Norma Kamali (GETTY)

This past week, fashion icon Norma Kamali presented her collection, OMO, and launched a new, more accessible diffusion line called Kamali Kulture. The Observer wanted to know the details about Farrah Fawcett’s legendary red bathing suit moment and why in God’s name she was expanding!

Charlie’s Angels! Farrah Fawcett! That iconic moment was all you! Tell us about it—looking back? This is all about Farrah, not me. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and I have seen many extraordinary looking celebrities and great women throughout my career. She told me that she happened to have my swimsuit in her bag and her friend (the photographer) shot her in it on location. Lucky me!

Do you take credit for the shoulder pad as well?The shoulder pad became famous in the late ‘30s and ‘40s. I was obsessed with the ‘30s years ago, and when I did my collection made of sweatshirt fabric, I thought it would be cool to design [it] using ‘30s-chic sensibility in locker room fabrications.

You also revolutionized the online store? I think the idea was comfortable to me because I had a job out of school on the UNIVAC computer… so, clearly I was ready to express myself with a website in the mid ‘90s.

Norma Kamali's fall 2012 presentation (GETTY)

What is Kamali Kulture all about? Timeless style—under $100—that is sold exclusively online via my website, Amazon and Zappos.

Why the expansion? This is the time for this type of concept, and I feel strongly about online interaction with my customers and bloggers. I believe social media today is authentic, raw and passionate.

While the swine flu story gets the largest type on the page, it's at the bottom, and the most compelling display surrounds the Farrah Fawcett story at the top. Using a black box and knockout type and a glamour shot of Ms. Fawcett from what looks like her Charlie's Angels days, the paper covers the civil action, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, of Craig Nevius, a onetime partner with Ms. Fawcett in the movie they were making about her illness from anal cancer. While Mr. Nevius' suit does not call for Ms. Fawcett's family to pull the plug on a 9 p.m. television airing of the story of her battle with cancer scheduled for tonight, it seeks unspecified damages from Ms. Fawcett's boyfriend, Ryan O'Neal, and others for allegedly violating a contract that gave him creative control over the documentary. Of course, to the Post, this makes him a "Farrah ghoul," which sounds like an Italian oath. And in fact, since the suit does not seek an injunction against the airing of tonight's documentary, it does seem as though it could have waited until Ms. Fawcett's battle with the disease is resolved, for better or worse.

Not one story, not two, not three, but four stories jammed on to the Post's front page today! "PIGGY BACK!" and "Farrah ghouls" are pretty great already. What made the paper go hunting for more stuff to put on the front page? Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia and hitter Hideki Matsui delivered what would otherwise be a pretty predictable victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, giving the team a 4-2 record in its most recent road trip. This provides the paper with the peg they need to ask whether the Best Rotation Money Can Buy, which got off to a pretty slow start to the satisfaction of the Haters, might finally be opening up its bid for glory. But there is little idea that that's what you're getting: The front page display only gives you a picture of the pitcher with the headline: "CC does it for Yanks." (What won't most of us do for yanks?! Sorry.) Couldn't the paper have been satisfied with a back-page placement, or else given us some hint of what they were up to in a larger story than the news from last night's game in Toronto?

Last but not least, a red box at the bottom flags the paper's bettor's guide for the Preakness. Pass me a Black & Mild and a No. 2 pencil!

Daily News: The News, as is sometimes its wont, goes for the direct hit on the swine-flu story: "SWINE FLU SHUTS 3 SCHOOLS." The type is huge; as at the Post, this story at the bottom of the page is clearly leading the paper.

But upstairs, the News goes big on a local crime story: A woman was being stalked by someone she met on an online message board and later traded instant messages with, and he showed up at a public park in broad daylight and stabbed her twice. Before she died of her injuries she was able to finger the culprit to police, who's been apprehended. Presumably this is an open-and-shut case, but with its overtones of the perils of modern love and its straight–to–the–Law & Order–storyboarders narrative, it's a good bet for the front page.

