"But the new breed of youngsters intent on highlighting the hypocrisy of their elders is meaner and, well, snarkier than their forebears, Ms. Bushnell implies. Their number is led by a smarmy 20-something named Thayer Core, who lives in a tiny East Village walk-up and yet feels qualified to lob his verbal grenades at the rest of Manhattan (including several residents of One Fifth). Thayer is a despicable character, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that she was personally offended by things written about her on Gawker (where, full disclosure, I used to work). And yet, Ms. Bushnell’s caricature of the Web site and its writers falls victim to the very same snarky, self-satisfied kind of writing she accuses the new generation of perpetuating."

You can't escape us, Candace! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE!

[NYO]

The crowd at 10:30 p.m., via Nonsociety.

There's no satisfying way to explain the party, other than a PR clusterfuck/fuckup.

However, maybe people are getting a little tired of the franchise after a six-year TV run, one of the most-hyped movies of the year, and a cultural reach that, on some days, seems to have infected the entire city with luxury brand names and bus tours.

What does this say about the sequel? We're guessing nothing good. Sometimes you just have to get the shotgun and take the old mare out behind the barn.

MattGaymon's new line beats the original, Doomsday at Tiffany's.

If the universe of the books is consistent with the universe of the show—and it very well may not be—readers should anticipate a scene featuring an 11th-grade Carrie sharing “half a joint” with one Seth Bateman and then doing it with him on the Ping-Pong table in his “smelly rec room.” At least this is how Carrie describes her origin story to Charlotte in episode 38, “The Big Time.”

Bushnell's editors aren't sure if this or any other sex scene will be included in the book. It doesn't matter: The book will have at least one generation of young kids primed to watch Sex And The City before they even graduate high school, which is corrupting enough on its own. They'll be ordering dreadful cocktails from the get go, for God's sake!

[Observer]

Writes Gross,

"Another friend, Ann, shares my fantasy of setting up joint housekeeping, assuming she outlives her husband. Our thinking goes something like this: If one of us can see and the other hear, if one of us is mobile and the other cognitively intact, we’ll muddle through as long as we can and then pool our insurance premiums to hire home care. We’d prefer to use the benefit for a masseuse and a manicurist but know it would be a hard sell to persuade MetLife that those were the kinds of “activities of daily living” our policies cover.

I’ve written before about pairs or small groups of unrelated women who are already doing this, some even constructing houses designed for their old age."

This sounds like the perfect idea for the fourth movie, actually. Carrie, help!

Another idea: OMG, maybe a Sex and the City version of the Golden Girls. It would only be half as funny, but the product-placement opportunities are endless.

The success of Sex and the City has convinced execs that film versions of beloved 90's sitcoms are a good idea, so a Friends movie is on the way. The article emphasizes Jennifer Aniston's role in the decision making process and speculates she's jealous of Sarah Jessica Parker's recent success. We should put together a magazine exclusively dedicated to speculating about Jennifer Aniston's emotions. It seems to be a popular preoccupation these days.

This is a horrible idea. Sex and the City was pay cable and it was classy. Watching it always felt like you were getting a little gem. Sometimes the gems sucked, but the irregular production schedule and HBO gloss made you feel like it was special. Also, partial nudity!

Friends was sharp, sure, but it was mass produced. We've got 238 episodes of it, and we've spent the past 10 years catching re-runs of it at 6:30 because we had nothing better to do between the gym and dinner. The characters are definitely beloved, but I don't know if a movie feels appropriate to it.

One issue is that Friends was a old-school three-camera sitcom. The genre leads to an unusual level of reality that can be hard to could be hard to bring to the screen. Also, they're old. Do we want to see Phoebe Buffay in her late 40s?

The biggest question, though: Can they get Marcel the monkey to sign on?

[Daily Mail]

"I am Carrie Bradshaw 2.0,” in Die Welt:

Expensive dresses, parties and columns: Julia Allison copies the lifestyle of the Sex and the City heroine.

New York – It was a hard week for Julia Allison. Thursday for example: six interviews for television. Six fresh makeup changes. And a hectic message situation: George Clooney separates from his girlfriend. TV-cook Rachel Ray makes videos because she wears a Palestinian scarf in advertising spots. Most important topic however: Sex and the City, the movie.

