‘May More Chickens Come From These Eggs’

Maureen and Mikhail and Malcolm were there.

So were about 500 other prosperous folk who attended the preview reception and dinner Thursday night for the Faberge egg exhibit at the Museum of Art, the artistic centerpiece of the Soviet arts festival.

Two days hence Balboa Park will be given over to Super Powers Sunday, the official start of the festival, with folk dancers, circus clowns, chefs, jugglers, musicians and about everything else, Soviet and American, that the park will hold. All free and informal and open to all.

The crowd at the preview reception was different. It was black-tie, invitation-only.

These are people with CEO and S&L; after their names; people whose names appear in the Blue Book but not the phone book. People who own newspapers and a few who work at them.

Security was tight. Discreet, but tight.

The presence of 27 priceless works of art, including 8 from the Kremlin and 9 from the Forbes collection, tends to make you cautious. I’m sure I spotted a guy with a heater hidden in his tux.

“Every screw is tightened, every case is unturnable, every pane is bulletproof,” assured Joseph W. Hibben, president of the museum’s board of trustees.

A toast was offered by Mikhail Gribanov, the Soviet minister of culture, a solid, stolid soul with a high forehead and thick eyebrows.

“May more chickens come from these eggs,” he said. Translation: If the festival goes well, it’s just the beginning, glasnost willing.

Four kinds of caviar and five kinds of vodka (the pepper vodka packed a particular wallop) kept the mood festive.

If there was a star of the evening it was the irrepressible Malcolm Forbes. “I’m just glad a capitalist tool like me could play a part in this,” grinned the magazine magnate.

You have to love a man who parks his own hot-air ballon outside the party: decorated like a Faberge egg.

Make no mistake, this is a man who has mastered the twin arts of making money and living well and doesn’t give a damn who knows it.

When his private jet arrived Thursday morning at Lindbergh Field, reporters beseeched: Where’s Liz? Malcolm and Ms. Taylor are quite good friends.

Turns out she caught the vapors early in the week and opted to stay home in Beverly Hills. “She even had to break a date Monday night with Mick Jagger,” explained Forbes.

Forbes said the Faberge show would never have occurred without the rapport that developed between Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Irina Rodimtseva, director of the state museums at the Kremlin.

“When those two ladies got together and hit it off,” Forbes said, “who the hell could have stopped it?”

Who indeed.

Ready to Tell All

Here’s what I hear.

* Dorena Bertusi, one of two women staffers that the House ethics committee says were sexually harassed by Rep. Jim Bates, has already accepted an invitation to tell everything to Geraldo Rivera.

She may also file a civil suit. And Bates-baiters are already planning buttons: Dump “Backseat” Bates.

* An old political saw says the smart candidate “knows who his voters are.”

If so, council-hopeful Bob Trettin may have an interesting constituency. His signs line the streets leading to the Del Mar Race Track.

* Sheriff John Duffy obtained a court order striking the address of his new 5,200-square-foot home at Scripps Ranch from voter registration records.

Too many threats and process servers arriving at all hours, says a spokesman.

Duffy invoked a new state law that entitles cops, prosecutors and judges to seek confidentiality in voter registration. So far, he’s the only San Diego County official to do so.

* It didn’t take long for panhandlers in downtown San Diego to develop an earthquake pitch.

One fellow at 5th and Broadway is bumming spare change by saying his Social Security check is delayed because the Oakland office is shut by the shake.