Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Memories of times when people weren't afraid to gather in groups.  

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

This year for the Super Bowl we were at my sister-in-law Dalia’s house in Glendale. Me? About football I know bubkes. Who’s playing? Don’t ask. (Ed. note:  The 49ers lost to the Chiefs.) As usual, the men were in the den with the bir and the cigars, while in the dining room, we “girls” were playing mahjong and the kids were going at it with penny poker and pisha paysha.

Later, when the men were running back and forth from the waschzimers, Benjy, (Lola’s son-in-law), yelled, “You gotta see this halftime show!” So, we did. And what did we see? We saw 50-year-old Jennifer Lopez half naked on a pole twirling her toches like a baboon in heat. As the kids say: “That’s something I can never unsee.”

And then there’s the Oscars. Who are these people? The only real movie star I recognized was Kirk Douglas, and he’s dead. Brad Pitt I know from the tabloids. Martin Scorsese I saw in the audience looking so tiny he should’ve had a booster seat.  I slept through all of the red-carpet chitchat, but I did see that schtunk Joaquin Phoenix give his speech thanking G-d and pegging the rest of us as mamzerim for “injecting cows with hormones, stealing their babies, and selling the milk to put it in our coffee.” This we need? Likewise, Rene Zellweger, who portrayed Judy Garland, droned on so long that I was able to use the kloset, load up the dishwasher, reorganize my purse, take a nap, and when I woke up, she was still kvelling away. Oy!

And then there’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. All over the news they are. She’s the actress nobody heard of who married the prince and invited only her mother to the wedding. Okay, so her father’s a schmuck, but no invitations she sent to her siblings? Yes, they’re half-siblings, but half-schmalf, family is family until they borrow money and don’t pay it back. Adele Luskin said maybe there weren’t enough seats in the cathedral for other relatives, (but between you and me, Adele’s been taking a medication that makes her drowsy and a bit schwindeldik).

Enough I’ve said already.



Vocabulary

Waschzimers: A variation on the German words wasch (wash) and zimmer (room.)

Pisha paysha:  Yiddish for the card game War, which remains popular among children to this day.

Mamazerim: In Jewish, a mamzer is a person born out of wedlock (aka, a bastard.) Grandma's use suggests a more general definition, one that defines mamzerim (the plural) as bad human beings.

Schwindeldik: Schwindel is a German word for dizziness.  With the addition of the dik suffix, Grandma seems to be suggesting a person who can't think straight.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Grandma senses a decline in the quality of American celebrities.

Not too many movie stars died last year. Doris Day is at the top of the list. She was 97. She was a singer, dancer, movie star and close hawer with Rock Hudson, who’s already dead. Some of the other movie stars to go were Albert Finney, Rip Torn and Peter Fonda.

On the TV it was Tim Conway, Valerie Harper, Diahann Carroll, Luke Perry and Grumpy Cat, (which, if you ask me, was a dybbuk).

Some music people died too. Eddie Money I know from the kids. He’s from Brooklyn, a couple blocks from us, but Ginger Baker? Her I never heard of.

Old news it is that Brad Pitt’s and Angelina Jolie’s marriage went kaput years ago. He said it was because she’s a control freak, a super yenta, and she’s still at it. Long story short, Angelina’s a meshuggener. Six kids she has with their names tattooed on her arm. What? She can’t be bothered to memorize them?

 It got so bad that Jane Etta Pitt, Brad’s mother, called Angelina and demanded that she stop being mean to her son! On good authority from Tiki at the beauty parlor, I heard that Jane Pitt talked Brad into leaving that cockamamy religion, the one with outer space aliens and flying monkeys who hook you up to wires, and then you write them big checks. You know, the Tom Cruise and John Travolta Mishegoss “Church of Scientology.”

Brad is now dating Sat Hari Khalsa, a jewelry designer and holistic healer. I know, I know. Don’t hold your breath.

And then there’s this. Alissa, my great-granddaughter showed me a video of this gal who’s all the rage. Her name is Cardi B. For two minutes I watched a half-naked woman squirm around on the floor screeching like a wild banshee. This they call entertainment? She admits she used to be a kurveh, but would do it again if she needed the money. Oh, and her husband’s name is Offset. Oy vey.

 From Doris Day and Rock Hudson to Cardi B. and Offset.

This it’s come to?

Vocabulary

Cockamamy (also cockamamie):  Wacky, ridiculous.  This word was initially a New York Yiddish/Jewish translation of a French term, décalcomanie, that means the affixing of prints or engravings onto decorative objects.  Perhaps as the process fell out of fashion, the translation's meaning changed too, and that newer meaning has stuck.  The word still is most associated with Yiddish speakers, but is understood and crops up often across the Anglosphere.
              The less colorful American shorthand term for the original French one is decal. 

Hawer: Best guess is this is a Yiddish version of haver, the Hebrew word for "friend."  Grandma seems to be making a sly comment when she uses the term to describe the Doris Day/Rock Hudson relationship. 
              From a Haaretz "Word of the Day" report in 2014:  "If you’re a woman who’s 'just friends' with a male haver ... you might not want to call him your haver. Sure, it means 'friend,' but, Hebrew being sneaky sometimes, it also means 'boyfriend.'"
               Day and Hudson starred in several romantic comedies, but odds are good that they were never haverim/hawerim in real life.