The News also fronts (in a smallish box) the story of former Yankee Jim Leyritz, who has checked himself in to a hospital after threatening suicide to his wife and a friend. The troubled ex–major leaguer, who is facing charges associated with a 2007 incident in which he crashed his car, killing a woman, and then was found to be above the legal limit for blood-alcohol levels, was given up to police by the friend who said a series of phone calls showed him to be in deep distress. It's all very sad. Mr. Leyritz was a big performer in the 1996 World Series, where  a hit of his was thought to open up the team's lead in a closely fought game.

General observations: Today is hard. While the two tabloids are fighting over readers, they're also fighting over the template for local tabloid news. The News has always had success fronting stories of anonymous victims of crimes where there is a good narrative to relate; the Post goes for stories with characters that sell themselves, whatever the story that surrounds them, and they've been pretty good at that, too. If either paper had chosen the other's feature for the wood, it would have been a mistake.

But while the Post tells us pretty much exactly what we're getting, which is moral outrage over the derailment of this strangely captivating and almost mawkishly public battle Ms. Fawcett is fighting for her life by a litigious creative partner, the News seems to be giving us a story we've heard before about someone we don't yet know to care about. What the News should be selling, to be frank, is the prospect of a great crime narrative, not a sympathetic victim to choke up about on the subway. If the Post were selling the story, we'd have a picture of the suspect as well as the victim, and a simulated graphic showing some of their online conversation or some such. In other words, the reader knows he's buying the paper to read a story.

Why either paper bothered with the little stories is a bit beyond us, but we call the Leyritz and Sabathia items a wash, possibly tilting slightly in favor of the News on story choice. What really happened was that Mr. Leyritz was put on a suicide watch over emotional distress he is suffering in the course of a drunk-driving death he may have caused. "LEYRITZ MELTS DOWN" seems, in those terms, like an undersale. For the Post's part, why put C.C. on the front page at all unless you're going to transmit to the reader the fact that there may be more to say about last night's win than just to relate that the Yankees won a game they were expected to win anyway?

Winner: New York Post

While speaking at a public hearing in Scotland to push his $2 billion golf resort, Donald Trump said, "We have a President in the United States who's terrible. He stinks." [NY Daily News]

Tatum O'Neal sang karaoke last night with Radar's Neel Shah at Broadway East on the Lower East Side. They performed a duet of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." [Radar]

NBC might pay $2 million for footage of Farrah Fawsett's cancer treatment. [P6]

Sumner Redstone said that his dinner with ex Manuela Herzer was a pure coincidence. Apparently she showed up at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse and ended up joining the Viacom chairman. "I'm a happily married man," he said. [P6]

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon will not be throwing a belated wedding party, but they have registered at Bergdorf's in case you want to send them a gift. [P6]

Tory Burch has hired Surface 2 Air designers as creative consultants to appeal to the hipster demographic. [Nylon via The Cut]

Chris Martin, Gwynee's hubby, has a little sleeping pill problem. [P6]

I went into my third session of couples therapy feeling swell. It really was working. I was opening up, sharing, communicating. Yes, youth was officially over, and soon I’d be like all those henpecked guys my age I see on the Upper West Side pushing a stroller and looking meek, ashamed, henpecked, half-dead, castrated. Wearing their favorite college fraternity T-shirt (“Co-Ed Naked Lacrosse,” “Liquor Up Front, Poker in the Rear”).

Finally, I’d be like them. A big boy!

Meanwhile, I was eager to volunteer more about my early sexual exploits and how that has impacted my relationship with Hilly. Since we’d last met with Dr. Harold Selman, she and I had made it onto the front page of this newspaper. I wasn’t too happy with the photograph. I looked ridiculous, like an extraterrestrial.

But Hilly looked good, and someone told me that was better than the opposite scenario.

She was still looking good in Dr. Selman’s office, which made me feel good. We sat on the couch, under a photograph of Dr. Freud’s office, and popped open our Diet Sunkists.

HILLY: Did you like the stories?

DR. SELMAN: I found them very entertaining, actually kind of compelling.

GEORGE: I keep hearing “compelling.” That means you want to keep reading?

