Drew Carey Writes a Blue Streak

Many moons ago, comedians would ride the club circuit around the country, pray for a break on “The Tonight Show” and then hole up for the winter in Vegas. These days, they’re parlaying their breaks into big fat book contracts. So many comics are pumping out books that they’re flying onto shelves--and publishers hope, off them--like bonbons at Lucy’s chocolate factory.

Take Drew Carey. Please.

“They just offered me a lot of money and am I supposed to be stupid and say no?”

Down, boy. What’s a cool $3 million between friends?

Hyperion just came out with the cresting Carey’s literary debut, “Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined,” which is about, well, guess. Carey has a particular fondness for blue humor. Even tastier are the dirty jokes he likes to tell in front of some innocent bystander like, oh, Mister Rogers, his co-awardee at a Television Critics Assn. ceremony not too long ago.

“It was the 14-year-old in me, you know.” Uh, yeah.

Carey’s book also has a bit of requisite tell-all. He writes briefly about his depressions, suicide attempts, fatherless childhood and sexual molestation. Not to mention the dread “Drew Carey Show” episode that triggered the unmentionable and unthinkable--an actual diet.

“They had to put up a billboard of me with my shirt off at a Warner Bros. lot. And, oh my god, it was so embarrassing.”

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When is a feminist not a feminist?

When she insists on equal pay for equal work but refuses to be known by that word feminist, right?

Not exactly, says U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-Calif.).

“I think people agree with everything feminists are for, so therefore I think it’s mainstream to be feminist,” she says. “But a cause by any other name is just as sweet.”

Indeed, it was a feminist fest at the Directors Guild the other day. More than 700 women’s rights advocates--many of them men--hailed the 10th anniversary of the Feminist Majority Foundation and its honoree, co-founder and philanthropist Peg Yorkin. The event raised nearly $200,000 for the foundation’s campaigns to defend abortion clinics, oppose Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan, get more women into elective office and raise awareness of women’s issues.

The group has its work cut out for it. Jay Leno, whose wife, Mavis, helped organize the event, polled Angelenos on the street about their feminist savvy. Such as it was.

“What is a suffragette?” Jay asked in a short film.

“The opposite of a dominatrix.”

The evening--which featured such luminaries as foundation president Eleanor Smeal, National Farm Workers Assn. co-founder Dolores Huerta, U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, (D-Md.), and U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, (D-Los Angeles) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove)--wasn’t all talk and no action. It was politics a la L.A., with plenty of singing and dancing feminists.

Yorkin, ex-wife of “All In the Family’s” Bud, made headlines when she donated $10 million to the foundation in 1991. She’s still stumping for the cause, bemoaning the rise of the Promise Keepers as “a backlash to feminism.” Because “in case you were wondering,” she said, “I am a feminist.”

She and Boxer have more in common than politics. They’re tiny feminists who nonetheless managed to tower over the throng. With help. Confided Yorkin from her podium perch: “I use the Barbara Boxer box.”

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Ted Danson was at the Sky Bar the other day looking spiffy from his gray suit to his toes. Make that his right pinky.

“Ted, would you like to do your nails?”

Why, yes, Ted would. His toes, please. Maybe just a finger.

“I’ve got to go to Venice and work out at Gold’s Gym,” Danson said, “so I’ve got to plan this right.”

OK, so Danson isn’t exactly walking on the wild side these days, at least not that we know of. He was celebbing in support of OPI’s new line of wacky nail lacquer, Nicole, which in turn is supporting his environmental charity, American Oceans Campaign, as well as Rock the Vote, the Starbright Foundation and Gilda’s Club. OPI President George Shaeffer presented an advance of $400,000 to the groups, from the Nicole line’s anticipated profits. Never underestimate the power of Cellular Celery and Pink.Dot.Com.

Meanwhile, Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen can’t seem to stick with dry land. They recently navigated the San Juan River through Colorado and thereabouts and plan a similar trip in Arkansas.

“Actually, Mary is the river rat,” says the damp Danson. “We’re going to try to go down as many rivers as possible.”

Probably an excellent plan of recovery after their short-lived brush with playing journalists on CBS’ “Ink.” Danson says he now has more empathy for us ink-stained types. He says executive producer Diane English would write naughty topical jokes about Danson’s friends that made him wince, but when audiences responded with a huge laugh, he rolled with it.

“I’ve always mocked the press for being thoughtless about going after people,” Danson says, “and there I was going for the laugh. It made me feel less holier than thou.”

Hey, being thoughtless is a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

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Lifelong Angeleno and writer Eve Babitz was driving home from a birthday party in April when she dropped a cigar ash on her chiffon skirt. The skirt went up in flames, and Babitz suffered third-degree burns from her calf to her waist and second-degree burns on her hands when she tried to put the fire out.

An uninsured freelancer and the author of “L.A. Woman” and “Black Swan,” Babitz spent five weeks in intensive care. Now her medical bills are nearing $500,000. Friends such as Harrison Ford, Jackson Browne, Steve Martin and Bonnie Raitt have donated more than $125,000, and a benefit will be held at the Chateau Marmont on Thursday to raise more. The event from 4 to 9 p.m. will include a silent auction of jewelry, paintings, lithographs and photographs from Laddie Dill, Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, John Baldessari, William Wegman, Dennis Hopper and others.