The Oak Room at the Plaza was chockablock with funny women, celebrating Joy Behar's new television show on HLN, to premiere on September 29, where this funny woman will opine on pop culture to politics. It's a yenta convention, observed one partier. Introducing Joy, Barbara Walters quipped that she thought it would be Star Jones or Rosie who would graduate from “The View” -neither was present. After Walters' very public contretemps, they were not expected. And Joy Behar who will retain that coveted View seat countered Barbara's accolades, saying that Libya's President Mouammar Kadhafi had a built a tent in Bedford just for his interview. He was waiting for Barbara now. (In fact, at the UN across town, world leaders were clogging the streets. Outside the Plaza, sat a motorcade with chauffeurs talked Turkish into their cell phones.) And so the evening went: Lorraine Bracco could not walk in her skyhigh platforms. “What was I thinking? She said stumbling over for a photo. My kids insisted,” said the former shrink on the Sopranos who told me she was on her way to LA to film a pilot for a new HBO series. Suze Orman  was not dispensing advice on money for the evening, but for this occasion comedy is recession proof: champagne, filet and a magnificent salmon. Others on the scene: Joan Rivers, Angela LaGreca, Hoda Kotb, and guys too, like Larry King, Bob Balaban and Reverend Al Sharpton. Susie Essman said she wrote up the experience of having her bridal announcement on the pages of the New York Times-that's chapter 11 of her new book, “What Would Susie Say?” (October, 2009). “Curb Your Enthusiasm” just started its new season and, as Susie Greene, when it comes to Larry, she holds nothing back. I tell her she cracks me up giving it to that Larry David, unrelenting, even if he is an SOB. She laughs, “Oh, he can take it.”

Regina Weinreich