Kurveh: Slut, whore.

Dybbuk: a malicious possessing spirit, the dislocated soul of a dead person.
         Plus this:  Banshee:  An Irish spirit (also familiar to Grandma) whose screaming foretells the death of a respected relative.  This is related to keening, a Celtic verb that describes human (typically female) sobs of sorrow after such a death and which closely resembles a Hebrew word with a nearly identical definition.
         

Note

The Idiosyncratist only learned of the late Grumpy Cat when reading Grandma's current file.  Described alternately as "him" or "her," the possibly gender-fluid feline starred in many promotions that seem to have netted beaucoup millions for its owners/dependents.  (In fact, GC seems to have been born with its distinctive look, not the implied attitude capitalized on by marketers to establish the brand that made Grumpy famous.)

In 2017, Grumpy Cat was named Forbes magazine's Top Pet Influencer, a competition of which the Id also was unaware.

"Influencer" is the cleaned-up descriptor for people -- or pets! -- who were called "famous for being famous" back in the olden days just after the turn of the century.

When I think of "influencers," I think of Lori Laughlin's daughter, who was admitted to USC after her parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to an academic fixer.  The former freshman had more than 1 million Instagram followers and sponsorship contracts with Sephora, Tresemme and Estee Lauder.  Another prominent influencer, Kendall Jenner, collected $250,000 for a single Instagram post promoting the doomed Fyre Festival in 2017.

The "influencer" phenomenon is further evidence of Grandma's thesis that we have a less distinguished crop of celebrities these days.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular California columnist, busy as ever, vows this will be her final 2019 post. 


That Miley Cyrus is at it again. She’s the one with the singing hillbilly father (Billy Ray Cyrus) who never taught his daughter how to act like a proper lady. She’s the one on TV “twerking” her tuchis in front of the world with that no-goodnick one hit wonder and yekl, Robin Thicke, whose father was that nice Canadian boy (Alan Thicke) a real mensch who was on the show Growing Pains, and he did the commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear.  Robin died playing ice hockey with his other son -- the good one.

Anyway, so this Miley Cyrus has been cavorting for years with the actor Liam Hemsworth. He’s Australian or Irish or whatever and has been in movies like The Hunger Games and other schtus for kids with short attention spans. Finally, in 2018 they got a marriage license and less than a year later -- Splitsville. She’s decided he’s a shikker and she now prefers the company of women only. Already she’s been caught cavorting with a new bummerkeh. Oy veh, and so many tattoos they both have they look like they just stumbled out of Uncle Billy’s Circus Sideshow.

Bill Cosby? In the news again. He’s the one who was tossed in the hoosegow for slipping all those women mickeys and doing the nasty to them. His wife Camille filed for a get and was ready to take her half of everything, but she changed her mind and decided to remarry him in the prison chapel. She said, “I still love him, and he makes me laugh.” If you asked me, she got a good look at him, realized he could drop dead any minute, and decided to hold out for the entire estate – all the mazuma.

And speaking of farchadat celebrities, Kim Kardashian, the one with the hooties so zaftig she could use them as a flotation device, now wants her husband, Kanye West, to get breast reduction on himself. She said they’re too big and he needs a “Diddie Downsizing.” That whole pack of narrs is addicted to plastic surgery, worse even than the late great Joan Rivers.

I’ve said enough already.


Vocabulary

Bummerkeh is Yinglish (which apparently is something like Spanglish) and means a female bum. i.e., a bad person, not a derrierre.   Possibly derived from the Yiddish word for "potato," but possibly not.

 Get, or gett is the Hebrew word for divorce.  There's a longer version, gettelsheen, but the single-syllable word is more common in the Anglosphere.

Schtus, roughly translated, means "nonsense," as Grandma's context makes clear.

Yekl is an over-assimilating immigrant.  The word traces to a short 1896 novel called Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto. In it, a young man named Yekl takes a different name, Jake, after getting off the boat at Ellis Island.  Grandma suggests that Canadian-born Robin Thicke has become, like Yekl, a shallow and ungrounded fellow.



Note

Billy Ray Cyrus made his fame with the 90s single, "Achy Breaky Heart," but more recently he has worked with rapper Lil Nas X, on Old Town Road, a 2018 monster hit in the new Country Rap genre.  

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Thoughts about celebrity misbehavior and its costs, or perhaps lack thereof.   Plus an Aniston family scoop.


O.J. Simpson is out of jail. This we need? Two people he murdered – his ex-wife and a nice Jewish boy. The trial, it lasted a whole year with a farchadat jury (whose members admitted afterward) that all had decided in the first month to find him not guilty because -- hoo-ha! -- he’s such a celebrity. This they call justice?

