Every day a little death

We can’t resist the opportunity to link showtunes, magazines and mega-moguls, especially when so ably done by our colleagues at the much-lamented Radar magazine. A mock-up presented last night at the Radar holiday party, featuring the head of Maer Roshan superimposed on the body of Tom Cruise from the cover of Radar‘s second (or fourth, depending on how you’re counting) issue, featured this little gem of a headline: “Petite Mort: The messy truth about a billionaire who pulls out early.” Which is the very least Mort Zuckerman deserves after quotes like this:

Mr. Zuckerman, who publishes The Daily News and U.S. News & World Report and is sharing his advertising and circulation staffs with Radar, said he would give the magazine “whatever it needs” to be successful. He said he had no idea how long that might take.

“There is no formula for these things,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “The good news for them about my business history is that the average real estate project takes seven years” to turn a profit.

We’re not sure what Radar meant to imply about girly-man Mort with the gender disagreement (the phrase uses the masculine “le petit mort” or “little death” but it doesn’t mean death literally, but rather the “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” kind of death, you know, the kind that takes you straight to heaven. You know what we’re sayin’. Please don’t make us explain more, we’re blushing.) The point is, Mort Zuckerman may have pulled out early, but here’s hoping that Radar staffers had an experience that was fulfilling, satisfying, and blissful. Might as well take whatever petits morts we can get, hmmm? Indeed.

In other news, is that what Stephen Sondheim was talking about in A Little Night Music? Because if so, his view of marriage is maybe not quite so bleak.*

Mag cover mock-up after the jump, and courtesy of Gawker. Trip down memory lane courtesy of the New York Times, circa April 11, 2005.

*Honestly, if you really care feel free to go here but it’s 3pm on the Thursday before Christmas, for God’s sake. You’re not reading and I’m totally phoning it in. So just hum a little Sondheim and let’s be done with it.

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