Vanity Fair articles from October 2007

Vanity Fair archives from October 2007

No, He Is Not the Paris Hilton of U.S. Presidents.(George W. Bush)(Editorial)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Graydon Carter Is it possible that for the past seven years we've gotten President George W. Bush wrong? Is it possible that that effortless stupidity and inexplicable arrogance that have become his hallmark are all just an act?...

Loving a Legend.(the racing horse, Barbaro)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... As someone who fell in love with Barbaro, followed every day of his recovery, and read everything written about him, I can say nothing has evoked emotions inside me quite like Buzz Bissinger's insightful account ["Gone Like the Wind," August]...

The Cultural Divide October.(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... 01 With its breathtaking glass facade, the Jack Diamond-designed Harman Center for the Arts, in Washington, D.C., new home of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, opens with a gala on October 1. (shakespearetheatre.org) 06 The 45th New York...

Hot Type.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Elissa Schappell Because, as James Beard so wisely noted, "food is our common ground, a universal experience," we present you with a feast: V.F. contributing editor David Kamp and the saucy Marion Rosenfeld's The Food Snob's...

Getting the Kinks Out.(specialty stores)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Lisa Eisner Sex shops are supposed to be fun. But there's that whole stigma to them. Most are way too creepy, and, honestly, who really wants to be seen entering or leaving one? Well, fret not. Kiki de Montparnasse has come to...

HONORING THE QUEEN OF EXISTENTIAL ART.(Louise Bourgeois)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: A. M. Homes A living legend at 95, artist Louise Bourgeois is the last of the great postwar avant-garde figures. Born in Paris in 1911, and residing in New York since 1938, she is a first-generation feminist artist-intentionally or...

Pink with a Wink.(message t-shirts in support of cancer patients)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Punch Hutton In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, Save 2nd Base-the organization established by Erin Dugery and Kelly Day in memory of their sister and friend Kelly Rooney-has launched a line of namesake T-shirts. Rooney, who...

To the Manor Born.(Giraffe Manor)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Victoria Mather I love having breakfast with giraffes. They don't talk about the weather or the Iraq war. Rather, they whiffle gently at the homemade jam and exercise some light quality-control over the toast, with their...

Private Lives.(Interview)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Krista Smith Every day, Harry Gesner, 82, walks through his door in Malibu, takes a few steps to the beach, does a ritualistic series of stretches followed by a set of push-ups, dons his custom helmet complete with bird feathers,...

The Wilderness Experience.(Into the Wild)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Graham Fuller When Sean Penn's not acting, he directs heartfelt dramas, dirge-like in their rhythms, that make little concession to box-office tastes. In his latest, Into the Wild, which Penn himself adapted from Jon Krakauer's...

Ocean's Away.(Michael Clayton )(Movie review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Bruce Handy On the one hand, Michael Clayton is a standard-issue legal thriller: partners square off in sterile, steel-and-glass bullrings; corporate baddies speak their evil in press-release cadences; and, it turns out, a single...

BOOK OF LOVE.(The Jane Austen Book Club)(Movie review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: A. M. Homes It is a truth universally acknowledged that after almost 200 years the world of Jane Austen remains a source of endless fascination. Robin Swicord's first feature film, The Jane Austen Book Club, based on Karen Joy...

A Cut Above.(hair salons)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Olivia Strand Frederic Fekkai has added some flattering new layers to his empire. Last month, he opened on Melrose Place, saving West Hollywood's A-list the drive to his Beverly Hills salon. The second-floor hideaway-worlds away...

FORBIDDEN FRAGRANCE.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Maria Ricapito Couturier Hubert de Givenchy, who has dressed women in both clothing and scent, believes "a fragrance remains the exclusive domain of each woman who wears it, since it can never be exactly the same on any other."...

Design for Living.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer NOUVEL'S NEW WAVE The curtain wall is a trademark of the New York skyscraper. Ever since Lever House was completed in 1952, the glass building has reigned supreme in the city. It has taken more than 50 years to...

On the Limits of Self-Improvement, Part I; There's an entire micro-economy based on the pursuit of betterment.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Christopher Hitchens Begin professional report and opinion here: Insofar as we are able to be objective, here follows a brief physical review of the subject, Christopher Eric Hitchens, at the time of this writing enjoying his...

The Simple Life: White House Edition; From the slapstick genius of his China trip to his spitball contests with the press, Bush has the makings of a major reality-TV star.
October 1, 2007... Byline: James Wolcott If I were programmer in chief of this great, ignoble nation of ours, I would decree the creation of a cable channel devoted entirely to the daily activities of the president of the United States: a continuous feed of...

Is This the End of News? Even a guy burned by one failed Internet start-up can't resist the idea that this latest technology-like Linotype, TV, and cable before it-could remake the news.(online newspapers)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Michael Wolff In every newsperson, not just Rupert Murdoch, there's the dream of owning a newspaper-my paper. This retro dream is why, for the past six months, every Wednesday morning, I've been on a conference call about the...

Phil Spector's Cheap Shots.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Dominick Dunne Phil Spector has stopped speaking to me when we pass in the corridors of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, in downtown Los Angeles, where he is standing trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson. No...

