I am back. Back from a week of resting my bones with friends in glorious leafy pastoral calm countrified Massa chusetts. Ever driven through Con necticut, which is what you have to go through to get to glorious leafy pastoral calm countrified Massachusetts? It’s the longest narrowest endless-est state where people who can’t live in New York live. You need lunch, snacks, dinner. I think there’s maybe a mile and a half of land on each side of the highway, but it probably goes right through the heart of Wasilla.
Anyway, we all know how historic and famous Massachusetts is. For the moment, I personally just can’t remember why — but all of you know. I mean, I know it’s not the Red Sox. Anyway, at its other end you eventually emerge into glorious leafy pastoral calm countrified Massachusetts — from which I have now emerged.
So I am back. Unclear whether or not you deserve me . . . still not sure . . . but, anyway, I am back.
AND madly in love with Tyler Perry. His new film’s “Why Did I get Mar ried Too?” With all kinds of people like Janet Jackson, Malik Yoba, Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson. And if you’re a little delayed getting tickets, no problem. By the time you get them he’s out with 10 more projects. The guy’s like crabgrass. He’s all over.
Tyler Perry’s done a novel that stayed on the best-seller list 12 weeks. His TV series is “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” this newest film — “Why Did I Get Married?” opened at No. 1. He’s now schlepping around the country until December in sold-out venues doing a live 2½-hour show about his famous Madea character. Like in Birmingham. A 20,000-seat arena. He’s now Hollywood’s fourth richest human. Ten minutes ago who heard of him?
Who are you? Where’d you come from?, I asked.
“I now have homes all over,” he said. “LA, Atlanta where I grew up, New York. But I live alone. In all my adult life I’ve had five serious relationships with women. And I’m not sure monogamy is for me.”
This stuff pours out of you. With such a workload plus that occasional night of non-monogamy, when do you write? “Always. I’m never without the computer. In the air. In my lap. Backstage. At the studio. Ideas come in spurts. Can be the middle of the night. No planned time for me to sit down and try to dredge up an idea. I’m working too much. I have everything I draw on. Lessons I’ve learned. It’s my people’s human experience. I started out as an architect.
“Look, I’ve had it tough. My mother went through hell. We’re talking the lowest form of abuse. When she took me to church as a little boy, I saw it was the only time she was happy. What helped us through those hellish days — the lowest of the low on God’s Earth — was faith in God. So what do I do with my money? I take cabs around New York — no limos — and I build churches for my mother’s people.”
And other than a little non-monogamous fun?
“I try to make people happy. I’m taking 12 friends on vacation. All expenses complete.
“God’s been good to me. I intend to be good to Him.”
MARIO and Matilda — ask not Mario and Matilda who? — caught a preview of “The Addams Fam ily.” Our one-time Gov did not pull up in any limo. He was seen hustling along 46th and Eighth to the theater . . . At Pio Pio, the cast party for the newest incarnation of “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” photographer Aubrey Reuben asked cast member Melissa Joan Hart where’s she been these last thousand years since “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” She said she’s spent the last five making babies. It’s in the genes. Her mom had seven children. Melissa’s now working on No. 3 . . . Bernie Kerik and wife Hala inviting friends to a final party at their house. He enters prison next month.
WE recently had the photography show at the armory. Fellow photog rapher Bettina Cirone says one item sold was an old nude silhouette of 39-year-old Claudia Schiffer. Called “Anima 2,” Danziger Projects unloaded it for $20,000. Another Miss Claudia is still up for grabs.
I don’t understand this stuff, but artist Christopher Bucklow silhouetted her in blue, no camera. The portrait is comprised of more than 14,245 tiny golden circles — which symbolically create every day in her life. And if you understand what all this means — go bargain for it.
Also still left over and gettable — maybe reasonable — Bob Colacello‘s signed Warhol photo. Andy’s eating a sandwich on an elegant couch in nothing more than his pajama top. To enjoy the pleasure of enjoying his whatever, it’s $3,600 — give or take a few bucks.
SO this lady is in a Chinese restaurant. She can’t get the wrapping paper off her fortune cookie. She’s bitten it, stabbed it with a fork, searched for some brilliantly hidden magical marker that some childproof lock specialist must’ve instituted and, finally, in disgust — gives it to a male friend. He opens it and hands it back. Her lone comment? “This is probably the only thing a woman still needs a husband for.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.