When it comes to celebrity news, Neibaur and I like to think of ourselves as generally above the fray. We don’t own a TV, don’t subscribe to glossy magazines, and don’t do walk-bys of celebrity apartments in Soho as news breaks about their death. Nevertheless, when I had an opportunity to gawk at some celebrities at the recent Gucci + Madonna event at the U.N., I seized it. Needless to say, I am not above the fray: I yelped when I saw Tom and Gwyneth, and called out to Donald Trump, Jr. (Donald!) as if we’d known each other all our lives. Since the event, which provided Heather Jones and me plenty of eye candy, I have reflected upon, a) the level of star-struck behavior I exhibited, and b) how embarassingly much I know about these “stars” that “glittered” the evening. I knew, for example, that Drew Barrymore’s companion was her new boyfriend and that she lives on the Lower East Side, that Ivanka Trump’s childhood bedroom was on the 67th floor, that Kimora Lee Simmons owns Baby Phat, that Debra Messing was on Will and Grace (I really don’t know much else about her.), that Gwyneth Paltrow went to Spence (trivia from Heather), that Vince Vaughn produced The Break-Up, that Katie Holmes has been going through a Scientologist cleansing process, that P-Diddy has an office midtown, that Ashton and Demi practice Kabbalah, that Jerry Seinfeld’s wife is getting sued because of her cookbook, that Billy Joel has a play on Broadway based on his music, that Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale live in Los Feliz, that Angie Harmon owns a boutique in Beverly Hills, that Lucy Liu went to Berkeley (or was it Davis?), that Martha Stewart was once a model, that Diane von Furstenberg married royalty, that Brooke Shields went to Princeton, that J-Lo’s current husband was married to a former Miss Universe, that Christiane Amanpour is half-Iranian and half-British (and was at Whole Foods recently–see Spontaneous entry), that Heidi Klum was dating Seal while she was pregnant with another man’s child, and that Salma Hayek recently had the baby of an older rich man . The only ones I knew surprisingly little about were Rihanna, Molly Sims, Eric Dane (cross between Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio), Moby, Nelly Furtado, Rebecca Gayheart, Djimon Honsou, Donna Karan, Pharrell, and some guy named Kujo. The absurdity of the situation is what made it both repulsive and irresistible, and although I wish that I couldn’t care less, I didn’t and it was fun.
~Leila
