[Photo via Daily News]

If you’ve been reading the Daily News lately, you would know that all the speculation about love and happiness was futile, since it can be boiled down to the algebraic equation above. The article, “When she’s hot & he’s not there’s a better shot at happiness,” seems to clear up any confusion (while, by the way, leaving very little up to imagination). I was unable get my hands on an original copy of the study without actually going to a library, possibly going through some kind of inter-library loan process, etc. I’m just way too lazy busy for that (if you’re more interested/ambitious than I, the cite is something like this: “Beyond initial attraction: Physical attractiveness in newlywed marriage,” J. of Family Psych., 2008 Feb Vol 22(1) 135-143). Anyway, to sum up the Daily News coverage, it looks like researchers studied 82 newlyweds and found that individuals in marital unions in which there is a discrepancy in attractiveness between the husband and wife (where the wife is hotter relative to the husband), are generally more content and behave “more positively” towards each other. More»

To atone for months of neglect, we spent most of our four hour train ride home engrossed(ish) in the fashion magazines that constitute our summer library. In the March (we know, we're behind) issue of Allure we found an article explaining the Junk Food diet. The words were out of order; the Junk Food diet is just diet Junk Food -some of which, we readily admit, makes frequent cameos in our own cupboards (not those 100 calorie packs though--too small and airy). However, while this particular diet may not live up to its promising title, there are plenty that do.

Below, a partial list:

• The Baby Food Diet: but what about all those calories we burn chewing?
• The Mega-Bite Diet: that's more like it. SF art dealer Horace Fletcher called for each mouthful to be chewed no less than 32 times before spitting out the remains. Good dinner party trick, too.
• The Jesus diet: for Christian Scientist raw foodies with above average masochistic inclinations.
• The Breatharian Diet: for all you oxygen fans. cheap, too.
• The Tapeworm Diet: and you thought Nicole Richie went to Mexico for the Mezcal.

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The L.A. Times has broken an exclusive on new evidence supporting the (widely acknowledged) claim that Sean Combs/P. Diddy was responsible for the murder of Tupac Shakur way back in 1994. Though no one's alleging Combs fired the fatal shot, the Times implicates Diddy and his "associates" for the beating and slaying that sent such a ripple through pop culture during the mid-nineties. Since that time, there has been no official police charge leveled at anyone involved. This article is the first account of newly-revealed information implicating Combs and relies on FBI documents, witness statements, and a confidential informant. More»

[Photo by Jeff Riedel via NY Mag]

Just breezed over NY Mag's article on our city's homeless "A Night on the Streets With the City's Homeless" and for a brief moment got an inside look into Damian's "Bat Cave" up on 134th and Broadway, William's spot in the dirt lot by the Hudson in the Bronx, Lorenzo's tight space under the ramp that leads to the paring lot to Yankee Stadium, Connie's UWS stoop, Nancy's space under a 4 lane overpass in the Bronx, and Lorraine on 31st St. They don't want to play by the rules: "Paperwork, rules, questions. I prefer getting stuff on my own." (Damian), their prices are quite a bit lower than the Emperor's Club:

"I call myself a self-employed street vendor. My license is my HIV-negative paper. You know what I’m saying?” She charges $20 for blow jobs, $30 for sex, $40 for “half-and-half,” which means both. On a good night, she makes between $100 and $150. She spends most of what she earns on crack—$5 for nickel bags, $10 for dime bags"

And they're a major problem for our city's legislature. They're also one group who could care less about the struggling market, or their 401k's. With over 35,000 homeless people living in our city, it could very well be the "single biggest failure of the Bloomberg administration".

[Photo via Rush Limbaugh]

With our gubernatorial train wreck of the last week, a recent spate of Clinton-Spitzer comparisons have been circulating, none of which can be very good for Hillary's prospects. We've been barraged with side by side accounts of precisely how much sex (free or otherwise) our politicians feel they need to keep their head in the political game. Does it matter that Spitzer was so blatantly careless about his exploits while Clinton, himself a chronic womanizer, seemed to conduct his affairs with something bordering on *discretion*? Our favorite choice bits from the scandal roundup:

"Here you had a guy who saw himself as a Jewish Kennedy in the making—combining the dash and idealism of John with the self-righteous ruthlessness of Bobby—and imagined his family at the center, one day, of a kosher Camelot. Is it any wonder that a man harboring such conceits would come to believe that he could dip his wick with impunity? (And at the very hotel where JFK is said to have, er, entertained Judith Campbell Exner!) I think not." - NY Mag

A Pants Down Primer [NY Mag]
Hillary Clinton's Spitzer Problem [Washington Post]
How Is Spitzer Different From Clinton [Slate]
What It Means To Be A Fighter [Daily Kos]
The Clinton-Spitzer Comparison [Volokh Conspiracy]

[Photo via NYMag]
Eglantina Zingg and Elisa Estrada, Travelers

The Look Book looks to have gotten its act back together this week, after several disappointing weeks....and they're back with quite the pair. Eglantina and Elisa are "travelers". Like traveling is their actual occupation. Clad in Fendi Fur, I'm wondering who their employer is that is providing their salary...I would gladly send over my resume.

