I went to Saint-Tropez this weekend to soak up the first rays of summer, and I had the good fortune of eating at an outrageously over-the-top French restaurant in the hills. It is owned by a giant Corsican man, Bruno, who is world-famous for his truffles. Talk about pimp.
The intense meal involved truffle caviar, truffle-infused [...]

At the ripe old age of 98, the famous French artist Louise Bourgeois died this week. She didn’t become a contemporary art celebrity until she reached her 70s, so it’s lucky she was vigorous enough to enjoy a few decades of her glory years.
Bourgeois is best known as a sculptor who created giant spiders, many-breasted [...]

I attended “Speech Day” at Stowe School this weekend in Buckingham, England. A friend of mine was receiving a prize for mathematics. In typical British form, there was a vintage car show on the campus’ front lawn, with Aston Martins, Morgans, beautiful old Jaguars, big-ass Bentleys, etc. etc. Numerous cricket matches had been advertised on [...]

I attended the annual “American University Club Cocktail Party” at the pimped-out Parisian mansion of the US Ambassador’s house. Eager for a romantic prospect to pop up in the form of a dashing young diplomat with a British accent, Italian sartorial sense, Parisian address, and American education, I ended up surrounded by a lot of priggish lawyers [...]

Blenheim – an 18th century palace nestled among resplendent gardens, shimmering lakes, and stately trees- is England’s Versailles. With 2500 acres of verdant fields and elegant rose gardens, it’s no wonder the English gentry flock here for picnics by the river and a little afternoon delight in the property’s arboretum. Tourists come to see where Winston Churchill spent his childhood [...]

Ever since I watched them playing devious little toddlers on Fullhouse, I knew I had started a life-long obsession. But now that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are 23 years old, just like me, and they are selling their glamorous West Village penthouse for $8.45 million, as though it’s an old sock they want to get rid [...]

I had the mixed fortune of being the hand-model-slash-display-girl at a very serious jewelry auction in the French Alps last weekend. The crowd was just as you would expect (except that there were fewer Russians since it was so late in the ski seasons). My personal favorite was the semi-elderly ex-wife of a very rich [...]

James Franco, the young Hollywood dreamboat who famously impersonated James Dean and makes funny online videos, has recently been accepted to the PhD English program at Yale. He dabbled in creative writing at Columbia, and I had the chance to act in a crappy NYU student film that he was shooting as part of his [...]

Jay McInerney is a New England boy who turned to the cocaine culture of 1980s Manhattan as inspiration for his breakout novel, Bright Lights, Big City. He went from fact-checking at The New Yorker to being part of the “literary brat pack” (along with Bret Easton Ellis), turning his book into a hit Hollywood film, [...]

It’s a classic set-up: a teenage girl is trapped in a bourgeois family in suburban England. She resents her father, watches French films, romanticizes about drinking wine along the banks of the Seine, and studies so hard that maybe she won’t become trapped in a dreary chintz-covered interior like her mother. Enter: a middle-aged man [...]