December 7, 1999

WHITNEY HOUSTON PRESIDES OVER CONFLUENCE OF TALENT

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

CELEBRITY SEATING ARRANGEMENTS: Win a special prize by giving the correct answer to this multiple choice question.

Recently Michael Jackson put in an appearance at an event billed, rather grandiloquently, as an "All-Star Holiday Gala" sponsored by preeminent songbird Whitney Houston, at a fancy hotel in midtown Manhattan. Michael quite predictably sat for a spell with Whitney at her table. After that, at whose table did he sit, according to a report in the New York Daily News?

1. Puff Daddy's.
2. Harry Connick Jr.'s.
3. Madonna's.
4. Gregory Peck's.

The answer is (4). If you got it right, you're excused from reading any further.

TROUBLE AND UNHAPPINESS IN THE WORLD OF PUBLISHING: Tina Brown, whose Talk magazine is backed by Miramax and Disney studios, is mighty displeased lately with intimations in The New York Times to the effect that the heavy exposure the rag gives to persons starring in films made by those entities constitutes some kind of conflict of interest or something. She's even more upset by the notion, floated in a Times article, that her publication's relationship with Disney put the kibosh to an article about the Unabomber.

"That is just a fabrication," Tina tells Salon, an online magazine. "It is utterly and totally untrue." Had she just said it was "untrue" we wouldn't have believed her.

HIGH SOCIETY: Speaking of famous women, you'll be relieved to hear that Sharon Stone and Madonna have, at long last, met face to face - as it happens, at the recent VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards in New York. Following is a verbatim (though not necessarily complete) transcript of their dialogue.

Sharon: "So we finally get to meet!"

Madonna: "So how's married life?"

Both of them, obviously, were channeling Dorothy Parker.

MORE CELEBRITY BACK-AND-FORTH: It looks like this thing where Walter Cronkite and Donald Trump were at loggerheads over Donald's plan to construct a big, vulgar building near the United Nations - a project Walter is vehemently opposed to - is all over and done with, the pertinent official agencies having given Donald the go-ahead.

"l'm disappointed," the veteran newsman tells a reporter. "I felt all along that the building would change the fabric of the neighborhood. It would change, diminish the United Nations so terribly. That great tower would overwhelm the United Nations."

And what are Donald's thoughts in response to Walter's thoughts?

"I hate to see him used in this fashion," the altruistic billionaire states. "The zoning is obvious to anybody who can read English. And I'm sure Walter never read it before, or he wouldn't be wasting his time."

DID SOMEONE SAY 'WASTING HIS TIME'? Speaking of New York's biggest real-estate billionaire, let's not forget that he's mulling a run for the presidency. In that connection Ivana and Maria's former husband has made the following incisive observation, according to a news report:

"Al Gore has spent $22 million so far, and all I've spent is $22 million less than him."

Which proves rather conclusively that Donald is the better man for the job.

STREISAND JUNK DRAWS TOP DOLLAR: We don't know who you are, but it doesn't really matter - if someone decided to auction off a bunch of stuff that had been lying around your household, it would bring in, what, a couple of dollars, maybe? Things are different when it comes to a personage like Barbra Streisand, a whole mess of whose bric-a-brac went on the block in New York recently and fetched major moolah.

"My friends," exclaimed the very fortunate Edwin Lopez of Brooklyn, who got a bauble of Barbra's in exchange for a nominal $140, "are going to go totally berserk when I tell them I purchased a Barbra Streisand ceiling fixture!” So don't tell them!

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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