The Transom

To the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala on Monday, May 5, themed “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” Gossip Girl star Blake Lively wore black gloves and a snug black Ralph Lauren gown involving feathers. She said that her favorite superhero was “Spider-Man. Cause he’s awesome! He gets to swing around, and, I don’t know....” Accompanied by her onscreen (and rumored offscreen) boyfriend, actor Penn Badgley, Ms. Lively had come straight from a photo shoot and had done her hair in the car. “I have no idea what I look like,” she said, adding: “I’ve always seen pictures growing up, being a teenager, and thought, ‘I’d love to go to that, a night just to dress up in ball gowns.’ And here I am!”

Here everyone was, at least in fashion and showbiz and society circles. Oh, to have the superpower of invisibility and be able to flit up the stairs and into the great halls beyond!

Vogue editor and hostess Anna Wintour was the first to arrive, at 6:33 p.m., wearing a Chanel gown adorned with what appeared to be seahorse tails and accompanied by daughter Bee Shaffer, who required two men, including the formidable Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, to carry the train of her voluminous blue Nina Ricci dress up the stairs.  read more »

Dylan does candy! David dates George Bush’s comely niece! But what does Ralph Lauren’s firstborn, Andrew, contribute to society?

Well, he’s a producer of This Is Not a Robbery, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, April 26. It’s a documentary about J. L. “Red” Rountree, who became a serial bank robber at the natural age of 86 and passed away in prison in 2004. “I don’t really watch documentaries,” Mr. Lauren said, “so I thought that if I was going to do a documentary, I wanted to do it with a story that people would relate to.”

Mr. Lauren the elder arrived with wife Ricky at an after-party at Marion’s Continental by car and driver, wearing an elegant gray suit with suede-patched elbows and running shoes with orange reflector stripes. Andrew, wearing a bit of his mother’s lipstick on his cheek, walked them around the party to the film’s directors, Lucas Jansen, Adam Kurland and Spencer Vrooman—“Want to meet my parents?”

When Andrew was in his 20s, he fancied himself an actor, appearing in films like Far Harbor and Getting in. He started an eponymous production company to further his thespian career, but has used it mostly to finance independent films like G and The Squid and the Whale. “I look up to people who wore many hats: Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen and Orson Welles,” he said. Someday, he’d like to—yes—direct. And he’s not averse to more commercial projects. “But I don’t want to make the flavor-of-the-month movie to make a hundred million dollars,” he said. “I want to prove myself; I’m hoping I’m doing that.”

Socialite Allison Sarofim is also getting involved in movie production.

Ms. Sarofim, who grew up in Houston, moved to New York seven years ago. Her father is the famous Egyptian-born financier, Fayez Sarofim, a.k.a. “the Sphinx.” Her mother, Louisa, sits on the board at the Menil Collection (art). Ms. Sarofim has acted, attended culinary school and worked at Le Bernardin. In recent years, she’s become known for her Halloween parties, which last year included a troupe of dancing midgets.

On Friday, April 25, her first produced film, Lake City, premiered at the Tribeca PAC theater. Ms. Sarofim also has a cameo playing the role of a hardscrabble hooker who gets beat up by the film’s drug-dealing villain played by … Dave Matthews!

After the screening, Ms. Sarofim hosted a bash at her West Village townhouse, of course. Among her guests: hotelier André Balazs, art dealer Larry Gagosian, director Brett Ratner, actress Marisa Tomei, designer Cynthia Rowley, Vogue editor Hamish Bowles, musician Bryan Ferry and pricelessly named Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis.

“Typically, I host private parties, and this had a different business element to it,” Ms. Sarofim told the Transom later on the phone. “But I can honestly say I was very comfortable. I think people from all those different worlds really liked socializing together.”

Ms. Sarofim took it as a good sign that the film’s stars, Sissy Spacek and Troy Garity, stayed till 2:30 a.m. “Larry Gagosian was so excited to meet Sissy Spacek because he’s a big fan,” she said.

She and the film’s writer-director team Hunter Hill and Perry Moore have started a production company, Sixty-Six, with three more projects in the pipeline.

But all you ghouls out there lucky enough to be in Ms. Sarofim’s Rolodex can breathe easy: Her legendary Halloween bashes will go on! “Those are productions,” she said. “And I really feel that this is a continuation of that.”

On Friday, April 25, Redbelt, a riveting David Mamet cops-and-con-men drama set in the world of professional jujitsu, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The cool table at the after-party, held at the Honey nightclub on West 14th Street, included Mr. Mamet and his wife, actress and chanteuse Rebecca Pidgeon; author Salman Rushdie; the actors Joe Mantegna and Ricky Jay, who are in the movie; and comic genius, novelist and playwright Steve Martin, wearing a fedora.

Mr. Rushdie said he loved the film. “I just think it’s so unusual now to have a real story that somebody really wrote,” he said. “Films seem to have simpler and simpler and simpler narratives.”

Which Democratic candidate is playing better political jujitsu?

“It’s been quite a bout. You started off thinking Obama’s a lightweight, Hillary’s a heavyweight, then it all turns the other way around, and now it’s turned back a little bit.”

Next, Mr. Martin, whom we’d last seen in 1985 outside a movie theater in East Hampton, with Paul Simon and Chevy Chase, when he’d given us the same skeptical squint we were getting now. Is there a line from Redbelt that encapsulates the Mamet code?

“There’s always a line that’s either this line or similar to it in a Mamet movie that says, ‘You didn’t ask for the money? You didn’t ask for the money!’” he said. “All right.”

The “all right” meant the sound bite had been granted and the conversation was over.

We made our way over to Mr. Mamet, who has a purple belt in jujitsu. Our last conversation, in 1996 at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble, had not ended on a positive note. We apologized for the incident, which he didn’t recall, and told him how much we dug the movie.

“That’s great!” he said. “Well, it’s about a guy who goes on the journey that every hero goes through—he goes from a safe place into a dark place and has to suffer to achieve some sort of enlightenment.”

On the fringes of the table was a lit’ry contingent: Mr. Martin’s Kirsten Davis-resembling wife, writer and former New Yorker staff member Anne Stringfield, and the novelist Paul Auster. Mr. Auster expressed no interest in having a chat.

On Monday, April 28, in the subterranean auditorium of the New York Public Library, Vanity Fair hosted a cocktail hour and convocation of experts grandly titled “Redesigning the World: A Green Way to the Future.” And environmentally concerned New Yorkers Mary Richardson Kennedy (wife of Robert Kennedy Jr.), NBC Universal’s Ben Silverman, and public-relations consultant Ken Sunshine (whose clients include green freaks Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurie David) were all there to partake in the fun.