Spice Girl.(Rachael Ray)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Laura Jacobs Rachael Ray has been compared to Gidget, Oprah, and Rosie, but she insists she's "a burger flipper and a Chatty Cathy." She is constantly described as "the girl next door," though she says she's more "your cousin." If...

Lazy-Ass Nation; America's Can-Do-But-Why-Bother spirit has produced a wave of gadgets that take the effort out of almost everything: vacuuming rugs, parking cars, walking dogs.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Jim Windolf The greater part of human history has gone something like this: see animal, chase animal, kill animal, skin animal, cook animal, eat animal. But all that chasing and killing and cooking means a lot of brutish work, and...

Alice Eve.(Interview)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Krista Smith AGE: 25. PROVENANCE: London (though she "kind of grew up in L.A. too"). TRIUMPHANTLY CROSSING THE ATLANTIC... to reprise her role as, er, Alice in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's epic, intricate play Rock...

What if ... ALL COLLEGE FRESHMEN HAD TO TAKE A CORE COURSE IN "Starlet Behavior"?(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Alford DARTMOUTH Adviser tells student he must finish his Selma Blair credits before taking seminar in Carla Gugino. HARVARD Nobel laureate gives lecture, "Whither Meadow Soprano?" PRINCETON Department chair gives lecture on...

Know Your Asshole Footprint; A Special V.F. Social-Service Feature Regrettably, some Americans are simply not aware of how large an asshole footprint they leave on the planet.(personality assessment)(Website list)
October 1, 2007... For ages 14-25 1.Do you refer to attractive members of the opposite sex as "smokin' hot"? 2.Do you leave vitriolic comments in the "Comments" sections of blogs and Web sites, even if you're commenting on something innocuous, such as...

A Rude, Crude, American Princess.(Sarah Silverman)(Interview)
October 1, 2007... Byline: George Wayne Sarah Silverman, 36, used to be best known for small, sophomoric movie roles, an edgy, dyspeptic stand-up act, and a jaw-droppingly raunchy cameo in the documentary The Aristocrats, but after the success of the equally...

The Lady is Yar.(Nicole Kidman)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Krista Smith "It felt big. It felt lonely and big." Nicole Kidman is sitting at the dining-room table of her home in Darling Point, Sydney, describing her feelings upon winning the 2003 best-actress Oscar, for The Hours. "You're in...

Inside Bush's Bunker; For any second-term president-as the pressure grows to cement his legacy, and with many of his best aides gone-the physical bunker of an electronically sealed, sniper-patrolled White House, which restricts his access to old friends and new ideas, can lead to psychological isolation.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Todd Purdum Sometime early on the morning of January 20, 2009, if recent history is a reliable guide, George W. Bush will sit down at the carved oak desk in the Oval Office and compose a note wishing his successor Godspeed. The...

Billions Over Baghdad; Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency-much of it belonging to the Iraqi people-was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele Hidden in plain sight, 10 miles west of Manhattan, amid a suburban community of middle-class homes and small businesses, stands a fortress-like building shielded by big trees and lush plantings...

Life With Zsa Zsa.(Zsa Zsa Gabor)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Leslie Bennetts Her shrewd, unnaturally wide eyes ringed by a thick fringe of false eyelashes, Zsa Zsa Gabor has been carefully arranged on a chair in her living room. Prince Frederick von Anhalt, the aging German stud who is Zsa...

The Man in the Irony Mask; Like Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, Stephen Colbert so completely inhabits his creation-the arch-conservative blowhard host of The Colbert Report, his Daily Show spin-off hit-that he rarely breaks character.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Seth Mnookin I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time, that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am? I [told an interviewer that] I'd been...

Talk of the Town; Topping each other's deals-$31.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Michael Shnayerson Later, the date of the dinner would come to seem apt in ways no one could see at the time. On June 18, 2007, the trustees of the New York Public Library welcomed 400 titans of business and New York society...

Star of China.(Ziyi Zhang)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Byline: Evgenia Peretz A handful of Chinese actresses-Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Bai Ling-have come this close to capturing the attention of hard-to-please American audiences. Ziyi Zhang, who stars in two new movies-The Horsemen, a thriller...

Going After Gore; Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Evgenia Peretz As he was running for president, Al Gore said he'd invented the Internet; announced that he had personally discovered Love Canal, the most infamous toxic-waste site in the country; and bragged that he and Tipper had...

Wild About Amy; Looks like the year of the redhead: her name is Amy Adams, and she's in a hard-to-ignore lineup, starting with November's fantasy Enchanted, opposite Patrick Dempsey.
October 1, 2007... Byline: Krista Smith Amy Adams has moved up the Hollywood food chain at lightning speed. Gone are the days of Cruel Intentions 2 and episodic television, thanks to her breakout opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can (2002). In...

Neil Simon; Lauded for creating hit after hit onstage and on-screen, Neil Simon has established himself as a true rarity in show business and remains beloved by critics and audiences alike.(Interview)
October 1, 2007... What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being aware that I am experiencing it. What is your greatest fear? "Listen, I have bad news." Which historical figure do you most identify with? Age-wise, Moses. Which living...