New York Times magazine writer Alex "I try to write about the populace, not just the elite" Kuczynski is now seeing the tables turned on her elite ass. It seems that the photos accompanying her Nov. 28th article about hiring a surrogate mother rubbed some people the wrong way. Specifically, the disgusting, racist, classist way.
One photograph showed her holding her son on the lawn of her Southampton home, columns along a wide veranda with white wicker in the background, a uniformed baby nurse standing at attention. Two pages later, Hilling (the surrogate) was shown pregnant, leaning back on her dilapidated-looking porch in Harleysville, Pa., weeds peeking out from beneath it, a dog lying at her side. To many readers, the pictures screamed rich woman exploiting poor woman.
Poor woman! According to Kuczynski, it is she, a lowly style reporter for the Times, that is being marginalized!
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• Giuliani's bratty son publicly declares his intention to vote for "the other guy."
• NBC sends anchor Brian WIlliams to Iraq, denies trip is motivated by attempt to gain ratings or to "one-up Bob Woodruff."
• Meanwhile, ABC gains credibility by beating out NBC in primetime news; immediately squanders it by awardingt Geico cavemen their own show.
• Actress Claire Danes is as good at stealing "boyfriend trousers" as she is at stealing boyfriends.
• Philadelphia Inquirer finds a clever new way to make itself "even more disposable."
• Alex Kuczynski stops shopping for the Times; starts shopping her new book.
Do you know Alex Kuczynski? If you knew her more than ten or fifteen years ago, it's likely you wouldn't even recognize her nowadays. The NYT "Critical Shopper" columnist—and veteran plastic surgery patient—has done an impressive job at drastically altering her physical appearance, to the point where her face is vague reminiscent of someone who was "too cool" to know you even back when.
(Oh, also, we're told she wrote some sort of book or something, too).
Anywho, the infamous Alex K. surprised and delighted us this afternoon by delivering an unexpectedly amusing interview on the 92nd St Y Blog. And, in perhaps more shocking news, the subject of plastic surgery doesn't even come up once!
Instead, Alex offers some delightful anecdotes about her 20 years as a New Yorker, and we've excerpted some of her very best quotes below. So please read on to find out how Alex wrestled the wheel from her inexperienced taxi driver, inadvertently stalked Jerry Seinfeld and had her marriage saved by former NYC mayor David Dinkins.
Alex K., on Taking the Wheel:
A very young, and obviously new, driver was at the wheel of the taxi. He was a lousy driver and he had no idea where he was going. I said, Buddy, you are way too young and way too inexperienced to be driving this taxi. Stop the car. He did. He thought I was going to get out. I went to the driver’s side and told him to move over and let me drive. To my amazement, he did! I drove myself home, with him next to me on the front seat, looking utterly bewildered.
Intrigued? More from Alex K. right after the jump.
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• Jon Friedman suddenly has a problem kow-towing to the famous. [Marketwatch]
• Hipsters don't just have their own language, they have their own scripted series. [NYO]
• Another roadblock to gay rights: Calling someone a "faggot" just doesn't conjure the same uproar "spic" ever does. [AfterElton]
• The Los Angeles Times receives an envelope filled with a white powdery substance. It's either sugar, anthrax, or Dean Baquet's stash. (Note the "From a Times Staff Writer" byline.) [LAT]
• It's always wise to take advice from someone with a cocktail in hand at a party. Especially when that hand belongs to Alex Kuczynski and the advice is about lipo-ing your ass. [NYO]
• Two of Boston's richest (including former GE chief Jack Welch) consider making a bid for the Boston Globe. Owner NYT maintains it's not for sale, though its dignity is. [Boston Globe]
Yesterday, Mayor Blooomberg declared New York City in state of "heat emergency." He asked that AC not dip much below 75 and that everyone do their part to conserve energy. Conserve, conserve, conserve — or else we could have another blackout. And that would be good news for nobody.