Former NBC Nightly News anchorman Tom Brokaw, who served as moderator of a panel that included Google CEO Eric Schmidt , told the Transom that he’s already noticed global warming causing droughts near his ranch in Montana. “We raise bison, which is an energy-efficient crop because they graze off of the ground efficiently and are lower in fat than turkey or chicken,” Mr. Brokaw said.

We blanched at the idea that the mild-mannered Midwesterner might personally slaughter these poor beasts. “No, I don’t kill them,” he said. “We have someone who slaughters them and then we sell them.”

Actress Edie Falco ducked in from the rainy weather sporting a sleek, boyish haircut and a casual trench coat with flats. “Graydon Carter invited me,” she said, looking up from her BlackBerry. “I’ve seen enough information on the Discovery Channel to know that larger things are happening than I can see here in New York.”

At around 7:45 p.m. on Monday, April 28, writer Carl Bernstein was mingling at the cocktail hour before the PEN Literary Awards at the Museum of Natural History, Coca Cola in hand, looking very healthy. “I ride a bike and listen to a lot of music,” he said. “I mostly listen to classical but also rock. I just listened to the new R.E.M.” His younger son Max is a rock musician and blogs about it on The Huffington Post. “Everyone should go check it out.”

“I’m not a blog man,” said Irish author Frank McCourt, in his melodious brogue. “I’ve read two in my life. I really don’t like to be sequestered in a room with a screen. I’d rather sit in a bar and listen to some guy uttering platitudes. You need time to think for yourself; I can’t absorb it all anymore. A book is enough, and a bar.” He gulped some more red wine.

Then the writer Gay Talese and his wife, Nan, an editor at Doubleday, swept in. Mr. Talese professed some weariness with PEN. “It’s very quick to judge lack of candor in other countries,” he said, with a mischievous, contented look on his face. “Like this Don DeLillo thing about signing petitions against China... Oh man, don’t get me started.”

But the Transom had and there would be no stopping him.

“I so will not sign that little circular letter under the auspices of PEN and with the distinguished Don DeLillo showing us the way, uh-uh, leave me off. I want China to have a wonderful Olympics!”

And another thing: “Believe me, if tonight someone says, ‘Now in memory of Norman Mailer, our former president, I’m going to get a glass and throw it in the air!” He said that in neglecting Mr. Mailer for too long, the organization had lost the right to celebrate his legacy.

Writer Michael Cunningham scoffed at Mr. Talese’s criticism. “The PEN awards will be at Gay Talese’s funeral,” he said. “I can’t imagine an era when writers are so disregarded as to be coming out against any attempt to recognize any writer under any circumstances. And Norman Mailer could write rings around Gay Talese.” Oh, snap. “Don’t quote me on that.” Oops!

Playwright Tony Kushner was gabbing away merrily with a clutch of bookish-looking women. He said he is currently reading The Rest Is Noise, by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, and lots of stuff on Abraham Lincoln, for the screenplay he’s writing.

“When you’ve got a play that’s getting in trouble with some right-wing asshole group in Illinois, you can call on PEN and they’ll write a letter,” he said.

Co-chair Tina Brown, looking glamorous in a black blouse with a plunging neckline (hello, boys!), began the ceremony with a tribute to Mr. Mailer, crediting him for, among other things, founding this party. Mr. Talese elected to pump his fist rather than hurl his glass.

The evening, which honored author Toni Morrison, was emceed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Plastic surgery expert Alex Kuczynski left early to see her newborn son, Maxime, named after her grandfather. The big blond bouncing boy had just been born 11 days earlier, via surrogate.

Move over, Paul Sevigny, there’s a new party in town: Julio Santo Domingo’s mysteriously named Sheik n’ Beik.

The venue changes from week to week. On Thursday, April 17, it was Kush Lounge on Christie Street. The week before it was Le Royale on Seventh Avenue. But fear not: Mr. Santo Domingo, the son of Colombian billionaire Julio Mario and uncle by marriage to socialite Lauren Davis, has created a Facebook page to keep guests apprised! “He’s starting off like all the other young DJs,” chuckled one observer. “Doing the gigs he gets. But yeah, it’s funny that the people that come to support him are some of the richest and most beautiful in the city.”

Indeed, Ernst Hannover, who used to date designer daughter Margarita Missoni before she moved back to Paris, and his brother Christian—their father Ernst Sr. is married to Princess Caroline of Monaco—are among Mr. Santo Domingo’s dancing acolytes. Christian, as well as self-described fashionista Vanessa Von Minckwitz, are listed among the group’s administrators.

“But he’s good,” the source affirmed of the DJ’s skills.

Partygoers describe Mr. Santo Domingo’s sound as “German electronic” and the general mood as sultry. “It’s a no-scene scene,” said one. “It’s about being there dancing, not looking at anybody, even though everybody knows everybody else.”

Mr. Santo Domingo was said to be on a plane to Tokyo when the Transom tried to contact him. Perhaps a karaoke night is next!

According to a source, socialite Olivia Palermo’s longtime dream of having her very own jewelry line is finally coming to fruition this summer. “I think she chose her favorite pieces from a selection,” said this person. “I think that it will bear her name, and of course she will be the face of it.”

Ms. Palermo was slightly less definite about these plans when reached by the Transom. “I might want to do a jewelry line,” she said. “I’m very into vintage and Art Deco.”

Also! Socialite artist Eneas Capalbo is releasing his second book of portraits, published by Valentino, later this month. In May, they will be on display for a night at the designer’s boutique on the Upper East Side, and the artist is planning on having several private dinner parties to celebrate.

“I’m interested in portraits because I like to have a keepsake of my friends,” said Mr. Capalbo. The new book is a batch of fresh (if well known to the upper crust) faces, including Andrea Casiraghi, Violetta Caprotti, Baroness Marion Lambert, Marjorie Gubelmann and Fiona Scarry—a slightly more Euro bent than before, the artist allowed. “It just happened like that,” he said.

Dita Von Teese, 35, née Heather Renée Sweet, grew up in Rochester, Mich., and currently resides in Los Angeles. She began stripping when she was 18 and has since become a modern-day burlesque icon and ambassador for brands such as MAC and Cointreau, the latter of which installed the porcelain-skinned seductress in Suite 1204 at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South on Monday for a marathon session of photos and interviews.

