Two ancient stories crashed my memory this week. They connect with today, so I suddenly recall each:
People magazine reprising Patti LaBelle turning 80 made me remember our long-ago interview in a NYC hotel. She lived good. Six-inch spike heels, 3,000 pairs.
From the elevator her fourth floor smelled. Forget perfume. The entire floor reeked so strongly of liver and onions you could’ve sniffed it in Colorado.
Her hello to me? “Room service is dinky. Not like down-home food. A picky eater who hates throwing money around, I like to see my food. Room service sends up hamburger that tastes like s - - t and charges you $100. Patti LaBelle don’t eat s - - t! On the road I cook myself.
“I travel with one whole suitcase that’s my kitchen. Pots, pans, spices, dishes, hot plate, electric fry pan, two burner stove, everything. Last night I made shrimp and rice. 3 a.m. for Wyclef Jean I cooked fries, burgers and onion rings.”
She’s even eaten backstage — I think it was veal — just before she went on.
She said: “Girl, on the road I cook my butt off. Once I came out with chicken in my teeth. Listen, I cook better than I sing.”
OK — but the whole floor of this high-class hotel had the aroma of a White Tower.
Hello, Justice
Another old happening. Stories lately chip at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. My meeting him once suddenly knocks at my consciousness. I simply just remembered it.
Maybe 20ish years ago, handpicked VIP legal minds convened for a NY Law School discussion in Florence, Italy. Invitation only. The venue, NYU’s ornate Villa La Pietra. Rules of law were being dissected. No outsiders allowed, but thanks to Barry Slotnick — one of our sharpest, toughest legal minds ever — I was OK’d, providing I never mentioned it.
I never mentioned it. Thus I now only rely on memory. These handpicked legals assembled to discuss presidential powers, presidential elections, wartime government and the Court’s role in national campaigns.
By happenstance, Justice Thomas (inset) and I got huddled together in an a la carte lunch line. Hard to maintain silence if facing a judgment call between roast beef sandwiches plus a mile of tuna fish and hard-boiled eggs.
After the usual “I don’t speak to the press,” it was days, nights, same bus together plus maybe awareness I’d been allowed there because I knew my place. Eventually he spoke a little about those tough early days of his nomination.
I subsequently requested a proper interview which was never granted. This memory is merely to state Justice Thomas was the most polite, refined, respectable gentleman you’d ever meet. Our bedeviled, besotted government plus our toy DA would best try and save America — not try and destroy Supreme Court Justice Thomas.
To prove how far we’ve come, Judge Judy and I had a quiet dinner-for-two at Canaletto. It’s on East 60th. The night, quiet. So were we. I had a deck of cards and polite Elvis the owner paid little attention as we sat in a dark corner, eating chicken and playing gin.
Definitely only in New York, kids, only in New York.