• Tom Cruise busted a move to Beyonce's "All The Single Ladies" when he saw her at her Staples Center concert in L.A. Poor Katie Holmes. This is the exact, precise, scientifically measured middle-ground between a touchdown dance and waving the rights to someone's soul in their face. Still, it's not nearly as bad as when he dresses the kids up and does "Defy Gravity" with them as the flying monkeys and him as Elpheba and makes her play the role of Steven Schwartz and scream at him from the audience, but still: pretty mean, you know? It's the wizard who should be afraid. Of me. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• Speaking of gay tragedies, two stagehands died in a stage collapse at a Madonna concert, and French police are launching an investigation into it. She paid tribute to them in concert: ""You may have heard of it... When they were building my show in Marseille, where we're going next - we don't know why, but one of the cranes fell... Two men lost their lives, it was a great tragedy to me." [Daily Express]
  
  
• And speaking of just straight-up tragedy, Hollywood producers are still total assmunches-yes, assmunches. There's no better word to describe the one behind Mischa Barton's newest film, as he's pissed that she went insane and had to be placed in the crazy house and is taking his frustration to the press. Honestly, dude, talk about loose marbles, you were the one who thought she was still bankable, first of all. Second of all, you're a dick. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• Jennifer Anniston's new movie that she's filming with Gerard Butler is pissing off New Yorkers left and right. First, she annoyed Daily News staffers by getting in the way of them pissing. Now, she's getting in the way of West Village residents by getting in the way of their dogs pissing. The production manager on the movie is apparently a total meanie, and she won't return the calls of the sad West Village residents who don't like noise and things on their nice block because they paid a few milli to live there, you know? On that note, I hope someone pours Birdbath coffee in their ears or something silly because if I lived in the West Village I would basically be deaf to everything but the schadenfreude of broke muh's like me, which I would record and consequently play back at half-speed and remix it with, I don't know, Thievery Corporation or something and play it at my parties where I serve fried chicken canapes in my garden and bitch about how Design Within Reach is out of reach of poor people but too in-reach of me, which makes it basically the silliest design store ever, and who buys chairs in America anyway, really? Also, Jennifer Aniston is still painfully single and I still think "Daughters" is the best song ev-ar. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin's new girlfriend was just a Drunkie McPlastered in high school: ""I remember on a school trip once, she got completely wasted," a source notes to E!. Okay, first: a source? Glad to know someone from E! is meeting in the basement of an Omaha parking lot or whatever and looking over their shoulder before being like, okay, tell me exactly how much of a floozie this chick was in high school, I promise: you will be protected. Also, you know she was that girl on the school trip who busted out the booze to the Mormon kids and taught them what Seven Minutes In Heaven was. SWOON. [E!]
  
  
• JoJo Simmons-son of Rev. Run of Run D.M.C.-got a very small punishment for his pot bust and resisting arrest charges. When you're the son of a celebrity, it's like that. Don't ask me, because I don't know why. But that's the way it is. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• The Hills' Lauren Conrad is deflating the fun behind Heidi Pratt's inflated assets to Playboy in an upcoming issue, noting that they're "not going to pay for themselves." No, Lauren, they certainly won't, especially if people are reading Playboy for the articles. Which, uh, everyone does, right? Also, plenty more smacktalk where that came from. "I don't call magazines and let them know about things so they can write stories." OHHH SNAP. STORIES, YO! Also, Conrad wore a burnette wig as a "social experiment," which is kind of like the Stanford Prison Experiment, but different, because it's a prison of the mind, man. [NY Daily News and E!]
  
  
• The "Octomom" LadyThing had to take one of her 19 spawn to the hospital yesterday because he drank some kind of "salt based solution." [TMZ]
  
  
• Cameron Diaz is convinced she has protective angels following her every move. What she doesn't understand is that agents' assistants actually get overtime and can expense jetpacks for this kind of thing. [Daily Express]
  