Perched on a sofa, her Louis Vuitton shoes barely reaching the floor, Ms. Von Teese recalled a recent visit to an L.A. strip club with an actress researching a role. “Crazy Girls, I think,” she said. “And I wanted so badly—’cause I used to work in a strip club for eight years—to get into it with her ’cause I used to do lap dances and all that stuff. I think, ‘Oh, it was so much fun.’ There’s no press there, there’s no journalists there—no offense! There’s no cameras.”

What does she like about New York? “I like roasted chestnuts,” said Ms. Von Teese. “I don’t know. I like to go to museums.”

She said L.A. and Orange County got her act more because of the thriving rockabilly scene out there. In New York, people sometimes see her in her red lipstick and powdered face and say, in hushed tones, “She looks like she’s in a costume.” Lame! However, Ms. Von Teese said she really digs the raunchy version of burlesque that the Box puts on.

“It was definitely an American invention,” said the starlet of the dance form. “And I’m proud of the fact that it’s a real American thing. But … I think I’m more popular in the mainstream in Europe. Here in America is the only place where you really hear, “I don’t get it. She’s nothing but a glorified stripper.”

Divorced from rocker Marilyn Manson early last year, Ms. Von Teese said that unlike, say, Beyoncé, she does not have an alter ego onstage. “I think a successful burlesque show has to do with the real girl’s real personality coming out,” she said.

Of course, there are other secrets, including gluing pasties to her nipples with heavy-duty spirit gum from Germany, “and having to rip it off … along with maybe a few layers of skin.” Yee-ouch! “You can just feel the burn,” Ms. Von Teese said. “It’s something I always have to explain to my new boyfriends, ‘Oh, pardon me. I still have a little bit of glue on there from yesterday’s show.’ It’s the bane of my existence.”

On Sunday, April 20, Famke Janssen strolled into the Roy and Niuta Tutus Theatre at MoMA for the premiere of her new film, Turn the River, wearing a pink tiered dress and heels: a striking contrast to “Kailey,” the crazy-haired, sweat-stained character she plays in the film. “Kailey is asexual,” the 42-year-old Dutch model-turned-actress said of her role, during a Q&A session. “I generally don’t get cast as a ‘house mouse’ type woman. I don’t think it would be that exciting.”

Thinking woman’s sex object Chris Eigeman, the movie’s writer-director, said he had written the part explicitly for Ms. Janssen, his co-star in The Treatment (2006). “I love her cowboy spirit,” he told the Transom. “Her no-bullshit approach, no mixing about, no preciousness. It’s not just that she has these incredible legs, this incredible stride … there’s something else, this spirit, this fierce independence.”

The film follows Kailey from upstate New York, where she is making a living off poker games, to Manhattan, where she tries to reconnect with her sixth-grade son, Gully (Jaymie Dornan). The agenda quickly becomes rescuing Gully from his aggressive and alcoholic father, to which end Kailey decides to raise money playing pool and take the kid to Canada.

“I wrote this because I lost a lot of money back in the day playing pool, now I just play friendly games of cards,” Mr. Eigeman said. “I found myself in a few raids in poker rooms. … They’re both scary, and my wife very clearly explained to me that I won’t be doing that anymore.”

Also in attendance: his former Gilmore Girls co-star, Lauren Graham, The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi, singer Lisa Loeb and 30 Rock’s Lonny Ross, who shares Mr. Eigeman’s fondness for pool. “It’s a sexy game,” he said. “Bowling, too. A lot of butt.”

At the premiere of Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, Then She Found Me, the actor Matthew Broderick smiled recalling the first time he worked on a film with Ms. Hunt: 1987’s Project X, about the military testing radioactivity on chimpanzees. It was “just chimps, just lots and lots of chimps,” Mr. Broderick said on the red carpet at the AMC Lincoln Square on Monday, April 21.

“Let me guess which movie you’re talking about!” said Mr. Broderick’s wife, Sarah Jessica Parker (Ms. Hunt’s co-star in 1985’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun), with a laugh. She was dressed in red heels, silver necklace and a blue dress with a white flower print.

Ms. Hunt, 44, resplendent in a gold frock, has been working on adapting Elinor Lipman’s best-selling novel to the screen since she won an Oscar for 1997’s As Good as It Gets. “I’m really proud and kind of amazed,” she said. She also co-wrote the script and stars as April Epner, a dowdy 39-year-old teacher from Brooklyn.

The lovable Brit Colin Firth plays Ms. Hunt’s love interest with an edge most fans won’t be used to; in one scene, he yells to her, “Fuck them and fuck you!” Is there anything different about working with a female director, the Transom wondered. “It depends if you have a rather macho chauvinistic crew or not, and this one we did not,” said Mr. Firth, in a black suit without a tie, and a scruffy beard. “They could have not been more devoted to Helen.”

The after-party at Nobu 57 was hosted by the Cinema Society and Mulberry, which makes gigantic, expensive handbags.

Is it just us, or are the names of designer labels getting weirder and weirder?

Five of ’em—3.1 Phillip Lim, Band of Outsiders, Michael Bastian, threeASFOUR and Philip Crangi—were feted by those unlikely bedfellows Vogue and the Gap over cocktails and risotto cakes in a whitewashed loft space off Rockefeller Center on Monday, April 14. CFDA/Vogue Fashion Finalists all, they’d each designed one or more white shirts for the chain, the second year of such a collaboration.

Socialites Byrdie Bell and Olivia Chantecaille, actresses Virginia Madsen and Lake Bell, and designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig were all on the scene. So was Amy Sedaris, the comedienne, a friend of the tattooed Mr. Crangi’s, wearing a black hoop skirt. “I just like seeing how everyone’s dressed, and their shoes,” she said, “And I like the guys bringing around the food. You know, they’re models.” How often does Ms. Sedaris attend fashion events? “Never!” she said, though she’ll certainly pop into the Gap “if I need something simple or generic or, you know, one size fits most.”

The store’s newly installed design chief Patrick Robinson—hubby of towering Vogue market editor Virginia Smith, incidentally, and subject of a sprawling profile and photo shoot in the magazine’s May 2008 issue—was bouncing around the room in a black T-shirt and jeans. “This went into stores last week,” he said, motioning toward mannequins dressed in his summer collection. “It’s doing amazing.”

No one is more excited about his post than his 5-year-old son, Wyeth, Mr. Robinson added. “He’s always like, ‘Dad, look, it’s Gap. Show me your shirt, is it Gap?’ He’s really cute.” But dressing the little one does pose its challenges. “My son only wears red. Whenever we see something red, we have to buy it.”

