Clinton envisions a fashionable lunch date

Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a 20-city book tour, is thinking about shoes.

Not comfortable shoes. Her feet don’t hurt, though she does ice her hand at night to relieve the pain. “The hardest part is signing all those title pages and shaking people’s hands,” she says.

Rather, the U.S. senator from New York is wondering what kind of shoes taste best. She’s heard that Tucker Carlson, the conservative co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire,” has promised to eat his shoe if she sells a million copies of her memoir, “Living History.”

She’s close. Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, so sure that the first printing will sell out, has already ordered another 600,000.

“I am going to be curious as to what sort of shoe he chooses: flip-flop or soft leather,” she says.

She doesn’t know if she’ll attend his culinary feat. Juggling her Senate duties and the book tour -- which brings her to Vroman’s in Pasadena on Sunday -- has forced her “to cut out nearly everything else.”

She can’t name the last book she read. The last movie she saw was “Bend It Like Beckham,” more than a month ago. Maybe she should rent Charlie Chaplin’s silent 1935 classic “The Gold Rush” and watch him boil and eat his boot, laces and all.

Or maybe Carlson should rent it. But he’ll need a lot more culinary help: He’s also promised to eat his tie.

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-- Gayle Pollard-Terry