Who, if not Julia Allison could completely talk about the return of Carrie & Co? Because Julia Allison is the modern, real-life version of the Lifestyle icon and series heroine Carrie Bradshaw, which lives through its three friends dear desire and suffering of single women in New York and writes columns about it. “I am Carrie Bradshaw 2.0”, says Julia Allison in the telephone interview with The World. “If Carrie came to New York today then she would be me.” Then Carrie would be 27 years old, with long brown hair, would wear art lashes and balloon dresses, write columns for the city magazine “Time Out” and would be blogging and seen as a prominent expert on television.

...“In all areas of life that concern relationships, the same questions: “Will I call him? Am I attractive to him? Am I to marry him?” she says. No matter how old one is: 17, 27, or 37.

Actually, she stresses, she is a “sociology, biology and psychology lady journalist.” That is one of the differences between her and Carrie: “I concentrate on the deeper questions,” she says. “For example, like similar personal and political relations.” Finally, she worked on political science at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a few months on Capitol Hill. In addition, she also had a short affair with a congressional representative.

...Otherwise, she doesn’t do so well with men. Those who would date her have problems with the fact that she writes about her relationships and thus, her partners. “They Google me and then they go away.” Nevertheless, Julia believes her openness is the correct way: “It is cowardly to hide your private life.” She sees herself as the vanguard of a technological revolution. Also, one difference with “Sex and the City” – heroine Carrie, she could hardly call up her emails. “I am a female pioneer. I stand on the crossing between the old and the new media.” This is enough, at least until a younger copy of Julia Allison comes crosses over into our time.

Update: And now she's Carrie Bradshaw in France, too!

Read VNY's funny account of the experience here.

“In the big picture, this is not important, but there is a relationship between the entertainment industry and fashion,” Parker said on Thursday evening, adding. “We’ve watched sales dwindle and we’ve watched people be less inclined to spend money on clothes.” To Parker, these are reasons for companies to take particular care with their relationships. “Look, my affection for the dress hasn’t changed,” she said, “but what they did was so short-sighted. It’s just unethical and disappointing that they would allow the dress to be worn again.”

Interesting. But, um, also unethical? Using your biggest fans as unwitting publicity props by giving the worthless tickets, having them line up for hours and then sending them home without the promised movie, all because your production company was too incompetent to secure the thousands of available extra seats.

And they don't have a $56 million, twice-as-good-as-expected opening weekend box office to cushion the slight.

[Times]

Morty: I remember that you loved Sex and the City.
Janet: Oh my god, my life is SO Sex and the City!
Morty: Every girl in New York says that.
Janet: I know. But with me it's really true.
Morty: Every girl in New York says that.
Janet: What do you know? You hated that show.
Morty: Yeah. I think that Sex and the City is a modern, less realistic rip-off of "Laverne and Shirley," but without the monogrammed sweater.
Janet: That doesn't even make sense.
Morty: Of course it does: Two best friends become four. Lenny and Squiggy are now two gay guys. Bowling alleys and pizza parlors are replaced with Pastis and Soho House.
Janet: That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
Morty: Come on, you know that if they had cable back then, there definitely would have been an episode where Carmine Ragusa's penis was so big, Shirley could barely put on her pants the next day.
Janet: Goodbye, Morty.

"Allison made it past the first date because I needed a hot companion for my company Christmas party. She was fun and sweet enough, but couldn't spell 'Louis Vuitton' if it wasn't written all over her handbag. And wallet. And shoes. Before I could even ask her about Sex and the City, Allison mentioned the words 'husband', 'pregnant', and 'why the hell are you calling me.':"

Morty: I don't know why you are so hostile to your ex that you haven't spoken to in seven years. Especially since it seems like you've done such a good job rebounding from our relationship.
Allison: I don't consider you my "ex," I consider you my "Y." As in "WHY did I ever go out with you?"
Morty: Funny.... Who said that, Carrie or Samantha?
Allison: Goodbye, Morty.
[HuffPo]

"Sometimes the clothes even match the scenery, as when Miranda wears a droopy yellow turtleneck keyed to the blossoms in Central Park, or when Carrie, reading a copy of 'Cinderella,' wears a sailor’s top with red stripes, which echo the dangling legs of a stuffed toy bug on a shelf behind her.

"Now middle-aged, the women seem to be mellowing. As Carrie says, their 20s were for having fun, their 30s for learning from their mistakes and their 40s for buying the drinks. They are still enthusiastic cheerleaders for fashion, but they don’t seem so overcome by a dress.

