Later soaked in the tub and read an old review of a Poussin exhibit by Robert Hughes and thought how we both banged the same woman, me circa 1995. He got in there a good 15 years before me, but my significant other didn’t catch me in the act and wave a machete around like his did. Also on the same layline as Quentin Tarantino, Chuck Scarborough and I’m pretty sure Matt Dillon. Wonder where that frisky cougar from the class of ’71 I hooked up with at our reunion in ’91 is. Could not close the deal. So many things I can’t do now. Eleven months ago I was yacht-hopping in St. Barts and having conversations with Leelee Sobieski, Nick Rhodes, Terrence Howard, Amy Poehler, George Soros; I had thousands of euros to blow. Now look at me.
Ever worry you’re gonna towel your balls off too hard and one of ’em is gonna fall off?
So the lady at the deli spreads a paper-thin layer of cream cheese on bagels. People have started to complain. So she charges another 50 cents for “extra cream cheese!” By extra she means the amount of cream cheese a normal decent American would spread on a bagel. Has nothing to do with the economy.
Never been much for S&M. Never been tied up, worn diapers. Went home with a girl circa ’97 who in retrospect suspected was a dominatrix. She cranked up Brian Eno’s “Here He Comes,” danced around naked in her living room, ordered me to sit on the couch and whack it. Next morning her phone started ringing. A lot. Oh, and earlier she kept going into her closet and coming out in different outfits.
I know about shame now. Know what it’s like to be poor. I was outside a Sbarro in midtown, jiggling quarters in my pocket, pacing like I’m outside a porn emporium ’cause I know someone might see me. Screw up the courage, take a deep breath and go in and order a slice and stack up quarters. Guy behind the counter gives me a pitying look and THEN the place starts filling up! Five, six people see my pathetic stack of change and the slice takes a long time. Then I start feeling inexplicably better. I sit down and what song comes on? “I Can See Clearly Now.” Positive vibes wash over me.
For the past few weeks I’ve been setting my alarm at 10:55 a.m. to watch you, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, on The View, thinking about you nonstop throughout the day, and YouTubing clips of you late into the night. Damn, you are one adorable pint-size dynamo. And stacked. I like how you’ve never changed your look. You still dress cute and feminine, and I really like your bottle-blond hairdo. But we still know the curtains don’t match the drapes! Oh boy. Be cool to have a tiny version of you sitting on my keyboard right now, blabbing away, and if it got on my nerves I could flip a switch—but I don’t want a doll like my Ann Coulter doll. It’s got to be you. Carry you around in my pocket. I can relate—I used to interview Republican pundits, then receive up to a thousand nasty e-mails from readers. “You are a fucking idiot,” one of them read in its entirety. You got the toughest job on TV. Case closed. Almost forgot. Here’s a nice vid of you in a blue satiny waist-high number and for a split second you can see the white panties. Just thought I’d pass that along. Lotsa weirdos out there.
NOVEMBER 10, 2008 EDITORIAL
PRESIDENT O. It’s Barackfest in New York!
Voting mobs, parties, ad-hoc exit polls; Chris Matthews, Matthew Modine, Susan Sarandon, Michael Bloomberg, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Caro, Jill Abramson, Austin Scarlett Go Gaga for New Era
AS ELECTION NIGHT NEARED, NEW YORK’S POWER elite—but also its creative class, its political class, its partying class, lurched to find the center of gravity for election night.
The premonition that New York’s obvious choice, Barack Obama, was likely to win was not the smallest consideration here.
And then there were those who attempted to provide the city with its own massive town square, to hold election night, for the first time in eight years, as a massive, citywide, public event.
ABC did Times Square, NBC of course did Rockefeller. Harvey Weinstein and Georgette Mosbacher cultivated a list, checked it twice, added a bunch of plus ones and basically accounted for every boldface name in town.
Then there were the churches, the political power centers of Black New York, which suddenly realized they might have the first black president on their hands. Charlie Rangel would spend some time in midtown with the Democrats, but then planned to go uptown, and try to move the center of gravity there.
Every neighborhood bar put up a sign: free hot dogs, CNN all night. And New York put on its suits and frocks and went out for a risky, big, historic night.