Later, to jail he went in Las Vegas for selling sports tchotchkes or some such opfal. Thirty-three years was his sentence, but him they let out after nine years. So now O.J. Simpson is on the Tweety Bird (Twitter) with 850,000 followers. But he should be so lucky. It turns out a good number of them are not fans, and they muschn him like the farseenisch that he is. Okay by me. They say he spends most of his time on the computer playing the Fantasy Football. If it were up to me, he’d be doing hard time on a Sing Sing chain gang or stamping out license plates.

John Aniston, who plays the crazy billionaire Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives is leaving the show. His daughter, Jennifer Aniston, who was on Friends is going to play a part in the soap opera with her father. Mazel!

Sunday evenings I never miss the 60 Minutes, and I enjoy the current pack: Lara Logan, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Steve Kroft. Then not so long ago I noticed that Steve Kroft had gone missing.  It’s because he was caught cavorting with a floozy in a seedy hotel room while his wife of 27 years sat home knowing nothing. So, before he was fired, he quit.

And one more thing about 60 Minutes. I miss that old kvetcher Andy Rooney, but not those bushy eyebrows.  Oy, why didn’t make him trim them? Were they afraid of what they’d find in there? Dandruff? Chinch Bugs? The Lindbergh Baby?

I’ve said enough already.


Vocabulary

farchadat -- confused, distracted, dopey

farseenisch -- ???  It was difficult to find a definition for this term.
           The context suggests the word may be a synonym for  farbrecher, which means a crook or a con man.  To be fair, Yiddishisms are not always blends of Hebrew and German, but also include Hebrew-Russian and Hebrew-Lithuanian origins.  Results may vary by community.

opfal -- trash, garbage

floozy -- a woman of low character
          There are at competing claims about this word's origin.  In one case, it is said to have been derived from the English word "flossy," which seems like a bit of a stretch. 
           In the other, it is said to be Yiddish; its first recorded use dates to the early years of the 20th century, a period when Jews were fleeing pogroms for the less dangerous Anglosphere.
            I'm going with Grandma here.


Notes

Orenthal James Simpson was convicted in 2007 for participating in the holdup of a memorabilia dealer at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.  Simpson claimed the items taken had been stolen from him and that no gun was involved in their recovery.  The jury found him guilty on 12 counts.  It was his second brush with the law.

-----

Grandma is not the first person to comment on the late Andy Rooney's abundant brows.  His stock answer when people raised the matter:

"I don't know what to do. I try to look nice. I comb my hair.  I tie my tie.  
I put on a jacket. 

"But I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got."

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our California columnist discusses talk-show celebrities of today and yesterday.

Kathie Lee Gifford left the “Today Show.” She and her sidekick Hoda Kotb were some kind of a low-rent Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, but me, I liked them better than Oprah with all her spiritual shtus and narish fad diets.

Kathie Lee’s given name was Kathy Lee Epstein. Her paternal seide was a Russian Jew, and she was Jewish until she saw a Billy Graham movie (“The Restless Ones”) and became a Holy Roller or whatever.

In New York she was known as a good hostess, (though hardly another Perle Mesta, G-d rest her soul), and wound up on the show with Regis Philbin, where she dumped her nudnik of a first husband for football player Frank Gifford.

No bargain she got with that momzer Gifford when he was caught cavorting with a stewardess/zoyne -- a surprise it should have been to nobody, since all of Hollywood already knew that Gifford had cheated with one of Johnny Carson’s wives (JoAnne Copeland) while she was still married to Carson, and Frank Gifford was married to his second wife, Astrid Gifford).

From what I hear, Johnny Carson was no mensch and it was no secret that he was a shikker. Me? I could smell his boozy breath coming through my own TV set. 

Sure, to his guests he was nice: Dean Martin, Don Rickles, Frank Sinatra, Angie Dickinson, Jimmy Stewart, Carol Wayne, but to sidekicks like Ed McMahon and Doc Severinsen? Bubkes! For them he had no time. And to Bob Hope, who was his most frequent guest, he was a real shtunk. Johnny hated that Bob Hope worked from a script, so he would ad lib to throw Bob off, who by then was so old and addle-brained, he’d shrug, slump down and say nothing like Charlie McCarthy without Edgar Bergen’s hand up his tuchis.

I’ve said enough already.


Notes

Most of Grandma's Yiddish here is self-explanatory, but it seems fair to note that the terms "stewardess" and "zoyne" are not synonymous.  The nicest way to describe a zoyne is as a woman of low character.  Most flight attendants, male and female, do not fit that description.

-----

Perle Mesta is a name not often heard these days.  She was a wealthy widow famed as the "Hostess with the Mostes'" in Washington, DC, during the last century, as well as a political activist, philanthropist  and the US Ambassador to Luxembourg.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Commentary from our columnist on news from Windsor Castle to Gotham to Los Angeles' own USC. 

Oy, feh, those Royals are at it again. All iberkern they are because Prince Harry and his pregnant soap-opera wife, Meghan Markle, have announced that the new baby's godfather will be Mark Dyer,  Harry’s real father. Of course, everybody already knew that Prince Charles was not Harry’s real foter, because he doesn’t have the family schnozz like William and the seide (Prince Philip).

Meanwhile, the Queen, who knows from nothing, waddles around the daffodils with her corgi dogs and spends the rest of the day in the castle sipping tea and counting her ducats. She should live to a hundred and twenty.