"Instead, they struggle with losing their identities, as they transition to coupled lives, to single lives and back again, to life on the Left Coast or to life as a mother. Fashion is the metaphor for the struggle." [NYT]

In a montage of wedding-dress fittings, [Parker's "Carrie"] honors "new friends like Vera Wang and Carolina Herrera and Christian Lacroix, Lanvin and Dior," and so on; what I object to is not the name-dropping—think of it as a chick response to American Psycho—but the montage itself, which is shot in lazy veils of schmaltz. Compare the quick-change sequence in Funny Face, with Audrey Hepburn robed in one Givenchy masterpiece after another, and you sense not merely the greater snap in Stanley Donen’s direction (with more than a hand from Richard Avedon), and the hotter bloom of the coloring, but the way in which Hepburn herself outglows the frocks, with her smile and her imperious shout—“Take the picture, take the picture!” No thoroughbred was ever just a clotheshorse.

The women in Sex and the City, by that standard, are little better than also-rans, and their gallops of conspicuous consumption seem oddly joyless, as displacement activities tend to be.

You know, Anthony, beating the dead horse of the Sex And The City movie is fine because you do it so well, but trotting out insensitive language like this will only saddle you with criticism.

[New Yorker]

Perhaps it's the anonymity or just the sheer volume of men that really does it: "I stopped counting at 56. There are so many opportunities to meet men here - bars, restaurants, clubs, walking down the street, the deli. Men are everywhere." So says Christine a 36-year-old SoHo resident. It's true! There are lots of guys (...Italian guys..) all over this island (and milling about the outer boroughs). New York is just a good place to fuck! Just ask Linda, 39, who once did it on my beloved/hated F train: "It was three in the morning and the car was empty. So we were like, 'Why not.'" Whee! Let's all do it willy nilly like Samantha! Although, hold up. One woman does not relate to or approve of all this free wheeling. Interestingly enough, she's a stripper.

Uh, excuse me. Exotic dancer. Her name is Crystal, she is 22, and she works at midtown T&A hole Rick's Cabaret. And she doesn't like all this sexy talk: "The women on 'Sex and the City' went through so many guys they devalued sex. I've seduced thousands of men, but my actual number of sex partners is one, maybe one and a half. Sex should be special." Oh. OK. I can respect that. But, erm, one "and a half"? Lady, is you meaning to say... Actually, I don't really have any idea what that means. Thoughts, anyone? [NYDN]

"The movie studio gave out way more promotional tickets than could fit in the orchestra," said one insider. "Radio City managers told the New Line people, 'You can solve this by opening up the mezzanines, which have 2,700 more seats - but they wouldn't do it."

However, a New Line source countered, "It was Radio City Music Hall making that decision. They took control of the fan line. They turned the fans away."

People get upset about Sex And The City selling vacuous lies — about New York, about relationships, about sex, about life — but now the enterprise has gone and done something that really will, for once, help hundreds of its most fervent fans start behaving more independently.

[Post]

The mean old clipboard people didn't know who she was, did not have her name on any list, and a third ticket that Julia thought she might be able to procure never materialized. According to an eyewitness, Mary "was greeted with a flat 'sorry, don't know who you are. bye now.' cue significant freakout, frantic texting or phoning, basic-cable tears." The horror! Julia and Meghan, of course, went on ahead into the movie, leaving Mary alone on the sidewalk, all dressed up with nowhere to go, a sisterly bond forever ruined. It's just like that episode of Sex and the City where Miranda gets pregnant and is sort of "meh" about it and Charlotte gets upset because she can't have a baby but really wants one. Life is never fair. Julia tells us that it was a more low key disaster, saying "we all went together, I had a ticket for Meghan and a ticket for myself and we were hoping that a friend of ours had a third ticket, but he didn't." Either way, quel dommage. Maybe after the reality show airs, she won't have to worry about tickets! Publicists will just usher her into the back of the theater where she'll stand, masked by sunglasses and a cold gaze, barely remembering a time when she was denied access to all that glitters. For now though, Mary, stay strong.

Though, apparently Juila and Meghan haven't quite "Arrived" themselves. A tipster tells us:

"Patrick McMullan covered the Sex and the City premiere last night...of course. I was browsing the photo gallery to catch a glimpse of the fashions. Every person in attendance is listed correctly with their names under their photos... EXCEPT... through the entire gallery... a picture of JA and friends with "Who am I?" written under their mugs..."

