Classy

Derek Blasberg's social calendar reads like WWD's Eye column or a Bravo reality series and an episode of "Gossip Girl" rolled into one. Before you ask, "Derek who?," we'll tell you: Blasberg is a New York-based fashion scribe for Style.com and V Magazine who made himself a boldface name after escorting A-list celebrities such as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Emma Watson and Chloe Sevigny on the global society whirl. Blasberg decided to parlay time spent on the arms of social butterflies into an etiquette book, "Classy: Exceptional Advice for the Extremely Modern Lady," positioning himself as a latter-day Emily Post who advises what one should or should not tweet or upload to Facebook.

Could this be the year for hand-held television? It's been tried before, but so far TV, unlike just about all other digital entertainment devices, has not successfully been shrunk to a pocket-size format. But there are a couple of new candidates. Now available is Flo TV, a personal television with a 3 1/2 -inch screen. And later this year a host of portable devices using a new standard for mobile digital TV will arrive. Attempts at hand-held TV go back to at least the late 1970s when English entrepreneur Clive Sinclair -- whose other inventions included a lightweight folding bicycle -- introduced the Microvision MTV1.

Station 39 is cramped and outdated. It's a tight squeeze getting the trucks in, and there's not enough room for the larger rescue ambulances that have become standard over the decades. There isn't any on-site parking, forcing firefighters to walk three blocks from another city lot. But the firefighters at the oldest operating station in Los Angeles could soon be moving to new digs, sparking concern about what will happen to the Depression-era building in Van Nuys and raising questions over whether a new location is even needed.

Interior designer Ryan Brown has made a career buying ugly-duckling properties, turning them into beauties and selling them for profit. It's a process that he and his business partner, Jeff Lewis, reveal on the Bravo reality series "Flipping Out," which starts its third season Monday. Two years ago, however, the 35-year-old Brown, known as the voice of reason on the show, realized that with the real estate market shaky and his own personal life in transition, it was time to focus less on remodeling for profit and more on getting his own house in order.

When you hear the words "wedding in Vegas," what do you think of? I am guessing it is of the waking-up-married tradition, made all the more notorious by Britney Spears' 55 hours of wedded not-quite-bliss with a friend in 2004. But the weddings that Vegas tourism promoters want you to think about look very different. And in truth there are far more elegant, high-end chapels tucked into exclusive resorts than there are drive-through weddings presided over by an Elvis impersonator.

Sailing from Liverpool, England, the Saga Rose, a 43-year-old liner that is aging with considerable grace, called at the Irish port of Cobh before heading northwest to Greenland and Iceland, its main destinations for this July trip. Perhaps Cobh was an add-on, but it lent a delicious fillip to the voyage that my wife, Laurel, and I were making. About 2 1/2 million Irish immigrants have passed through Cobh, many to the United States. Countless ships have called there.

Foreclosures are up, stocks are down and the workplace is awash in pink slips. Amid this economic gloom and doom, at a time when frugality is fashionable and opulence suspect, three Southern California luxury hotels have opened -- the Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Coast, Montage Beverly Hills and the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills. In the giddy days of rampant prosperity -- remember those?