Julie Macklowe. (Patrick McMullan)

“Pretty much every gay man in fashion is here,” a guest remarked at the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America’s “Cocktails at Sunset” benefit on Saturday evening.

And so it seemed. The air was heavily perfumed, and well-fitting white jeans abounded in the backyard of Ross Bleckner’s Sagaponack residence. Despite some wild weather earlier in the week—a smothering heat wave followed by a severe summer storm—the sky had cleared and the beach breeze was cool.

Photographer Stewart Shining expressed his relief at this, telling The Observer that, as the vice president of ACRIA, he’d been running around all day getting things ready and having nightmares about the rain. And with good reason—Kelly Klein told us that she’d attended the annual kickoff at the Bridgehampton Polo Club earlier that day, only for it to be canceled because of Friday’s harsh weather. “But everybody still showed up, so it was a bunch of people with nowhere to go,” she explained, a little exasperated.

But the grass was dry as Jeffrey Bilhuber, Tomas Maier and David Kleinberg milled around the tented lawn, sipping champagne and taking in the silent auction featuring Robert Mapplethorpe’s Fang (1987) and a Robert Longo portrait of Cindy Sherman, which sold for $9,000 and $11,000, respectively.

Mr. Shining assured us he was starting to relax, but his party-organizing duties were not yet over. “People keep texting last-minute, you know, ‘Where’s the party?’” he laughed.

Not long after Mr. Shining’s arrival, Mr. Bleckner strode out his back door and down the lawn, accompanied by his dogs. “My evening’s just beginning,” he told us. “I will say that my dogs seem to be having a good time, though,” he said, gesturing to his three dachshunds.

Stefano Tonchi, the editor of W, was lamenting the summer crowds (“even in my spinning class,” he moaned), when something behind us caught his eye. “Oh my god, you are bright!” he exclaimed. “Wow ... wow!”

A neon-clad Peggy Siegal had just appeared on Mr. Bleckner’s doorstep, where she posed proudly for photographers. “I’m wearing Nanette Lepore,” she informed a throng of admirers, gesturing to her vibrant papaya-colored skirt and revealing a leg through an Angelina Jolie-inspired slit.

“Did you know that neon doesn’t photograph?” Mr. Shining asked his companions. “I keep doing covers for Seventeen magazine—they love neon—and I shoot it, and then it comes up on the monitor and I go, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it painted,’” he laughed bemusedly.

Jill Stuart arrived with her daughter, Chloe Curtis. Patrick McMullan rushed up to her. “You’re here with your babies!” he exclaimed. “I’ll make you look beautiful.”

Ms. Stewart told us that her daughter, who recently graduated from Cornell, would be moving to London in a few weeks to study at Sotheby’s in the fall and, in the meantime, catch the Olympics. “Chloe and Sophie,” Ms. Stewart said, referring to the youngest of her three daughters. “They’re going to go to the finals of gymnastics,” she added, which she told us was one of her own favorite sports to watch.

We ran into Julie Macklowe, who eagerly gave us a sample of vbeauté—her recently launched specialty skin care line—anti-wrinkle serum. “It’s the best thing you could ever use,” Ms. Maclowe’s companion, Oliva Oluck, informed us enthusiastically. “You will be impressed.”

Yet Ms. Macklowe revealed that vbeauté might not be the entire secret to her own youthful complexion. “This morning I ran eight miles barefoot!” she reported excitedly, referring to her jogging footwear of choice as “condom shoes.”

“I feel like I have some aches and pains going on,” Ms. Macklowe admitted.

“Last night we went to Papa John’s Café for dinner, and I introduced my daughter, much to the chagrin of my husband, to deep-fried mozzarella sticks!” she elaborated.  “Of course, I proceeded to eat half of them. Needless to say, that’s how the eight miles came about.”

