Arianna Huffington fetes Tina Brown, Brian Grazer, Kathy Freston
THE GREEKS invented democracy. Arianna Huffington, Los Angeles’ most popular Greek expat and sublime aesthete, has turned the city’s Democratic politics into a party. And we’re not talking about the sort with no-host bars.
The queen of the popular Huffington Post website is known for the salons at her Brentwood estate. She put on a little luncheon recently for former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and, over the weekend, co-hosted a book party with producer Brian Grazer to celebrate Kathy Freston’s “Quantum Wellness.”
Huffington’s soirees are the kinds of gatherings the media savvy reporters at FishbowlLA blog live. (“Freston and Huffington are more graceful and charming than should be allowed in mortals,” the Fishbowl girls noted this week.)
Whenever Huffington releases a book (every year, it seems), the parties are nonstop. These days, the author and liberal political powerhouse is busily making the rounds to discuss her latest effort, “Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You Need to Know to End the Madness.)”
Next month, the provocateur-in-chief will be feted at the ultimate society palace: Lynda and Stewart Resnick’s Beverly Hills mansion.
Rolling in green
Keith Richards falls out of trees. Chuck Leavell, the Rolling Stones’ keyboardist, plants them.
He may be the only musician of his generation who thinks the good life includes conifers. When he’s not touring with the Stones or writing his own music, he’s busily tending to his 2,500-acre forest near Macon, Ga.
Last week, the rocker found himself in the surprising position of being called on not for an encore (although he did perform one) but to offer his wisdom on how to reforest the planet at Fortune magazine’s first “Brainstorm Green” conference, held in Pasadena.
The keyboardist, who is currently promoting his new solo CD, “Green Leaves & Blue Notes,” was awed by the Fortune gathering. “We’ve got Greenpeace and car makers in the same room,” Leavell said.
And the Fortune crowd seemed pretty impressed with Leavell, who played a few tunes on the bar piano. After the conference broke up around midnight, it was clear that there’s no music like the sound of the wind in the trees.
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