Dish, Dirt and Drivel - Happy B-Day, Tammy Faye!

CRIB TALK: The writer and star of Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Tyler Perry, is getting a lot of attention for his rags-to-riches yarn - made all the more interesting by the fact that the 35-year-old filmmaker was homeless in Atlanta just six years ago. These days, Perry’s squatting about 25 minutes outside the city in a $5 million, 12-acre estate called - I kid you not - “Avec Chateau.” The grounds house two prayer gardens, a waterfall, tennis court, amphitheater, and negative-edge pool. Sounds modest.

RESTAURANT TALK: We only thought it couldn’t get any better (or more expensive) than Bacchanalia. Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison, owners of the acclaimed west side restaurant, will soon open the Quinones Room underneath the existing establishment. The new venture (named for James Quinones, general manager of Bacchanalia’s sister restaurant Floataway Café, who was killed in a car accident last summer) will seat 36 people once nightly, Tuesday through Saturday, for a prix-fixe menu of eight to 10 courses. With the space set to open in late April (it was originally scheduled to open last month), you actually might have time to save up the $75 to $95 cost per person ($120 to $160 with wine pairings).

CLUB TALK: In case anyone was planning on doing some celebrity-sighting at Vision over the next month or so, hold your plans - the Midtown club has temporarily closed for renovations. It’s unclear what the owners of the nightspot, popular with the more posh of the hip-hop set, plan to do with the stark minimalist interior. But really, how much more modernized can the 2-year-old club get?

FAMILY TALK: Earlier this week, Jay Bakker, son of the televangelist Jim Bakker and his ex-wife, the raccoon-eyed Tammy Faye, was spotted at a Piedmont Avenue post office wrapping a big furry purse in pink tissue paper. It just so happens that Tammy Faye Bakker’s birthday was that very day - March 7. A furry purse: Just what Mom always wanted!

dirt@creativeloafing.comIf you have any tantalizing tidbits about anyone or anything worth knowing about, send them my way. Really, I won’t tell a soul.??