Southampton - Is it my imagination -- Alec Baldwin seems to be everywhere I turn. The Emmy winning "30 Rock" star keeps popping up like mushrooms after rain. I just tapped into his Huffington Post blog decrying the loss of our print media, especially the venerable Grey Lady, The New York Times and then minutes later caught an interview with the actor promoting his new film, "Lymelife" which comes out this week.

Alec Baldwin is promoting his new movie "Lymelife."

Critics are unanimous in their praise for his performance as a Long Island real estate developer with big dreams. His on screen wife is played to a fair thee well by the talented Jill Hennessey but it is next door neighbor Cynthia Nixon whom he beds. Set in suburban Long Island circa 1979, the film combines a coming of age story with the problems of a community becoming paranoid about Lyme disease. The loosely autobiographical "Lymelife," was written and produced by Syosset-raised brothers Derick and Steven Martini. Alec and Jill's kids are played by the two young Culkin brothers – Rory and Kiernan who watch their family being torn apart.

The Martini brothers are not the first pair of Long Island siblings to have caught the attention of a great star who also happens to be from the same neck of the woods. You might remember Orson and Ben Cummings who tracked actor Roy Scheider down at the Golden Pear in order to present him with a script written with him in mind.

Hamptonite Jonathan Tisch is also keeping mega-busy running the Loew's hotel empire, heading up NYC & Co and hosting a popular Plum TV weekly show. But he's finally taking a little time to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Michael Feinstein's at The Regency, the flagship of the Loew's holdings. The popular café was Jonathan's brainchild from the very beginning and has gone on to be one of the city's top niteries featuring the greatest exponents of the great American Songbook. On April 27 at Carnegie Hall, The New York Pops will honor Feinstein's at Loews Regency on its 10th anniversary and congratulate Michael Feinstein and Jonathan Tisch for leading this great New York music venue. The stars who make Feinstein's at Loews Regency the perfect intimate setting for American popular song will take the stage at Carnegie Hall to celebrate New York's quintessential supper club in grand style.

Jonathan Tisch.

With Pops conductor Steven Reineke leading the acclaimed orchestra, music's brightest stars will take to the stage including Ashford & Simpson, Sara Caswell, Bob Dorough, Cheyenne Jackson, Brian d'Arcy James, Idina Menzel and Anika Noni Rose. Another New York living treasure, Liz Smith, will the host anniversary salute. The all-star 26th Birthday Gala concert will also include a salute to New Amsterdam Rediscovered, a joint Dutch-American initiative celebrating the 400th anniversary of the exploration of New York Harbor and the Hudson River.

Also being toasted in the coming weeks is Hampton-friendly TV journalist and best selling author Barbara Walters, one of the media world's preeminent on-air interviewers and host/producer of the wildly successful "The View." Barbara will receive the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's second lifetime achievement honors at an awards dinner on Tuesday, May 12 at The Times Center in New York. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is scheduled to present the award.

A number of Barbara's Hamptons pals are co-chairing the event including Evelyn and Leonard Lauder, Donald Marron, Peter Peterson, Steven and Maureen Rattner and Mort Zuckerman. ABC's Elizabeth Vargas will do the honors as emcee for the fete.

Barbara Walters will receive Lifetime Achievment Award from CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

The "Grey Gardens" publicity juggernaut is officially in full swing with the masses.
The latest boundary-pushing print ad comes from Hamptonite Jann Wenner's Us Weekly. Subscribers to the celeb weekly will be greeted by a mock cover on the April 20 issue that's actually part of a five-page ad buy that the magazine created to promote HBO's film "Grey Gardens." The cover is meant to resemble a 1940s-era issue of Us Weekly and features "Grey Gardens" stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

The magazine will also include inside and back cover ads and a mix of pages designed to resemble Us Weekly as well as traditional ads promoting the film's April 18 premiere. The real cover, featuring the very contemporary Lindsay Lohan, follows the mock cover.

A leading literary light of the Hamptons the late Kurt Vonnegut, author of such darkly humorous classic novels as "Cat's Cradle" and "Slaughterhouse Five," will soon have a new book out. Hard to believe but a small treasure trove of his works will soon see the light of day. In late Fall, Delacorte Press will bring out 14 never-before-published short stories in a collection called "Look at the Birdie," which will be accompanied by the author's illustrations
The stories are undated but are believed to be from early in the writer's career, said a Random House spokeswoman. Vonnegut who like contemporary Truman Capote regularly held court at Bobby Van's - the popular Bridgehampton steak house - died following a fall in 2007 at the age of 84. He had survived prisoner of war camp in Germany and the firebombing of Dresden, which became the basis for a number of his novels.