But the day began early in the morning, with floods of New Yorkers eschewing habit to pull themselves out of bed well before the break of dawn to get themselves to their polling places, often, like Joseph and Mary, in some obscure neighborhood they have long since outgrown, and sometimes, in the very same place their family has voted for generations. The lines were long and the passions were high—ask Tim Robbins!—but the historic day had begun.
Harlem, before 6 a.m.
Sixty-four voters waited on a line outside an elementary school polling place on West 134th Street before 6 a.m. on Election Day.
Illustrated by Robert Grossman
Carole Branch, a 41-year-old project architect who lives around the corner in the Lenox Terrace apartments (where the Rangels also live), got there first.
“My mother-in-law told me to wake up early and beat the rush,” Ms. Branch said. She said she didn’t want to wait in line “but would have” to cast a vote for Barack Obama.
Election officials wouldn’t open the site till after 6 a.m. But soon after they did, Mr. Rangel appeared. The line had by now grown to about 200.
“This is beautiful. This is exciting,” he said. “Who would have thought it?”
Mr. Rangel, wearing a black overcoat, yellow tie and carrying a New York Times tucked under his arm, said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
He had little doubt about the prospects of his candidate, Barack Obama, on Election Day.
“No, no. He’s ahead in almost every poll.”
“Those Europeans never thought the slaves would be in charge,” Mr. Rangel was heard telling the young woman in front of him.
—Azi Paybarah
Union Square, Noon
The Rub DJs, along with DJ Rekha and Chez Music’s Neil Aline, were starting an afternoon DJ party at the Raise the Volume Election Day Party at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square around 1 p.m. On the decks: “Elected,” by Alice Cooper; “I Believe” by Simian Mobile Disco; “Funky President” by James Brown; “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” by the Smiths; George Clinton’s “Paint the White House Black” and more. Start your own playlist!
—Gillian Reagan
Harlem, Midday
Governor David Paterson walked into the voting booth with his wife, Michelle, today, but said afterward, “I pulled the lever myself.”
Mr. Paterson did not use a Braille ballot when voting for Barack Obama. (He doesn’t read Braille.) Mr. Paterson conducted a walking press conference with reporters while on line to vote at the same Harlem elementary school where Representative Charlie Rangel voted hours earlier.
“I’ve never seen so many people stand on line for so long and be so excited,” Mr. Paterson said. “I’ve never seen so many people look so happy, even though they have to wait over an hour to vote.” He said the “struggles” of African-Americans, women, Hispanics, the disabled, elderly and others “may all be congealed in this sort of symbolic moment. But symbolic moments have often been the catalyst for great change in this country.”
—Azi Paybarah
Harlem, afternoon
In some Harlem precincts, as the day progressed, it became not so much a question of whether Barack Obama will win, but how his victory will be thwarted.
“I think it’s going to come down to a mess-up in the voting,” said 70-year-old Ervin McLean, a golf caddy who lives in the neighborhood.
Thomas Mullins, a 52-year-old fellow caddy, was less pessimistic.
“I definitely think they’re going to throw a monkey wrench into the machine,” he sai
d, but, “I don’t think there will be no disarray. There will not be unrest, but there will be a lot of disappointed people.”
He added that if Mr. Obama loses, and it’s blamed on voting irregularity, it will “stay in the consciousness of America’s mind.”
—Azi Paybarah
The Lower East Side, 4:30 p.m.
By late afternoon on Essex Street, the line to vote at Public School 20 was nonexistent, and voters trickled out at five-minute intervals.
Which is not to say voting here was entirely seamless.
“The machines were weird,” said neighborhood resident Nikki, 30, emerging from the gymnasium in a black puffy jacket after voting for Mr. Obama. (She asked that her last name not be used.)
Lower East Sider Danny Rivera, 23, had also voted for Mr. Obama, but not with a lever. “My name wasn’t on the list, so I had to do an affidavit,” he said. He thought perhaps it was because he hadn’t voted in the last election, because he knew he was registered. He was with Maritza Alimonte, also 23, who had voted for Mr. Obama earlier in the day in the Bronx. They couple was confident Mr. Obama would win, but they were not Obamaphiles.
“I don’t trust him,” said Ms. Alimonte. “I don’t trust any of them.”
—Meredith Bryan
Chelsea, 7 p.m.
