Slow moving holiday tourists and presidential motorcades be damned. Nothing could keep the faithful away from Michael’s today. With the place decked out in its holiday finery, the mood was like a swanky office party on steroids.  While the usual suspects and a cool visitor from California (producer/composer David Foster) huddled over their tables deep in conversation, there was a little lunch for 14 in the middle of the dining room. I snagged one of the guests, Melissa Gorga, my favorite ‘housewife’ on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, for a chat about the knock-down, drag-out cat fights on last month’s reunion show and to get the real story about her on- and off-camera relationship with her fellow cast mate and sister-in-law, the charming Teresa Guidice.

Melissa, who is an absolute knockout in person, told me that the RHONJ cast (minus Jacqueline Laurita) shot the reunion special the day after wrapping the yet-to-be-aired Season 4, and the women were all seething about battles and betrayals the viewers haven’t even seen. “We had just had a huge blow up the night before, and that was what was on everyone’s mind. It was so hard not to say anything. That’s why Jacqueline wasn’t there,” Melissa tells me. “It was very confusing for us, and we were constantly trying not to say things about things that hadn’t aired yet. Bravo is so sorry they shot them back to back. I don’t think they are ever going to do that again.” Teresa “tried to set me up” and is back to her old tricks, Melissa told me, without giving anything away. After all the kissing and making up seen at the end of last season, Melissa’s husband Joe Gorga is “disgusted” with his table tipping sibling once again. Big surprise.

continued…

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Crude Awakening: Al Gore’s Syriana

Robert Redford‘s new, earthy Sundance Channel programming, dubbed “The Green,” had its screening and splashy launch party in New York. Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack‘s A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, one of the documentaries debuting on the channel, is the sort of like Syriana if it was produced by Al Gore. But unlike Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, the film leaves you with nothing but a feeling of grim, helpless despair, tossing aside each and every potentially earth-saving alternative fuel option (biofuel, solar power, wind power, hydrogen) as pipe-dreamy hyperbole. The message: “The planet is f*cked, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Seriously, don’t bother.”

Which is probably why Sundance president and CEO Larry Aidem was in a combative mood at the after-party (held at the equally-earthy ABC Carpet & Home on 18th Street). Aidem interrupted Paulette Cole, ABC’s CEO and creative director, to admonish the partygoers for talking during her speech. “You can treat me like a piece of shit [but not her],” Aidem said. “Please, shut the f*ck up.”

Shortly after Aidem’s rant, Rufus Wainright played a pretty solo piano set.

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