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BITS AND PIECES 06/26 Part 1

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AGC Queen

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Jun 26, 2001, 10:20:08 AM6/26/01
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E! ONLINE... by Marcus Errico
--ANOTHER LOSS: A federal appeals court rejecting Napter's attempt to have the
injunction against it tossed. Only the Supreme Court stands between the
troubled song-swapping site and a potentially devastating trial against the
recording industry.

--After protracted negotiations, Walt Disney World workers have agreed to a new
deal that will pay them a 35 cent raise over the next three years, boosting
minimum pay to $6.70 per hour. A ratifying vote is set for July 6.

--The Motion Picture Academy fine-tuning this year's Oscar rules, including
clearing the way for the first Feature Animation trophy and regulating the
number of producers eligible for the Best Picture statuette.

--Budweiser taking top honors at the International Advertising Festival in
Cannes, France, this weekend, thanks to its "Whassup?" and "I Love You, Man"
campaigns.

--Carroll O'Connor, TV's Archie Bunker, will be buried in a private Catholic
ceremony Tuesday in Los Angeles. The Emmy-winning actor died Thursday of a
heart attack at age 76.

--A memorial service for late bluesman John Lee Hooker is scheduled for
Thursday in Oakland, California. Hooker died Thursday at the age of 83.

NY POST/By BILL HOFFMANN
--Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady on "The Brady Bunch," filed a complaint
with the National Labor Relations Board in Manhattan yesterday, charging Actors
Equity with unfair labor practices. Williams, now 46, said he was illegally
fined $52,000 by the union in January for starring in a non-Equity production
of "The Sound of Music."

--A two-page manuscript of notes by John Lennon for a stage play he wrote is up
for sale for $35,000. The handwritten notes and doodles include a working draft
of his satirical skit on the Queen's annual speech to her subjects. The late
Beatle scribbled 36 lines, along with cartoons on two pieces of cardboard,
which are being sold by Fraser's Autographs in London.

NY POST/MICHAEL STARR....
--Mike Barnicle's stint as host of his own show, "Barnicle," on MSNBC is over.
Barnicle - a former Boston Globe columnist who resigned in a quote-piping
scandal and now writes for the Daily Snooze, will continue to do commentary to
"The News With Brian Williams" and "Hardball With Chris Matthews." The
"Barnicle" staff was told the cost of doing a live show from a rented studio in
Boston was too high. Barnicle declined the offer to do the show out of MSNBC's
Secaucus, N.J., studios. "MSNBC Investigates" will replace him in the 6 p.m.
slot.

--Ex-"Dallas" and "Remington Steele" star Jack Scalia will join "All My
Children" on Thursday in the role of Chris Stamp - a janitor at Enchantment,
the company owned by Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). Scalia has also starred in
"Everything to Gain," "Pointman" and "Wolf," among many other series. He's also
starred in a rash of TV movies including USA's "Tall, Dark and Deadly."

--Eugene Levy will serve as Gala Host at the Just For Laughs Festival July 21
in Quebec.

NY POST/PAGE SIX...
--DON'T expect Don King to invite lawyer Judd Burstein to any of his bouts.
Last week's federal court decision barring heavyweight champ Hasim Rahman from
fighting anyone but Burstein's client Lennox Lewis is the fourth consecutive
courtroom KO Burstein has handed King. Two years ago, after Burstein got the
executive director of the Florida Athletic Commission fired for some
questionable contributions to King, the electric-haired impresario blasted the
barrister as an "insidious insect." Now that Burstein has forced Rahman to
cancel his little-regarded fight with David Izon Aug. 5 on a King card in
Beijing, expect more insults.

--RAP godfather Gil Scott-Heron is back behind bars. The jazz legend, best
known for his '70s hit "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," was busted
Saturday at a crack house on 144th Street by the NYPD warrant squad after he
skipped a court date for a prior drug arrest. Scott-Heron's former girlfriend,
Monique Delatour, tells PAGE SIX he's been living in the crack house for about
a year. "If he doesn't stop doing crack, he's going to die," she said. Last
year, the emaciated addict was arrested after assaulting Delatour.

--O.J. Simpson, with a string of strippers, at Rachel's in West Palm Beach
trying to cut his sirloin with a butter knife because management didn't want to
give him a steak knife .