DR. SELMAN: Yes. Yes. I enjoyed it, actually.

GEORGE: It’s kind of different, doing therapy in public, right? One reason I think it’s good is that I feel like I’m being watched, and all these things I’m saying about wanting to improve can’t be empty words or promises. I’ve got to work on this stuff. It’s adding some pressure.

HILLY: Pressure about stuff we want to fix, right?

GEORGE: For instance, we’re going to go out tonight, and I think this is a real test, because Hilly will want to go home at around midnight. I’d like to go home around 1 or so, and I know I’ll be proud of myself.

[Silence follows.]

DR. SELMAN: So?

GEORGE: That’s about it. What kind of feedback did you get?

HILLY: Mostly people thought it was really funny, some of my friends and co-workers. I felt fine about everything; I didn’t feel like my privacy was being invaded or anything.

DR. SELMAN: Well, you know, my approach to this is that I’m doing it as if you were just another couple like this in therapy. I’m not addressing a newspaper column. So I’m trying to stay focused that way, and when I read the columns, what impressed me most, I guess, was how open the both of you really were. People go to see therapists and expect confidentiality, and they say whatever and it doesn’t ever have to leave the room. And here we have the expectation that everything is going to be made public, so you know, maybe you don’t want to say how much you drink and have it appear in the newspaper. But you guys were very open. I was impressed with how much information you put in. I said to you guys when you came in the first time, ‘You know, this could be a bit of a Pandora’s box.’ Because in real therapy, who knows what’s going to come up?

GEORGE: You’re right, you’re right. I was kind of freaked out about the picture that ran. It was the worst picture of me ever taken, and I thought my editor had purposely put it in there and deliberately didn’t show it to me beforehand. So I had a complete meltdown yesterday.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think that aspect was?

GEORGE: It was vanity, to begin with; then it was more conspiracy-minded. I didn’t want any pranks, any surprises with this. I wanted to know exactly what was going in there and Hilly to know, too. I didn’t see the photo and the subheads, the headlines.

HILLY: And you know, when they take a quote and blow it up on the page and make it larger-size. The one they used said something about infidelity, and then I had some kind of fleeting thought of coming across as some kind of a crazy, jealous, raging person.

DR. SELMAN: What shape and form did the meltdown take?

GEORGE: I sent about 10 e-mails to my editor and pretty much gave two weeks’ notice.

HILLY: I think they wanted us to look kind of funny. We both looked really nervous, and I was looking off in the distance and George had a really kind of scary expression on his face, and then the caption was “Before therapy.” And so I think they were trying to make sort of cartoon out of “before and after,” anticipating that after a few more sessions, maybe there will be some blissfully perfect photo.

GEORGE: Yeah, I looked demonic in the picture. But so far, so good. Right, Hilly?

HILLY: Yeah!

DR. SELMAN: So I take it that they rejected your resignation?

GEORGE: Yeah. I think by the eighth or ninth e-mail, I’d softened it a little. They know me pretty well. And they changed the photo on the Web site. They understood my reaction, because just doing this kind of therapy, talking about funny “Gurley’s a character”–type stuff—but also kind of excruciating personal stuff ….

DR. SELMAN: Excruciating?

GEORGE: Some of it. Maybe that’s too strong. Well, I think, at age 7, bribing a girl $5 to say “I love you,” then throwing the coins on the ground—I mean, where does that come from? That’s not learned behavior. That makes me feel like there’s something. [Pause] I talked to my mother, and she reminded me that I was obsessed with Farrah Fawcett. I had Farrah Fawcett sheets, Farrah Fawcett T-shirts, posters. I was obsessed with Farrah Fawcett.

And when I moved to New York, I learned about sex from the show Midnight Blue with Al Goldstein. This was like sixth grade. And The Ugly George Show.

DR. SELMAN: I thought that your sex life began when you were 7.

GEORGE: But this added fuel to the fire. Also, I wanted to say I think Hilly was the girl next-door. She was really sweet. I know it doesn’t sound so innocent, but that time of my life was pretty idyllic.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think about what George is saying?