And then there’s Regis Philbin. He’s another nudnick up in years who’s older than Methuselah. For the kids who don’t know the Methuselah, think of Morey Amsterdam. Is he still alive? (Ed. note:  Mr. Amsterdam died at 88 in 1996.) Anyway, Regis has the bad heart and could drop dead any minute, and he wants to make amends for quitting his talk show without telling his cohost Kelly Ripa.  But eight years later, his calls she’s still not taking.

Two actresses were arrested in that big scam about the parents who were bribing colleges to take their narisch kids. One is Felicity Huffman. She was in the “Desperate Housewives,” the TV show about the scheming yentas who hated each other – on and off the camera. The other one was Lori Loughlin, who played the nice girl on “Full House” and the Tess Trueheart types on those Lifetime Movies. Meanwhile, she’s married to this character Mossimo Giannulli, who’s made billions of dollars selling schlock T-shirts, and nobody has the beitzim to utter the word “mafioso”?

They ought to lock up all three of them and dump them in a turme like “Orange is the New Black.”

Enough I’ve said already.


Vocabulary

Beitzim is the Hebrew word for "eggs."  In Israel, as in this column, it seems to be the  vernacular equivalent of cojones in Spanish and balls in English.

Iberkern means "upset."  Grandma is polite enough not to overgeneralize, and so we can only guess whether the Windsors' worry is bissel (a little) or zeyer (rather a lot.)

Narisch is a German word that translates roughly as "crazy."  In Yiddish, narischkeit means nonsense.  (Ed: I'd use stronger language to describe the parental behavior in the Varsity Blues matter and also the narisch daughters' explanations, which amounted to, "Gee, I'd never have done that if I thought I'd get caught.")

Nudnick is a handy word for describing a boring pest.

Turme, of course, means prison.


Note

Grandma regularly drops unusual tidbits into her posts.  In this one, she raises the possibility, perhaps known to all but me, that Prince Harry may not be Prince Charles' son.    Curious, but who knows?

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Grandma visits a live television show.

It was my friend Adele Luskin’s 89 birthday coming up, and she wanted to do something special. All her life, she wanted to go to a TV show taping. She did manage to get on the “Price is Right” with her friend Shirley Heilman from their bowling league, but that was 40 years ago, and Bob Barker never invited them to: “Come on down!”

Adele’s nephew Brandon, a nice Jewish boy despite that graubyon of a mother of his, offered to get the tickets.

Adele’s first choice was “Ellen,” but a year it would take to get tickets. That’s because Ellen DeGeneres, like Oprah, gives away everything from tchotchkes to cash money to vacation trips.

Second choice was Judge Judy. In Hollywood she tapes, but no tickets are available because all her courtroom audiences are now paid actors.

And then there’s Dr. Phil. He’s here in L.A., but Adele thinks he’s a dybbuk who’ll give her the evil eye and make her confess she stuffed Kleenex in her bra at her wedding.  Go figure.

Finally, Brandon talked us into “The Jimmy Kimmel Live Show.” Oy vey, what a greis. Brandon, Adele and I went to the show in an Uber car driven by a zokn who smelled like Old Spice and falafels. This is how the kids get around nowadays? Feh!

Way back in the nosebleed section of the theater they dumped us, behind a crowd of shrieking schmendricks who stood up every time the Kimmel kid cracked wise with his Mexican sidekick Guillermo, who looked like he’d been into the schnapps. This we need?

By the time the first guest came out, two hours it was past my bedtime. A lovely actress (Regina King), dressed to the nines, kvelled about a movie she’s in (“If Beale Street Could Talk”.)

Next came a zombie actor, who kvetched on and on about breaking his hand in a fight (Jon Bernthal of “The Walking Dead”.)

Me? Enough already. Take me home.


Vocabulary 

Graubyon:  Vulgar, ill-mannered person

Greis, Zokn:  Old man

Schmendrick: A nobody

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular California columnist dishes on the three Jennifers and more.

Grandma

Jennifer Lopez is cavorting with Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player who has more nafkes than Doris Day has freckles.  You know they're getting serious now that he wants the ex-wife to slash the alimony payments from $115,000 a month to bubkes and some change.  JLo herself has more mazuma than monkeys have fleas, but she's 50 now, and wants a rich gonif to foot he bill for all the nips and tucks she'll need.

Jennifer Garner, who finally split from her shikker of a husband, Ben Affleck, is now running around with John Miller, a gonster macher who owns the CalifBurger restaurant, which is what?  It's nothing but a fancy-schmancy McDonald's without the clown but with prices up the wazoo.  

Me?  I go for the hot pastrami French dip at Langer's Deli.  It's to die for.  The best fast-food place is now long gone. It's Feltman's of Coney Island, home of the original hotdog.  They even spoke the mama-loshen there.

The other Jennifer, Jennifer Aniston, who was married to Brad Pitt for two minutes, long enough to dump her for Angelina Jolie, the queen of meshuggenehs, has now split from her other husband, Justin Theroux.  About him I know gornit.  None of his movies have I ever seen, and now they say the poor mensch is now seeing a psychoanalyst, which everyone knows is a Jewish doctor who hates the sight of blood.