Ms. Macklowe was not the only one taking advantage of the weekend to catch up on exercise. The belle of the evening, the young art director Sofia Sanchez Barrenechea, told us she’d been paddleboarding all morning, demonstrating the required motion with her arms. We asked about her plans for the rest of the weekend. “More paddleboarding,” she told us definitively. “And I’ll probably be doing a lot of eating,” she added, unprompted.

We wandered over to speak with Shelly and Vincent Fremont, who came with their daughter, Casey Fremont Crowe, and spent much of the evening conversing with Bob Colacello. “I have a new grandson who’s five months old, so that’s all I really care about,” Ms. Fremont told us. “We took him to the beach today, which was really fun. He just loved it! It was great.”

Bruce Weber told us he’d been busy working most of the weekend, but he’d be taking time later in the summer to head up to the Adirondacks. “So I’ll be swimming in a lake,” he said, explaining why it was preferable to the beach. “I swim, but I swim now with six dogs,” he explained with a crinkly grin. “They try to keep up and I have to carry them.”

Francisco Costa, the Women’s Creative Director of Calvin Klein, had just returned from a trip to Santa Barbara and was eager to tell us about a new hobby he’d discovered. “For the first time, I did—what do you call it, arch?” He mimed shooting a bow and arrow. “And I hit the bull’s-eye every time!” he exclaimed. “It was so beautiful.”

Mr. Costa told us he’d been spending time barbecuing at his house in Bellport but explained this was his last weekend of the summer. “Summer’s over!” he exclaimed. “This is it for me. I’ll be at home all week and then all the way until the end of August I’ll be in the office, working every single weekend,” he explained, alluding to fall’s looming fashion weeks.

We asked how he’d been dealing with the hot weather. “I love it,” he told us earnestly. “I’m Brazilian, so I keep telling people to just enjoy it.”

eschwiegershausen@observer.com

- Max Abelson

There were eight different appointments on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend for one 1700's farmhouse in Sagaponack, priced at $2.4 million. "I told a few people who were prepared to take their shoes off and walk through an un-made-up driveway that they could take a preview," said John Prince, a broker with Sotheby's International Realty who was selling the house for an American couple living in Paris.

Mr. Prince wasn't acting prematurely. "This is what everyone is trying to re-create in the Hamptons. This is the real thing," said Mr. Prince of the six-bedroom farmhouse with three porches and fireplaces in the dining room, living room and master bedroom. "People were just falling all over themselves to see it."

Well, not people like Jerry Seinfeld, who's building a monstrous garage (to house his classic car collection) adjacent to the $35 million house he bought from Billy Joel. But rather people like Kate and Andy Spade, who showed up at the farmhouse, located at 207 Sag Main Street, and offered $2.4 million. And people like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, who tried to buy the farmhouse they've rented twice in Sagaponack (this summer for $35,000) but didn't get it.

Ms. Parker and Mr. Broderick were victims of their own good taste, it seems. The three-bedroom, three-bath house they tried to buy on Hedges Lane is owned by two men: Irwin Sarason, a former art director of an advertising firm who lives in East Hampton, and Ted Jeremenko, a painter who lives in Sag Harbor. "We bought it together" in 1979, said Mr. Jeremenko. "Like investing in stock."

The two men fixed it up and started renting it the next year, once to the painter David Salle. "It's kind of an Americana two-story farmhouse with some gingerbread moldings on the front porch," explained their broker, Jeff Levine of Allan M. Schneider & Associates in Bridgehampton. "The farmland is very flat and open … very beautiful." A tall hedge marks the perimeter of the property, composed mainly of meadows and a few cedar trees; only about one-third of the 2.2 acres is lawn. It's a 15-minute walk to the beach.

Said Lori Barbaria, a broker at Cook Pony Farm Real Estate in Bridgehampton who showed several clients the house: "It's a very simple, elegant house that hasn't been overly tampered with, but has been maintained and brought up to the comfort level of right now, with air conditioning, charming nice bathrooms, an up-to-date kitchen, floors that are old and charming. There's a porch with a rocking chair." There's also an old barn used as a garage and an unfinished studio with a dirt floor and a classic-looking gabled roof.