A little before 7 p.m., Matthew Modine was watching the TV screen at the Half King bar on 23rd Street in Manhattan, a few blocks from where he lives.
“I tell you if Obama loses and there’s a sense that there’s been some funny business, there’s going to be fucking riots,” said the 49-year old actor.
Earlier that afternoon he had accompanied his 18-year-old daughter to a voting booth in the East Village. He said she doesn’t really get what the big deal is.
“It’s amazing how things have changed,” he said. “The other day she was doing her homework and the TV was on and she looked up and said, ‘Did you hear what he just said?’” The newscaster had just noted that Mr. Obama would be the first black president. That fact had apparently not struck her up to that point.
—Spencer Morgan
Soho, 8 p.m.
A cheer went up at 8:15 p.m. at the party for Huffington Post humor site 23/6, as MSNBC called Pennsylvania for Senator Obama. Looking over at Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper projected on another wall, a guest was overheard asking, “Where are the holograms?”
“I feel absolutely confident that Obama will win,” said Penelope Bunn, a 51-year-old journalist. “I travel abroad and the whole world wants this.” Asked if she felt at all fatigued by the long campaign, Ms. Bunn fairly beamed, “It seems like he just got started yesterday!” She added, “McCain’s not a bad guy. It’s just not his time.”
—Matt Haber
Harlem, 8:31 p.m.
As the jumbotron on 125th Street showed CNN announcing that Barack Obama is leading in Florida, the crowd here cheered.
But 27-year-old arts administrator Daisy Rosario of Harlem pressed a blue Obama poster over her mouth and tried not to cry.
“The last eight years have been awful,” she said. “On September 11, I was in the first tower that got hit. Since then,” she went on, referring to the Bush years, “it’s been a long, sad journey.”
She added, “I just want it to be over.”
—Azi Paybarah
Searchable Terms
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
A
Abdul Raman, Sheik Omar, 52
Abrams, Dan, 354
Abrams, Floyd, 34
Abramson, Jill, 364
Abzug, Bella, 13
Adams, Cindy, 5, 94, 95, 161, 218
Adelhardt, Christine, 283
Adler, Polly, 268
Affleck, Ben, 195, 292
Agassi, Andre, 171
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 310
al-Maliki, Nuri Kamal, 326
Albert, Marv, 157
Albo, Mike, 359
Alexander, Jason, 58
Alimonte, Maritza, 365
Aline, Neil, 365
Allan, Col, 5
Allbaugh, Joseph, 282
Allen, Woody, 7, 51, 93, 95, 98, 128, 139, 156, 201, 295, 299
Altman, Jeff, 128
Altman, Robert, 56, 295
Amis, Martin, 90, 103
Andersen, Kurt, 168, 260, 358, 359
Anderson, Chris, 347
Anderson, Jon Lee, 311
Anderson, Pamela, 256
Andreessen, Marc, 106
Andrews, Dana, 126-127
Aniston, Jennifer, 309
Annan, Kofi, 311
Anuff, Joey, 106
Aoki, Guy, 206
Apple, R.W., Jr., 330
Armani, Giorgio, 269, 342
Armstrong, Joe, 173
Armstrong, Louis, 257
Armstrong, Thomas, 26
Asahina, Bob, 36
Astley, Amy, 246
Astor, Brooke, 218, 259, 336, 352, 356
Astor, Caroline, 94
Astor, Vincent, 336
Atlas, James, 278
Attenberg, Jami, 359
Auchincloss, Louis, 50, 57
Auden, W.H., 358
Auletta, Ken, 111, 351
Auster, Paul, 103, 359
Avedon, Richard, 19
