The Transom

"I don't know if there are many people who are ever happy with the Whitney Biennial," longtime art collector Norman Dubrow said in the dimly lit living room of his Upper East Side apartment. "But I feel that this biennial is particularly unsuccessful, and I've gone to every one of them ."

The Whitney's biannual hodgepodge of art and provocation, which runs until May 26, has never lacked for critics who claim they could do better, but this year the 75-year-old Mr. Dubrow intends to prove the point.

On March 26, the retired city engineer plans to open the Norman Dubrow Biennial, a five-and-a-half-week show at the Kagan Martos Gallery on Broadway that will go head-to-head with the Whitney's exhibition.

"What I'm saying to the Whitney is: 'Your show should be directed towards your audience, not towards curators and newspaper critics,'" the bespectacled, white-haired Mr. Dubrow told The Transom in his pronounced New York accent. "'You should put the best people in your show-not leave out the best people.' So that's what I'm going to try and do."

Although his cramped, cluttered apartment did not reflect the extent of his passion, Mr. Dubrow has been collecting art since 1963. Many of the artists he's championed, such as Inka Essenhigh, Wolfgang Tillmans and Michael Bevilacqua, have now become stars. Others, such as Justine Kurland or Tim Davis, are on their way.

Unmarried and heirless, Mr. Dubrow, who worked for decades at the city comptroller's office, has given a number of artworks to New York museums, most notably the Guggenheim and the Whitney. Lately, however, he hasn't been feeling so generous. "New York institutions will get nothing from me," Mr. Dubrow said. "I am a person who wanted to give to New York City museums. I lived here all my life …. It was clearly my intention to donate to museums-that was one of the purposes of my collecting. But they treat me with disrespect."

To illustrate his point, Mr. Dubrow recalled the time he gave a Laura Owens painting to the Whitney as a promised gift. The museum, he said, sent the painting to California for a show without telling him. (He found out about it purely by chance.) They didn't even send him a catalog, he said. "This happens over and over and over and over," Mr. Dubrow said. "I call it stupidity. I call it arrogance." The Whitney, on the other hand, sees business as usual. "Given that it was promised as a gift and is in our possession, it's standard operating procedure," a museum spokeswoman said. "We can administer it and lend it as the museum sees fit, the point being that promised gifts are given to museums to take care of."

Mr. Dubrow, however, said that his decision to do his own Biennial isn't linked to his dissatisfaction over his dealings with the museum. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the disrespect they showed me," he said.

It has more to do with what he saw at the exhibition. Mr. Dubrow said he visited the Whitney's Biennial twice since it opened and, out of a pool of 113 artists, could find only nine that he liked. He opined that the Biennial fails because the exhibition's curators-most notably Lawrence Rinder-want to impress their art-world peers with brand-new names. As a result, few artists who have gained notoriety in recent years have been included.

"That's the first thing that went wrong," Mr. Dubrow said. "They should be showing the Whitney's public the best work being done, not just totally unknown people who'll excite their peers."

Mr. Dubrow also said that the Biennial suffers from geographical correctness: not enough input from New York galleries and artists.

"The Whitney has been accused in the past of catering to certain New York galleries," he said. "Now they've very much limited the amount of work coming from New York galleries." His voice grew louder. "What makes them think they can do a better job of finding artists than the New York dealers? It's their bread and butter !"

"The Biennial expresses the museum's point of view about art-making in America," a Whitney spokeswoman said. "It can't possibly be encyclopedic. If people want to create their own shows, that's great."

Mr. Dubrow hopes to avoid these and other pitfalls while observing the same rules as the Whitney: Only American artists will be featured, and the work will be no more than two years old. Unlike the Whitney's exhibition, the work at Mr. Dubrow's Biennial will be for sale.

Because of space concerns, however, the Dubrow Biennial will be limited to 36 pieces-a fraction of the Whitney's size. The artists include such hot young things as Anthony Goicolea, Jay Davis and Gajin Fujita, as well as more established artists like Malerie Marder, Ms. Essenhigh and Ms. Owens.

"If you speak to the peer curators or the peer critics, they'll say, 'Oh, Inka-that's old hat,'" Mr. Dubrow said. "But the public doesn't know Inka, and I can guarantee you that 90 percent of the people who go to the Biennial don't know who Inka Essenhigh is and have never seen a piece of her work."

Because Mr. Dubrow's Biennial will be featuring artists that he collects, some critics contend he's merely trying to drive up the value of his collection. But he scoffed at this. "I have never sold anything," Mr. Dubrow said.