HILLY: Um, well, I mean right off the bat, we have this way that we speak to each other frequently that’s kind of infantile, and I know that a lot of my behavior is very infantile. I think I remind him of a 7- or 8-year-old girl because that’s about my emotional-maturity level.

GEORGE: We have play dates; we get really silly. We go into fantasyland. Other couples must do this, but we talk about the cats.

HILLY: And ponies. Talk in, like, little baby voices and call each other “scoopie pie.” It’s more comfortable; it maybe reminds him of when things seemed safer.

GEORGE: Couple other things—O.K., this might be more relevant. I went to an all-boys school … am I taking up too much time and being self-indulgent?

HILLY: No.

GEORGE: What do you think?

DR. SELMAN: Well, it’s like digging in a mine and no one’s going to hit gold.

GEORGE: So I should continue? All-boys school from fourth grade until eighth grade here in New York, then the boarding school I went to in Connecticut—it was kind of a twisted place then. Hazing. You couldn’t leave on the weekends. People called it a penitentiary. I smoked a lot of pot to escape.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you see this as relevant?

GEORGE: I’m getting there. The girls’ school was five miles up a mountain. I didn’t have normal contact with girls. They weren’t allowed in your room, and it was basically the longest dry spell I ever had. It wasn’t until senior year that I started to have—what’s called “dating.”

You weren’t even allowed to masturbate there. You couldn’t lock the door to your room, and if you got caught masturbating—what was called “snapping”—that was social suicide. You were ruined. Everyone would find out.

DR. SELMAN: Clearly, there was some sort of underlying homosexuality about the place.

GEORGE: Yeah, definitely, all the jocks—I used to get punched all the time by these huge hockey and football players who were walking around naked in the dorm. It was a weird place. By the time you were a senior, everything would get better. Somewhere along the way, my whole confidence, sense of self and well-being got tied up into scamming on girls.

DR. SELMAN: “Scamming”?

GEORGE: Scoring, fooling around. That was all my guy friends and I talked about.

HILLLY: When I met him for the second time, it came up in conversation. I asked him how many previous sexual partners he had, and it was a huge number. I had to sit down and calculate if it was even possible.

GEORGE: I just think it got hard-wired into me—maybe because of being in these boys’ schools, and that was all we thought about.

DR. SELMAN: So you’re saying you overcompensated with women to defend against the homosexuality of the school?

GEORGE: No! No. No, it was not a reaction against that. I don’t know—maybe.

HILLY: You go out and flirt with pretty girls and get busy with them. So that’s maybe something that’s still on your mind when you go out.

DR. SELMAN: Well, then why should she trust you now? As she said in an earlier session—that she had concerns about whether or not you meet other women.

HILLY: The other day, when I walked into your apartment, I found a long dark hair in his bathroom and brought it out to him and asked if he was having an affair. He got mad at me.

GEORGE: Right, ’cause that was the cleaning lady.

HILLY: I feel bad that I have to ask. I hate feeling that way, but sometimes I do. I don’t wonder as much now as earlier on in our relationship, but I sometimes still do get concerned.

GEORGE: I think I’m saying this because I want you to know something about my sexual and psychological history. I don’t know—to me, it doesn’t sound normal. It’s not like some guy who, at age 15, had a girlfriend for four years and then another one—you know, long, stable, happy relationships.

DR. SELMAN: I’m curious: What is your reaction to what George is saying?

HILLY: There’s fear.

GEORGE: You also said you had a pattern that, in the past, you have screwed up relationships, right?

HILLY: Yeah, I just basically didn’t have them. Like I said, the longest one I ever had was six weeks. I was scared of them. I would sabotage the relationships before they even had a chance of taking off.

GEORGE: Six weeks. I thought it was six months.

DR. SELMAN: So you have no response to what he said, no reaction.

HILLY: Well, there’s a little anger, too, because it just goes back to self-discipline. I mean, what’s the big deal? You give yourself a curfew and you don’t have physical interaction with other women. There’s an answer for just about everything in the world. Sometimes, infidelity like what happened with us—you cheated on me—I forgave you for that. Once.

