Rich & Famous Penn - 7/15/00

I've been flying all over the place. I was in Minnesota to give a corporate keynote and then I went to Chicago to hang with Tony's Chicago Clown Posse and then I came back to the Slammer for one day. One of the reasons was to do this knockoff of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" show about my house. The host is Donna Hanover, who is Guilianni's (ex?)-wife. It was an all Canadian crew and I started them off showing my attitude by telling them, "Listen, as far as I'm concerned Canada is just a parking lot for Chicago, and don't think I'm one of these Americans that wishes they were Canadian, okay?" We got along fine, but I've learned you have to deal with Canadians right up front or they get uppity. They spoke French and that, sadly, is their privilege here in the USA (even though it's mandatory in their country.)

I really liked Donna. I showed her around the house and we had a great talk. I told her that one of the reasons I left NYC and sold my loft was because of Guilianni taking over and taking away the obvious, silly, freedom of Times Square. "I got nothing against Disney, but let's leave them to FLA and Cali, okay?" I talked a lot about Atheism and Libertarianism, because it's hard to understand the Slammer without those concepts in your head. I also talked about no-drinking/no-drugs. Donna seemed to be interested and care which is just nutty. I asked her how she felt about her role, if any, in helping Hillary, and she said she never said a word about politics in any way. I was very cool with that.

She said that Al Goldstein asked her out and I pushed really hard for her to go. I told her how great Al is and how cool it would be, but of course, it would be too nutty, and she's not nutty. I talked a lot about my family. It was a really good tour. When I made jokes about Guillianni and stuff like that, it had the feeling of monkeying around with a friend, it wasn't adversarial at all.

So, I had a good time giving a Slammer tour and it was very nice to meet her. After the whole interview was over, she took me aside and talked about how she didn't agree with me on everything but how much she respected my ideas. I have to say, I told her I felt the same way about her, and I did. She seemed like a good person.

I don't know the name of the show, but how many shows can she host, right?

Penn

<back