MrsQ
Just me
Member since 6/06 11378 total posts
Name:
Qiana
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Tuesday's Gossip
It says everything about a person when your exes - and your exes' exes - come to your funeral.
But there they were at the service for Claudia Cohen at the exquisite Central Synagogue on Lexington Ave. yesterday: former husband Ronald Perelman and onetime boyfriend and former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, plus Ellen Barkin, also once married to Perelman, the Revlon billionaire.
"She was a great wife - and an even better ex-wife," eulogized Calvin Klein, one of many New York notables whom the ABC entertainment reporter, who died Friday of cancer at 56, had been friends with for decades in a tough city. Klein recalled that when her friend and Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell "went away" to prison, she wrote him every day.
Also among those offering condolences to Cohen's 16-year-old daughter, Samantha Perelman, were Rudolph and Judith Giuliani, Matt Lauer, Donald Marron, Graydon and Anna Carter, Jon and Dorothea Bon Jovi, Donald Trump, Ian Schrager, Ken Auletta, Penny Marshall, Bryant Gumbel, Marc Simone, Bob Colacello, Bob Guccione Jr., Cece Kieselstein, Peggy Siegal, Jill Rappaport, Roger Friedman, Chris Taylor, Myron Rushetzky and, of course, Cohen's former TV colleagues Kathie Lee Gifford, Kelly Ripa and Regis Philbin.
Philbin reminisced how if someone crossed Cohen when she was a gossip columnist at Page Six and, later, at the Daily News, you would go "on vacation" for two weeks. Sounds like Regis had it easy. Others told us they'd been banned from her columns for as long as nine months.
Philbin also recalled the time Zsa Zsa Gabor was taking too long in the ABC makeup chair. Cohen had Gabor jettisoned from the seat, landing herself on the front page of The News.
Rabbi Peter Rubinstein said that the ever-smiling Cohen "saw life as a gift to be unwrapped every day."
Perhaps the most emotional words were from Perelman, who said Cohen gave him the confidence to be what he is today.
"I told Samantha she raised both of us," he shared. "Friday was the saddest day of my life, but it was also the most beautiful, because Samantha and I got to tell Claudia how much we loved her."
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Paris Hilton is set for a warm welcome when she gets out of jail next week, of the flaming-torch-and-pitchfork variety.
Neighbors are peeved at the heiress for turning their street into a media circus.
A spokeswoman for L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss told us yesterday that his office had received more than 50 complaints from residents during her brief respite from captivity.
"Most concerned noise from the five helicopters that handled the live coverage of her one day at home," said the rep. "Other issues involved overcrowding and space issues, because the street is very narrow, doesn't have sidewalks and has no parking."
The LAPD, Department of Transportation and Department of Street Services are bracing for her expected return next week. "There are no plans to force her out of her home," says the spokeswoman, "but action is being taken to minimize the annoyance of other occupants."
Yesterday, gossip blogger Perez Hilton published a flyer calling the community to arms, signed by neighbors Christopher Hauck and Anne Gaursaud.
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Don't believe the Nicole Richie engagement rumors. What was erroneously reported in some quarters as an engagement ring when she stepped out at the YSL Center Dance Arts party last week was a borrowed bauble from jeweler Neil Lane, worn on her middle finger.
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We thought Anna Kournikova might give us a thumbs up or down when we congratulated her on her rumored marriage (to Enrique Iglesias) at Thursday night's Smirnoff Source launch at Ultra. No such luck - the retired tennis beauty merely gave us an enigmatic "thank you" and moved on.
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Britney Spears is threatening legal action over Florida radio billboards that call her a "total nut job" and "certifiable," reports thesmokinggun.com. The ads feature her bald head alongside a local deejay, seeking to make him entertainingly kooky by association. Spears' lawyer says her likeness has a "multimillion-dollar value for authorized commercial exploitations" and cites a June 7 promise by the station to take down the signs. As of June 14, says the attorney, the ads were still there.
