Donald "Trump Daddy" and the art of hip-hopping

Lenin's posthumous makeover; Dennis Hopper plays golf; Muhammad Ali's gift to Jesse Ventura.

By Amy Reiter

Apr 9, 1999 | Yo, yo, yo, homey. Donald Trump is gettin' jiggy wid it. Or at least that's the rap at Vibe magazine. In the hip-hop bible's May issue, writer Nancy Jo Sales dubs the lily-white, singularly unhip Manhattan real-estate mogul "Trump Daddy" and "the first African-American billionaire." The Donald was "hip hop before he himself knew," writes Sales of the man who claims not to listen to hip-hop music. He's rich, he's flashy, and when people dissed him, "his response was indeed, Fuck off," says Sales. Sounds a lot like Ivana's and Marla Maples' responses, too.

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A spit and polish for Vladimir

Look, kids! No more waxy buildup! V.I. Lenin, that long-pickled Soviet leader, is back on display and looking fancy and fine in his Plexiglas box in Moscow's Red Square mausoleum this week after undergoing a very special sort of spring cleaning.

The body of the diminutive Bolshevik revolutionary, embalmed and gaped over like a fine Fabergi egg for the 75 years since his stroke-induced death, was removed from public perusal in February so that a team of scientists could perform painstaking preservation work. According to the Interfax news agency, the good doctors applied ointment to Lenin's face to prevent the skin from decomposing, took a few tissue samples for study, soaked the body in solution and -- our favorite! -- changed his coat and tie. 'Cause who would want to be caught dead in a too-wide tie? And you know how embarrassing that embalming-solution ring around the collar can be 

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In other news from beyond the grave ...

Unsightly stains and out-of-date clothing aren't the problem for David Blaine, the Manhattan magician and Moomba-frequenting paisan' of Leonardo DiCaprio who had himself buried alive under Donald "Trump Daddy" Trump's Riverside South development earlier this week. (And no, relieving himself isn't the problem, either; he flushed his system of solid waste by eating no food for days before his publicity-stunt entombment, and is making do with a handy gadget called a "Trucker's Helper.")

What is the problem? The huge crowds that have gathered to get a glimpse of the purple-silk-pajama-clad hipster, buried in a transparent coffin beneath a three-ton, see-through water tank, before his exhumation on Monday. (Celebrity visitors have included Drew Barrymore, Ed Norton and ear-pulling comedian Carol Burnett.) "They've turned David Blaine into a latter-day Lenin," griped the New York Post, noting the increasingly long lines of grave-gapers policed by the magician's handlers. Of course, observes the paper, such anticipation to see the "prostrate 'corpse' elevates Blaine from mere human to deity." Instant deification? That's better than anything David Copperfield's ever pulled off.

Next Page: "The Greatest" bequeaths his gloves to "The Body"

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