GEORGE: Sorry about that.

HILLY: Thanks. Twice, I don’t know. I think it’s situation by situation, and I think, too, because we discussed the “marriage” word, it’s case by case. Everyone has to deal with it in their own way. So I can’t predict if something were to happen, how I would react. I hope that it wouldn’t. I would hope that I would be enough to keep you from being tempted. But I know that especially in the circles that we run around in, people cheat. It’s disgusting, but they do it. It’s an ugly fact of life.

GEORGE: Well, I know that right now, compared to before I knew you, that I don’t have that same drive. And that incident you’re talking about: I’m not making excuses, but that was very late at night, alcohol—

HILLY: But you have lots of late nights, alcohol-induced.

GEORGE: I’m not making excuses; I’m trying to improve myself. Put you at ease.

DR. SELMAN: Well, you think that by telling her all this stuff, you’re putting her at ease?

GEORGE: Am I making it worse?

HILLY: No, I think it’s great that we’re talking about it at all. If we were at dinner or at home or something, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Otherwise, it builds up internally over time and can drive somebody crazy. To me, honesty is more important. If you want to go hop in the sack with Suzie-Q, tell me about it. And we can discuss it and see if comes to some … before you do something. We can see if we can work something out. Maybe it’s because there is something I need to do to change something, to make things more exciting for you.

GEORGE: I don’t think you have to worry about that, really. Expunge those thoughts.

DR. SELMAN: So you’re willing to accept him with all this history?

HILLY: Yeah, absolutely, I already have. For example, taking birth control for me was a very big issue. I really didn’t want to take it. But I did and I do now.

GEORGE: I had a report card once—you know they have the grades and the comments? My Latin teacher’s comments were four words: “vile behavior at times.”

DR. SELMAN: You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Really, I was thinking, “What’s coming next? How much can you tell her to turn her off to you?”

GEORGE: Oh, I see what you mean. So I shouldn’t have said any of this stuff? Counterproductive?

DR. SELMAN: No, no. But it seems like you’re very ambivalent about your relationship to begin with. What better way to have to avoid getting married than go for couples therapy with your girlfriend and try to turn her off to the max?

GEORGE: I don’t think I’m doing that. I’m not doing this to turn her, turn you off. I think what you’re getting at is there’s something self-indulgent, narcissistic about me. I agree. It’s possible the way I’m acting right now is an act.

DR. SELMAN: An act?

GEORGE: Sometimes when you confess to being narcissistic or something, it’s empty and you’re letting yourself off the hook. “Oh, I’m narcissistic, that’s just the way I am—I’m an asshole.” So there it is, I’ve said it. I don’t know. Do you think she lets me off the hook too easily and has been too optimistic about me?

DR. SELMAN: Sounds like she’s willing to put up with just about anything.

HILLY: I’m just a firm believer that people make mistakes, and I think George deserves the benefit of the doubt. And he’s been so great to me—he really has.

DR. SELMAN: So how do feel about what Hilly’s saying to you?

GEORGE: I agree with it and I appreciate it. I have some demons, and she’s accepted that.

DR. SELMAN: What I’m getting at here is, for someone who really has not had many long-term relationships, here’s somebody who, despite everything, she’s still hanging in there, right? So what’s it gonna be? What’s it going to be to turn her off? What’s it gonna take?

GEORGE: Can I raise something? Tonight we’re going to go out, and if I go out and go home with Hilly at 1 a.m., that will be a sign that this is working.

DR. SELMAN: So you’re putting pressure on yourself to live up to a certain ideal that you want to live up to. So you’re saying, “Well, this is what you really want to do”—so if you don’t do it, then you’ll have failed the test.

GEORGE: I think it’s a test, and it’s gonna work out.

DR. SELMAN: Let me remind you, this is the third session. Why put these kinds of tests on yourself so early on?

GEORGE: Should we talk about our cats? Do we have a few minutes?