And then there's Alec Baldwin.  Him I never liked.  He's so full of himself he looks gassy.  Now he's proven to the world that he's a k'nocker and a bulvan when he beat up an old man for taking his parking spot. (Editor's note:  Parking in Manhattan is a blood sport.)  His talk show they canceled -- the one where he was interviewing the Kardashians, as if they needed more exposure. 

Me?  I did like that Baldwin movie about the funny dybbuk ("Beetlejuice") with the tall girl (Geena Davis) who drove off the cliff with the other one (Susan Sarandon) in "Thelma and Louise."

Okay, enough already.

Vocabulary

This report is particularly rich in Yiddishisms, including several that are new to The Id.  Definitions follow.

Bulvan: a loud mouth or know-it-all

Dybbuk:  a malicious possessing spirit, the dislocated soul of a dead person.

Gonster macher:  a prominent man, typically wealthy.  Sometimes said gantse macher.

Gornit:  nothing.

K'nocker:  a showoff.

Mama-loshen:  Yiddish, the mother tongue.

Mazuma:  money.

Nafkes:  women of casual morals.

Shikker:  a drunk.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

After a restorative hiatus, our popular California columnist returns to praise Aretha Franklin and Della Reese and compare them with their successors.

Grandma

So sad I was when I heard that Aretha Franklin had died. One of the greats she was -- a real mechaieh. Once on TV I saw her sing a quiet little love song that stirred my soul and made me think of my Sidney and how I miss him. Beautiful. There will never be another Aretha Franklin.

I never got to see Aretha perform in person, but Sid and I almost managed to see Della Reese’s show at a nightclub in Harlem. That was before she was somebody. We went with Sid’s cousin, Leon Schmidlapp, a real nudnik. A wooden leg he had, and he did what for a living? What didn’t he do? He played the flugelhorn in a mariachi band. He sold 8-track tapes under the boardwalk in Atlantic City. He repaired TVs so bad that afterwards you got cross-eyed from looking at them. Oy, gevalt!

So, a nice table they gave us in front. The house lights go down, the spotlight comes up, and Della glides onto the stage. It’s at that moment when Leon reaches down and pulls a bottle of Schnapps (or who knows what!) out of his dummy leg, and out they toss us for bringing our own booze. So much for seeing Della Reese.  Oy, gevalt again!

Adele Luskin thinks Beyonce will be the next Aretha. Hoo-hah! She’s got no voice, that Beyonce. All she can do is wiggle her ample toches.

And then Madonna, who’s got some chutzpah going on TV to eulogize Aretha Franklin, and instead kvell about herself, and her own sordid career. She’s another one who can’t sing without the auto-lube (Auto-Tune.) Most of her public life she’s spent cavorting half-naked with shikkers like Sean Penn and Dennis Rodman, making movies nobody wants to see, and studying the Cabala. And did anybody see her on “Live with Kelly and Ryan?” So frumpy-looking she was in a shlock house-dress, I thought she was Ethel Mertz.

Madonna, bubeleh, you’re 60. Do us all a favor and get yourself to a rocking chair.

I’ve said enough already.



Editor's Note

Below is a photo of the dress Madonna wore for the Kelly and Ryan interview.

Here's a link to the event itself.  The Id cultural team believes Grandma's point merits consideration.  

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular California columnist discusses the often tangled course of love and reveals her secret crush.

Grandma

Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman are getting divorced again. Every three years they do this, but the “get,” they never seem to get. Such a bother it must be to split $140 million. We should all have such problems. 

Adele Luskin’s niece Shelley worked at the Palisades High School where the DeVito kids went. The two daughters? Naches! But the son? A mazik of epic proportions. Every week, they were calling his parents for a sizung. 

Shelley said that one afternoon, like a horror movie, terrified kids ran into her office screaming that a big SUV was rolling through the parking lot without a driver. A couple of boychiklech chased it down, only to find that Danny DeVito was behind the wheel. His head barely reached the dashboard. Probably he forgot his booster seat. Oy vey iz mir!

Jennifer Lopez is a singer and dancer on TV and has a cop show where her hair is always perfect. And she’s in movies nobody in their right mind would pay to see. Well, now she’s cavorting with a famous ballplayer -- not the one who hanged himself in jail (Aaron Hernandez), but the other one, who was with the Yankees (Alex Rodriguez). 

Those two I get mixed up. The A-Rod has a fancy shmancy apartment on Central Park West, with a parade of women going in and out, including  Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson and  Madonna, as well as floozies and nafkas.  

“Poor JLo!” say the tabloids, like she’s an innocent nayfish. Feh! Married three times, she’s had her way with busboys, chicken pluckers and the likes of Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Puff Ditty, and that sweaty Cossack (?) from the Dancing Stars Show.

And one last thing: Sean Connery, don’t listen to them. You’ve still got it, my besodik gelibter. You can leave your shoes under my bed anytime, Mister Bond. Grrr!