  
• Michael Jackson's death is again a breaking point, this time for his sister, Janet, and her mans, Jermaine Dupri, who have now separated following Michael's death. I would write something funny here but I'm already sad for Jermaine Dupri because I feel like people forget just how awesome the "Money Ain't A Thing" video-Dupri's magnum opus-was. Also, now that he's no longer with Jackson, Money Will Most Definitely Be A Thing. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• Really sad: Alan Ball watched his sister get killed in a car crash when he was younger, which basically explains all five seasons of Six Feet Under, and gives the first episode-where the family's patriarch is killed in a car crash on Christmas-entirely new dimensions. [Daily Express]
  
  
• Andy Dick's son, Lucas, is far funnier than his Dad. Especially when he's slagging on him, like he did to his face at Caroline's the other night: "I'll come home to find a big party at our house and my father will be rolling around naked in ketchup on the floor, and I'll think, 'Oh yeah, it's Tuesday.'" There's an entire David Sedaris-esque career to be had, here, because this is both sad, hysterical, doesn't sound the least be true, and yet, more than likely is. We'll be watching you, Little Dick. [Page Six]

The pair is renting a humble garret on the street for $12,000 a month, and have wildly disrupted the sleepy, well-insulated-from-ugly-poor-people feel of the exclusive enclave. They rumble up at all hours of the night in their enormous mink-fur powered assault vehicles, teetering up the stairs in slinky club-wear. Their security guards often shoo away the languid wealthy who sit on the building's stoop so the girls can enter their building unmolested. A rep for the twins says "If there were significant issues, you would think that the neighbors would address Ashley or Mary-Kate directly, rather than calling the media." Which would make sense if normal people lived in that part of town, but mostly they're entitled and silly, so this response is not all that surprising.

But through it all, their sad cries continue. ""It is a peaceful, quiet street," a mournful resident keened. "Plenty of other celebrities around this block are good neighbors and blend in with the neighborhood - but these two are invaders."

[P6]

He is risen. (The arguing blonde on the right is Ana Rogers, curator for Petra Projects, a tipster informs. The guy in the glasses is David Meyer, "does PR for the Standard hotels I think." Girl on left holding beer cup: Samantha Walsh.)

Both sides showed up in force at a community meeting Monday, where the tone was set by a neon-green hand-lettered poster that read, "Keep Our Park Dog-Free." Sydney Diaz, 2, painstakingly colored in the letters, while her mother, Nancy Lublin, chatted with other parents amid a tangle of strollers.

"I think the dog owners just arrived," Ms. Lublin said, gesturing with a slice of pizza toward the front of the room. "They're the people over there, who don't have spit-up on them."

A Park Eyes Its Future and Hears a Few Growls [NYT]

(This all plays into a pet theory: It's like the cast of characters that make New York interesting—Kenny Shopsin a prince among them—are constantly being called upon to reinforce faltering areas and retreating from hopeless ones. It's the strategy of a losing army. So the Lower East Side is richer for Kenny Shopsin and the West Village happy but poorer without him.)

Anyway. This isn't a knock on Market Table. Of the Bedford Street restaurant row, it is by far the best. Barfry is a bowling alley to its ballroom. Blue Ribbon bakery, though it's been there forever, can only look on in envy at what Market Table has done and think to itself, "Whoa, that is like a better us!" (That's how I feel when I look at Seth Meyers.)

The times I've visited Market Table, the food has been nicely done. There's also Yuengling which, as a Philadelphia boy, warms my heart. The crab cake sandwiches are, according to a Washingtonian friend with whom I ate, Chesapeake quality. Ed Levine calls their lunch hoagie one of the best in the city. The swordfish steak, on a bed of corn, avocado and greens, really showcases Price's ability to coax the best out of a fish.

The check comes in music books. One time I got a Marvin Gaye bio. The other night, my dinner for one (not sad, I had a book) came to $60, The check was tucked into the page of John Szwed's So What: The Life of Miles Davis. It was on page 269, at which point Miles Davis is roaming through the flash and funk boutiques of the West Village, high out of his mind. Would he have preferred Kenny Shopsin's blisters on my sisters to Mikey Price's apple and fennel salad?