Ms. Parker and Mr. Broderick first rented the house for the summer of 1998. Tina Fredericks, whose real estate firm represented them, said the couple were very happy there. "They always loved it," she said. "It is a very sweet house."

Back in 1998, the couple offered the owners $1.3 million for the house, but the two men didn't take the bait. Around the same time, actress Julie Andrews, who owns the adjacent property, tried to buy some of the acreage, to no avail. The following summer, Ms. Parker and Mr. Broderick rented a house on Beach Lane in Wainscott, but decided to return to the Hedges Lane farmhouse this summer.

The house had gone back on the market in the winter for $2.5 million, but Ms. Parker and Mr. Broderick did not make another offer, brokers said. "I had heard they were thinking about [buying the house], but changed their minds," said Ms. Barbaria. In late July, a Manhattan couple signed a contract to buy the Hedges Lane house for the asking price. The deal is expected to be final this fall; the new owners will add a pool, but not much else.

Said Mr. Jeremenko about finally selling the house: "The price is right." Ms. Barbaria explained it another way: "Everyone wants a farmhouse."

Just in Sagaponack, two others have sold in the last few weeks. The farmhouse on Sag Main Street that Mr. Prince was showing wasn't officially on the market and was in the middle of being re-landscaped, but that didn't make any difference: "We had two offers by the end of Labor Day." The Spades' offer was accepted, and they were supposed to sign a contract the second week of September. A few weeks earlier, just a few blocks away, an 18th-century farmhouse at 312 Sag Main Road was sold by the director and actor Andre Gregory for $2.2 million. (The house had been on the market for about a year.)

While Ms. Fredericks said her firm is currently listing five farmhouses, priced from $2.25 million to $5.25 million, Ms. Barbaria isn't comfortable with the current supply. She said she recently called the owner of a farmhouse on Parsonage Lane in Sagaponack to inquire if her house was going on the market. "She said her house was awful, had no air conditioning, was really old and shabby, and I'm like, 'Oh my God–it's a gold mine!'"

WEST VILLAGE

NATHANIEL ROTHSCHILD SETS UP HOUSE ON ST. LUKE'S PLACE Sure, some New Yorkers (see Madonna, Brooke de Ocampo, Candace Bushnell) are jumping the pond to London, but plenty of Londoners are still coming our way, too. Nathaniel Rothschild, the 28-year-old heir to the European banking dynasty, who went to Oxford and has a home in London, has set himself to renovating the $5.575 million, four-bedroom townhouse at 8 St. Luke's Place, between Hudson and LeRoy streets, that he bought in June.

Mr. Rothschild, son of Lord Rothschild and the head of NR Atticus, an investment fund, obtained a permit on July 13 to give his landmarked 1852 Manhattan townhouse a little face lift–an extra $350,000 expense in order to spruce up the kitchen, the three full bathrooms and the three half-bathrooms and to rearrange some of the rooms. The four-story townhouse's interior has retained much of its original detail, including French windows with shutters, high ceilings, a sweeping stairway and a rounded arched door. Other bonuses are a basement-level finished office, a private garden and unobstructed southern exposure. (Annual real estate taxes are $10,000.)

But Mr. Rothschild may be living there all alone. He's estranged from his wife, Annabel Nielson, the socialite, model and reported best friend of Kate Moss. The two married in 1995 at a secret Las Vegas ceremony but split two years later–and she seems to be having a pretty good time on her own. In May, at the party thrown by Italian Vogue for photographer Helmut Newton in Monte Carlo, Ms. Rothschild jumped into the pool wearing a clingy designer dress that became instantly revealing–a party trick that made European tabloid headlines.