Princeton sophomore Roby Sobieski, the younger brother of actress Leelee Sobieski, is defending himself against charges that he is racist.

As reported by the Ivy League gossip source Ivygateblog.com, an administrator at the university’s Berlind Theater recently sent out a mass e-mail to dramatically inclined undergraduates seeking a prompter for the upcoming opening of Orange Woman, a play by senior Roger Quincy Mason about the life and times of Lucy Negro (a character loosely based on the Abbess of Clerkenwell, who some scholars believe was the inspiration for the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets). The e-mail directed interested parties to hit “reply all” in order to avoid confusion, and freshman KaYee Ivy Lau did just that, adding a perky emoticon for good measure.

Mr. Sobieski, 19, having woken up from a late night out on the town when he read the summons, responded with a cranky missive telling Mr. Lau she had a future in telemarketing. Reply-alls, he told the Transom by phone, “are a pet peeve of mine.”

The peppery Princetonian, who says he’s headed to an internship at New York magazine this summer, cited the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “prompter” and concluded that Ms. Lau was not likely to be a good one, given her predilection for reply-alling.

Online tabloid writer Maureen O’Connor called this “patronizing,” suggesting that Mr. Sobieski was reacting in part to “Ms. Lau’s foreign-sounding name.”

The listserv then lit up with passionate debate. Mr. Sobieski, an English major, was first attacked for his cruelty, then defended for his right to make a joke. “The thing that bothers me the most is that the writer who wrote this implied it was racist,” he said. “It might even be slander, what she is saying. I saw this e-mail clogging up my inbox and so I tried to make a joke and it failed. I’m half-French and went to a French high school in Los Angeles and we had to put fences up when France didn’t want to go into Iraq. I’m not going to attack someone for being international, when, like, a lot of my friends from high school were sons of diplomats and didn’t even speak English and spoke French.”

Still, Mr. Sobieski’s sister, best known for her role as a child prostitute in Eyes Wide Shut, apparently told him his e-mail was a boneheaded move. “I didn’t mean it in a personal way and I was trying to be funny,” he said. “I can understand that people are seeing me as a jerk in that context. I think it’s blowing a little out of proportion what it is.”

The incendiary Ivy Leaguer attended the closing-night performance of Orange Woman on Saturday, April 15, and is said to have the support of the playwright, who didn’t return calls for comment but is African-American and part-Asian, according to a source.

“When you are a student at Princeton you get on a lot of mailing lists,” Mr. Sobieski said. “I don’t like it.”

“I only like to come to these things if I’ve recently published a book,” said Richard Price, author of the recently released and highly praised novel Lush Life, standing among fellow authors and editors at the Paris Review Spring Revel gala at Cipriani 42nd Street on the evening of Monday, April 14.

The crowd at the literary publication’s annual fund-raising event included writers Joan Didion, Jay McInerney and Frank McCourt, topped off with froth like departed Elle fashion director and Project Runway judge, Nina Garcia, and socialite Tinsley Mortimer.

“I don’t really know the magazine that well, I don’t read magazines,” Mr. Price told the Transom when asked how he thinks The Review has changed over the years. “My daughter is an intern there, though.” (We quietly wondered how that gig has changed since editor George Plimpton was alive, when it involved mostly slicing cheese cubes, pawing through unsolicited manuscripts and flashing a little leg!) “She graduated college and managed to find a job that doesn’t pay; we’re very proud of her.”

Also attending was esteemed author E. L. Doctorow, most recently of 2005’s The March. “Literary magazines publishing today are more glamorous than The Paris Review was when it began; they tend to come out of university communities,” he said, perhaps thinking of n+1, the creation of four Harvard classmates. “But we need every one of them.”

“The more the merrier,” gamely agreed The Review’s editor, Philip Gourevitch.

Oh my God—did our eyes deceive us? There was The Actors Studio host James Lipton! A past Review contributor, it turned out (he interviewed playwright Neil Simon for the magazine 15 years ago). “Literary magazines are being launched on a very turbulent scene today because people don’t read books very much,” he said. “I’m very conservative and I don’t like it.”

Don’t even get him started on the World Wide Web!

“Reading online is similar to people who watch a massive film on their iPhones—it’s an insult to the filmmakers,” Mr. Lipton said. “It’s an eternity of Cliffs Notes and Reader’s Digest,” he added, before being interrupted by a waiter who tried to remove a collection of various hors d’oeuvres arranged on a cocktail napkin next to him. “I’m eating those, don’t take those away!” the bearded broadcaster bellowed.

On Monday, April 14, the Transom visited with actor-writer Harvey Fierstein at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where his new play, an adaptation of the 1956 Gore Vidal-penned film A Catered Affair, is scheduled to open later this week.

So far Mr. Fierstein’s dressing room contains about eight pieces of folk art, a second passion for him. If the show is a hit, the chamber will soon take on the appearance of an antique shop. He wouldn’t name the price of his collection. “They would get very upset,” he said in his gravelly voice, referring to the pieces. “Like Constance would get really upset, right behind you.” (Constance: a puppet hanging from the ceiling.) “If I said I liked somebody better than her! Even though her hand fell off. The poor thing. Constance needs a little work.”

A Catered Affair had a brief run in San Diego before coming to New York, and Mr. Fierstein, sprawled on a couch in a kind of Lady Godiva pose, said the thrift shops and flea markets there aren’t so hot: Lots of Asian artifacts, and plastic.

Is he planning a seasonal purge of his possessions?

“Everything of mine is in boxes, because I’m moving into a new house,” he said, a giant red barn on top of a hill in Connecticut, with a few lakes nearby, but (poof goes a would-be priceless image) no rope swings. “I don’t really do spring cleaning anyway; I clean all the time.”

On his MySpace blog and to the Transom, Mr. Fierstein expressed disappointment in a review the play’s San Diego outing got from L.A. Times critic Charles McNulty, who took issue with its representation of gay men in the 1950s. Mr. Fierstein, as is his wont, rewrote the character of the drunk Irish uncle in Paddy Chayefsky’s original play (on which the film was based), converting him to a gay Irish uncle, and Mr. McNulty found it hard to believe that a man would be openly homosexual back then.

“It’s really our fault,” Mr. Fierstein said. “We don’t talk about our lives, gay people. We don’t write about our lives. And of course heterosexuals are definitely not going to go looking for us to write about or talk about us.”

Apparently, the 1950s are alive and well in Connecticut, where a grocery store clerk refused recently to believe him when he told her he was gay, he said, arguing that if he were gay, he wouldn’t have told her.