Delacorte, his longtime publisher, will also reissue 15 backlist titles starting with "The Sirens of Titan," "Mother Night," "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Galapagos." They will also be packaged with artwork by the author.

Gwyneth Paltrow promotes Top Shop.

Still another East End author is being toasted round town, Bridgehampton's Jay McInerney who just saw his collection of stories "How It Ended" hit the stands with a full barrage of critical praise in all corners from Publishers Weekly to The New York Times. The writer whose first novel, "Bright Lights, Big City," defined a generation and whose seventh and most recent, "The Good Life," was an acclaimed national best seller seems to have hit gold once again.

Jay's wife Anne Hearst tossed a little do at Cru Restaurant so that their pals wouldn't have to stand in line at Barnes & Noble to get their autographed copies. Raising a glass to Jay were such Hamptonites as Rudy and Judith Giuliani, Nicole Miller, Candace Bushnell, Amanda Hearst, Andre Balazs, and Brooke Geahan.

I recently tapped into Gwyneth Paltrow's blog "Goop" to get a fix on what the Oscar winning mom was up to. Just like me she was cleaning out her closets! Not much help to me but I did get the scoop on Top Shop which just opened its first U.S. outpost in SoHo last week.

Kate Moss may be the face of the trendy low priced designer duds company and has even launched her own line with Top Shop but girlfriend Gwynnie is seriously promoting the store's lines on her blog spot, mixing and matching designer threads with the cheap, cheap, cheap Top Shop coats, jackets and little dresses available at a fraction of the designer styles. GP even models some of them on her pages and they look fierce! Top Shop should be paying her!
And the savvy fashionista is turning her own hand to designing this time, she has created a bikini as part of the Lilly Pulitzer Colorful Cause: Celebrity Designer Program, supporting The EB Medical Research Foundation.

As part of Lily Pulitzer's 50th anniversary, the company has pulled in nine actresses to celebrate style and purpose. Celebrities such as Brooke Shields, Debra Messing, Marcia Cross, Angie Harmon, Bridget Moynahan, Catherine Bell, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Garcelle Beauvais-Nilson have joined the program to create limited edition prints for designs for "mommy-and-me" looks for both daughters and sons.

Raj Roy has organized a Mike Nichols retrospective.

EB or Epidermolysis Bullosa is a genetic condition that causes skin and linings to break and blister at the slightest touch. Sufferers battle daily with fluid loss and infection of the open wounds. In worst cases, they die of skin cancer before the age of 40, many in infancy.
The designs will be available very shortly from Lily Pulitzer stores including the Southampton shop and online.

Our favorite cinephile, Raj Roy who helped bring the Hamptons International Film Festival to worldwide recognition with his programming choices is now - as I have mentioned before - weaving his magic in the lofty halls of The Museum of Modern Art as Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Films.

MoMA just announced that Raj has organized, "Mike Nichols," a two week retrospective of 17 films that covers the extraordinary range of the brilliant director's four decade long career which opens this week and runs through May 1. The collection of Nichols' most significant film works from the career defining "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in 1966, the following year's "The Graduate" to the recent "Charlie Wilson's War."

In a statement released by the Museum, Raj said, "While remaining one of the most productive forces in the creative industries - film and theater - Mike Nichols' body of work is clearly one of the most referenced and revered in contemporary cinema. His ability to form lasting and consistently fruitful partnerships with writers and actors places him among the standard bearers for the great collaborative traditions of Hollywood. Emerging filmmakers have much to learn from the intellect and timeless humanity of Nichols' work."

A highlight of the retrospective will be an intimate conversation with Nichols and a select group of his closest writing and acting collaborators including original partner Elaine May, East Hampton's Nora Ephron and Buck Henry.

Speaking of MoMA, now that its new restaurant The Modern is an unqualified hit with not only museum goers but serious foodies, Amagansett's Danny Meyer can finally take up hotelier Ian Schrager's offer to create a new restaurant for Schrager's trendy Gramercy Park Hotel in a space at the historic hostelry that hosted a Chinese restaurant. Danny, the genius behind Union Square Hospitality group and such superstar eateries as Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern and Tabla will unveil an Italian eatery in the street level space.

Good news for the hotel stay-overs, he'll be providing room service which is something I had dreamed he would do in my New York apartment building years back. And it's good news for Schrager who like Danny only runs top notch operations with a great emphasis on hospitality and waited patiently to move forward until Danny was available. Ian, it will be worth the wait!