A virtual action

Loosely Speaking by Nancy Gaines

While the town was abuzz last week over what was afoot with the Patriots -- on the field and off -- the real "action" took place at Fenway Park. A film crew for the latest Kevin Costner-does-baseball movie, For the Love of the Game, quietly slipped into our field of schemes just before Thanksgiving to get shots of what will purport to show Costner and costar Kelly Preston on location. But the two Hollywood notables were nowhere in sight. Production manager Harvey Waldman confirmed that an LA locker-room set will save Costner and Preston the trip to Boston. That's in contrast to when Preston's husband, John Travolta, filmed scenes for the soon-to-be-released A Civil Action and had to hang out in town for weeks -- during which he visited Fenway's neighbor, the Cask 'N Flagon. There, patrons last week reflected that they'd "sure rather see his wife. She's gorgeous. But I guess seeing him's better at least than Henry Winkler."

Scary business Here's what Bostonians won't see -- thanks to the censors at the MBTA, who decided the ad for Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho was too bloody to go on the buses. No place else in the country thought so, but, hey, T officials say they got complaints from riders -- who evidently prefer real-life violence to movie gore.

A neighborly action

It's been several years since the pot o' trouble boiling at the once-lofty private Algonquin Club on Comm Ave spilled over into bad press, employee defections, waning membership, and damn near fisticuffs in the boardroom. Spats flourished over declining revenue, unpopular management, and factionalized leadership. Now, who should come to the rescue but the Ritz-Carlton, having had its share of ups and downs. The Atlanta-based Ritz-Carlton Company's club-management division, affiliated with the Marriott Corporation, quietly took over the Algonquin's management a few weeks ago. But don't expect Ritz executive chef Richard Raymond to be ferrying meals, sort of like the Woop Man, the few blocks uptown. The Algonquin's executive chef, Peter Patchett, who merely by coincidence once worked for the Ritz, is still manning his kitchen.

A covetous action

Long ago and not too far away, the fabulous but doomed Lafayette Hotel, now called Swissôtel (still abutting the armpit of the city and still lovely inside), employed the man who is now, arguably, the best chef in New York, John Georges Vongerichten. Although he may not be anxious to come back to town, his equally famed colleagues, including restaurateurs Drew Nieporent and Daniel Boulud, are high on the wish list of Kevin Ahearn, broker/marketer of the forthcoming superluxe condo development Trinity Place, who's recruiting top-of-the-line folks to run a restaurant in his new complex. Slated to open in two years, the Trinity "wedge" building, opposite the Marriott on Huntington Avenue and next to the Copley Square Hotel, will be the first major high-end residential/retail spot in town since the Heritage on the Garden complex in Park Square opened 10 years ago. From "au pair" studios, priced at $400,000, condos go up to the $4 million penthouse. Meals not included.

A rear-guard action

"Cafeteria Democrats," to co-opt Joe Kennedy's line about Catholics, are not pleased with Tommy "The Eyes" Finneran. "Too cute by half," "oughta be a Republican," and "as at home as a Jew holding a seat in the North End" are just some of the brickbats flung at the Democratic Speaker of the Commonwealth's House of Representatives. That is to say, the Powerful-State-Speaker-of-the-House-Who-Called-Kraft-a-Whiny-Millionaire, as he is better known. The latest rumor is that Boston Celtic Dana Barros, born in Mattapan and graduated from Boston College, might, in 2000, mount a challenge against Finneran.

But phooey on the Chicago Sun-Times' report last week that Ted Kennedy might be warming his ample seat for wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy. "In the last 18 years, the only time I've ever seen Ted campaign is for his own race," said a partisan. "This year, I saw him out for all the reps. He's out there. And he's running." Yet, said another insider: "If something happens to Teddy," who would run in 2000 for his seventh six-year term, "Vicki has dreams. But she'd have to step over a lot of bodies, never mind Ted's" to get the nomination.

Native intelligence

The next time the Boston Globe's Focus section decides to run a purportedly authoritative piece about Boston "nightlife" -- by Phillip W.D. Martin, a guy described as "a freelance journalist who writes about race and ethnic conflict" and "lives in Cambridge" -- they might pick someone who can spell "Lansdowne" Street, which he could not. . . . Does anybody know what happened to BC/Globe-gal-turned-TV-sportscaster Lesley Visser's eyebrows? They're more distracting than even her unctuous interviews. . . . Yes, that's the same Louise Palmer who had an unhappy stint at Boston magazine a few years ago who's now penning page-one pieces for the Globe as a staffer in its Washington bureau. . . . A new scientific study informs us that the lack of a certain brain chemical in genetically engineered mice causes them to "drink more alcohol than normal mice." It does not tell us how much normal mice drink.