“There’s this whole terrible lie that if you’re openly gay, it hurts your career,” Mr. Fierstein said.

He told a story about how when he first went to L.A. way back when, Mr. Vidal advised him: “Oh, darling, the hustlers are $25 an hour and they’re all gorgeous and they’re all straight and they’ll all do anything”—behind closed doors, that is.

“You write a heterosexual character and it’s a heterosexual character; you write a gay character, and it’s looked at as every gay character,” Mr. Fierstein said. “And you say, ‘Oh, you are so fucking completely prejudiced,’ but they don’t see it. Gay people are the worst critics. When I wrote Torch Song Trilogy, Edmund White, who sees himself as a gay pioneer, ripped me to shreds for saying that gay people might want to adopt.”

The Transom’s time was up. “Throw him out,” Mr. Fierstein hollered, belching deeply.

Spring is in the air, the birds are chirping and the town’s notable couples are hooking up and splitting up like wild dogs on the prairie.

In recent weeks, socialites Byrdie Bell and Bingo Gubelmann split. “It was perfectly amicable and civilized,” said a friend, “Maybe it was just their names—they knew it would never work.” That publishing-scion union made in heaven, Amanda Hearst and Winston Lapham, is over (Ms. Hearst is moving to Spain and wants to be “fancy-free,” said an intimate), and Born Rich star-turned-jailbird Luke Weil and his gal, Maggie Katz, are also totally dunzo.

But take heart! Cupid’s arrow has hit lit It Boy Dana Vachon and glamorous masthead mainstay Phoebe Eaton, oft-compared in looks to the model Christy Turlington.

The couple met at the party for Lipstick Jungle, and the attraction appears to have been immediate. The next day, Mr. Vachon, 29, took Ms. Eaton, a longtime established New York writer and editor, for a stroll through the Museum of Natural History. It was a bold move for the young author, who recently sold a pilot to HBO about a fallen professional golfer who starts a new line of vodka called Como No, which means “Why not?” in Spanish.

“After years of reckless bachelorhood, I was not schooled in the ways of the afternoon date,” Mr. Vachon confessed to the Transom over the phone. The twosome parted with a peck on the cheek. “Phoebe kept texting me with references to Fitzgerald, and meeting under the Biltmore Clock, and then we began spending a lot of time together,” he said. Mr. Vachon had been living in a small room at the Chelsea Hotel, whose aesthetic Ms. Eaton likened to a mix between a Piedmont villa and vomit, he said amusedly. They began spending more time at her place.

“I keep hearing the Bobby Short song ‘I’m in Love Again,’” Mr. Vachon said, meaning the spirited version in the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters. He broke into song. “Why am I like a racehorse running wild, why am I in a state of ecstasy …”

Fashion Week Daily news editor Jim Shi has been telling select pals that he will be appearing on CBS’ The Amazing Race, a reality show where coupled contestants race around the globe.

“He was saying that he’s going to do Amazing Race next summer with Leslie Fremar,” a source told the Transom, citing Mr. Shi’s dear friend and stylist to actresses Jennifer Connelly, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore.

“I’m going to say no comment,” said socialite and publicist Annelise Peterson. “I only know that he’s a big fan of the show.”

“Wow! This is the first I’ve heard of the news, but if it’s true I’m sure he’ll do great,” said socialite Olivia Palermo.

Is it true, Ms. Fremar?

“I love Jim, but we were just talking about that in fun; there wasn’t any truth to it,” said the stylist. “We were joking about how fun it would be to do something like that, but only in a fantasy world!”

Mr. Shi agreed that at this point such plans are just talk, but seemed to think that Ms. Fremar was on board should they be realized.

“I did speak to Leslie Fremar about doing it with me and she agreed, but nothing is set in stone,” he said. “We’re not confirmed to be on the show nor have we even submitted any initial application.

“It is true that I do eventually want to participate in The Amazing Race. It has always been a goal of mine to be on the show at some point in my life.”

Socialite Fabiola Beracasa was most amused at the prospect. “I never considered him to be an adventurer like that, but I think it would be fully entertaining,” she said. “I mean, c’mon, Jim Shi in The Amazing Race!”

On the afternoon of Monday, April 7, the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria filled with the clicking of heels and an array of expensive scents as the New York Women in Communications presented their Matrix Awards, this year honoring Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts, Gourmet editor in chief Ruth Reichl, and Disney-ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney.

Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi was emcee for the luncheon and was called to the podium so suddenly that she had to begin her opening speech with a mouthful of grilled chicken salad. In fact, Ms. Lakshmi was one of the few ladies seated onstage that dared to eat in front of an audience of more than a thousand women—Oprah pal Gayle King and rehabilitated morning-show host Kathie Lee Gifford among them—picking at lemon parfaits.

Designer Diane Von Furstenberg was presented with a special lifetime achievement award by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who applauded Ms. Von Furstenberg for encouraging women to wear dresses in the workplace and then timidly admitted that she herself has not managed this sartorial feat. “How to look good in a dress?” she asked the audience, eliciting laughs.

And how did Ms. Von Furstenberg and her husband, mega-mogul Barry Diller, react to his recent court victory over Liberty Media chairman John Malone? “We celebrated with a long swim in the Caribbean!” she told the Transom, “I never doubted that he would win; the whole thing was a little bit of a waste of time.”

Actor Bill Irwin presented an award to playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith, whose work he called a “YouTube of the soul” and whose husband he plays “in a soon-to-be neglected indie film,” Dancing With Shiva.

Ms. Reichl was given her award by chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, who told the Transom that he has not been directly hit by the recession. “I still eat and drink well!”

Injured ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff, a presenter to Ms. Sweeney, said that he’s been busy getting back to journalism. “I’m kind of addicted to it, just waiting for my brain to recover,” he said. “Although my wife has ordered me not to go back to Iraq.”

Onstage, Mr. Woodruff admitted that for a while he called Ms. Sweeney, “Anne Sweetey,” until his wife kindly corrected him.

“Bob,” said Ms. Sweeney coyly, taking the podium, “you can call me anything you want.”

On Thursday, April 3, Bergdorf Goodman welcomed designer Stacy Bendet’s Alice + Olivia spring collection to their stores with what was billed as a celebratory, Wonderland-themed tea party.

But there was no tea, just absinthe mixers and devilled eggs. Shoppers milled around vignettes of oversize clocks, giant shoes, playing cards and pink flamingos.