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ISAIAH Washington is getting some unexpected support in his bid to return to "Grey's Anatomy" - a petition drive spearheaded by a prominent lesbian and gay activist who insists he shouldn't have been axed for his homophobic remarks against co-star T.R. Knight.
Jasmyne Cannick, who worked with Washington on the Pan African Arts Festival, said she's infuriated ABC booted Washington from the show's upcoming fourth season for calling Knight a "faggot" during a scuffle on the set and believes it smacks of racism. So she's launched a petition - which had 1,233 signatures as of last night - to get the actor his job back.
The petition says Washington's firing "further adds to a disturbing new trend at ABC wherein minority actors have been dismissed at an alarming rate over the past two years. Blacks, including . . . Star Jones ('The View'), Harold Perrineau ('Lost'), Alfre Woodard, Mehcad Brooks and Page Kennedy ('Desperate Housewives') have been let go . . . One must ask themselves, what is going on? . . . While we don't approve of [Washington's] use of the F-word at the Golden Globes, Washington has since apologized and gone on to perform community service by way of a public service announcement for the very organizations that have been orchestrating his dismissal. But it seems it wasn't enough."
The actor came under fire last fall after getting into an altercation with Patrick Dempsey, during which he slurred Knight. He later repeated the word at the Golden Globes. Washington later apologized, checked into rehab and met with gay leaders.
Cannick told us: "Isaiah has done more for the gay and lesbian community than T.R. Knight did in or out of the closet. He did what they asked him to do, and now they want to make sure he will never work again. At what point is enough enough?"
A rep for Washington denied the actor was behind the petition but added, "We appreciate [Cannick's] support."
Last week, Washington, 43, said he was "mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" regarding his dismissal. "I did everything that the producers and the network asked me to do," he told Entertainment Weekly.
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NAOMI Campbell is pulling a Kevin Federline - making a mint off her bad reputation. Campbell shot a commercial for Dunkin' Donuts yesterday in which she riffed on her anger-management issues. According to a spy, the script called for Campbell to "be gardening in an evening dress. Something goes wrong, she gets frustrated, and she flips out. She then takes her shoe off and throws it through a window. Next to her is a Martha Stewart type who is calm, cool and collected, thanks to her frozen Dunkin' Donuts drink." Earlier this year, Federline starred in a Nationwide Insurance commercial as a fry cook.
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BRITNEY Spears is a "hot mess" who needs to "stay home with her kids," L.A. spies say. Over the weekend, the scantily clad pop tart not only flashed her panties at paparazzi but also let her sundress slip several times, baring her nipples to the cameras. On Saturday night, Spears went to a bar, Lola's, where she and two friends downed martinis "like water" and partied till the wee hours. Spears' frustrated rep has decided to take a "hiatus" but generously declined comment on her behalf.
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JOHN Travolta blames Virginia Tech, Columbine and all the other tragic school shootings not on the psychos who committed the heinous acts - but on psychiatric drugs. "I still think that if you analyze most of the school shootings, it is not gun control. It is [psychotropic] drugs at the bottom of it," Travolta told W. But the "Hairspray" film star won't be jumping on couches over the issue or attacking Matt Lauer as his fellow Scientologist, Tom Cruise, did last year: "I don't disagree with anything Tom says. How would I have presented it? Maybe differently than how he did, but it doesn't matter."
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CRISS Angel - without recent squeeze Cameron Diaz - at Vegas Magazine's fourth anniversary party at Mandalay Beach and posing for pictures with his female fans . . . POWER couples Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony and David and Victoria Beckham chatting over cocktails on M.E. Madrid hotel's rooftop bar, The Penthouse . . . A grumpy-looking Harrison Ford celebrating Father's Day with his dad and son at Da Silvano, while flame Calista Flockhart and her son, Liam, were apparently several states away visiting with her father.
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