“Darling, money is so last year … as the country unites, you stand alone, a blushing figure with a disgracefully expensive It-bag,” writes reporter Celia Walden.

So now, everywhere I go people are feeling sorry for the Super Rich. I mean, they once were worth 100 billion; now they’re worth only 30 billion – poor things. The other day I was observing the passing parade in Michael’s media restaurant. A lady, daughter to media millions, passed by.  Everybody at my table went “Tch, tch!” – except me. “Tch, tch, poor thing; she is said to have lost everything!” Yes, except the big house in Washington, the other one in the Hamptons, the one in the South of France. And the Manhattan apartment,  plus there’s her trust fund; it’s still there – dented, of course, but still there in essence. She isn’t on food stamps yet, as they say one in every ten Americans is! 

So even Bill Gates tells his wife to turn off the bathroom light these days. And ladies in Hermès ask for their expensive purchases to go in unmarked shopping bags.  

The fine reporter, Miss Walden, also notes that it is the mistress of the rich man who is being squeezed out by the current economic crunch. 

Walden writes: “Mistresses are facing a cull. A recent survey shows nearly half of analysts, stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers are preparing to let the ‘other woman’ go. Gifts and expenditures are shrinking. Credit cards are being withdrawn. Fidelity is now more attractive!”

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The smartest guy in Los Angeles, Peter Bart, longtime head man at Variety after a lifetime of producing big movies, is stepping into an emeritus position and the perspicacious Timothy Gray steps into his big footprint. Variety – long may it flourish!

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Big stars who have bank accounts, stocks and deposit boxes in California now find that if they let these accounts go dormant for longer than three years, the state of California is stepping in, helping themselves to the proceeds.

Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Kate Winslet and Colin Farrell are some of the 1,300 Britishers who have had their assets seized. And a few Americans, like Angelina Jolie and Reese Witherspoon, have also fallen victim. 

Reese Witherspoon, Angelina Jolie © AP/Shutterstock

There is now a class-action suit filed against California by U.S. attorney Bill Palmer who represents 6,000,000 outraged people who had property seized under the Unclaimed Property Law.       

I would think Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t want this kind of inhospitality to afflict people depending on California banks. If you have assets held by the state of California, go to sco.ca.gov/col/ucp/index.shtml.

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The tall, terrific Texan, Tommy Tune, is momentarily back in New York from his successful ongoing road tour with his show, “Steps in Time,” and he took in the opening of “Hair.”

Tommy Tune, Brooke Shields and Liz in
June ‘08 © Robin Platzer/Twin Images

This guy, who has won nine Tony Awards (count ‘em!), says, “It was the best Broadway opening in all my 50 years in show business!” 

Get thee to the age of Aquarius!

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You only have until June 14 to see “Exit the King,” Eugène Ionesco’s masterly 1962 comedy, revived at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in a production of such perfection and absurdity that the audience is in fear of falling out of their seats from hysterical laughing. (In a Shubert Theater where the seats are small, that’s not easy.) 

As King Berenger, the Australian icon and Oscar winner (“Shine”) Geoffrey Rush gives a performance of his, your and my lifetime. He is not only funny and theatrical to the bursting point – his king is intellectually daring and, ultimately, humanely sad.