Confirmed!

Update: Mary has clued us in to what really went down: "It's true, I actually didn't SEE the movie, but my beloved friends Julia and Meghan were not at fault. In fact, I had more fun at The Ritz bar than the girls did in the movie. It all worked out for best!" Oh, phew.

Epponneerae's new line beats the original, Real-Life Sex and the City Sure Is Something.

So my friend and I had tickets to the SATC premiere tonight. We left work early and booked it over there. When we got there, there was a line spanning from 50th and 6th to 50th and 5th around to 51st between 5th and 6th. We realized there probably wasn't much of a chance everyone would fit but it was Radio City sooo lots of seats. Some photographers took pics of the line and once that was done they told EVERYONE to go home. Not one ticket holder entered the theater. There were probably a couple of thousand people all decked out having travels from who knows where to get there holding their tickets and told to leave. There was a near riot of Louboutin clicking girls to the security windows in the front. I had gotten the tickets recently so I wasn't as emotionally invested but I thought it was really wrong. Some were in near tears waving their tickets and yelling into their cells. There were some people who had been there for hours and had missed work. They told us later that they didn't open the mezzanine so basically the tickets were for show. Just mean - all for a PR shots...

It seems Sherman won't get to go to a promised event featuring Sex star Kim Cattrall, a party that would likely have figured prominently in the story she's freelancin for some big Asian magazine.

"It was the after-party that was the big thing for me," she told the Post.

Oh please, Ella. You don't need to go to that. You've clearly soaked up the naive, entitled, psuedo-feminist striving at the heart of Sex And The City better than virtually every person at this little "after-party," assuming it ever existed in the first place.

[Post]

(Photo via Post)

Her husband initially made her get rid of her precious DVDs, but she's slowly gained them back and watches them once in a while. And everything's OK. Phew. "Now that I'm older, looking back, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, these women are in their 30s. What was I thinking?," she says. "I'm not sure I'd want my little sister seeing the movie — she's 14 — but I think it's a fun show for people my age now, as long as you don't take it too seriously." Exactly. Though, the show is still dangerous! According to a professor of psychiatry at UConn, anyway:

With teenagers and young adults, there's a certain degree of role modeling that goes on. There's a certain 'if it's done on the screen then it's OK, it's normal,'" he said. "You watch 'Sex and the City,' you see these women go out for dinner, come back, and wake up in satin sheets with a gorgeous guy. Who wouldn't like that? But it doesn't show what goes on under the surface in real sexual relations. Sex is an extraordinarily complex, emotional process. No one wants to talk about that. They're not going to see the reality.

• "Helen Malani, an online shopping expert [in Los Angeles]... has already bought seven tickets to an opening-night showing on May 30. One guest is coming from as far away as Arizona... the chance to 'hoot and holler' at the screen with a like-minded sisterhood has been lacking in her years of devotion to the series."
• "In Vail, Colo., Bonnie Vesey plans to go one better, with cosmopolitans and an Asian fusion dinner party for 10 at the Beaver Creek resort before a 9 p.m. screening at a nearby theater... 'We’re all going to dress fabulously... I’m the Kim Cattrall of the group.'"
• "In Manhattan, On Location Tours sold out 300 tickets, at $130 each, for a special 10-hour tour of “Sex and the City” hot spots. The night peaks with a group viewing of the movie at a reserved theater auditorium in Midtown, followed by a party at a club in Chelsea."
• "A spokesman for... an online ticket service said... 26 percent of those who responded planned to see the film 'with the whole gang.'"
• "Approximately 20 'beautiful females have all decided to meet for the event starting at Mangia e Bevi then out for a stroll to the movies with our man Manhattan...'"

On the bright side, this will be a huge, huge money night for cat-sitters.

[Times]

(Photo via EveryStockPhoto)

Prosecution: The movie ruined Manhattan, especially the Meatpacking District. When the sex-crazed Samantha moved there, and when Carrie and co. started trotting over to Magnolia in the nearby (kind of the same fucking neighborhood) West Village, all club-going, cupcake-scarfing hell broke loose. Thanks, Jonesy.
Defense: Meh. It would have happened anyway. The reason the neighborhood was on the show was because it was becoming trendy, not the other way around. The show was on premium cable for God's sake. It wasn't that influential. Sure, maybe the exposure expedited the Disneyfication, but it was inevitable. News flash: it's happening (or has already happened) to all of Manhattan. Just look at the Lower East Side. That once-hidden neighborhood was never really featured on the show and nowadays you can't swing a keffiyeh down there without hitting someone you want to punch. Come out to Brooklyn, where it's reasonably safe (for now).
The Verdict: We're gonna go with the "it was inevitable anyway" argument on this one. It's fun to make grand social theories out of a television show, but there were bigger reasons for the muppets taking Manhattan.

