Thanksgiving.
Spike Lee: “My wife does lots of veggies. She’s vegetarian. I’m not. So this Thanksgiving I have lots to be thankful for. Because her mother’s cooking.”
Elizabeth Olsen: “I’ll be home in LA. with my mom. She gets nervous, so I’ll help with the cooking. I’m good with yams, mashed potatoes and salad. We do it the night before and nuke it the next day.”
Steve Schirripa: “I’m so big I hardly fit in this chair. You think I’m not eating Thanksgiving? Look at me. What do you think I’m doing? I don’t go out a lot. I actually go to nothing. But starving I am not doing.”
Barbara Walters: “Thanksgiving I’m going to my lawyer Allen Grubman and his wife, Debbie.” Why? “They have a nice chef.”
Katie Couric: “My sister in Boston. She’s catering from Greenbergs. How many Greenbergs do you think are in Boston?”
Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein co-feast together. “Just a small intimate family dinner. Liza’s cooking,” says Michael. “She’s a fantastic cook.”
Cooking for Michael? Please. I’ve dined with him. He’s allergic to everything. No sugar. No whey. No wheat. No gluten. No celiac. His main dish is baked shirt cuff. “We-ell . . . maybe we’ll order in.”
Bill Maher: “LA, my home, an orphan city, is not for Thanksgiving. Few come from there or want to travel to visit the folks. Christmas I see my family in Jersey. Thanksgiving I do the only intelligent thing. Send out for Chinese.”
Then: “My act pokes everyone. Blindfold me, and I don’t know where I am. But any town that’s not NY, find the cabbie, bellhop, bartender. Learn. Be like the CIA.” Suffused with Loving thy Neighbor, he adds: “After hearing what’s in the ground, I just stick it to whoever those guys bitch about.”
Samuel L. Jackson: “Usually it’s my mom’s sister for family dinner. But nothing big this year because I’m in Germany shooting ‘Secret Service.’ Doing so damn many movies I actually don’t even know where I am this week.”
Steve Carell: “I’m cleaning and vacuuming. So many relatives staying over, I hope there’s enough little chocolate candies to put on all the air mattresses.”
Matthew McConaughey: “All my relatives are coming from Texas. We stick all the kids in one room. We make it work. I’m cooking.”
California reporter Jeanne Wolf: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is at the home of friends she’s known since third grade. Cuba Gooding’s son’s in college in the East, so the family’s all meeting in New York. Dermot Mulroney getting a 6 a.m. flight to LA from Chicago, where he’s filming the TV show “Crisis in Chicago.”
Upper East Side rotisserie Georgette’s, opened a week ago: “We’re doing roast everything. Roast chicken, roast turkey, roast duck, roast lamb, roast fish.” Want lemon sherbet? They’ll roast it.
This has zero to do with a turkey, but I thought you’d be interested. A Democratic bunch solicited signatures for Joe Biden’s Nov. 20 birthday card. Last week it said: “So far 113,318 people signed.” Like I said, this has zero to do with a turkey.
B’way producer/theater owner James Nederlander, wanting to buy Carleton Varney’s new coffee-table book “Decorating in the Grand Manor” for holiday gifts, said: “$95 a book’s expensive.” Answered Carleton: “Cheaper than your theater seats.”
Wendy Williams: “For my two Kevins — husband and son — I’ll make an oven stuffer. Turkey’s too big. And I’ll do ribs.”
Jennifer Garner: “For Ben and our children, I’m making a special turkey with cranberry glaze. Martha Stewart taught it to me.”
“Mandela’s” Idris Elba: “I’m in England. London does great Thanksgiving parties.”
Kirstie Alley: “In Kansas, where I’m from, I’m cooking traditional for 15. Also homemade chicken and noodles.”
Note: Friday, night after Thanksgiving, go see Cheyenne Jackson. It’s four singers at Carnegie singing classics. Then Dec. 1 and 2, if enough with turkey dinners, cold turkey legs, hot turkey sandwiches, frozen turkey, reheated turkey, minced turkey, turkey pot pie, turkey soup, turkey hash, turkey patties, turkey burgers, give thanks. Also ship the leftovers to my house. And go see Cheyenne alone doing a one-man show at Birdland.
Try not to miss me. I’m eating and sleeping — mostly eating — at Valerie Salembier and Paul Block’s Hamptons home. See you Monday.