A spokesman at Mr. Rothschild's Manhattan office told The Observer that the jet-setting Mr. Rothschild "doesn't talk to the press." Brokers Sara Gelbard of the Corcoran Group and Leslie Mason of Douglas Elliman would not comment on the deal.

UPPER WEST SIDE

RESTAURATEUR SELLS PLACE WHERE HE PLANNED GUASTAVINO'S

Joel Kissin, the 20-year partner of Sir Terence Conran, moved to New York in 1998 after 20 years of running successful restaurants in London. The 46-year-old New Zealand native sold his flat and bought a 19 1/2-foot-wide, four-story townhouse at 53 West 68th Street, right near Columbus Avenue, for $2.8 million.

After putting 15 months of work into his new place–including installing limestone floors in the dining room, the entrance hallway and the garden floor of the house, as well as re-landscaping the garden with the help of landscape architect Ken Smith–the restaurateur sold the house for $7 million to Jon Platt, one of the producers of Copenhagen , the winner of three Tony Awards this year, including for best play. "I loved the house," said Mr. Kissin, "but what can I say? I moved to a penthouse on Fifth Avenue."

According to his broker, Jaar-mel Sloane of Sloane Square, Mr. Platt was moving from Boston to New York, where the play has become a terrific hit. Although the asking price was originally around $6.4 million, according to one source, the property became the object of a bidding war, with Mr. Platt having to offer $7 million in order to secure the 6,100-square-foot house with four bedrooms, a 26-foot-high ceiling in the living room and a traditional exterior.

Perhaps he shouldn't have been so eager to buy. Before Mr. Platt had a chance to move in, it turned out that work would take him to London. So just a few weeks ago, Mr. Platt put the house back on the market for $7.5 million, with Ms. Sloane as the listing broker.

Mr. Kissin, on the other hand, has no regrets. His new home "is opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a penthouse … with a wraparound terrace and great views. I saw this apartment before I bought the house nearly three years ago; I liked it very much but I didn't buy it at that time. It is a very particular space and I didn't know what to do with it then, but I think I know what to do with it now. No one had bought it since then. It was done in a very contemporary way, around 1992, which I thought was very dated in 1998. It has black walls at the moment which I shall be getting rid of very quickly."

515 West End Avenue

Three-bed, three-bath, 2,200-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $1.995 million. Selling: $1.996 million.

Charges: $1,802; 48 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: five weeks.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE HIGH BIDDERS GONE? A couple put this recently renovated three-bedroom apartment on the market for $2.25 million last March. No one came around. After a month, they dropped the price by about $250,000 and–ta-da!– they had three interested buyers. Each had to file a sealed bid; a couple who work in the financial industry won out with an offer $1,000 over the asking price. The sellers had already bought a larger apartment on the Upper East Side in what their broker, Marilyn Presser of Douglas Elliman, describes as "not quite Carnegie Hill."

UPPER EAST SIDE

90 East End Avenue

Three-bed, 3 1/2 bath, 2,200-square-foot condo.

Asking: $1.610 million. Selling: $1.610 million.

Charges: $1,553. Taxes: $951.

Time on the market: two months.

DIAGNOSIS: CONDOMINIUM After observing a couple from Manhassat, N.Y., for a few months, a broker diagnosed them as "apartment people, not loft people." Said Robert Morrison of Douglas Elliman: "They couldn't decide if they were loft people," so they had been looking for an apartment downtown. Of course, in the end the couple bought a three-bedroom apartment in this building, a new condominium that opened in June. "This building mimics prewar style," said Mr. Morrison. "It's just like a Park Avenue apartment." Except that it is on Gracie Square (the mansion is just up the street). Their new apartment has East River views, a separate formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen. The 21-story building, with 38 apartments ranging from 1,408 square feet to 3,692 square feet, is the first new building to be constructed in the area in over a decade.

200 East 84th Street

Two-bed, one-bath, 1,750-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $950,000. Selling: $860,000.

