Sustaining Her Objections to Fat

Sick of O.J.? Want to wear a bikini this summer?

Here comes the first book inspired by the trial that not only has nothing to do with it but will also trim your tummy! It’s Susan Estrich’s “Making the Case for Yourself: A Diet Book for Smart Women” (Riverhead).

“I normally write about politics and law,” says the USC law professor, “and it was the middle of the O.J. Simpson case and I felt the system was going to hell. I was feeling fairly disgusted with that, and everywhere I went, the only thing I found myself wanting to talk about was how I lost all this weight.”

Indeed, the erstwhile presidential campaign chief for Mike Dukakis does funner things than lose elections. She loses weight, and she does it like a pro.

A lawyer, that is.

“I’ve been on 500 different diets, every diet known to woman. The breakthrough came for me when I began to look at the world of dieting the way I look at a legal problem.

“I have hundreds of diet books from college quite literally on my shelf. The chemistry books I threw away. The diet books I kept because I knew I’d need them. Understanding them as codes from different countries, I figured out the essence of the basic diets and why they work.” The book, due out next month, is an elaborate pep talk, crammed with practical tips.

To put it delicately, Estrich had been tipping more than the scales of justice. To put it less delicately, at one point she was bulging out of her size 14s. “I would go into the stretch mode to see how far it could stretch.”

That was 50 pounds and three years ago. After she had her second child, Estrich shrank to a chic size 4 in six months. Now she’s all of size 6. On a bad day. She did it by applying the same determination she uses to succeed in her career.

“Any system that will get you to eat less and work out more will end up with you losing weight. But dieting isn’t about your hand or your mouth. It’s about your head. Dieting is a total head game.” Come to think of it, that does sound like being a lawyer.

And don’t you dare sniff at Estrich’s claim to feminist credentials.

“I’ve spent years reading feminist articles that caring about beauty was stupid and sexist. It just made me feel embarrassed as well as ugly. A better answer is, wanting to be thin can be healthy. Vanity can work for you.

“There are a lot of ways in which women can become very, very sick in this culture and end up doing self-destructive things because of their desire to be too thin. People also rob banks, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with wanting a little money.”

In which case, we recommend writing a diet book.

“If it builds me a beach house, I’ll put on sunscreen and my new bikini--it’s the first one I’ve worn in 28 years.”

*

Bravo, all you philistines out there. You were so cool opening night of “Peter and Wendy” you could have passed.

For New Yorkers.

The New York-based troupe Mabou Mines was, shall we say, shocked when L.A. jumped to its feet to cheer its renegade puppet show at the Geffen Playhouse. The Mines figured that its take on J.M. Barrie’s tale of relentless childhood was a bit too, well, New Yorky.

“We got a really hot response in New York,” says archetypical avant-gardist, Mines director Lee Breuer. “It’s insane for a puppet show to sell out for six weeks unless you’re [“The Lion King” director] Julie Taymor and you have Disney behind you.

“This is an intellectual conception of a masterpiece. So I really wondered whether this particular culture, which is star-oriented and flashy, would bother coming out for a puppet show even if someone said it was great.”

We may have flash, but we also have class. (OK, and a bit of declasse.)

Anyway, “Peter and Wendy” doesn’t seem all that New Yorky to us. Consider the fact that the playtime modus operandi of the director’s 7-year-old son, Wah, inspired much of Breuer’s play, particularly Peter Pan’s flying about. “I lifted half the show from him,” Breuer says. Hey, isn’t plagiarism an L.A. tradition?

That was Wah you read, by the way. At one point, Breuer had named his youngest son after his spectacle “The Warrior Ant.”

Breuer is quite a creative guy, given the fact that Wah is only part of the Breuer bunch. His family embraces several understanding women and assorted oddly named kids--Clove; Lute; Tyappa, which means teddy bear in Russian; and Mojo. “It’s a voodoo sex charm,” Breuer says. “It’s kind of a joke.”

All the grown-ups work with the company. Go figure.

With all that creativity to support, Breuer was relieved to find that being a starving genius finally paid off when he won a $360,000 MacArthur grant this year.

“I’ve been in debt for 44 years,” says the 61-year-old. “That’s a problem with growing up in the ‘60s--you don’t treat money with much reality and the MacArthur will just get me out of debt and get my kids some money. I’m overjoyed because I was sure I would die in debt.

“What’s funny is when they were trying to reach me to tell me I won it, my phone was disconnected. Ruth [Maleczech, Breuer’s longtime spouse] walked over and nailed a note to the door. Believe me, I never knew what it was to have the relaxation a few bucks brings. I used to run from telephone to telephone to see if I got any work. Now I walk a little slower. I don’t stop at the phones.”

*

So you think gossip stinks? Wrong. It’s spicy.

“It’s the nature of the subject,” says gossip expert Cindy Adams. “It can’t be boring.”

Coty’s fragrance folk bottled the intangible and slapped the New York Post columnist’s name on it. And now Adams is schlepping here and wide to spread the word. She sailed through L.A. recently to appear on “The Nanny” as a gossip maven.

Needless to say, our little town is a constant source of revelation, and even a die-hard celebrity information specialist like Adams was surprised by the understated Fran Drescher.

“I had thought she’d be a little bit bitchy,” Adams trills. “She not only wasn’t, she was so warm and so loving and the set was a gemutlicht little neighborhood.”

Love ya, babe.

The lovefest took off the first day when Adams met Drescher’s little family. “She brought her little Pomeranian, Chester, who sat on her lap. She was feeding him with her same spoon. They were eating from the same bowl of cereal.”

Yum. For those who care to clone Adams’ sense of style, here’s a telling detail we recall from our earlier incarnation as a New Yorker. (We’re in recovery now.) Adams used to run around wearing a ring whose stone stretched roughly from her pinky to her forefinger.

Adams refuses to deny it.

“My birth certificate, honey, was built on a bugle bead. I’m not understated. What can I tell you?”