It was a night of sweets. The sweet folks of Warner Books invited me to Tuesday evening’s book reception for Amy Sedaris. She has given us one delightfully demented book of social etiquette and recipes. Please find it in your neighborhood bookstore and browse through it for some definite laughs. I LIKE YOU: HOSPITALITY UNDER THE INFLUENCE is just so wrong that it’s right. Or, as she writes in her recipe for Vulgar Barbecue Sauce, “…it’s so good it’s vulgar.” I helped get Amy on today’s show with Whoopi. That’s how I wound up at the party. I chatted with Amy and one of the actors from RESCUE ME, an excellent series on cable. That’s the one about the firefighters starring Denis Leary. Matthew Broderick and wifey Sarah Jessica showed up. Thank goodness I didn’t chat with him. Don’t get me wrong –he’s a good guy. I’ve had to interview him a number of times in my career. He’s polite but he usually has nothing to say and takes so darn long to say it. He and Sarah do look like a cool married couple. Bless their hearts. I couldn’t stay long because I had to MetroCard it up to the upper west side and attend a screening of MARIE ANTOINETTE, starring Kirsten Dunst as the ill-fated queen. Not a great movie, but some really snappy things going for it. I loved the rock soundtrack, the production design, the costumes, Kirsten and REALLY loved Jason Schwartzman as her nebbishy, kinda closeted king husband. Very funny. He’s got that early Dustin Hoffman quality. Marie Antoinette, for centuries, has been credited with saying “Let them eat cake” while the poor people of France got poorer. There’s plenty of cake in that movie and she enjoys it bigtime. I’ll save the review for this Friday’s WAKE UP WITH WHOOPI (check homepage for time and cities), but I will say this — I have not seen one person eat so much cake and other pastry in under two hours since the time I went out to dinner with Al Roker back in the early 90s. No lie.
A late friend of mine who lived in my neighborhood went on a vacation to France with his boyfriend and visited Marie Antoinette’s old stomping grounds. He put Versailles into a Puerto Rican perspective and summed up the queen’s fate with these unforgettable words: “Bitch had too much shit. No wonder they cut her head off.”
We’ll always have Paris. Here’s looking at you, kid.
My favorite Marie Antoinette was Lovey Howel on Gilligan’s Island.
And Al was funnier in the 90’s IMHO
xoxo, Mrs. Miller
Mine was Patricia Arquette on Medium, as she steps up to the gallows. (paraphrased)
“I don’t know what they’re so pissed at. Have they even TRIED cake?”