Donald "Trump Daddy" and the art of hip-hopping

Lenin's posthumous makeover; Dennis Hopper plays golf; Muhammad Ali's gift to Jesse Ventura.

Published April 9, 1999 11:27AM (EDT)

Yo, yo, yo, homey. Donald Trump is gettin' jiggy wid it. Or at least that's the rap at Vibe magazine. In the hip-hop bible's May issue, writer
Nancy Jo Sales dubs the lily-white, singularly unhip Manhattan
real-estate mogul "Trump Daddy" and "the first African-American
billionaire." The Donald was "hip hop before he himself knew," writes Sales of the man who claims not to listen to hip-hop music. He's rich, he's flashy, and when people dissed him, "his response was indeed, Fuck off," says Sales. Sounds a lot like Ivana's and Marla Maples' responses, too.

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A spit and polish for Vladimir

Look, kids! No more waxy buildup! V.I. Lenin, that long-pickled
Soviet leader, is back on display and looking fancy and fine in his
Plexiglas box in Moscow's Red Square mausoleum this week after undergoing a very special sort of spring cleaning.

The body of the diminutive Bolshevik revolutionary, embalmed and gaped over like a fine Fabergi egg for the 75 years since his stroke-induced death, was removed from public perusal in February so that a team of scientists could perform painstaking preservation work. According to the Interfax news agency, the good doctors applied ointment to Lenin's face to prevent the skin from decomposing, took a few tissue samples for study,
soaked the body in solution and -- our favorite! -- changed his coat
and tie. 'Cause who would want to be caught dead in a too-wide tie? And you know how embarrassing that embalming-solution ring around the collar can be 

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In other news from beyond the grave ...

Unsightly stains and out-of-date clothing aren't the problem for David
Blaine
, the Manhattan magician and Moomba-frequenting paisan' of
Leonardo DiCaprio who had himself buried alive under Donald
"Trump Daddy" Trump's Riverside South development earlier this week.
(And no, relieving himself isn't the problem, either; he flushed his system
of solid waste by eating no food for days before his publicity-stunt
entombment, and is making do with a handy gadget called
a "Trucker's Helper.")

What is the problem? The huge crowds that have gathered to get a glimpse of the purple-silk-pajama-clad hipster, buried in a transparent coffin beneath a three-ton, see-through water tank, before his exhumation on Monday. (Celebrity visitors have included Drew Barrymore, Ed
Norton
and ear-pulling comedian Carol Burnett.) "They've
turned David Blaine into a latter-day Lenin," griped the New York Post,
noting the increasingly long lines of grave-gapers policed by the
magician's handlers. Of course, observes the paper, such anticipation to
see the "prostrate 'corpse' elevates Blaine from mere human to deity."
Instant deification? That's better than anything David
Copperfield
's ever pulled off.

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Fore! Hopper's ridin' easy no more

"Dennis Hopper playing golf is one of the first signs of the
apocalypse. It's true -- he's become a Republican."

-- Kris Kristofferson in the forthcoming issue of Esquire

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Their kiss is on Guinness' list ...

Talk about a monster mash. An Israeli couple has earned a spot in "The Guinness
Book of World Records" for locking lips longer than anyone else
in recorded history. Dror Orpaz and Karmit Tsubera kissed for
30 hours and 45 minutes in a make-out marathon held in Tel Aviv's main
square this week, out-smacking 300 other couples contending for $2,500 and a trip
around the world. The supersmoochers exceeded the existing record, set last
year in New York by Americans Roberta and Mark Griswold, by 49 passionate
minutes before being rushed to a nearby hospital to be treated for fatigue. How do you say, "Don't you people have anything better to do?" in Hebrew?

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If the gloves don't fit 

It's hard to imagine Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura floating like a butterfly or
stinging like a bee (now bumbling like a bee, we can imagine), but he does
possess something that might help him out
in the ring: an autographed pair of boxing gloves from Muhammad Ali.

The former boxer known as "The Greatest" gave the former wrestler known as "The Body" the aforementioned mitts after hearing Ventura tell television audiences that he "shocked the world," a phrase Ali used the night he beat Sonny Liston.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota governor told the Associated Press that Ali was his "idol," adding that Ali was "someone I looked up to from a very young age." Ventura says he plans to take Ali's gift with him even after he leaves office. (We can hardly wait.) "If you get it from a stranger, you usually donate it," he explains. "If it was from a friend who was a friend prior to the election, you keep it."

We just hope he doesn't try to use them on his arch foe (and Salon columnist) Garrison Keillor in the meantime ...


By Amy Reiter

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