MY wonderful, marvelous, terrific friend Ruby Dee. Up for Best Supporting in Universal’s “American Gangster.” Said Ruby:

“I’ve never been nominated for an Oscar before. I’ve never even been to the Oscars before. I’ve been around forever. I have seven grandchildren. Youngest is 17. When I began, black people weren’t considered mainstream enough for an Oscar. So, in the habit of diminishing expectation, of not being included, for a long time I didn’t even feel connected to Academy Awards.

“But somewhere inside my bones I felt, if I didn’t die too soon, something spectacular somehow might happen to me.”

About famous actor-activist Ossie Davis, whom she married in 1948 and who left us in 2005, she said: “I dreamed about him last night. Because I don’t feel I’m making this on my own, I talked to him about the nomination. See, so much is suddenly happening to me. I have eight projects going on, one right after another this year. Some yet to be released. This never happened before. It’s like in my old age I got hotter.

“I believe life is forever. You don’t die. It just goes on. The vibrations continue. And I know Ossie’s up there doing his job for me. Doing something anyhow. Probably picketing.

“But I can’t believe being nominated for a film in which I hadn’t much to do. Blink, you miss me. But I did know that movie’s period. I was part of its history. In one street scene I saw my own house, the apartment building I lived in while I was growing up. I knew Nicky Barnes. I grew up in that exciting, dangerous Harlem neighborhood where there were always street fights, gunfights, big black cars up and down Seventh Avenue. We couldn’t play outside because so much was going on there.

“This movie was a slice out of my own memory. Us poor folks couldn’t borrow from banks, so the rackets played a part in all our lives. My father was into the horses and ran numbers. Gangsters owned Harlem when I was born. Only if you see this movie or you actually lived there can you understand what life was like in Harlem in those days.”

As for these days, what’ll she wear Sunday?

“Oh, honey, who knows? I’m counting on one of the designers lending me something. I’ve done nothing because it doesn’t seem real to me. That whole Hollywood scene is not part of my life. I live in our big old Westchester house, where I try to be discreet about Ossie’s and my other awards. I dust them. Keep ’em behind washed and polished glass. Question is, who do I will them to? I’ve got three kids. Do I share them? What do people do with their awards?”

AMERICA’s A-1 dele gates, the untouch ables, those super duper poopers who supposedly decide this election, know Obama will never go quietly into the night and Hillary will never play second to him. Come a divided party, they’re muttering Nancy Pelosi, who wants to be a major player, will push for a Clinton-Obama ticket. Meanwhile, playing hopscotch on the outer circle of these party elders – or, rather, infants – is Al-beg-me Gore being everyone’s friend and loving the attention. Wallflower Blo- omy, dressed up but never gone to the dance, has to be satisfied that for many months he at least wasn’t referred to strictly as “the lame-duck mayor.”

Democracy. A wonderful system. It permits you to vote for your favorite government servant – then sit on the jury that tries him.

NEW York magazine this week mentions Cyrus Vance Jr. running for Morgenthau‘s DA job. I did that Dec. 17. . . . In their salad days, Edie Falco and Michael Chiklis co-waited tables. She says: “He was terrible, always talking, and his tables were dirty.”

GUYS are around hauling demolition, filling dump trucks, wearing black T-shirts that read “Christine Smith.” So who’s Christine Smith? A stunning, skinny, befurred, 6-foot blonde with silver buckles on her jeans and waist-length hair. And why’s anyone hauling fixtures wearing her shirts? She’s this season’s contractor du jour. Looking like a model, this lady is demolishing johns, pulling out sinks, building walls and redoing kitchens all over the Upper East Side.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.