeover" and how pretty she suddenly supposedly looks! And that is not even to mention the matter of Sarah Palin's disappearing-reappearing beehive, and Michelle Obama's Thakoon dress and the cool shirt pictured above, which we found on Philebrity. Political fashion icons are the new celebrity fashion icons, and that is bad for the industry because unlike worthless celebrities who are allowed to change outfits as fast as they can spill tequila and Sparks on the ones they were wearing, politicians, at least when they are not wearing $300,000 dresses, have to pretend they understand the realities of working-class Americans busy raiding thrift stores/insurgent safe houses.

The must-have item this year is the jumpsuit. Perhaps you heard about the school in Texas that recently decreed that all kids who chose to violate dress code requirements by rolling up their skirts or whatever would risk being forced to don prison jumpsuits for the remainder of the school day. Now, there is always going to be that one group of totally cool high schoolers who make the prison jumpsuits into some sort of "subversive" fashion statement, but bottom line is that high schoolers would not be incurring dress code violations if they did not want to show off their skinny high schooler legs etc. etc. and those high schoolers grow into the adults who consume fashion. So this gives me pause:

Yet designers are willing to risk everything on a gut feeling. The trend-forecasters, fabric mills and color experts can offer all the advice in the world. It's still little more than a crapshoot when a designer says: Jumpsuits! A lot of them have been saying that over the past few days. Apparently that's what we're all supposed to want come spring. And if Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler are right, we'll want jumpsuits to be silver and sparkly and worn with just a frisson of dominatrix attitude.

Lydia Hearst got hospitalized… And the affliction is kidney stones? Is there even a drug you can get those from?

• Fuck, I know who like, all of these people are. So do a lot of you, I bet. And I don't even buy clothes, or think about clothes, or watch reality TV. How the fuck did that happen?
• Oh yeah, there was that time and that time and that and that. Oh yeah and that.
• This sort of calls to mind the time I asked my friend, who covered the fast food industry for the Wall Street Journal, why McDonald's didn't accept credit cards. She said industry conventional wisdom had long held that people didn't want to be reminded once a month of the massive quantities of grade C beef and high fructose chicken lips they'd consumed that month. Now I sort of see why.
• Okay, I didn't know Muffie Potter Anston or Anna Anisimova. Yay. So who are they, you ask? Well, Muffie is the wife of some plastic surgeon and Anna is the "daughter of a Russian billionaire" who doesn't have "much of a career to speak of." Huh. Well, I am sure they have rich inner lives in any case!
• You'll note that McDonald's locations everywhere accept credit cards now. Maybe people know better than to open their statements.

MisterHippity's new line beats the original, Ghost of Hairdos Past Stalks Fashion Week.

This just in: Lydia wrote us—and you—a letter!

From: Lydia Hearst-Shaw
Date: August 7, 2008 2:02:39 PM EDT
To: tips@gawker.com

I do not care what you say about me. I am a fan of Gawker! I think you guys have a very clever site with a witty take on celebrities, gossip and current events. I understand that people enjoy to read the negative articles about public figures and indulge in hiding behind an anonymous account and blog posts. Honestly, I'm surprised that anyone takes so much time out of their day to comment. I have a sense of humor when it comes to everything that is written and do not take any of it personally. Let's just clear a couple things up... I hope that by now you do realize that the situation with Aubrey was a scene for a film I have been working on between NYC and LA by director/designer Tara Subkoff for the new BeBe collection out this fall (remember ). I have a boyfriend. Also, there is absolutely no feud with the Hiltons. And as far as my name, let's get one thing straight - My legal name is Lydia Hearst-Shaw, professionally I am known as Lydia Hearst. Just so everyone is aware, the decision to use Hearst was made by my agents years ago when I began my career in modeling - course I have made this quite relevant is multiple interviews in the past. I love my family and they are more important to me than anything else in this world.

And, I do love Gawker, so keep up the good work and enjoy the rest of summer.

Lydia

Nard's new line beats the original, "I Love You When Boys Are Watching"

"I love the way the images turned out," Hearst-Shaw told the Daily News on Wednesday. "This season people will be seeing not just my high fashion/couture work, but also a sexier side."

... "I certainly have to give credit to my personal trainer David Kirsch for keeping me in shape and making sure I look good in lingerie," she said.

Hearst has to know it's not her "high fashion" people will be checking out with this campaign, but points to her for keeping up the charade!

[Daily News]

(Photos by Myla via Daily News)