The king of gossip

A towering dandy dressed in red-and-white polka dots came over to tell him how much he liked his column. Another man,his face veiled in metal mesh,wanted to slip Musto a CD he recorded. Later the columnist was air-kissed by someone with a birdcage on his head.

Musto,who is 54,defies the definition of a modern-day celebrity gossip. He doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. In 2008,he started a blog,but he is primarily a word-on-paper guy; his second book of columns,Fork on the Left,Knife in the Back,will be released next month.

All this makes him a bit of a throwback. Harvey Levin and his team at TMZ,for instance,became famous by ambushing Britney Spears before turning up legitimate scoops and running a nightly television show. Perez Hilton,who has 1.7 million followers on Twitter,makes fun of celebrities by scrawling epithets on embarrassing photographs that he posts on his Web site.

Musto,by contrast,revels in his role as social diarist. He goes out almost every night in search of items,sometimes attending three or four events before crawling into bed at 2.30 a.m.,though he no longer drinks or parties like he did when he was younger. In an era when virtual blather tends to trump real reporting,that,too,makes him something of an anachronism.

“Michael harkens back to famous gossips like Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell,” said Vince Aletti,a former Village Voice editor who edited Musto’s column,‘La Dolce Musto’,for 10 years. “He understands New York and where it comes from. He’s from a different generation. He’s not this flighty freak. He’s a dogged reporter.”

Musto was raised in Brooklyn,the only son of Italian-American parents,and graduated from Columbia in 1976 with a degree in English literature.

When he arrived at The Village Voice in 1984,New York’s downtown alternative press was shedding some of its Civil Rights-era activism to focus more on celebrity,fashion and nightlife. Clubs like the Tunnel were flourishing. The downtown art scene was vibrant,dominated by luminaries like Julian Schnabel,Cindy Sherman,Laurie Anderson and Keith Haring.

Musto lustily chronicled New York’s thriving celebrity culture,while poking fun at himself for living outside of it. In a 1987 column about Andy Warhol’s funeral he wrote: “Everyone was dressed sedately. I was dressed like a 14th Street hooker.”

As one of the few openly gay writers in New York at the time,he often wrote about gay culture—and even more about how he experienced it.

But his attacks on celebrities have caused the greatest stir. “Burning bridges was my shtick,” he said. In 2008,he parodied the New York magazine photo spread of Lindsay Lohan posing as Marilyn Monroe: Dressed in only a pair of underpants,his hairy chest bare,Musto was a grotesque Marilyn,his makeup smeared and blond wig disheveled.

Twice a month he gathers a coterie of friends to watch movies that they say are so bad that they are good. Recently,the group gathered at Musto’s apartment in Murray Hill to watch the Golden Globe Awards. When Mariah Carey appeared on screen in a black gown that exposed her ample cleavage,Musto shouted,“Show of hands! Are those fake?”

Everyone raised a hand.