“I’m full head-to-toe Stacy,” said socialite Ali Wise, who was wearing a catsuit as she skidded onto the fifth floor. “Well … minus the Dolce bag and the shoes. I love her. I love this!”

“I’m here for the ‘restorative wine,’’’ said her friend, Nylon style director Dani Stahl. “We’ll probably find the Cheshire Cat!”

Sadly, no.

“We were just being silly with the invitations,” said Ms. Bendet, known for her well-cut pants. “No cats here, just sexy girls. Who doesn’t like Wonderland? It’s a whimsical collection. The colors are what I’ve always pictured as spring, and it’s exciting. A lot of people in here are wearing it. I’m happy about that; it’s meant to be wearable.”

On the periphery of the throng around Stacy was her fiancé, producer Eric Eisner, plus NBC co-chair and all-around party boy Ben Silverman.

“I love these,” Mr. Silverman said, lovingly stroking his Alice + Olivia gray cashmere hoodie. “I saw Eric’s father”—former Disney head Michael Eisner—“wear one. Then I wanted it. She wouldn’t give me a discount.”

Earlier last month, the singer Diana Ross made one of her regular pilgrimages to Canyon Ranch, the award-winning, 80,000-square-foot spa in Tucson.

“You can’t miss her—she has the huge ’fro,” one of the washed, waxed, plucked, scrubbed, stretched-out, rubbed-up and fiercely dieting guests was overheard remarking to friends. Ms. Ross is not one to scrape her locks back in a ponytail while working out, confirmed a source in the spa, who added that the diva likes the anti-aging treatment, a 50-minute facial that leaves skin “smooth, hydrated and radiant with golden glints,” as it’s described in Canyon Ranch literature.

Ms. Ross goes to “CR” a few times a year to “cleanse her soul,” the source offered, usually buying a 7-to-10-day package, which retails from $12,180 to $16,730 for a single room. The singer is a fiend for yoga and Pilates classes, added the informant, but does not rock-climb. “She’ll sign autographs if you ask. She signed the calendar of workout classes for someone.”

The former Supreme is slightly less relaxed about her placement at dinner. “She has to have this one seat ever single time, very OCD,” said the spy, describing a four-person booth in the corner, to the left as one enters the enormous dining hall. Enjoying the daily fresh organic salad bar along with everyone else, Ms. Ross was said to be particularly enamored of the Brussels sprouts, which are drizzled with delicious homemade dressing.

An elderly couple from the Midwest, meanwhile, became so fixated on Ms. Ross’ routine that after she left they captured the memory with a photo of “her” empty corner table. “It was hysterical,” the source snickered.

A rep for the Motown legend didn’t return a call for comment.

For the last month or so, supermodels Karolina Kurkova , Adriana Lima and Doutzen Kroes have all been paying daily visits to the Aerospace Gym in the meatpacking district, according to Michael Olajide Jr., the gym’s co-founder and a former champion boxer-cum-fitness expert, who was been giving them special one-on-one boxing instruction.

Mr. Olajide, 45, was born in Liverpool, and came up in the ring in Vancouver, until his contract was purchased by Madison Square Garden in 1986. In a title fight against Tommy Hearns in 1990, he suffered irreparable damage to his right eye, and now wears a stylish custom-made silver patch over it. He has become the go-to guy for getting stars a nice boxer’s physique in record time. He worked with Will Smith for Ali, and Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart for The Black Dahlia.

But recently, models and their agents have also zeroed in on Mr. Olajide’s workout regimen to “sleek-ify” their bods before a big cover shoot. “Adriana started coming in for the GQ cover, Karolina is doing some magazines and had a G.I. Joe movie, and Doutzen has a Calvin campaign coming up, I think,” Mr. Olajide said.

The boxer and his partner, former ballet dancer, Leila Fazel, are just about to release a new workout video called CTBS, which stands for Cut the Bullshit. On a recent Monday, the Transom tried to make it through one of their hourlong Aero-3 classes, also a favorite of the models; it involves a lot of punching, jumping rope, squatting, push-ups and weights.

“I think they like it because it doesn’t bulk the body,” Mr. Olajide said. “It definitely lifts the ass and narrows the waist.

“Karolina hits hard,” he shared. “Doutzen loves the jump rope, she used to speed-skate. Adriana loves the mitts and the speed bag.”

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is also a client of the gym, Mr. Olajide said. “He’s not a ropes guy … but put it this way, you don’t want to get hit by him.”

Reps for the models and Mr. Weinstein did not return calls.

On Sunday, March 30, about 100 people, some rather done up, were cramming the small performance space at the New Dance Group studios, a few blocks from Port Authority in midtown, for the sold-out Miss Manhattan and Miss Southern New York beauty pageants.

Kristen Caesar, 25, a graduate student at New York University who won Miss Black New York State this year, was among the audience members. Unlike other fellow pageant winners in the audience—Miss Jubilee, Miss New York and Miss Brooklyn Outstanding Teen—she was not wearing a fake-diamond tiara, but rather a low-key ensemble of boots, a sweater and jeans. She had come to see a friend, Contestant No. 9, Becca Anderson, also a grad student at N.Y.U. “I wonder how the dancers feel about having high heels on their beautiful dance floor,” Ms. Caesar remarked.

Before the bathing suit and evening gown competitions, contestants marched onstage to proclaim their “platforms.” Among the more memorable: “Teens for Safe Cosmetics,” from Contestant No. 10, the ambidextrous Kathleen Perkins; and, from Contestant No. 14, Amanda Richie, “The State of Our Nation.” Vanessa Manata, Contestant No. 12, concluded her platform on combating the child sex trade with the rousing entreaty, “So, come on New York, stop the traffic!” Whoo-hoo!

During an onstage questioning period that counted for 5 percent of the overall score, contestants opined on everything from whether large celebrity divorce settlements are hurting the institution of marriage to whether the Miss America competition is “unrelatable” to younger people. A question about whether Britney Spears should get custody of her kids elicited murmurs from the audience and a long silence among contestants before someone finally piped up to say that Ms. Spears has squandered ample opportunities to prove herself a fit parent.

The talent component of the contest was unsurprisingly heavy on musical theater numbers. Contestant No. 17, Brittney Griffin, who ultimately snagged second runner-up, performed a dizzyingly fast tap dance to a spoken-word piece called “Talking in Tongues.” Jessica Cagwin, Contestant No. 4, performed “My Short Skirt,” from The Vagina Monologues. The pageant delicately introduced the piece as “part of a collection of monologues about women’s empowerment,” prompting scattered snickers in the audience. But Ms. Cagwin, who wore an appropriately short black sequined skirt, kept the audience transfixed as she spoke. “My short skirt and everything under it is mine. Mine. Mine,” she said.

