Celebrity Mound

Junior Mints, Yoo-hoo, Drake’s Coffee Cakes, puffy shirts: These are all things Jerry Seinfeld has endorsed – at least in his alter ego on his classic sitcom. Now, add Microsoft software.

Seinfeld will be a key pitchman in a planned $300 million fall advertising campaign for the software giant, a person familiar with the plans confirmed to The Associated Press on condition on anonymity because the deal has not been formally announced.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the plans. Citing people close to the situation, it reported the comedian will be paid $10 million for appearing in ads with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

It’s Microsoft’s latest move to try to capture some of the cool quotient that rival Apple has appeared to win so effortlessly.

But for younger consumers especially, can Seinfeld turn the image tide for Microsoft?

“Seinfeld does represent sort of a challenge,” says Brian Steinberg, television editor for the weekly advertising magazine Ad Age. “He’s not Dane Cook. He’s got a more sophisticated everyday take on things. He often comes across as a questioner of conventional wisdom but also can be kind of a crank. It’s a fine line to walk when you’re dealing with a younger person.”

Steinberg did point out that the firm producing the spots – Crispin Porter and Bogusky – is known for creating commercials that appeal to young males, particularly in its campaigns for Burger King.

Seinfeld has shown himself to be a superior promoter in the past, particularly for American Express (which also featured Patrick Warburton as Superman) and in selling his Dreamworks animated film “Bee Movie” last summer.

For “Bee Movie,” which Seinfeld co-wrote, co-produced and voiced, he also created 20 “TV juniors,” which seemed less like commercials than one-minute bite-sized bits of comedy. The extensive promotion of the film began with him dressing up as a giant bee at the Cannes Film Festival.

“You gotta sell it,” Seinfeld told the AP last year. “I’ve never been uncomfortable with that aspect. I don’t feel like it’s beneath me to sell what I did.”

But Seinfeld’s greatest triumph – the nine seasons of “Seinfeld” – ended more than 10 years ago, which means that many young computer users were still watching cartoons during his pop culture dominance.

Of course, the show is still on nightly reruns and Seinfeld has been active on the standup circuit. There have even been efforts to bring “Seinfeld” to younger demographics. Sony Pictures Television, which distributes “Seinfeld” in U.S. syndication, is holding a 26-city promotion in a cross-country bus tour of colleges.

Calls to Seinfeld’s agent and manager went unreturned Thursday.

Vista, Microsoft’s latest operating system that launched with the slogan “The Wow starts now,” has received mostly negative publicity since its release last year. But sales have been strong, since more than 90 percent of PCs sold worldwide run Windows.

Apple’s ad campaign “Get a Mac” pits a coat-and-tie clad older guy (John Hodgman) representing a PC, against jeans and T-shirt-wearing Justin Long, who plays the Mac. The commercials have also poked fun at Vista.

Steinberg said this latest campaign by Microsoft shows that the rivalry between the software company and Apple is reaching the intensity of Coke and Pepsi’s cola wars of years ago.

It’s also possible Seinfeld seems more like a Mac guy, Steinberg said.

After all, it’s a Macintosh that’s seen in the background of his apartment on “Seinfeld.”

Funnyman Jerry Seinfeld cheated death in the Hamptons when the brakes on his vintage Fiat failed and the car flipped over, police said yesterday.

Miraculously, the comic walked away “without a scratch,” wife Jessica told The Post.

“He was a little shocked when he walked in and it started to dawn on him what happened,” she said. “I was extremely relieved and grateful and I’m feeling very lucky that nothing happened.”

“It could have been a lot worse, obviously, and thank God it wasn’t. He’s fine,” she said.

The dramatic accident occurred at 7:40 p.m. Saturday on Skimhampton Road in East Hampton, said East Hampton Police Chief Todd Sarris.
Seinfeld was alone in the vehicle, driving north toward Montauk Highway.

“The brakes went bad,” Sarris said. But Jerry kept his head.

“He had to pull the emergency brake,” which Sarris said still failed to halt the two-door vehicle as it headed into traffic on the highway.
Seinfeld then cut the wheel to the right and “the car rolled over” and stopped yards from the intersection – just short of other vehicles.
The 1967 Fiat BTM rolled onto the passenger side, then the roof, and finally came to rest on the driver’s side.

“His actions probably avoided a very serious accident,” Sarris said. “I think he was a little shaken up, with justification.”

Police rushed to the scene, but the comic did not require medical attention.

The accident was chalked up to mechanical failure. Seinfeld had not been drinking and no summonses were issued, Sarris said.

A friend following Seinfeld in another car drove him to his nearby East Hampton mansion.

The banged-up car, which was dented on all sides as well as its roof, was towed to a local garage and later back to Seinfeld’s estate, sources said.

Jerry brushed off the whole thing.

“Because I know there are kids out there, I want to make sure they all know that driving without braking is not something I recommend, unless you have professional clown training or a comedy background, as I do. It is not something I plan to make a habit of.”

Seinfeld is an avid car collector. He is believed to own 47 Porsches – making him one of the world’s largest collectors of the German sports cars. None of them has ever belonged to actor Jon Voight.

While Jerry owns numerous Porsche 911s and Boxsters, he used the plainer and utilitarian Fiat to get around – not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In 2004, he completed work on a multimillion-dollar garage on West 83rd Street to house his prized cars. The renovation of the two-story building took five years following complaints from neighbors.

His favorite vehicle is a $700,000 Porsche 959 – of which only 269 were built. Unfortunately, the vehicle is not road-legal in the United States so Seinfeld uses it only for exhibition purposes.

