Dead Stars (55 page)

Animal Planet had showed him so many things, other beings locked in civil war. Like that show Hillbilly Handfishin the men hold their breaths underwater reach into hollow logs wait for thirtypound catfish to bite down they surface with it just stuck on their hand like that then club it into the boat, the gators are cannibals a 600 lb one on
Swamp People
accidentally hanged itself on one of the gator hunter's lines damnedest thing if such a thing can be called an accident the hook wasn't even in it, there was a baby gator still in its mouth, that was cosmic retribution.

Tonight an award is being given to
Young Hollywood Stands Up for Cancer!
& Jerzy's targets stand out whilst he clocks the arriving guests: Minka, Whitney, Pia Toscano&McPhee
HAILEE FUCKTASTIC STEINFELD
Nicole Richie, Tom&Rita Hanks, Vince & Kyla Vaughn (their infant daughter Locklyn: a
honeyshot! of the future
),
KYLIE FREAKIN JENNER
Cher Lloyd, Matt&Luciana Damon, Ethan&Ryan Hawke, ABBY FRIGGIN BRESLIN Khloé Kardash, Kathryn Bigelow, Kate Hudson/Matt Bellamy, Diane Kruger
ELLE EFFING FANNING
Meghan McCain, Rob/Sheryl Berkoff-Lowe,
JORDANA BITCHIN BEATTY
Nina Dobrev, Sandra Bullo————

Goes back to the car for a blunt & a booty-bump. Meditates on why he likes to shove crack up his ass of late. As Harry likes to say,
the Devlin (Janet) made me do it
. Jerzy sends an email of all images just taken to his NY agency, in the morning the tabloids will negotiate a price on what they like. Doesn't matter if there's
honeyshot!
s among em cause they'd never use em, never even
think
of it. Tonight he'll print the hi-rez
honeyshot!
s himself, he'll nurse & conjure & cull, Harry didn't like to have any ol batch just thrown at him, reason being he was slowly losing his sight, irony of eye disease for the beholder of beauty, there could be no correction thru surgery/lenses & the fatfuck bless his heart was vain, who'da thunk it. So Jerzy distilled & uncorked only the finest of ripened honeyvintages————

He smokes the pipe, half-looking around for the dumbass security guard.
Cheesy ugly fuckin garage
. Offends his aesthetics. Where the fuck is Rikki. Still tripping on the Wars. Eminem, the
demiurge
, the Demi Moorge, the Demineminurge, the whole vexing mantis-hummingbird
problemo.
But an answer was coming, he could feel it, like a tsunami still 1000s of miles from land, before it top ramens whole cities.

Someone from Deathrow really needs to call me back.
He looks at himself in the rearview, and says:

“They do, right?

. . .

Once inside the hotel, packs-o-publicists waited with simpering smiles (years of cowering & nearly being slapped/struck by stressed-out celeb junkies on junkets), tho as
ja rule
,
s were usually fairly well-behaved at cancer gigs, even moreso pediatric ones—said publicists waiting w/nervous hi-beam smiles to sweettalk and
o so very carefully
shepherd VIPs to the
inside
red carpet getting them to stand there with the backdrops sporting COURAGE BALL plus a stamped smattering of slogans,
Take Courage/Pledge to Wear Yellow Livestrong Day/Take the Pink Ribbon Challenge/Give Today, Cure Tomorrow
+ all the usual suspect logos of all the compassionate usual suspect corps, TOYOTA HUFFPOST TWITTER BEN&JERRY'S PANDORA INSTAGRAM GROUPON FLKR&tc. On said backdropped
inside
red carpet they of course would be shot by a
2nd
group of parasiterazzi, these being of the less loose-cannoned more
inner circlish
variety, in bed with the pubbers, each prosecuted to take useable glamshots
not
those sometimes peskily problematic step from limo tableaux, certainly no reason of course for
Jerzy
to be taking pics on the
inside
red carpet because one could not procure a
honeyshot!
on the
inside
of the hotel
,
at least not unless a fear-stricken flak was given the unenviable task of persuading this or that ½-¼
let to have a seat in the Fisker Karma that sat over there on a revolving lazy susan just beyond the ballroom doors on its
own
red carpet'd muff. (To be auctioned off later in the eve.) There was no way any of the old pros—translation:
lets over 30—would jump in the Fisker anyway because it would look like they were endorsing, most had never even heard of a Fisker, they'd have to be told that fucking
Leonardo
had one before it would get their attention, because
hey I don't do shit like that for free
. Jerzy already considered being on hand for such a contingency but wound up musing if Emma or Hailee or whomever
did
climb in, a Fisker “get” would be one tough panties get
.