HILLY: That was actually one of the turning points in our relationship, I think, when my beloved cat Pierre passed away. Oh my gosh—I don’t know what I would have done without George. I was surprised and touched at how sweet he was. I came home to find my sweet, precious Pierre dead in the bathroom, and I went into sort of shock at first and didn’t know what to do, and then I was sobbing and George called, and at first I said, “No, don’t come down here—I can deal with this on my own.” But he forced himself over to my apartment and just sat there with me when the ambulance came to take Pierre away and cried with me. It was just so hard. I know it sounds silly, but it was really sweet.

GEORGE: What were you thinking just now when we were talking about our cats?

DR. SELMAN: What would make you think that I would want the cat in my office?

GEORGE: So we have to wait until our sixth session before we get your interpretations?

DR. SELMAN: Well, we’ve had three.

GEORGE: Some of the questions you were asking me seemed to suggest that I was the villain. Maybe I am.

DR. SELMAN: You said it yourself with the kid in the classroom doing behaviors that are not approved of. Saying “penis” or something in the classroom. So I have a feeling like you’re saying “penis” in the classroom now, and that’s why you think I’m the principal.

GEORGE: You think I’m telling stories to be disruptive?

DR. SELMAN: I think they’re very provocative. And exhibitionistic.

HILLY: To me, it seems very clear: all the acting out, all the defiance, all the cries and screaming for attention. Who wouldn’t as a kid—your parents got a divorce, you’re a little kid.

GEORGE: Can I ask you one last thing? Is there hope for redemption?

DR. SELMAN: This is not church.

—George Gurley

If you went to see Requiem for a Dream when it opened over Columbus Day weekend and happened to be sitting next to a bleary-eyed film-school type who looked as though he'd already sat through the film a dozen times, chances are it was director Darren Aronofsky himself, doing his small part to make sure his film will get wide distribution. It seems that Mr. Aronofsky, the 31-year-old Brooklyn-born filmmaker who had an art-house hit with 1998's Pi and was recently chosen to follow in the steps of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher as the director of Warner Bros.' newest Batman sequel, wasn't content to let the marketing department from Artisan, the company distributing his film, do its Blair Witch craft on Requiem , which opens nationally on November 3.

It seems that you can take the kid out of film school, but you can't stop him from stacking his screenings with friends and second cousins twice removed. A few days before the film opened in Manhattan, Mr. Aronofsky zapped out a chain e-mail of sorts that he encouraged friends to forward, Amway style, to other friends. "Dear Friends," the e-mail began, "My new movie, Requiem for a Dream , opens in Manhattan on Friday and I am terrified. So in order to stir the grass roots I am writing to you dear friends and hopefully because this has been forwarded to dear friends of dear friends to your dear friends of dear friends. Does that make sense?" Mr. Aronofsky then demonstrated a real Billy Friedkin-style burst of humility. "Anyway," he wrote, " Requiem for a Dream stars Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans and even though I am very biased I think IT ROCKS!!! I would love you all to come and see it." (To be fair, Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times agreed that Mr. Aronofsky's drug-addiction opus ROCKS!!!, though neither Owen Gleiberman nor Elvis Mitchell phrased it quite that way.)

Then Mr. Aronofsky got down to brass tacks, explaining that behind his entreaties was some real Hollywood bidness : "Please bring all your friends, families, enemies and random strangers on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (Oct. 6-8) since the opening weekend box-office returns will effect the entire release pattern of the movie around the world."

Mr. Aronofsky's audience stacking seemed to pay off. Variety reported that over the weekend , Requiem brought in $64,770 on just two screens, which is nearly three times the per-screen take of the number one movie in the country, Meet the Parents . After Mr. Aronofsky finishes the fifth Batman, perhaps Warner Bros. will set him up with a T1 line and a Hotmail account and hand him the keys to the studio

Paparazzo Bites Publicists

Decades of getting booted off of movie sets by burly union guys and escorted from celebrity parties by publicists has left Steve Sands a very indignant paparazzo. Mr. Sands, a gangly sort who Esquire magazine once uncharitably dubbed "Ratso Rizzo with a camera," is a fixture among the corralled photographers who wait outside of movie premieres and clubs where the famous are expected to be. As a freelance paparazzo, Mr. Sands has what might be called a complicated relationship with publicists, a number of whom would rather eat a light bulb than let him into their exclusive parties.

