September 21, 1999

STREISAND: COLOR HER READY TO PLUG HER NEW ALBUM

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

THE DIVA AND HER CONSORT: Presumably because she's got a brand-new album coming out, Barbra Streisand - normally a bit too big for her britches to talk to the press unless there's an excellent reason to do so - is not shy about telling publications like USA Today some of the dynamics behind her choice of such tunes as Gershwin's "Isn't It a Pity (We Never Met Before?)."

"It has a lot of meaning for us," the Streisand woman says, with reference to her current husband, former "Marcus Welby, M.D." second banana James Brolin, "because we both wish we had met years ago."

But then we wouldn't have such good stuff to put in the column now.

THE DIVA AND HER CONSORT - LOUDER AND FUNNIER: Meantime, James Brolin-Streisand himself talks to USA Weekend about his and his wife's recent extracurricular activities.

"We just had the first 30-day vacation of our lives," James recalls, adding that they spent those days in England and Ireland and that the trip made them lust for further adventures in a travel vein.

"What if we took a house somewhere, like in Tuscany, for three or six months?" James says they asked themselves. "We love to travel, but we don't mind going back to the same places; we're easy." And not just easy but very, very rich.

AERODYNAMICAL NEWS: It seems we've done little recently except keep you apprised of the amateur airplane-pilot activities of wealthy stars like John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And here we have word that Cruise has purchased for himself a couple of high-ticket aircraft, namely a Gulfstream Jet and a World War II fighter plane. For you it would be a luxury; for Tom it's a bare-bones necessity.

TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP: When it, comes to the wonderful, if somewhat delusional, world of real estate billionaire Donald Trump, we scarcely know where to begin. For one thing, Donald is not only still toying with the concept of running for president of the United States, he has a book coming out that will put his political philosophy in a nutshell for avid readers.

"I am the American Dream, super-sized version," he writes in the tome, according to the New York Daily News. "I'm going to do everything I can to see that regular Americans can fly as high as their wings will take them."

Nor is this all, for Ivana's ex-husband also sees fit to offer samples of his foreign-policy thinking.

“North Koreans and others are building nuclear bombs.... They're not building those weapons for the hell of it," he observes. "They're going to use them if they can. We have to face the fact that the best thing may be a surgical strike to disarm them."

TRUMP, TRUMP, CONTINUED: The really exciting Trump-related news, however, is that Donald's most recent former missus, Maria Maples, says she's going to get married to someone named Michael Mailer.

Did we say "someone"? How thoughtless of us, since Michael, being the male offspring of Norman Mailer and a filmmaker in his own right, is, like Maria herself, a dyed-in-the-wool celebrity.

Our friends at the New York Post, rather than waste time on less central matters, get right to the essence by contacting Donald for his views on the union.

"I am very, very happy for them both," he says. "I met him briefly and he seems like a nice guy. And he's getting a very nice woman." In other words, no "strike" is called for, surgical or otherwise.

'RASHOMON' REVISITED: Speaking of the Post, a recent ish contains an item suggesting that screen siren Salma Hayek either is or is not becoming romantically involved with Tony Lord, who is her director on the film project "Shiny New Enemies."

Salma's flack: "They are not dating, they're friends."

The Post's "spy": "I've seen them in the hotel bar together in the evening, and when they leave they take the elevator to the rooms together."

CELEBRITY JOURNALISM: We have our moments when we still harbor the strange, very reactionary notion that magazine editors are the persons best qualified to edit magazines. Once again showing us how wrong we are is news that Demi Moore is going to helm Marie Clare mag's special millennium issue.

MORE NEWS THAT MAKES VERY LITTLE SENSE: Speaking of women and/or magazines named Marie, here's a report that Marie Osmond is planning to star in "Annie Get Your Gun” next summer.

ENGLISH AS A THIRD, FOURTH OR EVEN FIFTH LANGUAGE: We leave you with a quote from Melina Kanakaredes of the TV show "Providence," from an interview she has given Self magazine, with regard to her decision early in her career not to change her name or her hair.

"I want to be me who got there," Melina explains, "not some other girl with some other name." Believe us, Melina, it's you who got there.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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