Note

Grandma's most recent post is particularly rich in Yiddish expressions, including several that were new to the Idiosyncratist.  After consulting several dictionaries, the Id offers non-definitive exegeses. (Please share corrections as necessary.)  Here goes:

besodik  --  secret

boychiklech -- darling young boys

feh!  --  yuck! pooh!

get  --  a divorce document


mazik -- a rascal or imp

mygelibter  --  from the German, mein gelibter, sweetheart, my loved one, 
                   my cherished one

naches  --  proud pleasure, special joy--particularly from the achievements of a child 

nafka  --  a somewhat promiscuous woman, particularly one seeking physical or 
                 emotional gratification

nayfish  --  a doormat, someone who lets others step all over him or her but does 
                  not complain

oy vey is mir!  --  woe is me!

sizung  --   a conference or meeting

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our California columnist reflects on recent losses.

Grandma

By December, so few celebrities had died that I worried my column was going to be about a few rock’n’roll nudniks  and a handful of sitcom shnooks. But Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher put the kibosh on that. 

Debbie Reynolds was a big movie star back when movies were movies and dinosaurs roamed the earth. She was in “Singing in the Rain” and “Tammy and the Singing Nun.” Only 84 years old. Still a kid. 

Her daughter Carrie was famous in the “Star Wars” movies as the girl with the bagel hairdo. What’s not to like about bagels? So sad. They died one right after the other like Siamese twins.

Zsa Zsa Gabor? As an actress she was a kalikeh. Famous she was for being famous, marrying nine men (one short of a minyan), and having tens of thousands of yappity little dogs named after her.  

Leonard Cohen I heard 100 years ago at the Rusty Nail. Even back then he was a kvetching old poet. A singer he wasn’t, but that didn’t stop him.  Oy! That was some voice. Canadian he was. Do they count? 

If so, then in mitske derinnen, Alan Thicke, dropped dead too. He was in the “Growing Pains” and later some genius talked him into doing a late-night show against Johnny Carson, who was still alive.  Better he should’ve hit his head against a wall. Who stays up that late anyway? Insomniacs, parents with a new baby, and up-to-nogoodniks. That’s who.

Patty Duke won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker.” Then she played twins on TV (A piece of narrishkeit), went all meshugge, and married that fast-talking little shmoozer with the Mexican name on the monster show.  (John Astin, who played Gomez on “The Addams Family.”)

George Kennedy the actor died. Me, I’m not sure who he was, but it’s always sad when a Kennedy dies, except for the old man, the farbissener nazi (Joseph P. Kennedy). You can look it up.

I’ve said enough already.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our California columnist shares post-election thoughts and an analysis of TV game show hosts. 

Grandma

About the election I’m not going to say a word. Except that Cher said if Donald Trump won, she was going to leave the planet. Well, Trump won, and she’s still here. Maybe she’s packing for the long trip. It’s going to take weeks to get her sequined schlock-house costume shmattes loaded onto her spaceship. 

Between you and me, she left the planet years ago when she told her first husband -- Sonny Bono, the short hairy mazik with the furry vest who was mayor of Palm Springs -- that Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon. With sense she’s loaded.

Trump I never liked, going back to his TV show, The Apprentice, where he fired has-beens off the island -- like Gary Busey, Geraldo Rivera, Amarosa, and Bethenny Frankel, the Real Housewife of New York who invented the skinny cocktail (not the New Jersey jailbird, Teresa Giudice.) Joan Rivers he never fired, and now it’s all over the place she cavorted with Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett, John F. Kennedy and Johnny Carson. 

Me? If I were to vote for a game show host for president it would be Alex Trebek. Not only is he smart like a mavin, but he has good hair -- not like Donald Trump, who looks like a krechtzing Mister Pumpkin Head topped with a swirl of whipped butter. 

My grandson Todd told me that Alex Trebek can’t be president; he’s Canadian. Maybe that’s why all these celebrities want to move there. Also because he’s such a looker, with or without the mustache. 

Art Fleming (the original Jeopardy host) was better looking than Gene Rayburn of the Match Game, but the Rayburn fellow, a shlemiel, was a regular dreamboat compared to Jack Bailey of Queen for a Day, who, with that Errol Flynn pencil mustache, looked like a used car salesman, or Dino DiNucci, a draykopf bookie who ran a numbers racket from our basement apartment years ago.

As for Hillary Clinton, enough already with the burtching. Fine she’ll do. She has enough of that Arab money to live like the Queen of Sheba for the rest of her life in Chappaquiddick (Chappaqua?), or wherever.

I’ve said enough already.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Grandma

Our popular California columnist shares unfortunate observations about celebrities behaving badly.


Last month, I went out to dinner with Adele Luskin. What with her bursitis, cataracts and shingles, she doesn’t get out much, but she’d do anything to get away from Phyllis, her nudnik of a schnur.

To the West Valley Olive Garden she drove us. Such a nice one, too -- not so many Italians -- and the breadsticks are to die for. About four dozen between us we stashed in our purses.

Five o’clock rolls around, and we’re waiting for our meal, when in walks that zhlubby-looking actor, whose name I can’t remember, with Nobody Famous. They sit down two booths from us. He was in that TV show with the wife who was in the cockamamy cult with Tom Cruise and John Travolta, but she (Leah Remini) got out of it, and later he was the mall cop (Kevin James).