But not, alas, either of the title crowns, which went to LaMonica Falkquay (Miss Southern New York) and Melanie Hildebrant (Miss Manhattan).

As guests arrived at the 21 Club on the evening of Friday, March 28, for a party celebrating the opening in Soho of Acne Jeans’ first American store two days earlier, the Stockholm-based label’s creative director, Jonny Johansson, sat cross-legged in a plush red banquette, talking with the Transom about denim.

“If you had to choose one garment today that’s the most important garment in fashion, I would say it’s a basic pair of jeans,” he said in his thick Swedish accent. “I love the generic five pockets and the whole idea that it once was a work-wear pant.”

The Acne party, however, was quite lavish; attendees included singer Ryan Adams, actress Chloë Sevigny and newly appointed Interview editor Christopher Bollen. Billed as a masked ball (not everyone played along), it featured roasted ham, Spandex-clad court jesters contorting on the floor, and a woman dressed in the aristocratic trappings of 18th-century Versailles who circulated the room in the center of a mobile hors d’oeuvre table. At one point, a butch drag-queen Cher emerged to perform “If I Could Turn Back Time,” much to the ironic enjoyment of the stylish hipsters encircling her.

The unfortunately named brand, an acronym for “Ambition 2 Create Novel Expressions,” encompasses film, Web production, toys and a biannual cultural magazine called Acne Paper. “They’ve always been at the forefront of jean fits,” said Humberto Leon, the co-owner of Opening Ceremony, a downtown boutique that has partnered with the company. Indeed, Acne launched its first skinny jean in 1998, back when everyone else was still in boot cuts. “They’re very simple, very cool. Very indie,” Ms. Sevigny told the Transom, in between sips of a martini. She was wearing a black mask with cat whiskers—rowr!—and said she’d first slipped into a pair of Acne jeans on a photo shoot last year.

Mr. Johansson, meanwhile, was sporting a slim straight-leg model called the Mic, with a pair of yellow Yves Saint Laurent sneakers and a black Ralph Lauren sport coat. “I mean, it’s simplicity,” he said. “Fashion doesn’t have to be eccentric to be interesting.”

The Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS “Dining by Design” benefit on Monday, March 31, had enough crystal, intricate upholstery, designer china and orchids to make even Martha Stewart a little dizzy. Also: Drag queen Lady Bunny and her massive blond hair, spinning some records—plus yummy duck crepes!

Fashion designers Vivienne Tam and Ralph Lauren were among 45 contributors commissioned to create fantasy “dining rooms” for the event, held at Skylight Studios on Hudson Street.

The crowd seemed particularly drawn by an installation by Dalzell Productions featuring a man blindfolded, tied up and suspended upside down over a black table with nothing but three crumpled tissues on it. (Two production assistants were charged with staring at their watches so that they could swap the male subjects every 12 minutes.) A knitting-themed dinner set by DIFFA board chairman and architect David Rockwell and one by event designer Gary Bias with yet another drag queen petting a toy dog also caused some congestion.

Fashion designer James Coviello’s installation was adorned with quilted patchwork and antique-looking tableware. “I actually brought all that china from my home, and it’s going right back there after the exhibit is over,” he said, adding, “Fashion can be a bit snobby sometimes; the interior design world is a little more laid-back and down-to-earth.”

Marc Blackwell, who’s helped Bette Midler and Cindy Crawford with their dining rooms, was another whose room was showcased. “Dining rooms make sense because they are all about entertainment,” he said. “It’s where people come together.”

The fund-raiser’s executive director, interior designer David Sheppard, pronounced himself “thrilled” with the evening. “When the designers first show up, it’s a little bit about managing all the egos in the room, but this year everything came together nicely,” he said. Mr. Sheppard then sheepishly admitted that he lives in a studio and does not, himself, have a dining room.

CNN fixture Larry King’s 9-year-old son Chance Armstrong King plays Beverly Hills Little League. King père is the coach of Chance’s team.

On Monday, March 10, during a heated game, the suspendered talk show host apparently got into a confrontation with one of the league’s umpires. “[Mr. King] was making a fool out of himself as a manager on the field, talking in the middle of the field in the middle of plays,” reported a source close to the action.

According to this source, Mr. King was told by the umpire in question to “regroup” and calm himself, and he did not respond well to this. Rather, the informant said, he continued arguing and was then relegated to the bleachers, where he continued to make noise, and was finally forced to watch the game from the outfield’s periphery.

An eyewitness contradicted this account somewhat, saying he did not recall the journalist’s movements throughout the game, but that he was certain Mr. King had not been banished. “He absolutely did question an ump’s call,” said this spy. “He was asked to cool it.” But there was no profanity used, nor was subsequent disciplinary action brought against the celebrity dad. “He’s one of the valued volunteer coaches; I’m pretty sure that he’s coaching today,” Mr. King’s champion said. “I like his Bronx spiciness!”

A rep for the journalist (who was actually born in Brooklyn) did not return a call by press time.

Young Chance is the son of Mr. King, 74, and his sixth wife, actress Shawn Southwick, 49. They were married on September 5, 1997, in a Jewish–Mormon interfaith ceremony.

On Friday, March 28, the journalist Nikki Finke, a household name in Hollywood since her blog Deadline Hollywood became a must-read during the Writers Guild of America strike, posted an item about veteran actor Jack Klugman suing NBC Universal over residuals from his hit 1970’s show, Quincy, M.E.

“This really sounds like one of the worst cases of phony-baloney studio accounting, not to mention sheer arrogance, in Hollywood history,” she wrote. “Geez, when is Big Media going to stop this larceny?”

Ms. Finke, whom The Observer anointed its 2007 Media Mensch of the Year, quoted Mr. Klugman via his Beverly Hills attorneys Johnson & Johnson: “I don’t want their money. I want my money. I can’t believe they’ve collected over $250 million and they say they are still in the hole.”

The blogger, who has earned a reputation for championing the little guy against the moguls, neglected to mention that this law firm, specifically partner Neville Johnson, is representing her in an as-yet-
unreported class action lawsuit she filed against E-Trade in 2006 for surreptitious recording.

