I’m getting married this summer and thought it might be a good idea to speak with some gentlemen who I suspected could give me some pointers.

It was raining on a Friday morning when I met Bo Dietl at his office on the 50th floor of One Penn Plaza. Despite some shreds of cloud, Mr. Dietl—a homicide detective turned security consultant and media darling—had a clear view of the city below and, off in the distance, in the middle of the choppy harbor, the Statue of Liberty.  read more »

Think of a book club, and the image that comes to mind is one of a group of middle-aged women in a suburban living room, munching on crudités and sipping white wine, talking about The Kite Runner for 20 minutes and then sliding effortlessly into gossip about the markers of suburban ennui: children, husbands, lovers (always other people’s, of course), school boards, nosy neighbors, nosier bosses, and how Linda has lost so much weight since the divorce, maybe we should say something?

My mother has been in such a book club for over 20 years.  read more »

I spoke to Archimedes J. Selby, inventor of the six-sided television. I visited him in his loft in Dumbo.

Sparrow: So this is your six-sided television.

Selby: One of them, yes.

Sparrow: It’s a cube. When I heard ‘six-sided television,’ I didn’t picture a box.

Selby: It’s perfectly cubical. I call it ‘Total TV.’

Sparrow: It must have taken you a long time to perfect.  read more »

“I believe I’m the first person ever to bum a cigarette on the Internet,” reveals Ned Henly, a graphic designer in Forest Hills, Queens. “I met a guy named ‘dogelliott’ on MySpace. He lives in Cleveland and has a complete collection of the original Punk magazine—but he also loves techno!  read more »

“Why do you keep replying, ‘Thank you, but we already have plans for that evening,’ Marsha, when you know we’re free?”

“It’s just an excuse, Mauro. I just want to avoid an invitation by boring people.”  read more »

Was in the presence of a stunning Latina last night. Staring at her shoulders and back. Also met Fiona Apple. She’s either shy or was averting her eyes from the sight of me, couldn’t tell.

Dude, how many days did you wait until you fired up some porn when you got your HDTV? Tempted to now, but Hilly’s in a Really Bad Mood.  read more »

The revelation that Eliot Spitzer was a connoisseur of $1,000-an-hour prostitutes hit New York like one of those bolts of lightning in a cartoon that splits open the pavement in two perfectly perforated halves. No one could believe it. Now, a month after he ’fessed up and resigned, a crater in the proverbial town square continues to smoke and belch. For example: His 22-year-old hooker du jour, Ashley Dupré, becomes a millionaire off downloads of her song on MySpace and is offered six figures to pose for Penthouse. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau publicly defends his former prosecutor, saying, “I think he has been punished enough.” Mr. Spitzer and his wife, Silda, meanwhile, lay low. And men and women, couples and singles, are left to wonder: Just how many men in New York are paying for sex?

Last Thursday I went to Starbucks with one of Manhattan’s former top-dollar madams to get some answers. We met first at her attorney’s office to set the ground rules. No names. Let’s call her Jane!  read more »

The other weekend I went to a housewarming party that an editor I know was throwing in Prospect Heights. It was one of those parties where everyone there is someone you’ve seen at another media party but never hung out with one-on-one and the conversations tend to veer toward industry gossip (stuff like: “Well, I’m considering taking the editor-at-large position”), what I like to call byline stalking (“I loved your profile of Chelsea Clinton, but your blog post on your corner deli was hysterical”) and not-so-subtle undermining (“That Web site seems like a really good place for you right now”).

One woman, who is always wearing the types of dresses I wish I owned because they seem perfectly suited to media parties—simple, black, vaguely vintagey-looking, knee-length, very flattering—made a beeline for me.  read more »

On Saturday, March 29, Sanaa Sondhi’s short story “The Story of the Girls That Love to Dance and Love Each Other” was brought to life by 15 New York improv actors on a stage in the basement of the Drama Book Shop on West 40th Street in Manhattan. It was a sold-out show—about 60 people. Ms. Sondhi, the author, wore a yellow dress and sat in the front row. She was a little nervous. She had just turned 5 years old.

Standing in the back of theater, Jamie Salka—31, medium height, short brown hair, pointy nose, intense eyes with matching dark circles underneath—was grinning in a way that many of the youngsters in the audience might associate with a mad scientist.  read more »

Connolly’s Bar and Restaurant on 47th between 5th and Madison avenues is the official home of Black 47, a politically charged Irish rock band, whose name is derived from the worst year of the Great Irish Famine, 1847. They play every Saturday night. During the week, the bar is the de facto Bear Stearns after-work hangout: Some 6,000 employees of the fallen bank work in the $1.5 billion, 45-story, granite-and-glass octagonal tower around the corner.

“On an average night there would be between 20 and 30 Bear guys,” said a 23-year-old Bear man we’ll call Tommy. He works on the investment banking side and has been a Connolly’s regular since he started at Bear a year ago. He said that on Friday, March 14, when it was pretty clear that the bank was heading south, and fast, more than 100 Bear employees, mostly men, gathered among the mahogany, rich leather and lighted green clover leaves of the bar.  read more »