Charges: $2,111; 50 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: one day.

PROPERTY-TRAINED The owners of two side-by-side apartments–an alcove studio and a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment–split their earnings on this deal. They teamed up to offer their two apartments as a potential 1,750-square-foot apartment with a 350-square-foot terrace. Jonathan Wood of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, the listing and selling broker, called the pending combo "neat" because the two apartments had adjoining terraces. A single banker in his mid-30's had a very nice one-bedroom apartment on 74th Street, but he'd been looking for something a little larger with a terrace for over a year. He got $625,000 from a retired couple for his old apartment.

When Ira Rennert first got the permits to build Fair Field, his monstrous dream house in the Hamptons, a group called the Sagaponack Homeowners Association, headed by Manhattan-based real estate broker Albert Bialek, rose up in opposition. Then came the Sagaponack Village Association, an organization dedicated to the secession of this chunk of pricy land and the 300 families that live on it from the jurisdiction of Southampton township. Reporting for presidential duty once again was the tireless Mr. Bialek.

But on Feb. 5, when a new group, which calls itself, rather wordily, the Association of Friends of Sagaponack, filed two lawsuits, one against Mr. Rennert and the Town of Southampton, the second against the town's zoning board of appeals, local residents noticed something interesting. Not only was Mr. Bialek not involved in the Association of Friends of Sagaponack, the principals of this new association had all once belonged to either one or both of Mr. Bialek's organizations.

Indeed, sources familiar with the situation said that the genesis of the Association of Friends of Sagaponack arose out of dissatisfaction with Mr. Bialek's ham-handed leadership of the Rennert renegades. Those sources indicate that, late last year, after Mr. Bialek repeatedly refused to step down as president of the Sagaponack Homeowners Association, a number of members of the group, including restaurateur Allan Stillman, stockbroker Joseph Dilworth, money manager Joseph Zicherman, and real estate developer Carole Taylor, submitted their resignations to Mr. Bialek's office. In addition to forming a new association, they also hired an outside law firm from White Plains. (The new association's lawsuits, filed at State Supreme Court in Riverhead, L.I., seek to tear down Fair Field and also ask for millions of dollars in damages for civil rights violations.)

Sources familiar with the situation said that many of those who resigned had tired of Mr. Bialek's loud and sometimes rough-edged manner, which had allegedly alienated potential allies in the fight against Mr. Rennert and was at cross-purposes with the dignified public face that the group was trying to present. (One Sagaponack resident recalled Mr. Bialek wearing a leisure suit to one of the town meetings). There was also some dismay over the amount of press that Mr. Bialek was getting. Mr. Bialek accompanied filmmaker Michael Moore's camera crew when the group ventured onto the Fair Field construction, a jaunt which resulted in a short-lived lawsuit by Mr. Rennert.

Mr. Bialek had also generated controversy in his neighborhood with a boxy, two-story, approximately 2,500-square-foot addition that he had legally but quietly built onto his original house. One local noted that the structure "would be a welcome addition–to La Guardia airport." The building's design has prompted some locals to dub Mr. Bialek's house the "Doubletree Sagaponack" and to joke that overnight guests receive frequent-flier miles. In November, Southampton town supervisor Vincent Cannuscio was referring to Mr. Bialek's addition when he said: "There's some really big hypocrites [in Sagaponack], and Bialek is one of the guys who has a big letter H in the middle of his name."

Members of the Association of Friends of Sagaponack who spoke to The Transom downplayed their reasons for their split from Mr. Bialek's organization. Mr. Dilworth, who is the treasurer of the new organization, said, "I think there was a feeling that there was a need for a different way of approaching things," he said. "So rather than argue, those of us who were like-minded marched off in a different direction."

"I don't wish him ill," said Mr. Zicherman, who is a vice president of the new group. "He certainly is free to pursue this independently any way that he wishes."

