David Lat

Regis High School, Harvard College, Yale Law School

Lawyer turned writer/gossip blogger (seriously)

American Automobile Association (can't change a tire to save my life)

Theatre, film, fiction, running, travel, luxury hotels (including toiletries collecting), art and architecture, dining out, magazine oversubscription (12 and counting), real estate voyeurism, law, politics, entertainment industry, journalism, media, publishing, gossip (esp. celebrity, legal, and political gossip)

Great American novels (you know what I mean--e.g., ones by Fitzgerald, Wolfe), esp. suburban ones (e.g., ones by Updike, Richard Ford); Camille Paglia essays; depressing novels w/female protagonists (Roxana, Sister Carrie, Tess of the d'Urbervilles); Austen. More recent: Middlesex; Atonement; Random Family; Status Anxiety; White Teeth; Bergdorf Blondes.

All About Eve, Clueless, Erin Brockovich, Far From Heaven, Fatal Attraction, Monster, Monster's Ball, Moulin Rouge!, My Fair Lady, Nashville, Reality Bites, Singin' in the Rain, Spellbound, Traffic, most Woody Allen films. More recent: The Devil Wears Prada, Junebug, Mean Girls, Or (My Treasure), Magnifico, My Architect, Maria Full of Grace.

All-American Rejects, Blink 182, Counting Crows, Everclear, Good Charlotte, Hole, REM, A Simple Plan, Stroke 9, U2, Weezer, Wilco, other alternative/top 40-ish groups, musical theatre

Current: The OC, Entourage, Project Runway, Desperate Housewives, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Dearly departed: Ally McBeal (early seasons), Beverly Hills 90210, The Jeffersons, Melrose Place (later seasons), Sex and the City, The Comeback (yes, The Comeback)

I'm currently the editor of Above the Law, an online legal tabloid. I've also blogged about federal judges at Underneath Their Robes and about politics at Wonkette.

"I confess to a fondness for gossip, which, indeed, is a conservative genre. Gossips do not want to change the world; they want to enjoy it."
--Jeffrey Hart

"Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation -- not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.)"
--Susan Sontag

"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed."
--Samuel Johnson

"My book isn't gossip. Except in the sense that all literature is gossip."
--Truman Capote

"Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy."
--Charlie Bucket, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)

"You have a Monica problem."
--an unnamed official at the U.S. Department of Justice

Creative folks, e.g., actors, writers, directors, painters, architects, chefs.

Strong, brilliant, powerful women. E.g., Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Janice Rogers Brown, Camille Paglia, Shanetta Cutlar, Monica Goodling.

Talent agents; academics; Supreme Court clerks; hotel concierges (especially members of Les Clefs d'Or); people with funny or interesting stories to tell; luxury real estate brokers; journalists; foodies; Shohreh Aghdashloo; Wanda Sykes.