NEW YORK — Marriage is more important than work for Colin Jost, husband of Scarlett Johansson.
The “Saturday Night Live” star canceled his comedy standup stop in Dallas last weekend to support ScarJo while she’s promoting her new Wes Anderson move “Asteroid City.”
“Colin wants to be a good husband and father, and decided it was more important to be in New York with his family than being on the road,” said my source.
Jost still has seven stops on his tour.
****
Vernon Reid, of Living Colour, is worried about artificial intelligence.
“The public has been blindsided. We’ve been waiting for the future to arrive. We are at the beginning of a concept we are not sure where it will lead,” Reid told me.
Reid — born in London, raised in Brooklyn, and living now on Staten Island — will soon tour Australia and the U.S. with Xtreme.
He’s proud of the way his biggest hit “Cult of Personality” is still ingeniously relevant 35 years after its release.
“Neon lights, a Nobel prize/ When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies,” the lyrics say.
“You won’t have to follow me/ Only you can set me free/ I sell the things you need to be/ I’m the smiling face on your TV/ Oh, I’m the cult of personality.”
Still true. “Politicians are referred to as rock stars,” Reid said.
A tech expert spent several hours interfacing with Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which declared it loved him, and said he should leave his wife.
The trouble with AI is “it will go off the rails and tell you things that aren’t true,” Reid said.
“You can ask a computer to compose a song like Bob Dylan’s ‘Highway 61′ and then have him sing it,” Reid said.
“We are at the dawn of that. Experts are flummoxed. There is no agreement. AI experts are being very cautious about releasing this into the wild.”
Children will soon have computer-generated best friends.
Reid realized how dangerous AI is when “it came back with something that cracked me up. That’s scary. It’s not going to be stopped.”
****
How did Gionna Daddio become a professional wrestler with the ring name Liv Morgan? Credit Hooters.
“I grew up a huge wrestling fan. I grew up with four older brothers,” she told me.
“I was working at Hooters and met Joe DeFranco — he trained Triple H — I pled my case.”
DeFranco invited her to train for a week at his gym in New Jersey and was impressed enough to let her keep going.
“I got a tryout for the WWE just after my 20th birthday,” said Daddio, 29.
She defeated Ronda Rousey to become the SmackDown women’s champion before injuring her shoulder six weeks ago.
“I got kicked in the shoulder and tore a couple things. Accidents happen,” she said. “I get paid regardless, so that’s really nice.”
While recuperating, she’s developed ShopLiveMore, a line of organic beauty products.
“I started making soap. After a couple weeks, I was like, ‘I’m really good at this.’”
Daddio has also acted with roles in the TV series “Chucky” and the upcoming movie “The Kill Room” staring Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman.
But wrestling has put a crimp in her love life. “I’m totally single. When you are on the road every week of the year, it’s hard. There’s nothing like it in world.”
****
Marc Anthony seems to be on the outs with his teenage kids from Jennifer Lopez.
The twins Emme and Max feel partially abandoned by him since he hooked up with his current wife Nadia Ferreira, a Paraguayan beauty queen, said my source. They were not at the wedding in January.
Nadia, 24, just gave birth to Anthony’s seventh child. Anthony, 54, has two with each of his former significant others.
His twins with J. Lo are spending most of time with her and Ben Affleck and his three children with Jennifer Garner.
****
“Power” actor Joseph Sikora needed all his power to escape dozens of strippers at the Hustler Club.
“The Sopranos” star Federico Castelluccio, private eye Bo Dietl and writer Anthony Haden-Guest were unscathed as fans ripped Sikora’s T-shirt trying to get his attention.
Six of the club’s oversized security guards had to spring into action to rescue the TV star, who sprinted up the club’s staircase to the roof and back again until he could get a secured table.
Earlier in the night, things were a lot quieter at Mediterranean restaurant White Olive, where Sikora celebrated his birthday with producer pal Noel Ashman.
****
Richard Turley, a lawyer who worked with Roy Cohn and Andy Warhol and fed gossip to the Suzy column of Aileen Mehle, died June 13 at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. He was 79.
The Oklahoma native, who lived in a Bronx townhouse with generations of dogs, produced the 1975 Broadway musical “Man on the Moon” starring John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas.
Turley worked with restaurateur Jimmy Rodriguez, who led him on a jet ski tour around Manhattan, and produced dinners for Jason Binn’s Gotham magazine featuring the likes of Walter Cronkite, Rev. Al Sharpton and Donald Trump.
He will be missed.
****
Sharon Bush — who was married to Neil Bush, son of President George H.W. Bush and brother of President George W. Bush — will never forget how bossy her mother-in-law Barbara Bush was.
Sharon, who graces the cover of Park Magazine with her daughters Ashley and Lauren, said she was was sitting with President Ronald Reagan at his post-inauguration White House luncheon when Barbara Bush came over.
Barbara critiqued the president’s handling of a tartufo, a ball of ice cream in a hard chocolate shell which is difficult to cut.
“She started telling the president how to use his utensils and how to cut it, and he had just been inaugurated president. He handled it so well,” Sharon said. “I was just in shock, but that’s how she was.”
****
Al Pacino, Meg Ryan and Conan O’Brien have all had their homes designed by Campion Platt.
The interior designer has now partnered with House of Ecologie to create a collection of furniture made out of recycled household garbage from New York that has been transformed into a wood-like material.
Bjørnulf Østvik’s company Ecogensus hopes to eliminate landfills across the country.
Platt said, “The genius of repurposing our daily refuse to make luxury furniture captured my environmental spirit in this otherwise throwaway world.”
The first pieces from their collection will be shown at the Holiday House Hamptons Designer Showcase opening July 8 in Bridgehampton.
———