Rudy Giuliani, be warned. Being a former New York City mayor is not all it's cracked up to be.
Just ask Ed Koch. The city's famous former head cheese, who now cowrites a column for New York magazine with fellow ex-pol Alfonse D'Amato, told the assembled ink-stained wretches at Primedia's "Town Meeting" Wednesday that his first days out of office were a little shaky.
"I enjoyed 12 years in Gracie Mansion, being waited on hand and foot, but then I had to go back to my apartment," Koch said.
To ease his transition, staffers stocked his fridge. "But after a week," he recalled, "I discovered that I had to replenish my supply."
So, he said, "I walked up Fifth Avenue, across Ninth Street to Balducci's," a gourmet New York fooderie.
Along the way, people kept stopping him to congratulate him on his leadership.
But when he got to Balducci's, he said, "a man, kind of disheveled, about 30," came up to him and barked, "You were a TERRIBLE mayor."
"And I said ... ," and here the ex-mayor took a deep breath, milking the moment for all it was worth, then leaned into the microphone so the media company's Christmas Party-deprived throngs could get the full effect ...
"'FUCK YOOOOOU!'"
A man after Rudy G's own heart.
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Michael, Liz ... and Tito, too!
"They're our friends; so who else should we ask to be in our wedding?"
-- Liza Minnelli on the widespread snickering over her choice to include Michael and Tito Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, Marisa Berenson and Whitney Houston in her wedding party, on the World Entertainment News Network.
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Float like a butterfly, kiss like a whale
Remember all that Ali-like boasting Will Smith was doing the other week about his new, improved lovemaking prowess?
Credit his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who stars opposite him in the film "Ali."
"It was great to do this love scene with my wife because she could tell me honestly what I was doing wrong," the actor tells the Chicago Sun-Times.
"For instance, we were kissing on the bed, and Jada whispered, 'Baby, don't make your mouth that big because they're shooting a close-up, and your gums are going to look 12 feet wide on screen, and you'll look like a whale,'" Smith says.
And there were other benefits to shooting love scenes with his real-life leading lady, too.
"It was also pretty great to be in bed with my wife for 18 hours without the kids around," he says. "Of course, you had a whole film crew staring at you, but sometimes that's easier than the kids!"
Sometimes?
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She's satisfied! (You listening, Tom?)
"I don't think that I will ever choose to be that busy again because, at the end of doing those [films], I was exhausted and satiated."
-- Nicole Kidman upon being named celebrity of the year by E! Entertainment Television for her work in "Moulin Rouge" and "The Others."
Paul to George: I wanna hold your hand
OK. Here's a really, really sweet one.
Paul McCartney recently described his last visit with George Harrison before he died.
"The best thing for me was seeing him for a couple of hours and laughing and joking and holding his hand," McCartney said in an interview on Britain's Radio 1. "Afterwards I realized I'd never, ever held his hand. We'd been to school together and got on buses together and we didn't hold each other's hands.
"It was like a compensation; he was rubbing his thumb up and down my hand, and it was very nice."
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Juicy bits
In what really seems like a replay of Madonna and Guy Ritchie's nuptials, Ashley Judd and race-car driver Dario Franchitti have gotten hitched, reportedly at Skibo Castle in Dornoch, Scotland. The guest list was said to include Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sandra Bullock and, yes, Gwyneth Paltrow. Like Ritchie, Franchitti, a Scotsman, wore a kilt. What he wore under it I cannot say.
It's finally all over for Kate Winslet and her former hubby, Jim Threapleton. Just three months after they announced their separation, they have been granted a divorce in London's High Court. According to the BBC, Winslet cited Threapleton's "unreasonable behavior" as the reason for the split and has said that she has had no contact with him since September. Which I suppose explains Threapleton's recent comment that he and Winslet get on much better since they split.
Talk about lip service. Elton John is teaming up with Mary J. Blige and Garbage singer Shirley Manson as the new spokespeople for M.A.C Cosmetics' Viva Glam IV lipstick. The proceeds from the sales of the $14 lipstick will go to the M.A.C AIDS Fund and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Kiss, kiss.
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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.
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