Updated! So last weekend some rich kids went down in Cancun for something called the Summit Series (formerly known by the more assholeish moniker "the Young World Leaders Summit"). These entrepreneurs and executives networked or something, but clubbing and drinking aside they were obviously concerned about the dire state of the world. Specifically, they were concerned that clubbing and drinking in Cancun despite the dire state of the world might look bad! So they banned photographs during the "partying" bits of the event. A prankster told everyone he leaked a poolside photo to this very website and everyone got scared! But that turned out to be a joke. A happy ending! And so they all went cave-diving. The end. (Confidential to Caroline McCarthy and CNET editors: Gladwell's new self-help treatise is called Outliers. The Outsiders is an awesome S.E. Hinton book.) [CNET] Update: Hah, someone didn't like our use of that revealing boring photo!
We grabbed that picture of a Summit Series participant engaging in tug-o-war while the world burned from the personal blog of Summit Series organizer Elliot Bisnow. It is so explosive and revealing that we promptly received a takedown notice from the photographer, James "L." Duggan. Sorry, James!
New York's prep-school kids... they've gone wild. What else do you think will happen when a charity party is chaperoned by Sandra Bernhard? Dancing and making out, duly chronicled 
A 67-year-old fella in Bellingham, Washington named Thomas Baldwin spent $1,700 buying up 10,000 copies of the Bellingham Herald's November 5 "Obama Wins" edition. Baldwin has a friend "who sells copies of newspapers that are decades old at trade shows," and he reckoned that there might be a profit in those there papers a few decades down the road. Let's leave aside the spectacle of the garage full of rotting copies of the Bellingham Herald that will inevitably be the inheritance of Baldwin's children and just point out to Mr. Baldwin—hey, the entire newspaper industry is on the phone for you with a very attractive price on several thousand copies of the March 26, 2003 "Troops trudge ahead" 
Remember how magazines targeting the rich were going to be "
Yesterday we told you the media heiress and 
Heiress and
Last week the Observer, Tom Wolfe said the truly rich would be protected from the Wall Street meltdown because all the smart guys had long since decamped for hedge funds, leaving investment banks staffed by "
Horace Mann, the tony New York private school, was founded to get kids into Harvard. Silda Wall, ex-governor Eliot Spitzer's wife, is on the committee there. It's been much in the news lately—from student Facebook scandals 
The Observer has a new 
Go figure: There were two Lehman Brothers-related weddings announced in Sunday's Times. The "for poorer" section of the vows must have rung brutally even before the company 
Annie Leibovitz, the 58-year-old photographer who cried "Art!" when she took those 
Movie-like occurrence of the day: Pirates, for fuck's sake, have robbed a posh 178-foot party yacht moored off Corsica, making off with a freaking fortune. In the past the boat has hosted Jack Nicholson, Armani, and Puff Daddy, among others. Will the publicity surrounding this daring act of Robin Hood-style crime, minus the "give to the poor" part, lead to a rash of similar hijackings in the near future? You better believe it. Do you have any idea how lucrative yacht piracy is?:
New York used to be the the richest, biggest, and baddest state in the union. But new stats from the IRS will contribute to New Yorkers' inferiority complex—we've dropped from second to third for millionaires, behind those tofu-eating Californians and aged Jews down in Florida. (The stats are actually based on those making $1.5 million or more, and are from 2004.) But don't get too worried: we'll smugly mention that Florida has no state income tax, so it's sure to host plenty of tax-avoiding New Yorkers. [
We're not sure if the following Craigslist ad for a nanny is real or a spoof. On one hand, it's not quite over-the-top enough to be fake. 
East Hampton! It is the home and summer playground for many rich, like Martha Stewart and P. Diddy. But in fact, the town is going broke—like the rest of the country, they have almost nothing in their bank account and are about $12 mil in the hole. One solution: raise property taxes! But not too much—don't want to scare the rich. (While we're all piling on, we might as well mention that the 
The
When reporting on The Rich, it's critical to prove that they are, in fact, rich. This is most easily accomplished by showing their homes, because every reader can immediately tell that they couldn't even afford the solid gold horse stable, much less the platinum guest house or uranium master bedroom. But most of The Rich aren't gauche enough to allow a photographer to set foot on their property. What to do? Hire a helicopter, of course. You can spy on wealthy barons from the air all you want, and it's perfectly legal! Here's the proof, and the pudding:
The Hamptons are always of interest. Why? Because rich people and social strivers go there! 
As long as we're 
Boa-wearing internet entrepreneur Laurel Touby shocked and awed the media world when she sold her freelancer-helping website MediaBistro for $23 mil, despite her famous 
Don't feel too bad about the economy, members of the creative underclass: the superrich are still doing okay. While ordinary people like you fret over your outstanding subprime loans and plug the leaks in your rickety little rowboat with used chewing gum, the superrich are doing well enough to ensure that the Superyacht (an actual term!) industry is growing strongly. There are nearly 20% more requests this year for yachts longer than 130 feet. How many feet does one need? But god bless our economic superiors for providing the liquidity to fuel this crazy global economy. And don't be jealous; there's a benefit here for commoners, too:
Billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn launched his very own blog in January, with the totality of its content being the words "Blog coming soon." This caused the NY Post to put a clock on its website counting the minutes until Icahn actually posted something, just because they knew it would be annoying. But now Icahn says he's finally set to post his first entry, about corporate accountability, today. A rich guy talking directly to you—so exciting! Right now 
Recently, we met the Media Bloggers Association, supposedly a group that provides legal aid to bloggers and one that is currently negotiating with the Associated Press to establish guidlines for reposting tiny snippets of their copy. Our 
Talk-show host and self-made billionaire Oprah Winfrey was the 
So. Times columnist and former theater critic 
Avuncular Times columnist and former theater critic 
"Hello? Is this Paul? Oh, hey, it's John in the Times photo department. So, thanks for agreeing to be the human face of indifferent plutocracy amid economic ruin. Well, I wouldn't call it an honor, per se. Some people didn't want to be in the article. No, seriously, Cayne asked us not to mention the naked violinist orgy thing. I know, nuts. Anyway, could you park a few of those exotic cars you mentioned right out front, in the driveway? We want the photo to look like something out of a rap video, or a Sopranos promo. What's that you say? A yellow convertible? Perfect! Hey, are there any homeless people in your neighborhood we could maybe frame in the corner of the picture? No? Oh well. At least pick out a really pimpin' tie, OK?" [
It's been such a long wait for all of us! But at last, the World Trade Centre is nearly ready for its opening day. In just a few months, it will be a proud day for all of us in Bahrain. How will this 