New York points us to this Village gay who writes a rather genius assessment of the West Village scene:

I'm gone five months and the whole show falls apart. Saturday (the 9th) was the last Misshapes ever. Mr. Black was shuttered indefinitely after a drug raid three weeks ago. Chumley's has become an ugly construction site. Eastern Bloc is full of dancing queens. Condomania is dead. Rafaella (the one on 7th) is gone. The bestest deli ever and the site of so much late night joy blew away. Marc Jacobs just opened his third fucking (stupid, pretentious, annoying, gumboot-ridden, aesthetically irritating, brainless WASP without-a-clue attracting) store on the same West Village block.

It turns out no. There's a "secret" upstairs, however. Ok, actually it's just the upstairs but ugly people can't get it. Just go to the bathroom and follow the stairs upwards. The vibe is much more restaurant-y than the almost loungish feel of the downstairs. There are real tables and real chairs and no cheesy lighting fixtures. The people are gayer by and large (this is where Queer Eye Felicia was sitting) and prettier. They took cigarette breaks often, parading through the hoi polloi in the galley with a haughty step, their Marc Jacobs heels clicking a Morse code message on the tile floor: We are cooler than you.

[Photo: via]

The 14 story building has incurred no small amount of wrath, the most colorful of which flows from West Village preservationist crazy [Ed. Note: And total hottie] Andrew Berman, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's director.

"I don't know for sure — but my fear is that this will be the color," he said. "I think virtually any other color would be more acceptable." Berman called the building — with arched windows and clay roof tiles — Mediterranean style. "What it actually looks like is a house you would see in the hills above Hollywood — if it was two stories. On the Greenwich Village waterfront at 17 stories, it's a nightmare," he said. The preservationist thought this very may well be intentional — that Schnabel wants to punish, with pink, those who opposed him..."It almost looks as though he went to great pains to make this building as ugly as possible and to make it stick out like a sore thumb," Berman observed.

Not So Pretty In Pink
[Photo: Toni Dalton]

As the Real Deal reports:

The 2,500-square-foot space may soon be home to a Duane Reade or a Starbucks, according to Darius Solomon, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker marketing the property. The building's zoning, which is in the Greenwich Village Historic District but is not landmarked, allows for it to be built out to around twice its current size, according to Solomon."I've been pushing for Starbucks to take the space because the location is such a thoroughfare," said Solomon. Duane Reade, CVS and several medium-sized fast-food chains have also expressed interest in buying the space.

Movida Moves On

Adler is the Robert Gould Shaw of a certain banal slice of a certain slice of Gaymerica: He sells to the worked-out, shaved-chest fruity kind whose apartments are decorated with throw pillows and bright colors and who are constantly making meta-jokes about how gay they are and talk about getting "margies" at 7 and how cool that is. And as Real Deal reports today, as boutiques become priced out of Bleecker Street addresses, more and more of them are settling on Greenwich Avenue where landlords—sensing the impending rush—haven't been renewing leases.

So antique store Olde Good Things and other smaller boutiques are out, while Adler and his vision of a gay cheery utopia is in. And it'll only get more swish. "Richard Grossman, director of downtown sales at Halstead and a West Village resident, said, 'If Jonathan Adler moved there, other people are due to follow.'" And by people, you know what he means. —Josh

Green-eyed Real Estate on Greenwich Avenue [Real Deal]

Before Pichet Ong developed a love for asterisks, he was Jean George's pastry chef. The menu is thus divided into savory, savory-sweet and sweet. Within each section, the prices range from 12 to 19 dollars or so.

When a restaurant and chef trades on innovation and whimsy, finding the right decor is a challenge. As one might suspect from the name, this is where the restaurant makes one nutty. First of all, the asterisk theme is everywhere: On the asymmetrical mirrors, on the menus. Quirky pillows perch above the banquet and Eames chairs swivel freely. One wall is curvy wood. That is to say, it's all mid-season Top Design material. On the other hand, the crowd—which seemed to be mostly couples on dates—were eating it up. The couple next to us—Her: "I've always been into astrology. What's your rising sign?" Him: "Oooh, lemongrass! Um, Sirius? Look, asterisk!"

