Mindy’s new show a winner
MINDY Kaling’s new NBC comedy, “Champions,” premieres March 8.
“It’s about a “gay, biracial 15year-old son trying for Manhattan’s fancy performing arts school,” she says. “The show’s full of appealing weirdos,” she says. “And I’m in it,” she says.
She’s its producer. She wanted a role so she slept with herself. If that’s politically correct these days, who knows.
“It’s the best comedy cast of any of the new shows,” she says. “Not ripped from the headlines, like ‘Law and Order,’ ” she says. And if you want her to say anything else: “It’s super funny,” she says.
About awards
THE Academy Awards. And may the best hairpiece win. Designers slit the dresses in the front — losers slit the winners in the back.
Hollywood. Where anyone over 30 is booked into assisted living.
Even if the show runs longer than Manafort’s legal bill, if the red carpet shrinks to a rug, if gala parties aren’t, if men get treated like compost, even if there are the what’re-you-wearing-now-that-yourcrotch/crack/butt/ boob/back/leg/ chest/nipple/navel/ sides are showing — remember: We have to make Hollywood great again. The once-itsy Independent Spirit Awards, held outdoors, informally, the afternoon before the Oscars on sunny, windy Santa Monica beach, has grown larger and starrier. The indies are now the biggies in the movies. In 1987, Spike Lee won their very first ever best feature prize for “She’s Gotta Have It.” In 2018, winner Spike is a presenter. And co-chair Ava DuVernay will present something new. The Bonnie Award. It supports fe- male filmmakers mid-career. Chloé Zhao gets it. Their Bummer Award will be up for grabs.
Oscar parties on
THOSE dissing this year’s Vanity non-Fair party and missing Harvey’s yearly gala should know p.r.’s Ed Lozzi and Roger Neal are doing a black-tie viewing job. RSVPs include Gary Busey, Paul Sorvino, Fran Drescher, Diane Ladd, Jon Voight, Renée Taylor, who’s getting an award, and 350 others. Hollywood Boulevard’s Max Factor building. A sit-down dinner. Prizes like cruises and goodie bags, which they (mind, p.r. men only speak in superlatives) claim have gifts worth $23,500.
The first time
MONDAY was the 25th anniversary of Feb. 26, 1993’s first World Trade Center bombing. Here, in part, is a retired FBI agent’s memory:
Sept. 1, Pakistan Air Flight 703 brought a sinister 25-year-old Iraqi. No visa. He said he sought “political asylum.” If returned home, he’d suffer “execution.” Officers at JFK ran his ID into a computer base. No red flag. However, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef “was a highly skilled terrorist” using an alias.
Photographed, fingerprinted, told when to appear before US authorities, he was released. No surveillance. His mission? To see blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, whose mantra was “Spill American blood on its own soil.” Pending his US Immigration and Naturalization Service date, and still minus a visa, he opened an account, laundered through Middle East banks, to finance the WTC bombing.
It killed six, injured 1,000. Had the building collapsed, deaths might have exceeded 20,000. Yousef never attended his INS hearing. With another passport, under the name Abdul Basit Abdul Karim, he, still unwatched, flew home.