Papal Passion

Comedy legend–and right-leaning diabetes and animal rights spokesperson–Mary Tyler Moore has been dancing on some tabletops on behalf of her new memoir, “Growing Up Again.” She got pretty dishy with Kevin Sessums in Parade this weekend, telling him that when she was separated from her second husband Grant Tinker, Frank Sinatra came onto her once:

“Frank had his assistant phone me and ask if I would take a call from him. I said, ‘Please, by all means.’ For two days, no call. Then, Grant and I were out having dinner and thinking about getting back together. Not two feet away from us sat Frank Sinatra. He came over to say hello. I never heard from him after that.”

And then the bombshell:

“The only other man who ever looked at me the way Frank did was–and don’t take this the wrong way–Pope John Paul II.”

Elegy

Helen Vendler reminds us in the new New York Review of Books that M.S. Merwin (born 1927, the same year as fellow poets John Ashbery, Galway Kinnell, and James Wright) wrote Elegy, “the best brief poem of mourning in English.” It is very brief indeed.

“Elegy”

Who would I show it to?

V. Day, Part Deux

Well, given that it’s taken me five days to report back about the fabulissimo New York City opening of  Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary,”Valentino: The Last Emperor,” I can only conclude that the event’s glittery charms have  magicked me into slackjawed catatonia. From the roiling contagion of the press corps waiting outside the Museum of Modern Art where the screening was held, to the wonderfully strange seating juxtapositions inside the theater (eg, rocker Michael Stipe sitting near Regis Philbin; a leatherclad biker “bear” hovering in proximity to the editor-in-chief of Town and Country), I was agog. Put me in a room wherein one of the socialite couples bear the first names Tinsley and Topper, and you have lovingly scratched this dog’s skritchy spot. I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Pops. Satiety and gratitude exude from my pores like a powerful musk.

My favorite scene in the film, having seen it three times now, is still the one where Valentino’s co-hort Giancarlo Giammetti tells the world’s greatest living couturier that he is “too tan.” The scene draws its strength from the fact that Valentino is, not to put too fine a point on it, orange.

Asked to sum up the Valentinian worldview in a single sentence, I would refer you to this line of dialogue from the film:

“Girls, but some sequins can’t hurt.”

Viewers of this movie are brought very, very close to the beating heart of the sequin.

V. Day

Tonight I am going to the New York premiere of “The Last Emperor,” the hilarious and lovely documentary about fashion designer Valentino that  Matt Tyrnauer made. The premiere is at the Museum of Modern Art, and is hosted by every fabulous, well-dressed famous woman in New York (e.g., Diane von Furstenberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Claire Danes, Princess Firyal of Jordan), as well as a scrum of socialites whose aggregate name is Tinkly Kimble.

I spent two hours neuroticizing about what to wear this morning, only to opt for what I always wear, my dark blue suit (I am daring. Hear me roar.)

Tension: mounting.

Cambooty

I have a story in today’s New York Times about traveling the Cambodian coast on the Gulf of Thailand. Other than the temples of Angkor Wat–which are staggeringly, curl-up-and-die-calibre amazing–my two favorite parts of the trip (as I write in the piece) both involved tiny bubbles. We bought tablets of effervescent codeine at a pharmacy one day, soon rendering us giddy field mice; one night we swam in phosphorescent plankton in the Gulf of Thailand. Air pockets on parade!

Love Sam

The early letters of Samuel Beckett–between 1929 and 1989, when the otherwise taciturn playwright died at 83, he issued some 15,000 missives–have been recently published. As Tom Stoppard has pronounced, “The prospect of reading Beckett’s letters quickens the blood like none other’s, and one must hope to stay alive until the fourth volume is safely delivered.”

Beckett’s correspondence, no surprise, can be wintry. Asked by the Times of London in 1984 for his New Year’s resolutions, the Waiting for Godot author wrote,

“resolutions colon zero stop period hopes colon zero stop beckett”

Moreover, his letters showcase his fondness for likening his literary output to excrement. When he refers to some of his poems as “three turds from the central lavatory,” or when he tells a friend that,

“my next work shall be on rice paper wound about a spool, with a perforated line every six inches,”

it somehow seems fitting that the writer in question is considered to have had the worst penmanship of any 20th century author.

But what the letters showcase best, in the end, is Beckett’s fascination with and reverence for language–hello, words like boniments, obstipation, eviration, poylpus, gantelope and mumper–as well as his antipathy for others’ misuse of it. He writes that D.H. Lawrence is

“a tedious kindling of damp.”

And of Proust:

“a maudlin false teeth gobble-gobble discharge from a colic afflicted belly.”

In short–as Beckett once wrote of his own health–

“the various eviscerations characteristic of [his]  distemper are at the very top of their form.”

Elderism #43

Can I just say that Chita is one of my all-time favorite names, alongside Marshall, Viv, and Ethelred? So it was an especial treat to see the greatest of the Chitas–that’s Miss Rivera to you, bub–get some love in yesterday’s New York Post. In reference to the new Broadway revival of West Side Story, original cast member Rivera was asked how one should play a Puerto Rican correctly. The 76 year-old triple threat, having said earlier in the interview, “You never want to be called a spic,” now specified,

“You have to be really smart and elegant. We are an elegant tribe.”

The Eternal Appeal of Hairlessness

The New York Times is very concerned (ie, they have published a front page story about) the fact that President Obama’s hair is getting grayer. The reporter Helene Cooper talked to a founder of RealAge–the web site that considers your extracurricular activities like smoking and drinking to determine your “real” age–who tells us that presidents age two years for every year in office; we also hear that Presidents Roosevelt, Wilson, and Roosevelt all developed hypertension, and that Clinton had to have heart surgery post-White House. Walt Frazier tells  Obama to start dyeing his hair, as Frazier does–“No play for Mr. Gray.” I say, strike another victory for the bald, who render such discussions moot.

Elderism #42

“Remember dear, if someone throws up on you, that’s the one with the upset stomach.”

From Anne in NYC, as told her by her mother-in-law

Elderism #41

“As long as there’s a telephone, no actor is ever retired”

From a resident of the Lillian Booth Home in Englewood, N.J., a home for “retired” performers, as captured on a lovely story on Studio 360.