Celebrity feets

A while ago... while tripping through the chilly airs of Bryant Park I noticed a small crowd of photographers gathered in the southwest corner. Something was up! I crunched through the dead leaves toward the hustle and bustle of a crowd of maybe 50 stand-arounds... and became one of them. I overheard a woman mentioning that Mayor Bloomberg, Kenneth Cole, Harry Belafonte and Natasha Richardson were going to appear with a kick-off of a new AIDS campaign entitled "We All Have AIDS". I wondered what would be new about it and decided to stick around for a few minutes.

Mayor B. and Kenneth C. spoke for a couple of minutes while the batallion of cameras flashed-up the otherwise desolate and lonely park at 10 in the morning. And although both speakers were emphatic about raising our consciousness toward this planetary plague, the only new thing about the presentation was the dedication of a silvery tunnel-like exhibit which contained the bas-relief footprints of 20 or so additional celebrities. After the short speeches and the photo-ops with Natasha and Harry, I decided to check out the "star-studded-feet-of-clay".

It was cute... that's about the best description of a row of foot-bottoms, which looked as though they would elicit a chuckle if you deigned to tickle them as you passed by. Whoopy Goldberg's were chubby, Elizabeth Taylor's were plump, and Barry Manilow's were HUGE (what a shwanshtukah he must have)! What a thrill to have to look at the bottom part of a celebrity and then consider that "we all have aids". I guess that's new.