--TOM Hanks and Bruce Springsteen and their wives and kids vacationing together
in Rome and enjoying a long dinner in the garden at Romolo with lots of food
and lots of red wine.

--THE burglar alarm at the Hamptons house of Sean "Puffy" Combs went off at
6:12 a.m. on Sunday. When police arrived, they found Quamine Wallace, 19, of
Brooklyn, in gray sweatpants, no shirt, and a blue Yankee cap. One cop noticed
a broken pane of glass on a side door. Wallace, who said he was a cousin of
Combs, admitted breaking the glass because he didn't have a key. Cops arrested
him and called his mother, who denied he was related to Combs and said he has a
history of mental illness. Wallace was charged with criminal mischief and held
on $15,000 bail.

--A COUPLE of years ago, Erin Wasson was serving buns at Spring Creek Barbecue
in Dallas when her dad entered a picture of her in a modeling contest. Now
Wasson is on the cover of July's Allure, credited with one of the best smiles
in the business. Blond Erin, 19, who's signed to IMG, plans to save her money -
arriving in boatloads now that she's inked an exclusive deal with Gucci for
fall - so she can "retire by age 25."

NY POST/CINDY ADAMS...
--SO, your weirdest summer job? Courtney Love's was "the phone answerer for an
escort agency." It was "Midtown" and they had "wine and --" there and the place
"smelled really bad." Jill Hennessy: "Playing guitar on Toronto's streets for
dinner money. I'd sit on the curb and play anything anybody wanted. After
awhile I'd have 10 people standing around and maybe 25 bucks in my guitar
case." Paul McCartney: "I was second guy on a lorry. I slept most of the time."


--DONNA SUMMER writing an autobiographical B'way musical . . .

--Handsome, sexy Eric Dearborn, 21, "All My Children's" new recurring
19-year-old Gabriel character, is nephew to news anchor Sue Simmons. He's ABC.
She's NBC. Neither can guest on the other's show . . .

NY POST/LIZ SMITH...
--TIME MAGAZINE did a "Time 100" series where I contributed "The Century's Five
Greatest Romances." That amazing effort at the end of 1999 has been called the
most successful magazine project in publishing history. Now Time hopes to
out-do itself. On July 2 the mag's list of "America's Best" will profile people
who excel at what they do in five issues. "It's about excellence," says editor
Steve Koepp. So who will Time name as "America's Best"? We don't know yet, but
here are a few of the famous who'll be writing about different categories -
Dennis Hopper on best actor . . . Dick Cavett on best talk show host . . . Mel
Brooks on best musical maker . . . James Earl Jones on best playwright . . .
Emmylou Harris on best songwriter . . . Joe Pistone on best TV producer . . .
Stanley Crouch on best singer . . . Chuck D on best rapper . . . Reynolds Price
on best photographer . . . Bill Irwin on best clown . . . Greil Marcus on best
band. And CNN will do a number of companion shows on Time's choices.

NY DAILY NEWS/RUSH AND MOLLOY...
--Derek Jeter and Chuck Knoblauch are both celebrating birthdays tomorrow
night. Jeter, who's turning 27, is having a hip-hop blowout at the WWF club in
Times Square. Nelly and Missy Elliott are rumored to be performing for friends
like Michael Jordan, Tyra Banks, Black Rob, Carl Thomas and Chris Rock. Jeter's
Yankee homies will have to shuttle downtown to Veruka, where Knoblauch, who
turns 33 on July 7, will celebrate with owner Noel Ashman and celebrity deejays
Nicole Miller and Patrick McMullan.…

--A BIG man needs a big house. L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant is plunking down $13.5
million on a gated estate in Orange County, Calif. The 16,000-square-foot pad,
which sits on 9.5 acres and boasts 10 bedrooms and two four-car garages, has
plenty of distractions for the $11.8 million-a-season player and his new wife,
Vanessa, including a theater, manmade caves and a lagoon with water slides,
bumper boats and a replica of a pirate ship. ...

--Look out, Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow. Kate Winslet is the latest
actress to sing out. Her new flick, "What If?," an animated version of Dickens'
"A Christmas Carol," features her title song. Winslet's agent claims producers
were so impressed by the "Titanic" star's voice that they have decided to
release the song as a single in late November.