Asked about the lawsuit, Ms. Finke said that she did not want to discuss her personal life. She said that she intended to go back and correct the item to include the fact that Mr. Johnson was also one of her attorneys. “I totally forgot,” she said. “I’m very scrupulous about things like that. It was a busy news day. I was posting a lot of breaking stories. And I wasn’t thinking about myself.” (She said she became aware of the Klugman case via an e-mail that was sent to various journalists.)

The ongoing class action suit, which Ms. Finke filed under her married name, Nikki Greenberg (she explained that this is simply the name that appears on her passport), echoes a beef she apparently had with Women’s Wear Daily reporter Jacob Bernstein last July; according to an editor’s note, WWD pulled Mr. Bernstein’s profile of her from their Web site “based on confusion over Bernstein’s taping of a conversation he had with Finke”—which is illegal in California, where Ms. Finke resides.

According to Ms. Finke, E-Trade pulled similar shenanigans. “On or about August 15, 2006 plaintiff Nikki Greenberg placed a telephone call to the E-Trade Financial Center in Beverly Hills, California,” reads her complaint, a copy of which was obtained by the Transom. “At the time, plaintiff Greenberg spoke to Jeremy Zezini, an employee of defendant E-Trade Financial Center. During the course of that telephone conversation, plaintiff Greenberg disclosed personal identifying and financial information. At no time during that conversation was plaintiff Greenberg informed that her telephone call was being eavesdropped upon, wiretapped, recorded and/or monitored.”

Though she is the only named plaintiff in the suit, it is a class action lawsuit and so also includes a plea for “all those similarly situated.”

Calls to E-Trade were not returned.

Ms. Finke clearly is fond of her lawyer: In a Deadline Hollywood post published months before the E-Trade lawsuit was filed, she described Mr. Johnson as “a foremost go-to guy for invasion-of-privacy torts” and mentioned that “many victims of the [Anthony] Pellicano wiretapping scandal” were lining up to meet with him.

With different representation, the journalist in 2002 sued the New York Post, its parent company News Corp., and Disney in Los Angeles, a case that was settled out of court.

In September 2001, she sued an L.A. condo management company over an injury in the common area of the building she lived in and received a settlement of $36,267.

Crushed grapes in Chelsea! The hugely hyped, High Line-straddling Standard hotel, slated to open in fall 2008, might be getting its own house hooch.

Its handsome proprietor, André Balazs, is close to launching his own signature wine label, according to sources in the hospitality industry.

Possibly popping corks as soon as this summer, Mr. Balazs would join a bevy of other celebrity vintners, including filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, domestic diva Martha Stewart and X-rated film star Savanna Samson. (Can you guess which woman earned a ranking of 90-to-91 from famed wine critic Robert Parker?)

Presumably some type of rosé is in the works, as Mr. Balazs has made no secret of his thirst for the pink stuff. His affinity for Provence producer Domaine Ott, in particular, is almost as well documented as hip-hop mogul Jay-Z’s love-hate relationship with Cristal Champagne.

Mr. Balazs was traveling in Africa this week, according to his rep, and was unavailable to provide any juicy details.

Rapper Ice-T, 50, and his buxom wife, Coco, 29, a model, arrived for their birthday party at the Plumm on 14th Street around midnight last Thursday, March 20. By then, the open bar was closed and a few hundred party-favor copies of the March issue of Playboy, in which Coco appears wearing a variety of skimpy lingerie ensembles, had been either ransacked down to a few pages, or pocketed.

The couples been married for seven years—faithfully, Ice-T swore. “Monogamy is a choice,” he said. “Since Coco and I have been together, I’ve never cheated on her. I’ve never even been tempted to.”

“Thank you, baby,” said his wife, and leaned closer. She uncrossed her legs, bringing her Louis Vuitton heels and tight-stretched fishnets together.

The couple was speaking to the Transom in the downstairs bar area, sitting opposite one another on square purple chairs opposite a stripper pole and stage. The party, which included singer Kid Rock, bounced noisily above.

“Honestly, Coco and I are kind of boring,” Ice-T said. “Coco had her party days, and everybody knows my reputation of being a player and being around, but once we got together we got kind of boring. People think, you know, we have three people and all, she’s picking up girls. We’ve never done that.”

Coco nodded and added: “I think people see us out and we’re fun, we’re not like ‘cramped couple in the corner,’ whispering about people. We’re pretty much the wild person in the club when we go out together.”

It was hard to ignore a group of cameramen that was adjusting lights nearby. “I’m sorry; I just want to say something about the media. I’m thinking about what we’re doing right now,” Ice-T said, gesturing toward them. “I think right now at this moment, any person who thinks they can do anything on the sly has lost their mind.” That was glaringly apparent; several people with camera phones had already taken pictures.

The conversation turned to local politics.

“When you are an elected official, or you’re a cop, you’ve kind of taken an oath to be extra-right,” Ice-T said. “I mean, I never took an oath not to break the law. So, if I’m smoking weed but then putting people in jail … I’m an arch criminal. Like [fallen Governor Eliot] Spitzer put people in prison. I’ve never done that. So, to do that and then for himself to break the law … that’s kind of fucked up.”

When did the haute cuisine crowd become such a bunch of cunning linguists?

At the James Beard Foundation’s annual awards nomination breakfast on Monday, March 24, Mitchell Davis, vice president of the esteemed (if recently blemished) culinary organization, elicited snickers when he introduced Sullivan Street Bakery owner Jim Lahey, provider of the morning’s munchies, as a “master baker.”

Blushing but grinning, the good-humored prince of pastry brushed aside the crude implication to make a few brief remarks about artisanal foods. Afterward, he offered his take on his profession’s dubious double-entendre.

“I hate the word ‘master baker,’” Mr. Lahey said. “I have nothing against masturbating,” he added, chuckling, “but master-baking? Master-baking is something you do by yourself.”

Given the flurry of one-liners that ensued, the Transom quickly got the impression that this had become something of a “who’s on first”-type routine for the duo.

“Which hand do you use to master-bake?” Mr. Davis asked, chuckling.

“This one!” Mr. Lahey replied, raising his left.

Also on hand to help announce this year’s nomination was Le Bernardin’s Michael Laiskonis, named Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2007.

“I’m by no means a master anything,” Mr. Laiskonis said humbly. But talk about self-love. Asked about the upscale seafood restaurant’s lack of nominations this time around, he proudly declared, “I believe that Le Bernardin has gotten every James Beard award with the possible exception of wine service.”

On Wednesday, March 19, on a soundstage at Paramount Studios during the filming of the super-secret, $150 million new Star Trek movie (also known as Star Trek XI), cast and crew were riveted by t