-Elisabeth Franck

Bert & Ernie Shocker!

Forget the entertainment industry's rush to convert the events of Sept. 11 into dramatic narrative. The hottest source material out there right now is the long-term ambiguous relationship between Sesame Street Muppets Bert and Ernie.

First there was Ernest and Bertram, Peter Spears' eight-minute short that was screened at this year's Sundance Film Festival, in which the cohabiting Muppets were outed as gay by a tabloid. The film included a reference to Miss Piggy as a "fag hag" and provoked some legal saber-rattling from the producers of the real Sesame Street , Sesame Workshop.

Now there's Avenue Q , a campy puppet musical written by Robert Lopez and Jeffrey Marx that also features two Bert and Ernie doppelgängers who may or may not be Friends of Dorothy.

The show, which is tentatively slated to open off Broadway in the fall, was previewed at the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre showcase of new works at the Manhattan Theatre Club on March 11, where it was billed by an M.C. as " Sesame Street for grown-ups."

One of the puppets, whose name was Rod, looked suspiciously like Sesame Street 's pigeon-loving Bert, and opened the number by announcing that his favorite book was Broadway Musicals of the Early Thirties .

Rod was joined by Nicky, a green-faced puppet who resembled rubber-duck enthusiast Ernie. Nicky told a story of a guy on the bus who was trying to pick him up.

"I think he thought I was gay ," said Nicky, before launching into the song "If You Were Gay," which included the lyrics:

If it were me

I'd feel free

To say I'm gay

But I'm not gay.

To which Rod replied: "Stop touching me."

Reached by phone, Mr. Lopez, 27, referred The Transom to one of Avenue Q 's producers, Kevin McCollum. Mr. McCollum seemed taken aback by the suggestion that Sesame Street 's producers might react negatively to the musical, which also features a song called "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist."

"There are no characters named Bert and Ernie in our show," Mr. McCollum said. "If our humor parodies things you're familiar with, then that's what Forbidden Broadway does.

"Besides," the producer added, "it's not a song about being gay. It's about acceptance."

A spokeswoman for the Sesame Workshop said that the company's legal department would have to see Avenue Q before it could comment, but she did confirm that the company had sent "the Ernest and Bertram filmmakers a cease-and-desist letter," and also that they "are confident that the creator has violated rights, and we will resolve this to our satisfaction."

-Rebecca Traister

Ill Al

Bill Clinton has a legal-defense fund. So why not Al Goldstein?

On March 12, Mr. Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, told The Transom that the magicomedy team of Penn & Teller is planning to raise money for his upcoming appeal.

On Feb. 27, Mr. Goldstein was convicted in Brooklyn criminal court on six counts of harassing his former secretary, Jennifer Lozinski. Before his sentencing on April 16, Mr. Goldstein jetted down to Florida, where he was reached by The Transom. "I got black guys fucking me to loosen my ass up," he said. "I'm ready for jail-I can't wait."

Despite Mr. Goldstein's apparent joy at spending some time in the pokey, he said he'll appeal the decision. He added that the legal fees for such a gambit will probably exceed $10,000, which is where Penn & Teller come in. Yet, though Mr. Goldstein expressed his gratitude to the duo, he said, "I have nothing to do with that."

Despite his troubles, Mr. Goldstein described himself as "mellow and happy." He did, however, call the judge in his case, Danny Chun, "a fucking retard [who] never read the law."

At press time, Penn & Teller could not be reached for comment.

-Ian Blecher

Diller Departs

Around 9:45 p.m. on March 8, Vivendi Universal Entertainment chief executive Barry Diller was engulfed by the swarm at art dealer Mary Boone's opening-night party at the Chelsea restaurant called Elmo. He looked tan, but he did not look happy.

"I know your face," an aggressive guest with a British accent told him. "I'm sure I know you. Are you in the art world? Are you a dealer?"

"No," Mr. Diller said. He seemed to be fighting the urge to express what was really on his mind. He was dressed in a light-blue polo and dark blazer.

The crowd surged, and the Brit was pushed even closer to Mr. Diller. Again, he aimed his index at the mogul's nose. "Are you sure? I think I know you."

A cold smile crossed Mr. Diller's face. "No," he answered again. He had come with two friends, and now he turned toward one of them. "Can you move, please?" he implored. " Please ." As he pushed out of crowd, Mr. Diller could be overhead muttering the phrase "fucking prick" under his breath.

