PX This.

• Tuesday, May 4, 2010 4:30PM – Julian Schnabel, in sarong skirt and sandals, having late lunch at Mekong.

• Thursday, May 6, 2010 4:30PM – Ron Burkle with Danny "A" Abeckaser, having late lunch at Bar Pitti.

• Friday, April 30, 2010 9:30PM – NBC Extra’s A.J. Calloway arguing his way into La Esquina.

• Wednesday, May 5, 2010 6:30PM – F&B superstar prodigal son, Pietro Pagano, having early dinner at Da Silvano.

• Friday, October 23, 8:57PM – "@ Blue Ribbon Sushi right now Chelsea Clinton sitting next table over!"

• Saturday, October 24, 10:00PM – Eric Goode and Emil Varda at The Bon Bon (née The Boom Boom) "just checking out the digs" and saying hello to Andre Balazs. When asked to confirm Artan Gjoni’s (earlier) assertion that Juliet Supper Club is housed "in the former Area" space, Eric Goode replied, "What? Where? Twenty first street? No way."

• Monday, October 19, 2:30PM – Sante D’Orazio lunching outdoors at Bar Pitti. Also, Merv Matheson (not together).

• Tuesday, October 20, 2:00PM – Mark Baker and Artan Gjoni lunching outdoors at Gusto Ristorante e Bar Americano.

• Adrien Brody lunching at La Esquina (with a male hipster friend)— looking pale, scrawny, and headshaved enough to possibly be filming The Pianist II. Rode off into the sunset (down Lafayette St.) on his bicycle afterward.

• Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds dining at Mr. Chow Tribeca with his son, wearing an olive military-style fatigue jacket, matching cap and dark sunglasses. Ate pretty quickly and left. Little Babyface Jr fist bumped Michael "Mr" Chow on the way out. Mr Chow tried to make it fancy and fly, but little homeslice wasn’t havin’ it – he likes it plain and classic.

• Real Housewives’ Kelly Killoren Bensimmon chatting with a shorter woman outside Cafe Select in the mid-afternoon. Wearing sparkly black leggings, and a short, black, suede fringed jacket and ballet flats. Supposedly "filming" for an upcoming episode.

• Über-photographer Sante D’Orazio lunching at Bar Pitti with an übertall, leggy, beautiful model-type. What else is new.

So! This is What Happened to Mason Reese

believe it or not, every once in a while some anonymous commentator on the interwebs actually says something nice about me. "Old Man" was one of those people.
after a few messages lobbed back and forth here and there between us in cyberspace, i discovered "Old Man" actually has a real name, it’s: mason-reese.

anyways, to make an interminable story long, i accidentally doublebooked my lunch(es) yesterday— one at 1PM and the other at 3:30PM. i scheduled the 1:00 at CentroVinoteca with my friend, tracey. the 3:30 was at BarPitti, to meet mason-reese in real live flesh and blood person for the very first time.
since tracey and i were having so much fun at our 1:00, i didn’t want it to end so abruptly so i asked her to join me for a stroll to BarPitti. and so she assented.

we get to BarPitti a few minutes early, so we decide to have a seat on the benches out front. suddenly tracey blurts out "hey, that guy looks just like mason reese!" i look over to where she’s pointing and i respond: "no, that’s richie-akiva."
she answers: "well, he looks like mason reese."
i say: "wait, what did you say? the guy i’m meeting is named mason reese!"
and the dude to whom richie-akiva is speaking immediately turns his head. lo and behold, it is indeed the person i recognize from my facebook friendships, mason-reese.
tracey asks: "you’re here to meet mason reese?! why didn’t you say so?!"

ha ha ha ha hahahahahahaa. the whole scenario was pretty bizarro. at the time. i guess you had to be there.

so dig this
it turns out mason-reese is this hugely famous actor from like the 70’s! i only know this cuz the way tracey was babbling away about her favorite childhood teevee shows and commercials and whatnot, you could have sworn it was like fucking lee-majors or some shit sitting across the table from her.

oh and it was so much fun, mason-reese had great stories!
like there was the one about how brett-ratner made a short film about mason-reese for his NYU graduation project called "Whatever Happened to Mason Reese?"
evidently this movie won some awards or whatever and even scored funding from steven-spielberg for brett-ratner’s film short. wow what a small planetoid.
then tracey had a notsogreat story about brett-ratner being a big creepie and sticking his hand down her shirt back when she used to work at Nell’s. oh but hahahaaa tracey got to bitchslap brett-ratner in the face, so there is that.

and there were other random fun tidbits too, like how mark-baker used to wear pink spandex leggings to busboy at ummm CafeParadiso (was it? i forget now) or someplace.
and how mason-reese used to own the famous NowBar (where apparently richie-akiva was once a promoter).

i felt really badly cuz i couldn’t remember any of the commercials tracey was talking about even though i totally should have, being such a teevee junkie myself back when i was just a wee tot.
so today i googled all the mason-reese commercials, and holy crap. i soooo recall that RaisinBran one, i musta seen that thing like a bazillion times.

anyhoo
mason-reese owns Paladar restaurant on ludlow street and Destination Bar and Grille (where all the bloggers go and get drunk in the middle of the day) on Ave A.

and so
to answer that decades old burning question—

that’s what happened to mason-reese, bitches.

• Urban Daddy does all you losers a favor by letting you know how you can finally get into theJane. Then the comments section of Down by the Hipster reminds you all again why it is exactly you are such a fucking bunch of losers. -Vanilla Ice

• Speaking of reminders, Joshua David Stein grabs another opportunity to exhibit how he is such a knowledgable and insidery genius, and that Abbe Diaz is just a "batshit crazy, angry, petty" person— by graciously informing you pretty much the exact same shit Abbe Diaz already told you. -Vanilla Ice

• Jennifer Aniston reports on Conan O’Brien that she wants to possibly maybe open a Mexican restaurant— because "usually a great night is had in a Mexican restaurant, no?" And also: "New York City needs a great [Mexican restaurant]."
OH SNAP! Ya hear that, La Esquina? All that hospitality you’ve been showing Jennifer (we’ve spotted her there with our very own eyes on two separate occasions, both times with John Mayer. And we hear she’s "there all the time") is only going to end up with her biting yer stilo and stealing your patrons, à la Graydon Carter and Ron Perelman.
So much for gratitude! -Vanilla Ice

• SPOTTED: Last week at BarPitti, all dining on the same evening— Tony Shafrazi (business), Carmen Kass (pleasure), and Mena Suvari (business/pleasure ?). Look out for the paparazzi pics of Mena Suvari somewhere (she was properly attired and bespackled for them) since the photogs were plentiful and relentless. (Carmen Kass they completely missed, however.)

• SPOTTED: Nightlife impresario Richie Akiva celebrating his birthday over Saturday (September 19th) brunch at Cercle Rouge— with three super-tall babes and one beefy bruiser in tow. And his little dog too.
Nobody sang for him (aww, booo!). And kudos to him for being the only at the table not too hungover and/or stoned to have to hide behind big bugeyed beblackened spectacles.
As they were departing after their meal, one model reprimanded Richie Akiva like his mom, "The waiter just said ‘Happy Birthday’ to you!" And Akiva retorted, "I said, ‘thank you’!"
Yes, he certainly did, and quite sweetly, too. So there.