Mr. Dilworth and Mr. Zicherman also praised Mr. Bialek for being, as Mr. Dilworth put it, "the first one to stand up and say something ought to be done about this."

Mr. Bialek did not return several calls to his Sagaponack home and his Manhattan office. He recently told the East Hampton Star that the Association of Friends of Sagaponack was a "splinter" group from his own and estimated that the Sagaponack Homeowners Association still had about 60 members in its ranks. Privately, members of the Association of Friends and other locals expressed extreme doubt about Mr. Bialek's estimate. "It's more like two members–Al and his wife," said one. If Mr. Bialek decides he would rather follow than lead, he may find he's not exactly welcome in the new organization. Asked if he would be allowed to join the Association of Friends were he to ask, Ms. Taylor replied, "No comment."

Studio 54, Where Are You?

Thanks to the wonders of grass-roots dissemination, a gayer version of Mark Christopher's 1998 film 54 –the cut that Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein did not want the public to see–may be screening at a friend's home near you.

Just a day after The Transom made a series of phone calls inquiring about a "director's rough cut" of 54 floating around New York gay circles, presto, a videotape copy appeared on The Observer 's doorstep bearing just that title.

Disco film buffs may recall that last year Mr. Christopher was steamed when Miramax executives informed him that his movie had fared so badly with a Long Island test audience that he would have to reshoot a number of scenes in order to make the film less noxious to multiplex crowds.

An hour of Mr. Christopher's two-hour film was lopped off, and a half-hour of new footage was inserted. (Mr. Weinstein has been dubbed "Harvey Scissorhands" for his stringent editing demands.) Since many of the changes involved taking out the gay tendencies of the film's central character, Shane (Ryan Philippe), Mr. Christopher, who was hired on the merits of two gay-themed short films he directed, howled that Mr. Weinstein and Miramax were trying to de-queerify 54 .

So in a turn that cannot please Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Christopher's version is making the rounds. The questions of how and why are not so easily answered. According to a source close to the production, copies of early cuts of films are never hard to come by on movie sets, and frequently circulate before a film is even released in theaters. Mr. Christopher did not return telephone calls, but speculation among the movie-industry crowd is that supporters of the director are trying to turn his version into a cult hit, thereby boosting his stock in Hollywood. The Miramax version of 54 tanked at the box office.

One film industry insider, who requested anonymity, did cop to circulating a copy of Mr. Christopher's 54 , which could account for some of the buzz. "People just can't wait to get their hands on it. It's all that anyone wants to see from my video collection," he said.

Mr. Christopher's cut depicts a Shane who is much more sexually active with both men and women. He enjoys two shirtless tongue kisses with men (one of them a Halston knockoff) in the basement of Studio 54. He also romps with his best friend's wife (Salma Hayek) on top of a Studio 54 commode while Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) peeps through the stall door. The Miramax version steers clear of any love triangles or weirdo voyeurism.

Mr. Philippe's character is more voracious (and less of a heroic figure) in other ways, too. He takes more drugs in Mr. Christopher's cut and deals them as well.

In one of the climactic scenes of the director's cut, Shane admits to Steve Rubell that drugs he had dealt to Disco Dottie (a grandmotherly character based on the real-life Disco Sally) caused her overdose on New Year's Eve in 1979. In Miramax's version, Shane doesn't take the blame. "We did it to her!" he wails to Rubell. "The place did!"

Los Angeles Film Critics Association president and Daily Variety film critic Emanuel Levy, who wrote a negative review of the Miramax version, warmed up a little when he was sent a copy. "In the director's cut, you get much more of the mood of Studio 54, the decadence of the time," Mr. Levy said. "The characterizations are stronger. And it also seems like Miramax took out the real sexuality."

Is a small groundswell of critical support enough to make this version of 54 an underground favorite? The aforementioned tape disseminator wasn't so sure. "Honestly," he said, "even the gay version was a little tough to get through."

