My favorite headline this month on the Drudge Report: “Woman Told to Remove Nipple Rings for Flight.” Next, they’ll be telling us to remove our diaphragms and IUDs, stop wearing mascara and have our tattoos erased.

That ideologically unmatched Washington couple, super democrat James Carville and Mary Matalin, super conservative aide to the GOP’s Dick Cheney, are giving up on D.C. for the most part. The odd couple is moving to New Orleans where they’ve already bought a house. Their Alexandria riverfront home is on the market for just under $4.5 million. (They paid $3.9 million for it according to The Washington Post.) They’ll live near Tulane University but keep a pied-a -terre in Washington. Their daughters are about to enter the fifth and eighth grades in Louisiana schools.

The Carville-Matalin duo will join other elitists in New Orleans, chiefly our very own wowOwow contributor, the fabulous Julia Reed of Vogue and Newsweek, and her lawyer husband, who have a big house in the Garden District. Maybe Julia will keep us posted on James and Mary, the new royalty of New Orleans.

At the opening of Broadway’s latest version of "Gypsy," I did manage to shake hands with Matthew Broderick, seen without his "Sex and the City" wife, Sarah Jessica Parker. (Matthew is always reserved and courtly.) And I saw the great actress Sian Phillips sitting on the aisle with her co-star-to-be, the amazing Laura Linney. (We’ll soon see these two onstage in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses.")

I probably should just remind you that the gifted Sian played the evil Livia in "I, Claudius" and she also misspent many years married to Peter O’Toole. And Laura Linney is my best bet to win an Oscar in the future no matter what she does.

Also at this opening night, they gave the star Patti LuPone a standing ovation as she came down the aisle shouting “Sing out, Louise!” They gave her another after she did “Rosie’s Turn,” long before the musical ended. And then they gave her another standing ovation for the curtain call. I never saw this before. In the audience was the gracious and charming Angela Lansbury, who had once played Mama Rose herself way back after Ethel Merman had done it for the very first time. I asked Angela how it feels to see another actress star in her role. She said, “I feel great about it. I like watching what they do. All of the Roses have been great. I can’t wait for the curtain to go up.”

I had a blast last month when I was honored by the Friars Club of New York at a lunch filled with the women of the Friars. I suppose some of them are called “Friaresses” themselves.

My longtime pal, Jeffrey Lyons, was the interrogator of Liz for purposes of amusement and, as he has a big legacy from his late columnist father, Leonard Lyons, he knows more quips, jokes and anecdotes than anyone left in traditional New York show biz. So we had fun talking about Friars past — Alan King, Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle.

Although this was not a “roast” (the Friars only roast super big names and it all takes place in a cavernous ballroom where they earn big bucks), there were some riotous stories told. And although you can get away with anything on the Internet, I will decline to repeat these jokes and tales. Impressionable children might be watching.

Auntie Liz may be a bit like Auntie Mame, but we don’t want to go too far!

I had barely finished writing here about the late Rex Harrison and how he swore at people in Italy by saying “Bastard” and adding an “o” on the end of it to make it acceptable “Italian” — now I pick up the paper and read that there is a new restaurant in New York called Bastardo.

Recently, in this space I spoke of how people in Sweetwater, Texas, are reaping big bucks from renting their ranch lands to wind turbines which are sometimes as tall as the Empire State Building. High winds, low cost energy.

Now comes my nephew in Austin, Texas, one Sloan Smith, and he sends me a photo he took riding behind a truck tooling along east of San Antonio where a plant manufactures the windmills.

 

This picture is of a truck on Interstate 10 carrying just one blade!

Covering a café called the Cattleman’s Steak House in Fort Worth, I see that at the end, the critic writes: “Get someone to explain calf fries before you order them.”

I want anybody out there who doesn’t know exactly what a “calf fry” is to tell me, so I can explain. I have been on roundups in Texas and I know all about these delicacies.

 

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