What do you guys do?
ELISA: Right now I am living life. Because I can. I’m living, and I’m enjoying. I collect art, I collect fashion. I can’t lie to you, I love it. At some point you follow a type of life with a schedule, and I kind of said, “You know what? I’m going to take a hike for a while.”
EGLANTINA: I was just in the Amazon. My father has a farm there. I was doing some work that was ecofriendly, planting trees. I study drama in London too.

"Living life without a schedule" and "planting trees in the Amazon"....
Best.Job.Description.Ever.

We asked Oper8tor, who along with The Undergrad attended Blackbook's party for the release of their March '08 issue. Here's what he had to say:

"hmmm...well it was a magazine release party for the march issue of Blackbook.  The space was tight , the drinks were strong, the light was a dim yellowish orange and the people there were fashionable, loud and ready to dance. Lots of magazine and fashion folks."

Pretty much sums it up... The party was at Tillman's and was apparently hard to get into, and, once inside, was packed. His photos are below:

Extra may have offered "Kristin" $100K, but it was still The New York Times that broke her identity along with photographs by employing a combination of shoe-leather reporting and MySpace surfing. Let this be a cautionary lesson to all of you that may want to post personal information and photographs online if you are involved in something illegal, like prostitution. What the Times reporters found: Her name is Ashley Youmans but she is known as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, she's from New Jersey, is 22, and is into her music. She even owns an entertainment company called Pasche New York, but apparently it wasn't enough to pay the bills when the man she was with walked out on her, leading her to a job in the escort business. (This is also a cautionary tale about trying to live in this city on no money.) According to her MySpace, she comes from a broken home, has gone through abuse, suffered drug addiction and been broke and homeless before. You almost can't blame her for not wanting to go back to that.

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Twenty-four hours since the scandal broke, AND....Governor Spitzer is still hanging on. I don't know who else is geeky enough to have The New York Times set as a homepage, but following the headline changes today was entertaining in and of itself. First, there was no word on resignation; then, his own aides were talking to the press and saying the resignation was probably going to happen; New York's next governor was all lined up and waiting in the wings; now, "Resignation by Spitzer Not Likely Today." Apparently, New York also hangs in limbo as we wait for him to resign. I'd say it's more like Bizarro World, like in that Seinfeld episode, as the ethics guy ends up killing his own career with high-priced hookers.

Lieutenant Governor David A. Paterson is just waiting to step up to the plate. If he ascends to New York State's highest position, he will be the first ever legally blind man to hold this office. Nasty comment overheard in the newsroom: "At least he won't care what the hookers look like."

The beauty of blogging is that you get to write whatever you want--provided that it's not going to get you arrested. The downside of blogging, when you blog for a publication like a newspaper or magazine, is that you sometimes need to watch what you write--or at least how you act.  Let it be a lesson to all future "Man Needs Date" bloggers for Glamour magazine's website that you must at least PRETEND to be a gentleman. Blogger Mike Cherico was fired after behaving "boorishly" towards women, and more specifically towards one Miss Smarty Shoes, who he wrote had herpes because she had a cut on her lip, lusted after another woman while they were at a concert together, and made her pick up the phone when his ex-girlfriend was calling. That's just the least of what she writes about on her MySpace account. Apparently there have been many, many allegations against him, which Page Six didn't see fit to print because they are a "family newspaper", but reading what they DO consider fit to print, I have got to wonder what else he did.
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It's been a while since we heard about Leona Helmsley with the press frenzy following her death. And of course the press had a field day—how many billionaire/hotelier/real estate moguls leave more money to their yappy little dog than to their flesh and blood relatives? Now that's bitchy, and we mean that even without the pun. Plus, she earned herself the "Queen of Mean" nickname while she was serving time for tax evasion. Trust me, it's not often where we come up with something so clever that both a.) shows she rivals royalty in her wealth and reigns over anyone that thinks they're nasty enough to compete with her, and b.) rhymes.

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