This will be the first Christmas in decades I won’t be getting a semi-homemade fun card from Phyllis Diller. I know her forever. We’ve been inside one another’s homes and hearts. To remember Phyllis best is to resurrect her masochisticisms:
“My cooking’s so bad, my kids call it morning sickness . . . My alphabet soup spelled ‘Ugh’ . . . My rum cake gave friends a hangover . . . I got my first laugh when my mother entered me in a baby contest . . . She couldn’t call sitters who knew me. They wouldn’t come . . . As a kid, I’d play post office. I was the dead letter office.”
About her husband: “If Fang had brain surgery, it would be a minor operation . . . Loaded one night, he walked into my closet and said, ‘Third floor, please.’ . . . When Fang tried to divorce me, cops arrested him for leaving the scene of an accident . . . He took me to a cheap hotel, but it had a continuous floor show — mice . . . Fang’s a drag. He took his suit to the cleaners to be steamed and depressed . . . I can only get him up mornings if I wear a black dress, veil then sit on the edge of his bed and cry . . . Fang always felt marriage and a career don’t mix. That’s why he never worked . . .
“My husband says he’s learning karate to defend my honor. I told him to mind his own business . . . Dumb? When he won his letter in high school, the coach had to read it to him . . . Fang said if they used my figure for an hourglass the day would be very short . . . Fang won’t do a picnic. He says we have all the bugs, dirt, tainted food right at home.
“And his family? We wanted to play horseshoes, but his mother refused to go barefoot . . . My sister-in-law’s so skinny she has a striped dress with only one stripe.
“I’ll never forget my first modest little fur stole. Modest? People thought I was wearing anchovies . . . I can’t work with my hair out of place. Anyone got a screwdriver? . . . Who’d give me a driver’s license? I got two tickets on my written test . . . I entered a beauty pageant. And lost. And it was fixed! . . . I just learned why my neighbor’s laundry looks so much whiter than mine. She washes it . . . I buy coats in a carpet shop. I wear a 9-by-12.
“The doctor examined my body. I asked, ‘Is there any hope?’ He said, ‘Yes. Reincarnation.’ . . . Witchcraft? I’m its result . . . Everyone says I’m a beautiful person inside. Leave it to me to be born inside out . . . I have that rare beauty that drives men sane . . . Last night a Peeping Tom begged me to pull my window shade down . . . When I wear a bikini, even the tide won’t come in . . .
“My favorite food is seconds . . . When I was three months pregnant my neighbor asked, ‘Having another baby?’ I said, ‘No. I’m just carrying it for a friend.’ . . . I found a great new weed killer. Problem is, it stains the carpet.”
And on and on and on. Right now she’s probably telling St. Peter: “A funny thing happened to me on the way to the cloud . . .”
CONVENTIONS: A presence at every presidential scramble is Arianna Huffington. This year she’s conducting a job creation lunch panel plus 7 a.m. to midnight arranged spa treatments, yoga classes, private massages, facials for VIPs.
Giuliani will do three days — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. “Five different events. To raise money for congressional committees and certain candidates.”
He would have said more, but he’d just left the dentist. Gum surgery.
Despite repeat phone calls to those in charge, participating biggies — including delegates — do not yet know their schedules or slots. Still no info as to where, what they’re to do when.
THE InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel’s gone ecological. They compost, recycle, reduce paper. LED bulbs. Support animal shelters, domestic violence campaigns and a Kenyan orphanage. The roof garden grows fruit, veggies, herbs plus colonies of honey bees. Their Natural Power Breakfast is local, natural, organic. Your muffin probably wears a homegrown honey dollop. You want cream cheese, it’s probably extra.
RICHARD Dreyfuss says he’d like to play Adolf Hitler . . . A periodical’s writing personal notes to subscribers whose subscriptions are ending . . . In the White House hangs George Kalinsky’s photo painting of Obama’s basketball hero Michael Jordan . . . That dumb politico who made that dumb remark about rape? Word is he’s six months behind on his psychiatrist’s bill. And on a recent visit, he heard his tapes playing in the elevator.
STRATEGISTS strategize VP Biden indirectly boosted his and Whatsisname’s re-election. The Veep’s daughter Ashley married Dr. Howard Krein. Rabbi Joseph Forman assisted. They call the bridegroom’s Jewishness a vote-getting plus . . .
Joaquin Phoenix: “Nobody butchers my name like Mark Wahlberg. He called me ‘Yo-hooker’ Phoenix. Then ‘Hakeem’ then ‘Rakeem’ like I’m some kind of rapper.”
WEEKS ago I attended Allen and Deborah Grubman’s East Hampton dinner. Unaware of the dress code, I came outfitted like for a catered bar mitzvah. Martha Stewart’s short simple denim shift was perfect. I wanted to tear it off her. Yesterday — boxed, silky ribbon, lots of tissue — Miss Martha sent the identical dress.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.