Prosecution: The ladies on the show promote some weird brand of feminism where men are both disposable (their word) and completely necessary to one's happiness. So what is it, are they objects or idols? Whatever the answer, both are damaging ideals for modern women.
Defense: Whoa, back the Subaru up there, Gloria. It's a television show/movie. The women and girls who are taking clues on how to navigate relationships from fake women who refuse to take subways and say things like "the subtext of that text" have bigger problems to deal with than Sex and the City. The show is a pleasant diversion, and was never meant to be anything else. It's not SJP and company's fault that other people are idiots.
The Verdict: Gotta go with the Prosecution here. Yes, women who heed the show's precarious "advice" about men and women need a wake up call, but the trouble is, the show never offered any caveats that it was, you know, fake. We're pretty sure you were supposed to treat the show as gospel.

Prosecution: The shopping. Oh God, the shopping. $400 shoes! $3,000 handbags! $bamillion dresses! Sex and the City functions as material porn on overload, by not just pimping the products, but enforcing high-end fashion as every woman's right and need. You're just not urban, you're not chic, you're not anything unless you traipse around in $20,000 worth of designer shit, just so... what? A man will look at you? Poor nannies and housekeepers will be jealous? It's not just snobby and over the top. In these credit-crunchy times, when impressionable young people are amassing mountains of debt, it's downright irresponsible.
Defense: Oh, get over it. Nearly every show and every movie geared toward women features fancy clothes and shoes and accessories. It's partly how these movies get made. Product-placement is a necessary evil. And hey, Sarah Jessica Parker understands. Her Bitten line of clothing retails for like three cents a pant. Sex and the City celebrates style, which can cost $10 or $10,000.
The Verdict: The excess on the show is awful and damaging. The next time you see a fourteen year old galoompfing down the street wearing the monetary equivalent of a Tercel, you can definitely blame Sex and the City.

Prosecution: Errrbody's a sex and dating columnist now. You know who we can blame on Sex and the City? Fuckin' Julia Allison. And the myriad other oversharers and "got to wondering"ers. Candace Bushnell was a revolutionary in her own way, and now that's just being co-opted by lesser writers. Sex and dating are fun to read about, yeah, but it should be more rarefied.
Defense: Don't blame SATC, blame the internet. Blame increasingly frequent and public discourse about sex. Bushnell represented something a bit new, yes, and SATC capitalized on it, but it was inevitable that someone would. If you don't like them, don't read them.
The Verdict: Kind of a draw. Yeah, SATC encouraged the trend, but who really cares. It's kind of on its way out anyway.

Prosecution: Frankly, Sex and the City ruined fucking. What could possibly be less sexy than a bunch of grown women sitting around at a restaurant, punning about cocks? All the dirty talking (and talking and talking and talking) and graphic sex scenes just overexposed and distorted sex. SATC makes sex seem like a theme park ride, rather than the loving and intimate (or dirty and hot) act that it should be.
Defense: Like the dopes who take feminist cues from the show, anyone who learns carnal lessons from SATC has bigger problems to solve. What on TV doesn't trivialize and sugarcoat sex? If we wanted to watch realistic, sweaty, sorta shameful sex we'd watch Tell Me You Love Me. And God knows no one did that. Sex and the City sex is fun and easy and honest enough. It probably helped some women overcome some sexual fears, and that should be commended.
The Verdict: Nah, sex is still fun.

The thing about Sex and the City phenomenon is this: it can be really fun if you just don't take it all that seriously. Yes the whole affair is ridiculous, but that's why it's entertainment. The trouble comes when people do take it at face value and, sadly, try to shape their lives in a similar way. We feel bad for them, yes, but they're also really fucking annoying when they clomp by us on sidewalks or push past us in bars. So, go. Have fun. But if we see you at Houlihan's, throwing back SATC-themed drinks or making up annoying nicknames for the dudes you've boned, then we have a problem.