Okay, people, first of all, if you think our video about holiday tourists was mean-spirited (which it wasn’t … it was warmly derisive), how do you feel about Broadway advertising lady Nancy Coyne, who came right out and told the Times, “We hate tourists from Cleveland,” and now has to apologize to all these tourists from Cleveland? Huh, that dope is mean-spirited. Now on to the famous people: Willie Nelson ran into the cast from the new Notorious B.I.G. movie in midtown, which is deliciously ironic because both Biggie and his mom loved Willie and the movie used Willie’s albums as research. Genre editor Neal Boulton and his also-bi wife Claire made out with the same guy at Genre’s holiday party at an East Village gay bar. Can we be in that marriage too? Plácido Domingo might take over the Met if Peter Gelb leaves. David Bowie’s stepdaughter, Stacia Lipka, is getting $80k in a settlement where she said that NYPD detectives took pictures of her naked, and also molested her, while she was on suicide watch after she reported being raped. We didn’t even know Bowie had a stepdaughter, so that is a bit too much to process all at once.
Cindy says that a fancy Michelle Obama handbag is coming out, that a big book on how Obama won is coming out, then goes all Truman Capote on celebs and asks them for “A Christmas Memory,” which is the best Christmas short story ever, by the way, if you want to click and read it now. Cin also had to go have a big meal in the middle of a screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because she was so hungry. Cin, for God’s sake, put some gorp in a Ziplock. Liz Smith says that Harvey Weinstein says that Elie Weisel says that The Reader is commendable, so it’s okay to see it even though Kate Winslet plays a lovable murderous bombshell.
Bernie Madoff’s business sidekick, Bob Jaffe, who’d get a big commission from setting up Madoff deals, nearly got punched in Miami Beach last night by Nine West founder Jerome Fisher, who lost $150 mil in the Madoff bust-up. Harvey Weinstein’s snooty social networking site, ASmallWorld (why is it capped weird like that?), now has its own magazine with Ivanka Trump in it. Woo-hoo. Will Ferrell has a show coming to New York around Inauguration where he plays Dubya for a night. Time put the Lagerfeld evil-sea-queen dress that Anna Wintour wore to the Costume Institute ball on its worst-dressed list of 2008. (Duh, Time, it was a superheroes-type theme party; nice try at being sassy.) It can be really, really hard for teen stars like Hilary Duff who say they’re virgins then kind of take it back, so try to be nicer to them.
Madonna and Guy Ritchie are saying that her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, is a liar for telling the AP that Ritchie would give Madge up to $92 million in their divorce settlement. Madge, don’t be turning on Liz — she’s your real longest marriage. Arlen Specter has had to apologize to the Polish community for making Polish jokes and now is due for some nasty cracks about Jewish Republicans.Richard Belzer knows that Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Enrique Iglesias wears the same two hats in concert over and over again. Rufus Wainwright says if you want to marry a dog, go ahead. Sarah Palin’s dad says that granddaughter Bristol and her hot redneck inseminator, Levi, are due to have a boy December 20, and also that Sarah has 200 media requests, 87 boxes of unopened mail, and a partridge in a pear tree all stacked up in the kitchen blocking her view of the former Soviet bloc.
