VegasBeat — Timothy McDarrah: Warhol exhibit a perfect portrait

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 3 a.m.

The last time I saw Andy Warhol was about two months before he died, at a holiday party the nascent Spy magazine tossed in the Puck Building in New York City.

My girlfriend (and future wife) Caroline Howard had been brought in by Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen to get Spy's photo desk up and running.

At the party we chatted with Warhol, who was standing in a corner with his friend Paige Powell, when Keith Haring walked by.

"Oh look ... all the kids are here. What a fabulous party," Warhol said.

He would have said the same thing Saturday night at the party for "Andy Warhol: The Celebrity Portraits" at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

All the kids were there. It was a fabulous party.

But Warhol, the most business-minded of artists, would have really loved the licensed Warhol crapola (uh, paraphernalia) in the gift shop -- and that his old wig was given a $400 salon treatment and touch up.

Gallery directors Marc Glimcher and Andrea Bundonis were gracious enough to invite VegasBeat and select media types to get a look at the show late last week before the crowds swarmed in.

When we were there Thursday afternoon, Jorgen Nielson -- the stylist director of Salon Bellagio -- walked in with what I immediately recognized as Andy's "fright wig."

Seems that his old wig, which is on display in the show with a number of other Andy-facts such as his glasses and a Polaroid camera, was packaged poorly when it was shipped from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. So it was sent to the Bellagio's barber for a primping.

"It was flat like a pancake when it got here," Nielson said. "I washed and conditioned it with Kerastase (an expensive European shampoo and conditioner) and then finished with a blow dryer and some shiny spray.

"I hope Andy would have approved." He probably would have. The idea of a wig getting a $400 styling is as Warholian as it gets.

A faux-Warhol wig is perhaps the only memento not for sale in the gallery store.

Among the Warhol-licensed items we saw were bite-size chocolates stamped with a Marilyn Monroe image, light-switch plates that looked like Campbell's tomato soup cans; wristwatches bearing Warhol's face; videocassettes of the A&E Biography episode on Warhol, T-shirts, handbags and change purses carrying Warhol's signature, reproductions of many of his famous works of art and dozens of books by and about Warhol, including critic David Bourdon's definitive tome "Warhol," chock full of my father's photos of Warhol at work and at play.

The show, which is a spectacular slice of Warhol's life and work, is up through Sept. 7 and is open daily.

Twentieth Century Fox is set to produce a pilot for UPN called "Vegas Dick."

It will be about a former con man who becomes the house detective for a Las Vegas casino.

Casting begins next month in Los Angeles, according to the broadcast trade Electronic Media.

Which former right-wing congressman and current book reviewer was spotted at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum this week? It was Newt Gingrich. He spent more than an hour browsing through the "Art Through the Ages" show.

Sheryl Crow was booked by The World Shoe Association to hold a private show Saturday night at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts. The big shoe convention is now at Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

Crow also performs cameos from time to time with the Rolling Stones, who were also performing in Las Vegas on Saturday night.

Former UNLV star and Super Bowl champ Keenan McCardell of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was back in town this week. Seems he is also a champ at air hockey.

He beat several other NFL players during an impromptu tourney at ESPNZone at New York-New York.

Among his victims: Willie McGinnest and Troy Brown of the New England Patriots, John Randle of the Seattle Seahawks and Sammy Knight of the New Orleans Saints.

George Carlin, to whom most other stand-ups who perform in Las Vegas can trace their comedy roots, is back at MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre March 6 to March 19.

One never gets tired of hearing his famous bit, "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television."

Or print in a family newspaper, for that matter.