Aznul, Carol, 41
B
Babson, Robert, 28
Bacall, Lauren, 93, 269, 292
Bacharach, Burt, 155
Bagli, Charles V., 98, 268
Bailey, Glenda, 205
Baker, Nicholson, 42
Baldwin, Alec, 15, 95, 138, 169
Baldwin, Billy, 138
Baldwin, James, 303
Ball, George C., 27
Bamert, Alison, 203
Banks, Tyra, 291
Barak, Ehud, 262
Baris, Richie, 40
Barkin, Ellen, 166, 177, 357
Barkley, Charles, 157
Barnes, Julian, 41, 103
Barr, Roseanne, 93
Barreneche, Raul A., 213
Barrymore, Drew, 169
Bartlett, Michael, 53
Barton, Molly, 359
Barton, Richard, 301
Basabe, Fabian, 278
Basso, Dennis, 266
Batali, Mario, 90
Bates, Stephen, 161
Baum, L. Frank, 269
Baumgold, Julie, 197
Beatty, Warren, 148
Beavers, Nick, 54, 252
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 257
Begley, Louis, 50
Beit, Louise, 299
Beller, Tom, 85
Bellow, Saul, 134, 278
Bellows, Jim, 9
Benchley, Robert, 108
Benny, Jack, 126
Benson, Elaine, 18
Benson, Robby, 357
Benton, Robert, 293
Bergen, Candice, 93
Berger, Meyer, 259
Bernbaum, Glenn, 232
Bernstein, Paula, 360
Berra, Yogi, 96
Berry, Halle, 148
Bias, Len, 305
Biden, Joseph, 9, 319
Bird, Larry, 157
Birkerts, Sven, 134
Black, Cathie, 187
Black, Charles, 46
Blaine, David, 83
Blair, Jayson, 6, 241, 245
Blair, Tony, 280
Blanco, Kathleen, 282
Bleckner, Ross, 83
Blitzer, Wolf, 365
Blitt, Barry, 7, 295
Block, Allan, 170
Bloom, Claire, 68
Bloom, Harold, 38, 258
Bloom, Lisa, 270
Bloomberg, Michael, 216, 288, 292, 299, 328, 356, 364
Blount, Roy Jr., 56
Bly, Robert, 34
Bobbitt, John Wayne, 303
Bocly, Ch
arlotte, 313
Bogdanovic, Tanya, 203
Bogdanovich, Peter, 326-327
Boies, David, 34
Boulud, Daniel, 52, 119, 348
Bolster, Bill, 51
Bon Jovi, Jon, 314
Boone, Mary, 5, 83, 102, 133
Borden, Anthony, 283
Bork, Robert, 34
Boswell, James, 304
Bouley, David, 119, 153
Bowles, Jane, 358
Bowles, Paul, 358
Brachetti, Guido, 88
Bradshaw, John, 46
Branch, Carole, 364
Brando, Marlon, 295, 304
Bratton, William, 95, 290
Braunstein, Alberto, 289
Braunstein, Peter, 289
Brennan, Johnny, 51
Breslin, Jimmy, 259
Brewster, Brinton, 320
Brill, Steven, 34, 166
Brimley, Wilford, 357
Brinkley, David, 351
Britton, Burt, 17
Broder, Josh, 290
Broderick, Matthew, 56
Brodkey, Harold, 17, 38
Brokaw, Tom, 210, 313
Bronfman, Edgar Jr., 95
Brown, Aaron, 290
Brown, Chip, 85
Brown, Clarence, 126
Brown, Foxy, 169
Brown, Helen Gurley, 218, 247
Brown, James, 331, 365
Brown, Mike, 282
Brown, Tina, 7, 20, 37, 45, 69, 76, 91, 99 102, 141, 153, 170, 181, 195, 196-197, 200, 218, 252, 280, 292, 293, 294, 303
Bruce, Lenny, 257
Bruno, Joe, 346
Bryant, Anita, 266
Bryant, Kobe, 157
Buatta, Mario, 18
Buchanan, Pat, 240
Buciarelli, Ed, 348
Buckley, Patricia, 8, 177, 292
Buckley, William, 30
Buford, Bill, 79, 103, 147
Bunn, Penelope, 365
Burke, Edward Jr., 206
Burke, Philip, 7
Burke, Scott, 291
Burkle, Ron, 302
Burn, Taylor, 54
Burns, Ed, 177, 187
Burroughs, Williams S., 322
Buscemi, Steve, 327
Bush, Ashley, 318
Bush, Barbara, 104, 354
Bush, George H. W., 40, 318
Bush, George W., 188, 191, 192-193, 194, 205, 207, 210, 237, 239, 242, 257, 273, 278, 280, 282, 292, 309, 311, 321, 327
Bush, Laura, 242
Bushnell, Candace, 7, 54-55, 142, 181, 232-233, 252
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