Bette’s the Biggest

Bette Midler’s gonna be the biggest Star around, that’s what Peter says. I mean she wasn’t even through her second song — a steamy version of Bessie Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues”: “He’s a deepsea diver with a stroke that could not go wrong” etc. — and Peter is turning to me and announcing in that don’t-contradict-me tone of his that she’s got it; she’s a Star. (And Star should be capitalized, he advises. I don’t know whether it should be all the time, but in this case maybe it should even have quotes around it to give it a sort or tacky/Taki prominence like those names scribbled in subways: “The Big Timers”

— which is appropriate cause Bette dedicated one of her first songs to New York’s graffiti star Taki 183; I bet he is hot, she said.)