NY DAILY NEWS/MITCHELL FINK...
--Jennifer Lopez is suddenly in great demand as a cover girl. As we speak, a
battle for J.Lo is raging between two magazines: FHM and Stuff. Both want her
for covers. But a story is going around that Stuff has agreed to pay Lopez
$250,000 to be its September cover on the condition that she cancel her shoot
with FHM. In May, FHM readers voted Lopez "The Sexiest Woman in the World."
Since then, there's been a plan for her to be the magazine's November cover
girl. That came apart Friday, according to sources, when someone representing
Lopez called FHM informing them of this extraordinary deal with Stuff. With the
exception of some foreign publications, or magazines like Playboy and
Penthouse, celebrities almost never receive money to pose for a cover. Handlers
inevitably will try to control a number of elements, such as approval of the
photographer and the writer, but cash rarely is exchanged. Andy Clarkson,
general manager of Stuff, vehemently denied making any financial deal with
Lopez. "We are just trying to work out a date for her to shoot the September
cover," he said. Lopez's rep, Alan Nierob, said he never heard about any deal
with Stuff and added that he expected the shoot with FHM to be rescheduled.
Nevertheless, a spokesman at FHM confirmed that Lopez had canceled the shoot
with them.

--Sophia Loren was not pleased last week when the New York Post suggested that
she had just bought a $4 million apartment on the 58th floor of the Trump World
Tower, the 90-story building going up near the UN. "They're crazy," the
66-year-old screen goddess told a source of mine. Loren is in Toronto shooting
her 100th film, "Between Strangers," directed by her son Eduardo Ponti. Loren
added that she maintains no residence in New York and has no plans to move
here. I called Donald Trump to see whether he knew if someone was putting out
phony names in connection with his massive project. "I never comment about
people moving into my buildings," he said. "It would be wrong of me to do, so I
never do it."

--Just when you thought there was nothing left in the Hamptons for Christie
Brinkley to lend her name to, along comes a noncelebrity horticultural event.
Brinkley, who is as synonymous with Long Island's East End as summer traffic,
joined her husband, Peter Cook, to head up Saturday's Mark Dendy Dance and
Theater performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Sagaponack. It benefited
the local Madoo Conservancy and honored Marco Polo Stufano, the director of
horticulture at Wave Hill gardens in Riverdale. Brinkley and Cook were made
even more conspicuous by a film crew who followed them. P.S.: The couple did
try to make an early exit. But when several people admonished them, the Cooks
reconsidered and stayed.

--Madison Square Garden continues to hold two dates for Michael Jackson, Sept.
7 and 10, but there is still no deal between the parties. An unsigned Garden
contract is sitting on the desk of Jackson's lawyers, and while the singer's
rep, Howard Rubenstein, has no reason to think the deal will fall apart, he
said some issues regarding insurance have yet to be settled. In the meantime,
it has been widely reported that 'N Sync would be a part of the Jackson shows,
but I'm told they don't have a deal in place either.

--Before Tom Brokaw left town for hi summer-long vacation, he took his entire
staff to Zocalo on Friday. Brokaw is in this Mexican restaurant a lot. The last
time he was there, candle wax dripped on his sweater. The owner, Laura Shapiro,
keeps insisting that she'll pay for the cleaning. But every time, Brokaw says
"no."

--People close to Whitney Houston must have been concerned when she summoned a
doctor to her suite at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. But she was just
experiencing pain in her knee.


Send email to: PUSSS...@aol.com


Ron Turner

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Jun 26, 2001, 1:07:14 PM6/26/01
to
>-Mike Barnicle's stint as host of his own show, "Barnicle," on MSNBC is over.
>Barnicle - a former Boston Globe columnist who resigned in a quote-piping
>scandal and now writes for the Daily Snooze, will continue to do commentary
>to "The News With Brian Williams" and "Hardball With Chris Matthews." The
>"Barnicle" staff was told the cost of doing a live show from a rented studio
>in Boston was too high. Barnicle declined the offer to do the show out of
>MSNBC's Secaucus, N.J., studios. "MSNBC Investigates" will replace him in the
6 p.m.
>slot.

Bummer. I liked him. And "MSNBC Investigates" is too melodramatic and corny.

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