Perspirating stinkbreathed ulcer-prone scaredy-cat pub flaks delicately moved the celebs, demi-celebs & ¼celebs thru the open doors of the ballroom for cocktails and mingling . . . those same old-timey thirtyish
lets that avoided the Fisk Karm knew better to
mingle
for free & besides, OCD handlers were in place to rush them to their designated tables for some well-earned alonetime. Meanwhile, bids were being placed for the silent auction (a banjo signed by Steve Martin & all the banjo greats; you could win a round of golf with Jack Black or Alec Baldwin ((both couldn't make it tonight)); you could blind-bid on a box that said
The Kardashian Experience
, &tc.) then everyone was hustled to eat 1st so there would be no clinking & table-clearing once the show began.

. . .

Sitting at the other $100,000 table (the one Brando didn't buy) were Michael and Catherine; Steve Martin (who'd flown in from NY where just hours after being voted president of PEN American Center); Joyce Carol Oates & husband No. 2 (who, in solidarity w/husband No. 1 has refused to read any of JCO's work “because if I open that door I'll have to walk thru it”); Tom & Rita Hanks; Sandra Bullock (
sans
black baby arm candy) with what the mags call Unidentified Friend; Nobel Prizewinner & former PEN American Center President Toni Morrison; Sol and Tiffany Koster. Tiff was President of the organization that puts on the Courage Ball, the very same who had the effrontery to perform a partial mastectomy on Telma's appearance in tonight's show.

For a long while, there'd been a bubble of speculation about whether the Nobel Committee would come to their senses & just
give it to her—
to Joyce—but the bubble always burst. Each time it happened, sycophantic friends made the tiresome, toadying remark that JCO was the Nobel's Susan Lucci, the same they said about Julian Barnes before he finally won the Booker. Common sense had forced Mrs. Oates to the unpleasant truth: Queen Toni's investiture had knocked her out of the box for at least 30 years, because Oslo doesn't
do
nationality-wins that close together, which means she'd be 85 when finally becoming eligible for consideration. The Committee was famously unpredictable but the line in front of her did seem rather long: there was Rushdie & Roth, not to mention the usual darkhorse bevy of unpronounceables writing in dead languages in civil war-torn stamp-sized countries too new or too old for anyone to have even heard of (anyone except for JCO).

. . .

They were giving Michael Douglas the Take Heart Award tonight for his fundraising efforts, whose most recent focus was on children. “Mine are coming of age,” he told
Entertainment Tonight
. “So it feels like a natural progression. Some of these kids are going to be the same doctors, researchers and scientists who'll find that missing piece we're still looking for in so many of these diseases we're struggling to understand
.
”

. . .

At the
Ooh Baby
table: Biggie & Telma, Gwen & Phoebe, Aleisha & her parents, Biggie's brother Brando, Wendy Mogel & budding author Bud Wiggins.

Wendy was married to Michael Tolkin. Bud was her date tonight because her husband had to fly to New Zealand for the weekend, where a $125 million film was being shot from his script. There'd been a few skirmishes between director &
, serious enough that they almost came to blows. Tolkin & the lead actor had a good relationship so the studio asked him to intervene. Wendy wryly said that he agreed to do “emotional triage.” Tolkin & one of his agents flew over, plus 2 studio semi-chieftains, plus 3 of the film's producers, plus the actor's & director's agents. They were all staying at the same lodge, which Tolkin had christened “Olympic Village.”

Wendy had written a number of bestsellers on healthy parenting. (Bud told her, “Where were you when my mother needed you!”) He knew Wendy all the way back to when she and Michael started dating. She was always kind to Bud, even when she knew he was down and out, something he never forgot. She looked Bud in the eye when he spoke, and generally treated him like a human being worthy of attention and respect.

. . .

Michael Douglas saw the documentary about Fran Lebowitz that Toni was in. He thought it was hilarious. He particularly loved the part where Fran talked about what it was like to accompany Toni & her retinue to Oslo for the Nobel ceremony. Ms. Morrison knew that Michael and Catherine hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2003, for the Iranian woman.