I don’t know about you, but New Year’s Eve usually makes me really depressed. That is, unless you’re madly in love with the man/woman of your dreams and that person is the one kissing you at midnight.

In 2011 I hope to:

1. Get a prestigious job.

2. Get my novel published, or at least get a literary agent.

3. Get hired as a bartender, since neither 1 nor 2 will happen.

4. Avoid all creepers, wankers, and other degenerate characters — unless they have something to offer me that is relevant to any of the above three.

5. Get everyone to start reading and cooking from my sister’s brilliant new food blog.

6. Stalk the following celebrities (all pimps in their own ways): Hugh Hefner (he only has a short time left! the clock is ticking!), Kristen Stewart (she is so hot right now), Jack Nicholson (not sure why that hasn’t happened yet), Blake Lively (just cause…).

7. Finally discover a legitimately good reason for having a blog.

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog about WASP culture]

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Hugh Hefner did as all classic pimps do: he got engaged to be married to a 24-year-old Playboy playmate at the ripe old age of 84. I don’t know about you but sixty years of difference seems like some sort of a record.

The ‘lucky’ lady, Crystal Harris, is a British-American model and singer (according to her Wikipedia page), and she comes from a long line of entertainers. To be exact, her parents worked at an England-themed amusement park in Arizona. It was during Crystal’s formative years studying psychology at San Diego State that she first delved into the exciting world of modeling and the Playboy empire.

In typical Hef fashion, he met Crystal at one of his infamous Halloween parties, and the rest is history. It was a Christmas Eve engagement for the happy couple. Let’s hope that Hef holds out through New Year’s Eve so that Crystal can have her magical geriatric make-out session.

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog about WASP culture]

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Somewhere is Sofia Coppola’s newest film, which deals with all her favorite themes: Hollywood, celebrity, loneliness, meaninglessness, love, romance (or lack there of), travel, and hotel living. Stephen Dorff plays a very attractive famous actor who is a total pimp but doesn’t enjoy it — he drinks Coronas in his empty hotel room at the infamous Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles; he drives his black Ferrari around in circles on a track; he answers inane questions at press conferences; he has sex with hot girls he meets in the hallway; he hires twin pole dancers to entertain him in his room.

But nothing really happens in his life until his eleven-year-old daughter, Cleo, played by the magnetic newcomer Elle Fanning, enters the scene. She whips him into shape, emotionally that is. And then she literally whips up some amazing home-cooked eggs Benedict for her dad. She’s like the balm of life for him. And little by little, the soulless movie star man transforms into a real person. In the last scene of this predominantly dialogue-free film, he drives his Ferrari down the highway into the Californian desert, and then he gets out of his car and walks, because sports cars symbolize going nowhere, and finally he has somewhere to go (that’s not a hotel). Or maybe ’somewhere’ is synonymous with ’someone.’

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog about WASP culture]

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There is a billionaire in Russia named Roman Abramovich whose girlfriend is into the arts, so naturally he has decided to drop $400 million to make his own museum on an island near St. Petersburg. Roman already has a significant contemporary art collection to install in his museum, and he hopes that others will have the chance to enjoy his vanity project.

The island/museum is really just an excuse for Roman’s hot girlfriend to become a curator of a big museum. I think it’s one of the sweetest things a rich pimp could do to spread romantic cheer one Francis Bacon at a time.

- Haley Hogan [Follow me on Twitter & read my other blog about WASP culture]

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The Vogue Japan editor, Anna Della Russo, is so addicted to capitalism that her closet is as big as an apartment — no, wait, her closet is an actual one-bedroom apartment. And all its contents change every season, so it’s not exactly renewable.

This Russo woman thinks of herself as such a pimp of the fashion world that she has 4,000 pairs of shoes and 250 tuxedo jackets. She seems incredibly creepy. In fact, her personal mantra and decorating sense bring to mind a book someone once gave me, Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World’s Most Colorful Despots. If you don’t believe me, then click here.

- Haley Hogan

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is beyond satisfying as far as big Hollywood movies go. Michael Douglas continues to be the original pimp who makes a cigar into a lot more than just a cigar. And Carey Mulligan is great as Gordon Gekko’s estranged daughter fighting for liberal politics through a little lefty news blog.

I highly recommend that you see the new Wall Street if you are interested in dirty, sexy, money, or if you are estranged from your greedy blood-sucking father, or if you are in love with a man who is starting to resemble your greedy blood-sucking father. Electra Complex anyone?

- Haley Hogan

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Martin Amis, the enfant terrible of British novelists, recently came to Manhattan to read from his new book, The Pregnant Widow. During the summer of 1970, the novel’s protagonist and several other privileged 20-somethings frolic in a castle outside of Rome, reveling in the newfound sexual liberties of their time. Amis could have chosen to read a lush passage from this part of the book, but instead he gave us the protagonist’s perspective as a jaded middle-aged man reflecting on his lost youth. Life inevitably deteriorates, as the novel’s cryptic title suggests.

But if Amis is struggling with the aging process, he masks it well – he’s one of those intelligent older men with a perpetually naughty countenance, who remain sexy well into their sixties. John Updike was another. His novel, Couples, like The Pregnant Widow, is a juicy story about the sexual revolution. But Updike’s prose is perfectly tuned whereas Amis’ occasionally falls flat. When you’re a magician with words, chances are you’re also a pimp. Perhaps this is why my friend fantasizes about the late Vladimir Nabokov “even in the grave.”

- Lizzie Crocker

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The 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, or “The Barefoot Bandit,” led a luxe life on the run, because apparently juvie and halfway houses didn’t suit his taste for the finer things. He burgled homes, stole cars and big boats, and even hijacked a bunch of planes, though he was never trained in the technicalities of flight. He’s not exactly what you would call a “Princess in Flight,” but more of a “Pimp in Training.”

But every holiday has its expiration date, and perhaps Colton took too big of a bite out of life, a bit like the Greek demigod, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell too his death: Colton flew 1,000 miles to the Bahamas, made a crash landing, burgled several island homes, and was finally arrested.

On the other hand, the Barefoot Bandit is becoming an icon for today’s youth. He’s an absolute hit on the Facebook, and all the cool kids are wearing shirts that say, “Run, Colton, Run!”

- Haley Hogan

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I have always been obsessed by glass houses, and even more so by the people who inhabit them. Robert Rubin is a total pimp and a collector of something even more exciting than fine art … fine architecture.

After Rubin got rich on Wall Street, he was able to pursue his real passion for collecting, and his most exorbitant investment thus far was the Maison de Verre, an iconic Modernist house made of glass hidden behind an 18th-century city block in Paris. I got a chance to take a private tour with a bunch of nerdy architects and PhD students whose eyes lit up at the site of the panels of illuminated 1920s glass and the lacquered revolving doors.

It must be strange for Robert Rubin and his New York family to live in the former doctor’s office and residence of a bourgeois Parisian gynecologist. But any modern architecture geek would do the same.

- Haley Hogan

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I recently received an expensive camera as a belated birthday gift, and it makes HD-quality videos, so basically, I can shoot my very own vodka advertisements, and other important things like that for Youtube.

But filmmaking is hard. Apparently even Woody Allen, the miniature king of cinema, does not yet have sufficient funding for his next film, Midnight in Paris. It’s supposed to start shooting this month in Paris with Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, and France’s first lady, Carla Bruni.

Not even the pimpest director in Hollywood and a cast of super-egos can brave the trenches of the financial crisis. Or maybe Woody’s just busy blowing his funds on expensive Parisian apartment rentals and foie gras for the under-21 club.

- Haley Hogan

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