What is it about the preholiday season that winds everyone tighter than the postsurgery forehead of a Real Housewife? We’re trying to stay out of the drama as all of New York lets fly a seeming year’s worth of unaired grievances this week. Case in point: Ms. New York Diana Taylor’s ticked-off response to the locked-out union art handlers of Sotheby’s had more than a couple of people up in arms last week, the auction-house board member having replied curtly to a bunch of protesters interrupting a meeting that she would resign if Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht acquiesced to any of their demands. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal (what happens in board meetings stays in board meetings) except that Ms. Taylor had the misfortune of giving her brusque brush-off to the Teamsters while someone happened to be filming.
Not that you need to be Mayor Bloomberg’s paramour to get attention these days. You can also be part of his so-called “personal army” (those men in blue with “NYPD” etched into their badges). Occupiers on Seventh and Broadway went into a rage after being arrested on National AIDS Day and forced to watch their captors “sadistically” eat the free pizza that Housing Works Bookstore had sent to OWS in solidarity. Hey, whatever happened to the “feed anyone who’s hungry” plan? At least your civil servants know how to multitask: they can hand Occupiers a summons with one hand and eat a slice with the other.
And if the NYPD wanted extra spice on their pies, they wouldn’t have to use their own—they could just go to Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, where two days ago a student injured 20 people (including the principal) with a can of pepper spray. This is the third New York City school in the past three weeks to report an incident involving the latest weapon du jour. Wonder if Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna feels hip for starting a trend that’s caught on like wildfire (and feels like it, too). Soon administrators are going to have to start carrying milk cartons around in case anyone gets trigger-happy.
But it’s not all bad news. We recently had the opportunity to sit in on TV’s tipsiest talk show, Watch What Happens Live, with Bravo’s signature “power suit,” Andy Cohen. My, does that man have the world’s nicest teeth—even when he’s polling viewers about which housewife of Atlanta has “the biggest donkey booty.” We look forward to WWHL’s becoming a five-night-a-week phenomenon come January, if only because it’s the only talk show in town that gives its audience an open bar tab. (One call-in viewer may have taken the popular theme of “Single Woman Getting Wasted Alone to Bravo” a little too seriously; she proudly announced that she had been dutifully chugging whenever Mr. Cohen said the night’s “secret word” and later revealed she was tossing back shots of Nyquil, not rum and Coke.)
Another fun piece of gossip divulged at Mr. Cohen’s after-hours party den: King of Comedy actress Sandra Bernhard revealed that she had been up for a role in Sex and the City. The brassy, whiskey-voiced comedian wasn’t reading for Samantha, but uptight Miranda. But: “The pilot script was a disaster and they were offering the worst money in the world.” Cue five minutes of bickering over whether or not any of the other women besides Sarah Jessica Parker made money off the show (premovies, of course).
Sadly, the world has bigger problems to discuss than the size of Kim Catrall’s … paycheck. Like the fact that the Muppets are environmentalist, anticapitalist socialists from President Obama’s secret camp of puppet propaganda. It’s true! We heard it on Fox Business News’s Follow the Money, where Eric Bolling and a roundtable of ostensibly sane people devoted seven minutes to explaining how Jim Henson’s studios were destroying America’s youth with their liberal brainwashing.
“What are we, in socialist China?!” shrieked one guest host outraged at the concept of “sharing” being promoted on programs like Sesame Street. Oh, not yet, Fox Business News. Give it another year. In the meantime, we’re gonna try to unwind with a nice, spicy slice and maybe a shot of Nyquil.