Even the New York Times is not immune from the warning. After the jump, the full memo sent by building operations to the Times staff, asking them to turn off their computers and, uh, take the stairs.
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Thirty pages of plastic surgery tales? We wouldn't even expect that much from New Beauty, and those are the glossy pages where a sad story of body dysmorphic disorder skewed with a celebratory slant is most fitted. But we're talking New York Times shopper Alex Kuczynski, whose true-life tome Beauty Junkies hits bookstores in October like a scalpal does the hairline. Kuczynski's story is a common one: Girl goes in for skin therapy; girl walks out with eye lift, collagen injections. plumped lips, and a forehead that even an Upper East Side townhouse explosion couldn't furrow. What social status observing scribe hasn't been in that situation? But Alex learned her lesson: She's quit "beauty treatments" cold turkey, abandoning the hollow world of age upkeep for the hollow world of a Vanity Fair excerpt, coming at you in September.
Face Off [Memo Pad]
We have been waiting for this day since the moment LC told Stephen she was moving to Los Angeles. The Hills premiers tonight on MTV, and seriously, we could not be more excited. The end of Laguna Beach left a whole in our hearts, and while Entourage may have done it's part to fill our all things California quota, there has been a major lack of underage surfer boys and pedicures on our television screens.
And if you think that's poetic, listen to the New York Times cream their pants over the "new" LC — now an almost grown-up Teen Vogue intern who comes of age as she leaves her spoiled teen years and enters her spoiled young adult era.
This works well for Lauren, who is actually not so trifling as the others; she was always much more wary and anxious than a pretty teenager should have any cause to be. Her heavily lined eyes appeared more watchful than bright or twinkly, even in the old golden light; now she has the thriller lighting to match her mood.
Lauren's workday, granted, is a charmed one: the series chronicles her experience as an intern at Teen Vogue (which receives heavy promotion here). But sand and surf have given way to steel and glass in her world, and she is earnestly trying to forge a Mary Tyler Moore existence in Los Angeles. (Who knows what Lauren Conrad actually wants? I watch this show as fiction.) She really does have to work, as we see her stamping envelopes and typing on a computer. And put it this way: now she wears a headset when she goes to parties.
The Times is so freakin' right. Pretty girls should never worry about things. And stamping envelopes is about as much effort as they should ever attempt to exert. Before we know it, little LC will be 26, and standing in line to take Alex Kuczynski's job.
'The Hills,' a Follow-Up to 'Laguna Beach,' Makes Its Premiere on MTV [Virginia Heffernan]
Finally, we found a job on Mediabistro that might be better than sitting in our pajamas and bitching all day.
Passing out kosher marijuana cigarettes to members of the media. Just for the pure joy of getting Alex Kuczynski high, we would risk anything.
MEDIA RELATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS MANAGER [Mediabistro]
We were first drawn to this story on new literature because of the Anderson Cooper on Oprah mention. Not that we should be shocked, but, the painfully obvious favoritism by Oprah towards the Coop just goes on and on. The CNN anchor just wrapped a show with the queen of Daytime that focuses on his book Dispatches From the Edge.
And just as we were ready to go on yet another rant about how every time Coops goes on Oprah, it gets mentioned on CNN (creating this double promotional campaign hidden behind the guise of "save New Orleans") we were silenced by this.
There was also a glimpse of the glam New York Times shopping reporter Alex Kuczynski, who finally is ready to roll with her book "Beauty Junkies," exploring America's $15 billion obsession with plastic surgery. There were no advance copies of Kuczynski's book, but one insider who saw the galleys said that the fair Alex details some of her own self-enhancements, including trouble the author had speaking during a eulogy for a friend the day after she had a collagen injection in her lip.
Alex K is coming out with a book? And in this book she talks about being unable to give a eulogy because of her collagen injection? And nobody told us about this before? Oh, this is for sure going to be our next subway literature, to be filed on the bookshelf right between Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary? and Bonnie Fuller's Joys of Much Too Much. Female journalist chick lit totally trumps male journalist Katrina coverage any day.
