Britney Spears | The New York Observer

Hooray for Celebrity Breakdowns: At Least Britney, Lindsay Et Al. Resist Siren Call of the Logo Wall

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:31:15 -0400

I’m furious with all these red-carpet celebs. No, I’m not talking about the reckless jail-bound rehab devotees. I kind of like them: Britney, Lindsay et al. are providing us all with a real-life Valley of the Dolls free of charge, and I for one am truly grateful. No, I’m talking about the boring, functional ones, the ones who are not answering my e-mails.

Permit me to explain: Last week I...

The Transom

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Isn’t it Tisch? Odd Bedfellows Denise Rich and Elie Wiesel Hype Hotelier’s New Book “Hey, that’s Elie Wiesel,” said NYPD detective turned big-time security consultant Bo Deitel. Mr. Deitel was standing by the bar during the party for Loews Hotel chief executive Jonathan Tisch’s new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough, at the Four Seasons on the evening of Wednesday, March 7. The wiry-haired Nobel Prize–winning author was a few feet away with...

The Transom

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Saturday Night Soundsystem

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:00:00 -0400

James Murphy is portly and uncombed, 37 years old, and drives a 1991 Volvo station wagon. But next week his one-man band, LCD Soundsystem, is releasing its second LP, Sound of Silver, the shiniest and most ecstatic album to arrive so far this year. With his disco-ball beats, hopscotch bass lines and high-serotonin melodies, Mr. Murphy is the king of white-boy New York dance—or, according to the eloquent online encyclopedia All Music, neo-post-punk dance. ...

New York World

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Don’t Call It an S.U.V. We’ve gotten a sneak peak at the headlines of various feature stories slated for future editions of The New York Times. Most of them seem likely to run in the paper’s various weekly “bonus” sections (Circuits, House and Home, et al.), while others appear to be scheduled for the main paper. Thought we’d share. A Blogger Goes Retro With Street-Corner Speech NASCAR Considers Professional Soccer League For Enlisted...

Britney Sells at the Silk for $4 M.

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:30:59 -0400

After two years on the market, our long Noho nightmare is over. Britney Spears has finally unloaded her condo in the Silk Building for $4 million, according to the New York Post. When The Observer last checked in on Britney's real estate woes, the pop princess had just slashed another $400,000 of the asking price. Originally priced at $6 million in July 2004, the subsequent price drops finally brought in...

American Idylls! A Multi-City Celebri-Spree

Sun, 14 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Having spent the last two weeks on a whistle-stop tour of American hotspots, I now have a very clear understanding as to why illegal immigrants continue to storm our borders with such persistence and verve. It is, quite simply, because they still think America is the most enticingly fabulous place on earth, and they have not yet heard about Dubai. Herein, a recap of my travels. Los Angeles: Courtney Love, looking every inch the...

Britney in Noho Slasher

Sun, 07 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Since Britney Spears first put her Noho penthouse on the market in summer 2004, the pop star married Kevin Federline, gave birth to her first child and is reportedly pregnant once again. There was also Chaotic, her reality show; a perfume line; innumerable glossy-magazine covers; a greatest-hits collection; divorce rumors; even a flirtation with Kabbalah. Now she appears to be back in the business of selling her 4,400-square-foot spread atop the Silk Building,...

Weekend Roundup: Rupert, Richie Tenenbaum, and Free Booze

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 18:18:00 -0500

Advertising works! Last time The Real Estate checked in on love birds Rupert and Wendi, they were waiting by the phone, hoping that a wealthy buyer would call for their Soho loft. Elie Tahari apparently has, according to New York magazine. The fashion mogul is reportedly paying $25 million for the 9,300-square-foot apartment. New York magazine reports that Britney Spears now has a new broker, Adam Modlin, and reduced the asking price of her...

WOOD WAR XXIV

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:40:00 -0500

Who's winning the battle of the front pages? Maybe the Post and the Daily News could team up to put out a separate publication, Scratch-Off Daily, in which they promote their unwinnable games of chance? So they could go back to using their newspaper front pages for news? Just a thought. When it's not flogging "Scratch n' Match," the News is flogging Peter Braunstein, who draws high-minded outrage because he wasn't locked up for precrime....