"Off the top of my head, I can think of three PR people who I'd like to see dead because I think they are a bunch of scummy egomaniacs," Mr. Sands said. He paused, perhaps thinking that a few relationships with publicists are worth salvaging. "[Lizzie Grubman PR partner] Peggy Siegal is not one of them," he added.

Now Mr. Sands, who for so long has been an unwelcome guest at so many places, has a room of his own from which no clipboard-toting publicist can toss him. Last month, he started a chat room called "Publicyst" (get it?), found at www.dreamwater.net/publicyst, where he can dole out his own brand of justice. And he's encouraging other photographers to join him. Recently, Mr. Sands said, Ken Katz, the paparazzo best known for shooting John Kennedy, Jr. and his wife engaged in various arguments, recently logged on and left a friendly message.

Lara Shriftman, a partner in the PR firm Harrison & Shriftman, doesn't rate as highly as Ms. Siegal on the Sands-o-Meter. Mr. Sands has been booted from quite a few Harrison & Shriftman events, notably a recent Hugo Boss party from which Mr. Sands readily admits he left screaming. "I certainly used Lara as my muse for the site," Mr. Sands said. On September 22, Mr. Sands decided to put his money where his mouth is and posted a $20-to-$75 bounty for "any information on the lies, dirty dealings and scandals involving the Harrison & Shriftman PR firm," ending it with the ominous sounding, "Their time has come." (Ms. Shriftman said she had no comment on Mr. Sands' site.)

So far, traffic hasn't exactly threatened to crash AOL. At press time, the site had been logged on to 184 times. And though Mr. Sands invites people to post anonymously, he has been acting as something of a cop to those who don't share his disaffections. After someone who identified himself as a photographer named Frank posted a positive message about one of Mr. Sands' least favorite PR companies, Network, Mr. Sands struck back, "What is your last name. I don't know ANY photographer (sic) named 'Frank' that covers network partys (sic) . Are you sure that you're not a shill for the firm?"

But Mr. Sands said there will be no censorship on his site, pointing out that he left a posting from someone who wrote, "Steve, everyone knows that you are the ONLY ONE posting these ridiculous, badly misspelled e-mails...[A]re you that starving for attention? I thought you were a photographer!! Where are your pictures ever published? I suggest you take that twitch to a doctor!!!!"

"I mean, how fucking nasty can you be?" Mr. Sands asked The Transom. "I have a twitch because I've been carrying 30 pounds of camera equipment for 30 years." Bruised ego and all, Mr. Sands said he will press on. "I think this site is something that is going to serve the public interest."

Farrah Gets a Head of Herself

Actress Sylvia Miles tromped past the phalanx of journalists crowded around Farrah Fawcett at the new restaurant Brasserie 8 1/2. "Farrah!" she cried out. "Farrah!" Ms. Miles, who was wearing a big black bow in her hair, seemed to be on a mission.

Ms. Fawcett had just attended the premiere of her very serious TNT movie, Baby, in which she played a painter. (Unlike her 1997 Playboy video, this time Ms. Fawcett actually painted with her hands.) She was on her best behavior, drinking Coca-Cola and refusing to say anything controversial about Robert Altman, who directed her in Dr. T and the Women , or her former Charlie's Angels costars.

Ms. Miles, on the other hand, seemed content to be as weird as she wanted to be. While Ms. Fawcett looked on, Ms. Miles, who later said she "knew Farrah in the 70's when she was with Ryan," fiddled with the top of a small gold cylindrical box. Once she got her ringed fingers inside, Ms. Miles slowly pulled out what appeared to be a large lock of flaxen hair attached to a chunk of flesh. An ear? A scalp? Ms. Fawcett looked concerned, as though perhaps Ms. Miles had become a practitioner of the black arts.