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DESPITE the success of “Bee Movie,” don’t expect any more films from Jerry Seinfeld . “Jerry is . . . as he would say, he’s at the end of his career,” his wife, Jessica, told Barbara Walters on her weekly Sirius satellite radio show. Jessica said the movie “took four years out of our life . . . My children are not going to see their father for 23 days [while he's promoting it].” In the future, he’ll just do stand-up. “That makes him happy. He goes for 36 hours,” Jessica said. “I like to have my bed to myself once in a while.”

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Jerry Seinfeld’s trip to the Holy Land got so much hype it rivaled news of key upcoming Mideast talks. The Jewish comic visited Israel for the first time in decades to promote his new animated movie about bees, and he was treated like royalty – literally.

Few entertainers get to meet both the Israeli prime minister and president. Seinfeld saw both, as well as touring the official Israeli Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem – the route taken by visiting world leaders.

Newspapers devoted nearly full-pages to his trip. And references to his humor crept into serious items in the news.

“Yada, yada, yada,” said TV political analyst Amnon Abramovitz Sunday about the Mideast meeting called by President Bush, quoting one of the best-known phrases from Seinfeld’s TV show.

Seinfeld, who arrived Friday and left Sunday, was in Israel as part of a world tour to promote his film, “Bee Movie,” his first major project since the end of his TV series.

Seinfeld wrote the script and stars as a bee who is unhappy with his life manufacturing honey for humans.

The comedian himself seemed awed by his reception. He said it was quite a contrast to his last trip to Israel in 1971 as a 15-year-old volunteer on a kibbutz collective farm.

“I would be in the fields, and nobody wanted my autograph and nobody wanted to take their picture with me,” he told reporters in Tel Aviv. “They just let me hack away at those banana leaves, and no, I didn’t meet the prime minister even once.”

Jerry Seinfeld says his wife isn’t guilty of “vegetable plagiarism.” Jessica Seinfield’s “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food,” published this month by HarperCollins, explains how to hide nutritious vegetables in traditional recipes so children will eat them.

The couple have three children.

“So there’s another woman who had another cookbook – and it was a similar kind of thing, with the food and the vegetables in the food – and my wife never saw the book, read the book, used the book,” the 53-year-old comedian said Monday on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.”

“But the books came out at the same time. So this woman says, `I sense this could be my wacko moment.’ So she comes out … and she accuses my wife. She says, `You stole my mushed-up carrots. You can’t put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. I put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. It’s vegetable plagiarism,’” Seinfeld joked.

“I love the term `plagiarism’ for this little event,” he said. “Because it used to be you had to really take a theme from a major novel, some sort of literary narrative. Now, you’re in your kitchen making brownies, you sneak a little spinach in there, your name’s dragged through the mud.”

“Are you worried now that discussing it on the television program here will actually incite or exacerbate the circumstance?” asked host David Letterman.

“Well, then it gets me another shot on your show,” Seinfeld responded.

“The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals” by Missy Chase Lapine was published in April by the Running Press, which acquired the book after it was turned down by HarperCollins. In a statement released Tuesday by her publisher, Lapine said: “It was painful to be called names on national TV when I am just a mom who wrote a cookbook to help parents get their kids to eat well.”

Jessica Seinfeld has said she’s never seen or read “The Sneaky Chef.” Lapine has said she isn’t accusing anyone of anything, but added that it does “hurt” to see someone given credit for her method.

Both books are best sellers. “Deceptively Delicious” has more than 1 million copies in print, thanks largely to Jessica Seinfeld’s Oct. 8 appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s television program. Sales for “Sneaky Chef” have jumped since the allegations emerged against Seinfeld, with Running Press ordering a new printing of 60,000 copies, for a total of 150,000.

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Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger

Tina Fey

Ralph Lauren and Ricky Lauren

James Gandolfini, Marcy Gandolfini and son Michael

Bee Movie star Jerry Seinfeld says that studying Scientology made him a better performer — and not because it gave him some good material.

The 53-year-old comedian tells Parade magazine that a teacher in high school turned him onto the religion almost 30 years ago. “It was interesting. Believe it or not…it’s extremely intellectual and clinical in its approach to problem-solving, which really appealed to me.”

Though Seinfeld has not continued with Scientology, he tells Parade that it helped him get his start in comedy. “In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful. I took a couple of courses. One of them was in communication, and I learned some things about communication that really got my act going.”

Could the same be said for the rest of Scientology’s Hollywood devotees? The Church counts musician Beck, John Travolta, and of course, Tom Cruise, among its members. Seinfeld explains that as an entertainer, Scientology “really helped me onstage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit…Not too much, because then it’s obnoxious. But you can’t be short of them either, or you won’t control them.”

Another draw for Seinfeld — the gadgets. “They have a lot of very good technology,” he tells Parade. “That’s what really appealed to me about it. It’s not faith-based. It’s all technology. And I’m obsessed with technology.”

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JESSICA Seinfeld has spoken for the first time about her very brief marriage to theater heir Eric Nederlander, whom she left for Jerry Seinfeld. “I had left a relationship where I was sort of supposed to be someone I wasn’t. That relationship was never going to work, and I met someone who was heaven and earth to me,” she tells Time. Jerry adds that two months after he and Jessica tied the knot, “She had one of those [home pregnancy test] sticks that you buy at the drugstore. I was sleeping and she started tapping the stick on the pillow. So I opened my eyes. It was great.”

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