Toby Young

This morning, Top Chef host-judges Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio treated the food press to a conference call to discuss the upcoming fifth season of the show, which was mostly filmed in Brooklyn. Besides learning that guest judges will include Eric Ripert, Dave Grohl, Martha Stewart, Lidia Bastianich, Wylie Dufresne, and Marcus Samuelsson, we found out that Ms. Lakshmi usually "gains about 10 to 15 pounds over the course of [filming] … I always go up one dress size, without fail." Mr. Colicchio was also adamant that people know his, uh, collection of seven restaurants is not "a chain." 

Also, did you know Mr.  read more »

Wednesday evening, Gawker Media hosted a party at Soho House in honor of the soon-to-be-released film version of How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, Toby Young’s memoir of his misadventures as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair in the late '90s. Half of the crowd kept referring to the celebration as a book party, despite the fact that the book in question had been released over six years ago. Indeed, the film did seem to take a backseat, as the room was full of media types eager to speak with Mr. Young, who did not arrive until late.

However, our first conversation was with a different type.  read more »

David Letterman might just have summed up last week when he said, “You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, this doesn’t smell right." Felix Gillette and John Koblin track the billion little pieces in our new A.D.D. news cycle. PLUS: Pumping McCain.

John Koblin looks at the last days of The New York Sun. "Staffers seemed in buoyant spirits, some even laughing."

Leon Neyfakh looks at Penguin's financial crash book buying spree and wonders "Is buying three books about Wall Street a good investment?"

Plus: Toby Young... The Mad Men of New Media... Paul Newman.

“You see those extras?” said the producer, indicating a group of nubile young women standing a few feet away. “They’re yours for the asking. Just point to the one you like and I’ll have her sent to your room.”

This was in the summer of 2007, and we were on the roof of Soho House in New York shooting a scene from How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. I was actually staying at Soho House, so from a purely practical point of view it would have been relatively easy to dispatch one of these young women to my room. But was he being serious?

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Sunday's Los Angeles Times ran a short profile to remind you that the film version of Toby Young's bestselling 2001 memoir, How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, will be released this Friday. Starring Simon Pegg as "Sidney Young," the movie seems to be a loosely fictionailized version of Mr. Young's failed tenure as a contributing editor at Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair (veiled as Clayton Harding's Sharps) in the early 90's, which was characterized by such ill-advised stunts as "sending a strippergram to a colleague on Take Our Daughters to Work Day and snorting cocaine with bad-boy artist Damien Hirst during a photo shoot.  read more »

The Transom refused to attend Toby Young's book party last night, even though it was clearly the must-attend party of 2002. Did one really have to attend to report it?

Rachel Sklar was in an effusive mood, her rockin' bod swaying slightly with the off-genre Soho House soundtrack. She warmly greeted the overly well-dressed reporter Greg Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay brushed aside compliments on his tan, the result of long hours this summer spent on the fun-loving eastern side of Ocean Beach. Remy Stern rolled his eyes roofdeck-ward almost imperceptibly as Jessica Coen made a crack about the cokey bathrooms of Soho House.

They were all trapped in the so-called "library" room, which contains no books. It was a room too small to contain such egos.

Early enough, Mr. Young's ploy came to fruition. He, and his co-hosts, had invited both Ian Spiegelman and Doug Dechert. The two feuding gentlemen had clearly been in training for this party: both had obviously been consuming massive amounts of carbohydrates in preparation for this moment.

Spencer Morgan in The New York Observer, February 20, 2006:

"Doug, are you going to reach out to Ian?" asked Webster Hall promoter Baird Jones; he is an old friend of Mr. Dechert's and knows how to push his buttons.

"Oh, yeah--I'm gonna reach out with my fist, right in that fuckin' schnoz of his," said Mr. Dechert. He gave his prepared (and likely well-worn) quote about Mr. Spiegelman: "He's a little media mediocrity, and he has the instincts and countenance of a rodent."

(Mr. Spiegelman, reached for comment, declined to be goaded into battle for a second time. "He seems a little obsessed with me. It's kind of gross," wrote Mr. Spiegelman in an e-mail. "I really don't want to be associated with that person at all. And, no, he's not in my book. I write dark, but not that dark.")

And so the boys, at last, shoved each other a wee bit. One question remains: How did Jared Paul Stern, in town just for the night and looking natty, not get any ink out of this party yet?

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How to Lose Friends and Alienate People , by Toby Young. Da Capo Press, 329 pages, $24.  read more »

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