My Kid's in Pre-K, And I Got a Jones For the Zone

Sun, 23 May 2004 20:00:00 -0400

There are those for whom being "in the zone" means diets or Britney Spears albums. For people like me, parents of soon-to-be-school-age children for whom the reality of $25,000 a year for private-school tuition hit like some kind of cosmic joke, "the zone" has come to represent an obsession. More well-heeled friends rend their garments because their toddlers cried at their Packer interviews. I mock their aristocratic dilemmas. And I and my ilk resent...

Fools for Scandal

Sun, 23 Nov 2003 19:00:00 -0500

On Nov. 17, three days after he'd been hired by the family of Paris Hilton, public-relations consultant Dan Klores had his saltpeter powder puff out, and he was giving everyone who ventured into his orbit-his new client, the press and even himself-a good whack. If anyone had a proper excuse to see the grainy Whitman's sampler of sexual positions featuring Paris Hilton and former boyfriend Rick Salomon that, since Nov. 10, had become one...

We're Not Dressing Britney!

Sun, 03 Aug 2003 20:00:00 -0400

You know how pop star Britney Spears has been bopping around New York and L.A. lately looking, well, not so spiffy? That "Page Six Six Six" T-shirt worn Flashdance -style with pubic-bone-bearing skirt and jaunty trilby? That sausage casing of a Norma Kamali swimsuit in the big, sticky pages of the August W ? "That's not us," said Joey Tierney, one half of the erstwhile Spears styling team Joey and T. "Please believe that's...

Oh! Vey! Madonna!

Sun, 02 Feb 2003 19:00:00 -0500

When Madonna shilled for Pepsi in 1989, the Catholic Church threatened a boycott of the soft-drink company. Fourteen years later, she's flogging a new product-the Oxygen cable channel for women-but practitioners of her adopted religion, Kabbalah mysticism, will probably think it's divine.

Certainly, the sight of Madonna crossing her obsessively toned arms in Oxygen Media's new "Oh!" ad campaign has struck some fans as odd-if not a sign that the singer is running scared since...

Richard Bernstein, 1939–2002

Sun, 03 Nov 2002 19:00:00 -0500

"Quiet please," reads a black sticker on the tall red door to the ground-floor apartment that artist Richard Bernstein kept at the Chelsea Hotel. And for almost two weeks, this city seemed all too willing to oblige.

On Oct. 18, Bernstein's body was found on the other side of that door, in his high-ceilinged studio apartment that once was part of the Chelsea's grand ballroom. Bernstein, whose 63rd birthday would have fallen on Halloween, had...

How to Succeed In Fatherhood: Be a Girly-Man, Pray

Sun, 16 Jun 2002 20:00:00 -0400

My name is Tim, and I am a father. Not 10 feet from where I sit, Lola, my progeny, is dancing without self-consciousness or style, like a drunken WASP at a wedding. "Dada! Dada! Dada!" she yells, glaring at me with what seems like unquestioning love. I manage a half-wave. I sort of smile. I try to turn back to the computer screen, but here it comes again, louder than before: "Dada! Dada! Da-DAAA!"...

Madonna: Zero to 90's

Sun, 16 Dec 2001 19:00:00 -0500

Madonna began the 90's at her commercial zenith, bestriding the

world in the overweening manner common to pop- culture colossi. She ended the decade with only that English accent as her most detestable affectation. In between, she released some magnificent singles. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (WEA/Warner Bros.) not only complements her first hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection , but also serves to silence those clowns who say she has no musical ability. She has always relied on collaborators, but there's...

Rebuilt Like a Detroit Car With English Upholstery, Madonna Ritchie Returns to Town That Made Her

Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:00:00 -0400

Madonna Louise Ciccone's Drowned World 2001 Tour surges into New York City on Wednesday, July 25, for a five-show stand at Madison Square Garden, but to call it a homecoming misses the point. It's more like relaunching a multimillion-dollar product. After sharpening her act in the celebrity-starved sticks–Europe and Philadelphia–Madonna has come back to the Town That Made Her to hawk yet another version of herself.

And it's not a particularly user-friendly version....

Britney Spears Is Good for the Jews

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 19:00:00 -0500

The other night I was on a panel at the 92nd Street Y,

biting my tongue as fellow panelist Dennis Prager spoke in a deep, ominous voice-as if the weatherman was predicting Armageddon-about the nation's debased moral fiber. We were discussing the role of the country's Jewish community centers in nurturing the Jewish sojourn in America. Mr. Prager, who writes on Jewish subjects and has a radio talk show in California, said that he had heard that first-graders in one...