Our citywide political campaign generates jokes. Our overseas soldiers campaign generates honor. Together it’s the annual Stand Up for Heroes event.
Jim Gaffigan: “Our mayoral election was destroyed by penises and prostitution.” Then: “Comedy keeps you on your toes. Flopping’s a balancing act. I talk to the audience to relieve that tension. I’ve worked places in Brooklyn that never saw a guy with blond hair. They think I’m Cameron Diaz.”
Smartass reporter Roger Friedman overhearing my conversation. “Brooklyn? He go through Customs?”
Caroline Hirsch of Carolines Comedy Club: “We formerly were at the Beacon Theatre; 2,800 people. This year, Madison Square Garden Theatre; 5,500 people and sold out is $5 million for vets suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.”
CNN’s morning anchor Chris Cuomo, whose wife, Christina Greeven, looks great even in bright lights: “I’m friends with Bob Woodruff (ABC-TV correspondent whose war injuries spurred this event). I’m usually asleep by now. I’m up 3:30 every morning. Not by an alarm. More by the sound of desperation.” So’s he made any mistakes on camera? “I have a hard time pronouncing ‘Cuomo.’ I don’t say my own name on-air.”
Also wandering around, America Ferrera: “I have a boxed set somewhere of my old ‘Ugly Betty’ series frozen in my memory. I’ll look back on it someday.”
Also Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters: “In starting days, we’d get tanked and work birthday parties near London. Long ago. Before Lincoln. Actually I don’t ever remember working for Lincoln.”
Producer Andrew Fox: “We’ve started on next year’s benefit. I’ve already booked stars for 2014’s Stand Up for Heroes.”
Either Bill Cosby loves me and wanted me hugged or hates me and wanted me dismantled. Not sure. Hoisting me, he threw me around, spun me into a backbend, wrestled my bones, ruffled my hair then walked to the cameras. Discombobulated after Cosby’s Ferris wheel, I went home.
Under his direction?
How come Neil Patrick Harris, busier than Obama, directed Signature Theatre’s new production “Nothing To Hide”? He saw two magicians’ 20-minute act in LA’s Magic Isle Club then staged them then got them four months in the Geffen Playhouse. The guys wrote the show. With minor changes for the 42nd Street stage, it’s here and open-ended.
More. Our newly opened “The Jacksonian” was there four months. Began when writer Beth Henley first invited pals home to hear her script. Loving it, all four — Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Bill Pullman, Glenne Headly — cleared their schedules, then all moved here to stage it in New York. Neil Patrick Harris did not direct this.
Little more. Last season’s Bette Midler/Sue Mengers one woman B’way show schleps to the Geffen Dec. 3 to Dec. 22. Neil Patrick Harris did not direct this, either.
Waste not
Tonight’s the Jakarta premiere of “Trashed” about how waste threatens our planet. Communities recycle 70 percent. Indonesia, less than half. Jeremy Irons, who voices the documentary, arrived for the evening sponsored by the late President Sukarno’s daughter’s Kartika Soekarno Foundation.
Financial District. 5:30 p.m. Outside Delmonico’s. An odd-looking bird. Pheasant? No. Quail? Uh-uh. Deroy Murdock followed the creature. Never flying, its little feet swiftly scooted into traffic, barely avoided a car then selected Broad Street. A knowledgeable passerby, staring, said: “That’s a roadrunner. Must’ve escaped a cage. Oklahoma’s the closest roadrunner area to Manhattan.” Blocks away three cops, pulled off guarding lower B’way’s bull statue, went on roadrunner alert.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.