Conclusion: Probably not destined to be a comfortable neighborhood spot, P*ONG will succeed because it is priced right for dates and business dinners and the food is remarkable, as in, it gives you something to talk about. Also because guys who take girls for freaky food come off as adventurous progressive lovers who ain't afraid to bring toys into the bedroom or a Meyer lemon sabayon to a tartare. —Josh

P*ONG
P*ONG menu

you are a dear friend, a good colleague and a total inspiration. that's why we are extending a warm invitiation to JAPS + BAPS, an intimate champagne and dessert mixer. The word BAPS (Black American Princess) and JAPS ( Jewish American Princess) can be frowned upon, but for this event we choose to define both terms as amazing and successful women who really need to get to know each other better. (And it's quite all right if you are neither BAP or JAP.) So, come out for dessert and champagne, 10% discount on merchandise in the store (and really cute servers).

"Hello?"

"Wrigglerump? Is that you?"

"I would think The Past would recognize my voice by now."

"Sorry. I'm a little groggy. Took a Percocet."

"Your recreational drug use—"

"Listen here, Judge Mental. You go and get hit by a cargo van on the West Side Highway and see if you don't want to take a pill or five."

"You were hit by a ..."

"Anyway, mon putain pour pamplemousse, everybody knows that Percocets are dirty highs and that the anti-addictive additives that are in them give you a pill hangover the next morning. If I had my druthers, I'd have crushed up the new kid in town, Oxycontin, and snorted it right up."

"Okay, fine, but what were you doing on the West Side Highway?"

"I bought these new things, Rollerblades? They're like roller skates, but the wheels are lined up like ice skates. Anyway, I was rolling down Christopher Street and waiting at the corner for the light to change. There were these three Jersey-looking queens prancing and singing 'Gypsy Woman.' By Crystal Waters? Oh. And I guess I should mention that I was a little stoned."

"Well, that's sort of a given."

"Right? So they were all in unison, 'As she stands there singing for money,' and I started to cross. Then, ka-wham! Moving van."

"That's horrible!"

"But it was so worth it. Those Jersey queens were all up on the van. They opened the passenger door, and were waving Lee Press-Ons in the driver's face and screaming, 'Sue her! Sue her!' and 'Murder!'"

"So what did you do?"

"Got up, poured some water on my bleeding knee and went to the piers."

"But you were injured!"

"Who isn't in this town? Anyway, I saw Candace and Girlina on the other side of the street and wanted to say hello. Their night at Crow Bar is my favorite."

"CroBar?"

"Yeah, Crow Bar. Anyway I chatted them up, reminded them to take their One-A-Days and rolled to the main pier off Christopher. It was a good day to be out. Somebody had a gigantic ghetto-blaster playing some Danny Tenaglia mixes, and the queens were working it out. Then I rolled over to the better pier."

"Better?"

"Yeah, you have to go through a hole in the chain-link fence. It's all decrepit and there are holes in the asphalt floor where you can see right down to the river. Toward the end there are concrete barricades, and just over those are all the nudie-boys."

"What's a nudie-boy?"

"Oh, just guys lying out in the sun, nude. Granted most of them aren't really there to get sun. In fact some of them have little screens set up to block the sun and just want to give schlong shows. Sometimes you'll see some people hook up, more toward sundown."

"Well, I've read about the piers and how they were just massive orgy-pits."

"Not really, tickletongue. That's more the Distant Past. Things are very discreet now. Much more conservative. I haven't seen someone get fucked on the pier in, gods, weeks. So after a while I got tired of blading around, so I smoked up for the trip home. But smoking made me lazy, so I went to the parking lot down below Houston Street, jumped in some married guy's car, and let him diddle me for a bit."

"You had sex in a parking lot?"

"Nah, I just put out enough to get him to the manipulability point. Then I convinced him to give me a ride back to the Lower East Side. Married guys from Jersey. They're all so nice."

"Actually there was a New Jersey Governor..."

"Whoa. Stop. I don't 'do' politics. Do people still go to the piers?"

"I actually went last weekend. There's like a nice park from Battery Park all the way up the West Side now. Trees and bushes and flowers."

"Ha! I bet there's a lot of frolicking there!"

"Well, yeah, there was frolicking, but..."

"Whoa. Heh. I, wow—I should let you go. This pill's really starting to kick. La da dee la dee da ... La da dee la dee da."

Earlier: Past, Over

Earlier: Goodbye Old Chumley's
[Photo: Curbed]

Curbedwire: Chumley's Wall Collapse [Curbed]