Serena Torrey

Barack Obama needs more people for his March 9th fund-raiser in New York.

Which either means that the response was overwhelming -- organizers say they've changed the event's location to a new, bigger space in the Grand Hyatt Hotel to make "room for more people," and, of course, for more money -- or that it wasn't quite overwhelming enough.  read more »

After the jump is the email, composed and sent out by New York Magazine spokesperson Serena Torrey.

--Jason Horowitz

In the spring of 2000, when Nedra Rhone was still a bright-eyed graduate student at Columbia’s  read more »

Well, somebody's campaigning against Mike Bloomberg today:

"Bloomberg to NY Mag in 2001: 'obscene' to spend too much money on campaigns" is the subject line on the apropos-of-nothing campaign-style email.

"FLASHBACK: April 2001, Bloomberg tells New York magazine: $30 million is too much to spend on a campaign. 'At some point, you start to look obscene.'"

Thing is, the email came from New York Magazine spokeswoman Serena Torrey, former spokeswoman for the New York State Democratic Party.  read more »

The email arrived at 1:12, and by 1:14 another message came in: "Did Serena accidentally just slip back into her old job as State Dem spokesgal?"

In a strange fit of caffeination, The Transom began researching the in-office population of various magazines and newspapers this morning. Yom Kippur in the New York media world is sort of like, well, a big Jewish rapture.

But, of course, in trying to find out who was in what office... there was no one to pick up the phone. All we know is Jews! Still, The Transom was able to ascertain that a minimum of 1/5th of the staff of editors New York magazine was MIA, and on the day they close the weekly, no less!—although, no official statement was made, as the luscious spokeswoman Serena Torrey didn't pick up her phone. (Stealth Jew?)

Better yet, 100% of the staff of Gawker is also missing today. And we were going to call New York Press and the Village Voice, but we felt like we knew the answers already. Also, we didn't care that much.

The Transom can also report first-hand that office life at the Observer is largely nonexistent. Of course: So very much to atone for, so little time. They really oughta stretch this thing out for a week. (Yes, we're looking at you, media reporter Gabe Sherman!)  read more »

Out of sheer loneliness, The Transom ventured out to City Bakery, where gentiles read last week's Arts & Leisure. (Conclusion: the goyim don't need to worry about timely consumption of culture news. Hello, it's Thursday already.) While there, we spent $18 on a wee bit of salad, and we rather feel that's exactly what we deserved. —Choire Sicha

The Transom was, of course, entranced by today's JT Leroy semi-expose in New York magazine, even though Serena Torrey, the icy blonde vixen PR woman at New York magazine wouldn't send over advance on it last Friday, or even arrange to have the author comment on the piece. Even though, you know, we all get that email from New York mag every Friday that lists the coming week's contents and claims, "New York magazine writers and editors are available for comment." OH ARE THEY, MS. TORREY? ARE THEY REALLY?

Anyhoo.

The proof in the JT-is-a-fake pudding was a little weak at the end—what's that? You didn't get to the end of the 6000-or-so word article? Huh—but still, we couldn't believe that the sexpose didn't address Mr. Leroy's raccoon penis bone price-gouging profiteering markup in his online store. $17? Please, everyone knows you can buy some raccoon weiner for $3 bucks.

But more importantly, underlying the whole article is a fascinating unnoted sexual web. An army of literature lovers indeed! Why, The Transom is quite ready to resurrect that terrible high school idea of the sex chart (see also: the Buffy sex chart) to explicate all this.  read more »

Why, just from the characters on the first page of the story, The Transom can draw a straight line of sex partners from Dale Peck to X to Y to Z to Allen Ginsberg and Dennis Cooper and William S. Burroughs, which of course branches off to, hmm, let's call him M, to Gore Vidal to Jack Kerouac... oh, the list of randy devils goes on and on. It's even just a hop and a skip to Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins and Rock Hudson!

—Choire Sicha