SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE LAUNCH PARTY
I’ve always been a big fan of British band The Stranglers (in fact, I met frontman Hugh Cornwell and drummer Jet Black when I worked security for a show they did at Webster Hall years ago in support of their then current LP release “The Raven”), and so, when I had opportunity to attend the January 10th launch party for a magazine entitled “Skin Deep”, it was their hit tune of the same name from the “Aural Sculpture” album that buzzed through my head most of the evening.
I can’t remember what music was on the sound system that night (probably the usual sort of Eurotrash techno disco so prevalent in New York nightlife venues – sonic wallpaper instantly forgettable even while it’s playing) but, as the publication in question focuses on all things relating to cosmetic enhancement, it was unfortunate that thematically apropos Stranglers songs such as “How To Find True Love And Happiness In The Present Day”, “Something Better Change”, “Sweet Smell Of Success”, “Bring On The Nubiles”, “Who Wants The World?”, “Peaches”, “Choosey Susie”, “Ugly”, “Too Precious”, “Big In America”, “Ice Queen” and “La Folie” in addition to “Skin Deep”, weren’t on the playlist. (I couldn’t get the chamber quartet playing at Comptroller William Thompson’s post-inaugural reception at 60 Centre Street on January 1st to play any Stranglers tunes either, despite their mastery of Britpop displayed with a rendition of “Norwegian Wood”.) Still, with an endless supply of champagne proffered at the elegant Upper East Side restaurant Bruno Jamais, it was easy to overlook the lack of atmospheric synchronicity.
On hand to help magazine founder Dr. Jeannette Martello and her crack team equally numbering editorial staff specialists from the beauty industry and an impressive roster of American Board of Plastic Surgery Board Certified M.D.s were serial ice hockey bride/former supermodel – and current “Skin Deep” cover girl – Carol Alt, singer/Hamptons fixture Samantha Cole and Kwame Jackson from “The Apprentice.” Catching up with newscaster pixie Lynne White, I asked if now that she’s rebounded from her banishment by WPIX Channel 11 in a cost-cutting move to a new gig on Court TV’s “Hollywood Heat” if she’ll continue to grace the stage at the Inner Circle Show – the City Hall Press Corps’ annual benefit review where she caused hearts to flutter several years ago in the same revealing green dress (sans culottes, according to some accounts) Jennifer Lopez had made infamous. She thinks so.
Also of note were the sumptuous hors d’oeuvres being passed around, a bounty which might’ve required liposuction but for the competitive jostling to snatch them from the platters (if indeed any remained beyond the kitchen perimeter, characteristically patrolled by a ravenous fat woman who fraudulently passes herself off as a journalist in order to engorge herself at countless Manhattan events – earning the nickname “The Hungry Red Planet” in the process), which was bound to burn a few calories off.