COOPER HOPING FOR OPRAH POP [Keith Kelly, New York Post]
There are so many ways to describe consumption porn, yet it takes so few words.
While the New Repbulic spewed roughly 4,000 on Alex Kuczynski and her weekly proverbs (leaving out the one where she begged us to call her crazy) one small statement from the Thursday Styles god Bertram Gabriel (aka "Trip") should have sufficed.
"I think people who whack it aren't comfortable with this new area of journalism about some of our tastes and consumption habits."
Sorry, Alex. But people who whack it just don't do it while thinking of you. Don't feel bad, though. We don't think they whack it to Eric Wilson, either.
The Gray Lady Wears Prada [Michelle Cottle, The New Republic]
As Alex Kuczynski gets ready for her 20th high school reunion, she decides to swing by Anna Sui to re-live the 80's. While we were still watching Sesame Street and playing with Jem dolls, Alex was gettin' down with hair dye and mixed tapes.
The store is a crazy assemblage of looks, sounds, ideas and smells that evoke for me an era when I dyed my hair pink one day and blue the next, wore vintage clothes one day and a man's suit the next and carried around a lunchbox packed with mix tapes.
But, those days for Alex, and in her opinion, for fashion, are totally over. She more or less loathes the store, Anna, and her line, but goes through the process of trying on these crazy clothes in the name of being a critical shopper. With The Violent Femmes playing in her head and The Sex Pistols playing in the store, Alex finally decides that though it's over the top, Anna Sui does have some kind of style thing going for her.
But, just not as stylish as Alex, who, because she is too fat for stretch pants, does not want to visit that 80's style ever again. The one size fits all lunchbox full of cassettes will never go out of style. Actually, we think Cindy Adams just picked one up the other day.
Journey Back to a Wild and Crazy Time [Alex Kuczynski, New York Times]
What is a day in the life of Alex Kuczynski really like?
After getting kicked by Keith Richards, Alex flies to Vegas to do some shopping. To get rid of that "pickled" plane feeling, she drops $22 a pop on a few hits of Oxygen (just about the lamest thing anyone can do) and of course, doesn't pass up the vibrating spider scalp massage.
Then its off to Victoria's Secret, where she doesn't understand why everyone is taking pictures of plastic Gisele (hello, Alex is right there). After thumbing through the crotchless panties, pink paddles, and sequined pasties, she decides that even though nothing is quite kinky enough for her, Victoria Secret Vegas really is a family place.
In a strange way this Victoria's Secret store, which is presumably racier and more sexually explicit than any other in the country, is the most family-friendly. There is a boutique where Mom can buy her bras and silk pajamas, another where little sister can equip herself with T-shirts and cotton pants, and yet another where Dad can be secretly titillated.
Thank you Alex, for always acting as the epitome of style. Nothing says family fun like little sister stocking up on Vicky C while dad carries the shopping bags to hide his boner.
Leaving Las Vegas With a Little Secret [Alex Kuczynski, New York Times]
Reports Alex Kuczynski from inside Versace's revamped (and "tone downed," courtesy Donatella) flagship, where Medusa's role has apparently been downgraded.
But the sales clerk could not have been nicer, seizing us as we walked in the front door and giving us a rundown of all the new accessories on the first floor. He was especially proud of the new Canyon purse, which is broad and eerily snoutlike. He cheerfully demonstrated how it opens up flat, so a woman can see everything in it at once.
This makes very practical sense, but the purse is unwieldy. I hoisted it on my arm, and I felt like I was carrying a very expensive ($4,600 for the snakeskin version) toolbox. He was, of course, selling the purse to the wrong woman. I have a constitutional aversion to handbags that cost as much as the average Panamanian makes in a year. Call me crazy.
Ms. Kuczynski: You're crazy. Especially given the big bucks hubby Charles Stevenson is packing.
Medusa Wears a Sweeter Smile [Alex Kuczynski, NYT]
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