So the waitress comes to their table and recites the Olive Garden spiel. Then to Kevin James she says, “Do you have any questions?” And he tears into her like a beggar on a blintz. “You do not speak directly to me!” He yelled. “You speak to my personal assistant! You are not to look me in the eye!” And on and on.

Such a shtuss he made that the poor girl ran off in tears. The big shtunk! I wanted to jump up and shove a sharopnikel in his grauber pisk, but I couldn’t find even a breadstick -- so deep they were buried in my purse.

Later, at the beauty parlor, when I told Gigi the story, she shrugged and said, “Old news. He’s known as one of the biggest shmucks in Hollywood.”

She went on to say that even worse than Kevin James are Christian Bale (arrested for yelling at his family on a press tour), Justin Bieber (caught on video spitting on his fans from a balcony), and Jerry Seinfeld, who slammed his eggs on a hotel concierge’s desk and demanded they be cooked again.

And in her neighborhood, Meryl Streep is known as The Nasty Lady for always cutting in line at the grocery store and being a major oysvorf. 

Oy!

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Grandma

Our popular California columnist continues to encounter celebrities in unexpected places. 

One day last year I was sitting in Dr. Rosenbaum’s office with my great-granddaughter Traci, who drove me to my appointment.

(She’s the one with the ring in her nose. So big is this ring, you could hang meat from it. But such a lovely girl otherwise. Me, I almost said, “You know, bubeleh, while we’re here, maybe we should have Dr. Rosenbaum snip it off and let the insurance pay for it.” But for peace in the family, I kept it zipped. Why klop der kop in der vant?)

While we were there, a woman walked in with a cat. She was middle-aged. You know, about 65-70, and all decked out in some fancy-shmancy shmatte -- a long satin dress, pearls, and matching pumps -- all this at 11:00 in the morning!

So up she goes to the receptionist and says, “I need to see a doctor. My cat has arthritis.”

“How does she know the cat has the  arthritis?” I whispered to Traci. “Does Mittens have trouble shlepping through “Chopsticks” on the Wurlitzer?”

And what kind of a meshuggeneh brings a cat to the doctor’s office anyway?  Back and forth she went with the poor loksh of a receptionist. (Who needs a kopdrayenish like that?)

Then out came the other doctor, the short hairy one with the accent. (Him I never liked.)

And in all this mishegoss, to me the crazy cat lady looked and sounded very familiar. Who could she be?

Then about a month ago, I was sitting under the dryer at the beauty parlor and spotted her on the cover of the National Enquirer. The woman with the cat in Dr. Rosenbaum’s office was none other than Richard Simmons. Different shmatte, same shmendrick.

Like Bruce Jenner (aka Caitlyn Jenner), the Deal-A-Meal bez is now cavorting in public dressed like Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard.” Gigi says he’s now trans-something-or-other. Drag queens are what they used to be called.

And all this goes to show you that the National Enquirer is right, whether it’s about Mel Gibson,  Whitney Houston, Tiger Woods or Richard Gere with the squirrel in his pants.

 I’ve said enough already.


Editor’s Note:  The Idiosyncratist was unfamiliar with the final Richard Gere reference and dug up an old Village Voice piece describing and perhaps debunking it.  Read if you wish:  http://bit.ly/29Li76y

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip.

Grandma

Our California columnist on death and celebrity family news.


Prince died. Not Prince Charles, but the singer from Minnesota. Him I don’t know much about, except he sang, danced the boogaloo, and liked the color purple -- not the movie with Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg, but the actual color. Maybe he liked the movie too; I don't know.

Me, I never liked purple. With nothing it goes, except maybe black. Good for sitting shivah, I suppose. He’s also famous for changing his name to a picture of a tchotchke nobody could pronounce. May he rest in peace.

Tom Cruise, who’s in all the movies I never see, long ago married has-been actress Mimi Rogers, who got him started in that meshugge religion with the space monkeys living in volcanoes, like John Travolta.

Then her he divorced to marry Nicole Kidman, who later dumped him to marry that Aussie hillbilly singer Keith Urban. Next, Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes, who was a nayfish teenybopper in the “Dawson’s Creek.”

All this time, he was best friends with Jamie Foxx, who was Ray Charles in the movie. No surprise was it when Katie dumped Tom, secretly married Jamie, and is now pregnant. And Tom Cruise? He’s farbissener.

And speaking of pregnant, Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend, Rihanna, is knocked up with his baby. Her, I never heard of, but the girls at the beauty parlor say she’s a hootchie-kootchie type of singer and a chain-smoking pothead who dresses like a nafka. His mother is auf gehoketh tsuris.

And what mother wouldn’t be? Except maybe hers.

Remember the movie “Cleopatra” with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton? It was a farshtinkener bomb that almost bankrupted the studio.

Who in their right mind would want to remake such a movie? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, that’s who. She’s a loksh, down to 70 lbs, can barely lift her head, and together they have enough kids for their own reality show.

Yet, this they need? Feh!

