A toxic mixture of dread, fear, panic, paranoia and self-doubt was brewing in my head on my way out to the Hamptons the last weekend in June.

On the train, I sat on a fold-up chair next to the bathroom and listened to the contents of the bowl swish and swirl around, like the economy and the Bush administration. From time to time, I looked up from my novel (about a sleazy opportunistic journalist in late-19th-century Paris), saw baseball caps, tall boys, tattoos, flip-flops, and shuddered.  read more »

I had been invited to stay at the large, elegant estate of the interior designer Tom Britt.]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/style/hamptons-detox#comments Style the hamptons Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:16:28 -0400 George Gurley 71531 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/style/fly-me-montauk-pack-ativan-shades-anti-jitney

Debbie White, an entertainment lawyer with the firm Grubman Indursky & Shire, was inside the stuffy cabin of a floating Cessna seaplane docked at Manhattan’s Skyport Marina on Friday, June 27. “It’s kind of hot,” said Ms. White, clutching a cold beer. She was awaiting takeoff to sunny East Hampton, where she was scheduled to meet up with her celebrity clients, Dina Lohan and Ali Lohan, for an party promoting their E! network reality show, Living Lohan.

Traveling by car from Manhattan could take hours, depending on traffic. But if the frickin’ plane would ever take off, she could be there in under 40 minutes.  read more »

A couple of weeks ago, Hunter Johansson, then a community organizer employed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, stopped a co-worker, Greg Kirschenbaum, in the lobby of 1 Centre Street.

“Hey, so I think I’m leaving the office and going to work for the Obama campaign,” Mr. Johansson, the twin brother of actress Scarlett Johansson, told Mr. Kirschenbaum.

“I remember, for a while he was asking all the community liaisons where would be the best place for him to go, and I actually recommended Colorado because I thought it would be a good place for him,” said the latter man, who sometimes walked over with Mr.  read more »

The second of Arianna Huffington’s New York parties for her subtly titled book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe, published by Knopf, took place at the Upper East Side store of Italian designer Domenico Vacca on the evening of Monday, June 23. (The first was on May 9 at the Chambers Hotel, co-hosted by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and former Viacom CEO Tom Freston.)

Ms. Huffington, who was dressed in a tan pantsuit and an off-white silk blouse designed by Mr. Vacca, said she met the designer one year ago at a Tribeca Film Festival dinner, where she was introduced to him by friend and TFF president, Jennifer Maguire Isham.  read more »

A trio of mimes, dressed up like tall, white palm trees, were moving around quite admirably on stilts. Yet slinky model Heidi Klum was the one complaining about blisters during a lavish party at Seagram’s Plaza along Park Avenue on Monday, June 23, celebrating the erection of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Dubai.

“I need to sit down—my feet hurt,” said Ms. Klum, clomping away from a scaled-down model of the structure (complete with mini-monorail) in four-inch platform heels. When the Transom respectfully requested more sound bites, she blushingly demurred, saying, “You vil have a lot of commas in there, and a lot of dots.  read more »

On Tuesday, June 24, just before 2 p.m., the Transom stepped into an elevator and all of a sudden found ourselves gazing at dreamy Top Chef contestant Sam Talbot.

Holy smokes! Er, who’s gonna win Top Chef season whatever?

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Talbot, who wore a tight black V-neck T-shirt that revealed bulging biceps, accentuated by a necklace with a giant shark tooth.

Shucks. So, what else is going on?

“I just opened a restaurant in the Hamptons.” Right, right—that seafood joint, the Surf Lodge. Does he surf? “No, I wakeboard,” said Mr.  read more »

At Barnard College’s spring gala, held at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers on Monday, June 16, the Transom found alumna and former Seventeen editor, Atoosa Rubenstein, eight months pregnant with a daughter she plans on naming Angelika, wearing a pink dress, a beaded belt and steep, strappy sandals. “For my first day, I got my nails especially air-brushed with blue lightning blots,” she said, of arriving freshman year from Malverne, Long Island. “I wore torn bicycle shorts and had a huge Jon Bon Jovi poster on my wall. I was not one of the many cosmopolitan women that went to Barnard”—or did she mean Cosmopolitan women?—“but I learned how to be amongst them.  read more »

Far be it from actress Sarah Jessica Parker to do something so clichéd as show up at her Sex and the City co-star Chris Noth’s bar, the Cutting Room, on West 24th Street—despite her position as honorary host of a benefit concert there, also on Monday, June 16.

A number of other entertainment luminaries, including the comedian and writer Al Franken, and the actresses Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman, likewise lent their names, if not their presence, to the charity event, a fund-raiser for the fledgling Andi Foundation, which provides scholarships in memory of Andrea Parhamovich, a young activist with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute who was killed during an ambush on her convoy in Baghdad last year.  read more »

At its annual gala at Cipriani on 42nd Street on Monday, June 16, the Friars Foundation, the charitable arm of the comedians’ clubhouse, presented a Creative Achievement Award to legendary singer Frankie Valli, 74, dressed in a woven ecru shirt that “I looked through my wardrobe and found,” he told the Transom. We noted his lack of neckwear. “I hate ties,” he said. That’s O.K., sir—we hate heels!

In attendance: actor Michael Longoria, who plays Mr. Valli in the hit Broadway show Jersey Boys, and Burt Bacharach protégé Steve Tyrell, wearing a black beaded jacket that he quipped came from “a  read more »]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/you-want-shake-them-friars-ma-m-feting-frankie-valli-piscopo-trots-out-ye-olde-sinatra-spoof#comments Style Frankie Vallie Joe Piscopo Michael Longoria Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:45:08 -0400 Rebecca Lazarus 70865 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/where-s-lapo-shhhh-euro-wrangler-no-eunuch-ladies

Italian playboy turned workaholic entrepreneur Lapo Elkann recently took on the appointment of Global Ambassador to the biggest hospital in the Middle East, the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, which treats roughly two million Jewish and Muslim patients.

“My companies, they all start with an ‘I’ and end with an ‘I,’” said Mr. Elkann, founder in the past year of both Italia Independent, the lifestyle brand, and Independent Ideas, the advertising agency. He was watching a soccer match at a sports bar on Bleecker Street, hours before he was scheduled to catch a plane to Paris. After a few days there, he was planning to visit Italy for four days, followed by a trip to Iceland, where he’s working on yet another mysterious venture.  read more »