"It's you!" Ms. Miles cackled as she pulled out a Barbie-sized head and waved it in front of Ms. Fawcett's face. Ms. Fawcett examined the head, which, judging from the cheekbones, was indeed supposed to be her as Angel Jill Munroe. "I put sunglasses on it!" Ms. Miles pointed out. Ms. Fawcett nodded and smiled.

Afterwards, Ms. Miles said she had a few of the Farrah noggins lying around the house. She'd found a whole bin of them in a knickknack shop on Seventh Avenue and kept one stuck to a pen in her apartment. The Transom told her that the head looked a little evil. "It's not that evil," cackled Ms. Miles.

Soho Gets Godpia

On Oct. 5, as the city's trend-devouring art crowd dragged from gallery opening to gallery opening, an unusual, ecstatic, raving joy was zinging about Soho's Wooster Projects. At the center of the whirlwind was Manji Ryu, an unassuming middle-aged Japanese man wearing a tuxedo and a large pair of square, lavender-tinted glasses.

While insiders were heading to Sharon Lockhart's show at Barbara Gladstone in Chelsea, Mr. Manji was presiding over his domain of fantastical paintings, titled "Manji Ryu World Godpia Exhibition 2000." Nude, koala-hugging vixens writhed amid floral explosions. The babes' long hair swam in paisley waves, flames leaping from betwixt their legs. Glowing planets sizzled by. A baby Buddha rode a horned dragon-fish like a bucking bronco, and an enormous rhinoceros beetle hovered alongside a white-leisure-suited, samurai-sword-wielding Adonis.

Mr. Manji's paintings illustrate the journey to Godpia, a place envisioned by the artist. Through a translator, Mr. Manji told The Transom that Godpia is "happier than utopia. It's superior to utopia. This is Godpia." In the literature that accompanies his art, Mr. Manji instructs his disciples-collectors on how to access this mysterious mental realm. "Let your soul warp freely to Godpia," he writes. "Let your Godpia free. Let us scream out of joy, 'I wanna touch God!! I wanna touch God!!'"

As the sky spit mist outside, the gallery pumped with random onlookers and the temperature soared into the triple digits. Mr. Manji climbed onto a raised platform and grabbed a microphone. "Listen to me!" Mr. Manji demanded like a cake-high birthday boy. "I am it, okay?! Listen to me! Good evening! Ladies. And gentlemen! My name is Manji Ryu. I thank you very much for coming!" he announced, competing with the violin concerto that continued to whine over the sound system. He then broke into a lengthy address in halting English that was, for the most part, incomprehensible. Next, Mr. Manji's young daughter had a turn and the mike, followed by his wife. Finally, special guest Rocky Aoki, the shaggy-mustached father of Benihana (as well as of Lenny Kravitz-dating model Devon), gave his take on the evening.

Then-bang!–the men attacked a keg of Sho Chiku Bai sake, smashing off its wooden lid with mallets. The alcohol sloshed about and gallery hoppers dove in. Benihana chefs kept the sushi coming. Paintings were knocked askew as the crowd attacked the free fish.

Suddenly, the classical music stopped and "Louie Louie" thundered through the speakers. Mr. Manji, now sporting a pair of what appeared to be white boxer shorts, matching socks and an abbreviated kimono, emerged on the makeshift stage. On his head he wore a kerchief that was knotted under his nose. With all the grace of an out-of-water crustacean, Mr. Manji pranced about, robotically waving two fans as he performed his rendition of the ancient "bubble dance." "Too much sake!" someone yelled. "Sake overload!"

Despite the distractions, some people took the time to check out the art. "There's some nice little mysticism about his paintings, but it's not, how do you say...complacent mysticism," observed a gentleman named Angelo, who looked like a direct descendant of Mr. Clean.

"When I first walked in, I was sort of turned off by the imagery," a middle-aged woman admitted to The Transom. "Almost, like, in a kind of nauseous way. But the more I looked at the paintings," she hesitated for a moment, searching inside the frame in front of her, "I'm...I'm getting into it the more I drink."

–Beth Broome