I’ve said enough already.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular California columnist dishes on Cher and George Clooney, and, as a bonus, shares a recent snapshot from her collection.

Grandma

George Clooney said he’s going to quit acting because he doesn’t want to look like an old shlump in front of the camera.  He’s 54. That’s old? If that’s old, he can park his walker in my space anytime. 

Him I remember as dashing Doctor Ross on "ER." 

I didn’t recall ever seeing him in a movie until Adele (Luskin, not the single-named  zhlubby kvetch singing: “Oy-oy-oy! I’m so sad. Nobody loves me. Give me another award.”), reminded me we’d seen the piece of narrishkeit where he was chasing Arabs in the desert (“Syriana”), but I say it was Charlton Heston. 

Do I believe George Clooney is going to put the kibosh on his acting career? A nechtiger tog!

Every month Cher weinens she has one foot in the grave from the Epstein-Barr. So a Broadway musical about her life she’s writing and a tell-all book spilling the dirt on her sordid affairs with both men and women. Such a platke-macher, that one. 

This she’s kvelling about? Try staying married to the same man your entire life -- one who incessantly hummed “Auf Wiederseh’n” and whose dentures clicked every time he chewed. That’s true love. 

Me, I had plenty of opportunities for the hanky-panky with famous men. At a B'nai B'rith function, Dan Dailey said I looked like Claire Trevor and winked at me. But did I jump out of my flimsies and hop into bed with him? Chas vesholem! Later Sylvia told me he was gay, but I didn’t believe it, not with that deep voice of his. 

And as for cavorting with men and women, that’s no megillah. Two birds you can kill with one stone by inviting Caitlyn Jenner over to the house.  Naked she’s still Bruce.

And who would have recognized this hulking golem at Ralph’s in Encino? Not me. It was Oscar winner Geena Davis. Oy!

After and before

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular columnist remembers the recently departed. 

Grandma

It’s been years since I did a dead celebrity list, so this one I’m doing early before any more bodies pile up.

Judy Carne died. She was the little loksh on “Laugh-in,” who got a frosk in pisk every time she said, “Sock it to me.” That you call a career? She did. 

To Burt Reynolds she was married for ten minutes, but, hoo boy, everybody and their brother knew he slapped her around whether she wanted it or not. Then he canoodled with Dinah Shore after she dumped her husband, the putz George Montgomery, who dressed like the paper towel lumberjack. (Brawny?)  

Later Burt Reynolds cavorted with Sally Field and then married Loni Anderson. They still look good, those two. But him? Like The Crypt Keeper with acid reflux.

Jean Nideth died. 91 she was. Jean lived in Queens, not too far from Selma M. (Selma’s full name I’m not giving because she’s still alive and reads everything). Selma, she had a weight problem. Plain talk: she looked like she was smuggling kugel in her pants. But in four months, she went from muumuus back to pedal pushers when she lost 20 pounds. 

Her secret? She and her nextdoorekeh went to Jean Nideth’s house for diet tips. Long story short, Jean Nideth invented Weight Watchers and sold the company later to Heinz for $71 million. That was before John Heinz died and left his fortune to the wife Teresa Heinz, who married John Kerry, who would have been president if he didn’t look like the golem on "The Addams Family." 

Ten years after selling Weight Watchers, Jean Nideth was flat broke and said: “Eh, The Lord giveth, and the croupier taketh away. Let’s nosh, girls!”

Yogi Berra died at 90. A real mensch he was. Everybody liked the man. My grandson Todd’s favorite quotes: “The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.” And when Yogi’s wife asked him where he wanted to be buried, he said, “I don’t know. Surprise me.” 

Farewell, Yogi.

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Our popular guest columnist reports on the lives of aging entertainers.

Everybody’s getting old.

Grandma

Frank Sinatra would have been 100 years old this year. For you pisherkehs too young to know from nothing, Frank Sinatra was the Frank Sinatra of his generation. Who can forget the bobby-soxers with the saddle shoes and pony-tails screaming their heads off like banshees? 

We should all live so long, even though he didn’t.

Sandra Bullock is 50, but she doesn’t look a day over 31. Her I always get mixed up with the one in the underwear running around the spaceship to get away from the squirming kishka that popped out of a dead man’s mogn like a jack-in-the-box, Sigourney Weaver. Oy, that one gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Johnny Depp is 51, and his life is a plate of hot shtuss. He’s famous for being in the “Jump 21 Up!” show with the son of the Italian shlimazl from  “Hollywood Squares,” Dom DeLuise. He was also engaged to Wynona Rider until she turned to a life of crime and brought tsuris to her family. Later he was the Disneyland pirate. 

Two kinder he has by a French actress nobody ever heard of. Her he left to marry an American trayfeneh named Amber Heard. Ten minutes later she left him for a woman who looks like Van Gogh and dresses like the Willy Wonka.

And finally, spotted in the Ralph’s parking lot was the MacGyver on TV, Richard Dean Anderson. He’s 65 now. With nothing but a cup of noodles and some popsicle sticks, he could build an atomic bomb or some other cockamamy contraption to save us all from the stinking Nazis. 

Richard Dean Anderson

More tzaddikim like him is what the world needs today.