–Andrew Goldman

No. 1 at Elaine's

The 70th-birthday celebration that Elaine Kaufman's friends threw for her at her Second Avenue saloon on Feb. 9 attracted some old literary souls and, naturally, they came with stories attached. Ms. Kaufman was especially touched by the sight of Memoir of a Gambler author Jack Richardson, who was one of her original regulars, but hadn't visited the place for a while. Writer Bruce Jay Friedman had called Mr. Richardson to invite him and told him he had always been No. 1 with Ms. Kaufman. In contrast, Mr. Friedman placed himself at No. 11. Mr. Friedman said Mr. Richardson replied that "there had been some fatalities since then, so I might have moved up a lot faster than I had realized."

Meanwhile, former Harper's editor Willie Morris couldn't make it, but he sent a telegram. Problem was, when New York Post columnist Neal Travis got up to read it, no one seemed to want to quiet down enough to hear it, especially MacAndrews & Forbes employee Dennis Stein, who emitted a loud snore upon hearing Mr. Morris' name. Mr. Travis shot back, "Just because you dated Elizabeth Taylor, you snore!" He added that the document he was holding came from "Willie Fucking Morris." Mr. Travis tried again to read above the din, but then gave up, announcing that he would simply reprint the telegram in his column. Finally, while there was much discussion about Woody Allen's absence from the night, it turns out that Mr. Allen dined with Ms. Kaufman the following night, which happens to be the actual date of her birthday.

No More Bread for PB&J

PB&J, the public relations company formed by twentysomething trendsters Ally B. (as in Bernstein) and Jennifer Posner, will shut their doors come March. Many publicists sounded the death knell for the company after the publication of New York magazine's "Power Girls" cover story: Ms. Posner, in particular, took heaps of flak–and death threats–after she was quoted as saying that PB&J's hip-hop clients hadn't being served well by black publicists. "...They needed two big-mouthed Jewish girls to tell it to these guys straight," Ms. Posner was quoted as saying.

Shed no tears for Ms. B.–Momma's got a brand new bag. Lizzie Grubman–another of the infamous "Power Girls"–has hired Ms. B. to start up a music division at her eponymous firm. According to Ms. Grubman, Ms. B. intends to bring over PB&J's two major accounts, Tommy Hilfiger Jeans and Loud Records. And Ms. Posner? She is looking to "go in house," possibly working in the publicity department for "a big company, like Sony," according to one source who knows both women. The strain of running a small business, coupled with the bad press from the magazine story, was too much for the two youngsters to bear, according to the source. "The story was very taxing on all the girls involved. It really came down to how they would react: whether they could hunker down and get back to work, or whether they would, like, spin out."

Neither Ms. B. nor Ms. Posner could be reached to comment as to whether they were surviving nicely, or, like, spinning out.

The Transom Also Hears …

Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein was a virtual human multiplex when he arrived at Camp David, the Presidential retreat near Thurmont, Md., on Jan. 30. The Transom hears that Mr. Weinstein brought approximately half a dozen films with him when he and his wife, Eve Weinstein, joined Bill and Hillary Clinton and a group that included Mrs. Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham; former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, his wife Polly Kraft; singer Carly Simon and her novelist husband, Jim Hart; Steven Rattner, deputy chief executive of Lazard Frères & Company, and his wife, Maureen White; and financier Dirk Ziff and his wife, former Forbes reporter Natasha Bacigalupo Ziff at the rustic Presidential retreat. Although Mr. Weinstein insisted everyone watch an upcoming Miramax picture called Happy, Texas , the group voted on the second of the double feature. The winner: Shakespeare in Love , which Mrs. Clinton had seen at the film's New York premiere. By the time the film began playing at around 11 P.M., many of the V.I.P.'s had already gone to bed, leaving only a hard-core half dozen or so, including the President (who had napped earlier in the day) to see it to its end.