Saturday, September 10, 2005

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, April 18, 1984

I'm just on the phone with Christopher. Robert Hayes is in intensive care, his mother's coming down from Canada. He was coughing for weeks and pneumonia's really dangerous, you can go just like that. Before he went into the hospital he was home for weeks, he said from a bad flu. He came in for a business lunch once, though, and I asked Gael why he had round little bandages on, and she said he'd just had moles removed, and that sounded reasonable.

Then there was a lunch at the office for Charles Jourdan shoes (cab $6). Jay came to work glowing, he's in love with our fashion editor, Kate Harrington. And I said I thought she was going with John Sykes on MTV, and Jay said, "Listen, she broke up with him the day she me me," so I mean I didn't want to get into that. Kate has eyes for everyone. She's so bubbly, so pretty. Let's hope Jay stays in this good mood. And Jean Michel was after Kate, too--she styled an Interview shoot of him and de Antonio in Armani clothes and he left five joints for her.

Victor called a couple of times and now he always brings up that I said he could be dangerous and he always mentions Valerie Solanis. He's staying at the Barbizon now, he said Halston's changing the locks. He thinks Victor's stealing his Peretti candlesticks, but actually he just borrowed them to leave with the Barbizon as a security deposit. Victor gave me two at Christmas, but that was with Halston there and it was only on the conditon that Halston could get more of them. If he couldn't, then I was supposed to give them back. But Tiffany does have more of them--I checked.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, April 5, 1984

Fred got me so mad in the morning being so grand when I asked him what was happening with the Michael Jackson portraits. He was giving me these very calm, low-key stock answers, repeating them to me, like "I've got a grip on it," and "it's under control," and things like that, and I told him, "Oh don't give me that." So then when he started asking me questions, I decided to just give him his own medicine, and that's what I started telling him, "It's in my control..."

and Gael Love said that Doria and Ron have gotten an apartment in L.A. and that Ron's going to be getting $6,000 for articles he writes, so they wouldn't be doing anything more for us.

Maura came by and made 14,000 calls to L.A., The New Show folded and she's going out thre and wants to get to Barry Diller's party. And she was saying, "If you have any stocks sell them all, because with this national deficit, I mean..." And she just says what her father tells her. so I guess Senator Moynihan wants everybody to panic.

The press had called a while ago and asked what did I think about Campbell's soup having new plastic cans, the crushable kind, and I said, "Oh yeah, sure, great idea, great, great!" so now I just got the cutest letter from a person at Campbell's saying, "I'm so glad that you agree with us that we needed a new look." I should have said, "And I'm going to get a new wig."

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, march 28, 1984

I'd forgotten that David Whitney was coming down with Jasper Johns to get a painting for Jasper's benefit, he's got a Jasper Johns Foundation for needy artists. i don't know who picks who's needy. Probably some idiot like Barbara Rose, right? Or Robert Hughes. Oh, Robert Hughes. Oh, I bet that's who it is. I just bet. I'm going to ask David. So they came and they wanted the biggest one. The ink Spot painting. The Rorschach Blot. Jasper liked it.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, March 19, 1984

Paloma called and we were invited that night to her dinner for her perfume. They didn't send perfume to men, but the bottle is kind of nice. She was having the dinner at the old Burden mansion on 91st Street that's now a Catholic school and they rent out the old ballroom for parties.

Dropped Benjamin. Glued and then was late. Cabbed uptown ($3.50). And because I was late I'd been bumped from the main table. So I wound up at the same table as Rosemary Kent! She's back around and working for the Post! I've been forgetting to tell the Diary. And Fred was at this table, too, so he was going nuts trying to look away from her. She's still with the same husband, Henry. And instead of running up to Paloma I ran up to horrible Rosemary Kent, who's still writing her stupid "What's In/What's Out" articles, you know--"Handbags! Shoes! Andy Warhol's wigs!"--and tried in my heart not to think she was awful, because God forgives so should I. See I'm sure I got sick the other days as punishment because I yelled at that lady. Didn't I tell the Diary? A real estate lady called the office and said she wanted to show our floor to some people and I screamed that she couldn't, that our lease wasn't up and that she better not set one foot on the premises until it was, and she said she couldn't believe that a nice person and an artist like me would be yelling at her. And then I got sick.

Paloma's party just missed. The people were too old or something. I've decided I'm just going to go to openings of stores and galleries, that's my new philosophy.

And the big news of the day was that Rupert's house in new Hope, Pennsylvania, burned down, so he didn't come in. A coal got caught in the chimney. I never had a priest exorcise my room that had the spontaneous fire. I blessed it myself--I got holy water. but I still think there's something funny about that room. I had the Picabia painting of the devil that fell down in there and also the ceiling fell down.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Friday, March 2, 1984

Mick and Jerry had their baby. A girl. A girl named Elizabeth Scarlett.

And you know, it's so funny with all these protests now about Jane Fonda at the stores where she's trying to sell her exercise clothes. I don't understand why it would start now. I mean, all these years her movies have been doing big business and her exercise video is number one--Vietnam veterans complained but nobody listened. But now with the clothes it's all these protests and they're effective because Saks cancelled. But why haven't they been calling theaters all these years and saying, "We'll bomb the theater if you show her movie."? So it makes me think it's like one person in the garment business that's gone after her. You know? Because it's all of a sudden and just focused on this one area. And I mean, what category do we fall into, having her on the Interview cover? Will that be an area that's just fine, like her videotapes where she's the "most respected woman in America"? Or will they be writing us threatening letters?

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Saturday, February 15, 1984

Bianca told me she'd just been in Japan doing an interview with Robert Wilson for Vanity Fair and I said how could she do that and not for Interview, and she said well would inteview have sent her for three weeks to Japan and paid her hotel bill. That must have been expensive. She said, "he's a genius." I did used to think he was good, too, but then that last time at Lincoln Center it was so boring. it's like artists who do things--well I don't know, maybe I fit into that category--but they're showing the mechanicals of something instead of entertaining you. Rauschenberg's good, though. He'll put on his ice skates in a new way.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Saturday, February 4, 1984

Did a personal errand with Jon, but he made me promise not to put anything personal about him in the Diary. [Jon Gould was admitted to New York Hospital with pneumonia on February 4, 1984, and released on February 22. He was readmitted the next day, however, and released again on March 7. On that day Andy instructed his housekeepers Nena and Aurora: "From now on, wash Jon's dishes and clothes separate from mine."]