"I'm just running away," Mr. Diller said when The Transom asked why he was bolting the party so quickly. "I went out to dinner with a friend of mine, and he said we have to stop here. But this is, this is-really scary ."

-E.F.

Oscar Grouch

How does a New York public-relations firm generate press for a brand-new Oscar party it's representing? By trashing the eight-year-old Oscar party that it used to flack.

On March 5, the New York Post 's Page Six column ran an item headlined "Dueling Parties," which quoted an unnamed source talking up a new Mercedes-Benz-sponsored Oscar "celebrity" party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel that will compete with Entertainment Weekly 's annual Elaine's bash. The source dismissed the more established uptown affair by deeming it "more for advertisers this year." The item also erroneously reported that the EW party was in its fourth year.

In media and event-planning circles, the "advertisers" smack-down is a pointed one-an implication that the Elaine's event would be bursting with suits, not stars.

So who planted the item? London Misher Public Relations, which represented the Entertainment Weekly Oscars party for the three years prior to this event.

Earlier this year, EW replaced London Misher with the Susan Magrino Agency as the agency representing the soirée. Soon after, London Misher began to work on another Oscar event with two of its clients, Mercedes-Benz and the Tribeca Grand. The initial press release about the Mercedes-Benz party boasted that 200 invited guests would view the awards ceremony on "plasma television screens," and that they would receive "a black Mercedes-Benz gift bag filled with high-end goodies."

"When we decided to do this party, we gave [Page Six] an item immediately that this party was happening," Lauren London told The Transom. "When I called [Page Six reporter] Paula [Froelich] to follow up on it, she said how come I wasn't doing the Entertainment Weekly party. I said that their party was going to be more of an advertisers' party this year. So if you want to say that we planted that, then that's exactly how it happened."

Ms. London soon got an angry call from EW director of public relations and communications Sandy Drayton, who asked Ms. London if she'd placed the item. Making the situation even more complicated for Ms. London is the fact that her uncle is Entertainment Weekly managing editor James Seymore.

Ms. London said that she was "just as upset as" the Entertainment Weekly camp at the column item, but added that she had made the remark about the advertisers because that was the explanation Ms. Drayton had used when she told Ms. London that her firm was being replaced.

Ms. Drayton declined to explain why EW had dismissed London Misher, saying only: "We left on good terms."

Ms. Drayton said that the EW bash will include the "same strong mix we've always had," but declined to give the names of those who'd be attending. Paul Lerner, a London Misher partner handling the Tribeca Grand party, said Tribeca Grand "security policies" prevented him from naming guests, but he did say that the gift bags would have a retail value north of $1,000.

"This is a town that needs the support of the entertainment community post-9/11," Mr. Lerner said. "So we feel like we're doing something good, and we have the guest lists to prove it and the gift bags to prove it."

Ms. London's item also caught the attention of another former employer, publicist Bobby Zarem. Mr. Zarem, who helped EW create the Oscar party and is a regular at Elaine's, said that when he read the Page Six item, "I was very angry about it, because it was incorrect and obviously malicious and meant to be harmful." But then Mr. Zarem admitted that he may have actually inspired the deed. "If Lauren and Sherry [Misher] did that item in Page Six," he said, "it could be the one thing they learned from me.

"Five years ago," he explained, "at the height of the EW Oscar party, I heard that Vanity Fair was going to do a party in New York" to complement its lavish, celebrity-studded Los Angeles event." Mr. Zarem remembered that the event was supposed to take place "at some shithole like Cipriani." To protect his turf, Mr. Zarem said: "I put an item in saying that their party was for advertisers."

-R.T.

Mel to Pay

Mel Gibson has long been known as one of Hollywood's biggest practical jokers. So when the American Museum of the Moving Image paid tribute to him at the Waldorf-Astoria on March 7, the audience and even Mr. Gibson seemed to be expecting some payback. "One good spurn deserves another," he told The Transom. Unfortunately, the celebrities who gathered to fête the actor-including actors Danny Glover, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and Glenn Close, DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg and, by tape, Dame Edna Everage-did not seem interested in one-upping Mr. Gibson.

Indeed, the funniest line of the night was aimed at the diminutive but long-dead actor, Alan Ladd. Upon taking the podium to introduce a film clip, actor Matthew Modine, who co-starred with Mr. Gibson in Mrs. Soffel , lifted up a stool that was behind the lectern and shouted: "Hey, Mel. It's Alan Ladd's cheater!"

-Frank DiGiacomo