To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People June 11, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/06/11/lenin Hot fun down South That sly dog! The Magnolia State's governor finally cops to a thing goin' on. Plus: Vladimir Lenin's lost head pops up; ex-Stones drummer now hawking tube steaks; and Mister Rogers soaks up fawning from a cardigan-clad pol. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter It's often said that people who live in glass houses they won't let their wives even visit shouldn't throw stones. This is a lesson Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice has just learned the hard way. The good ol' Mississippi gov'nah, a vocal critic of President Clinton's smokin' affair with Monica Lewinsky, has of late been more than slightly peeved that the press has been asking tough questions about a jaunt through Europe he took with a woman who is not his wife, while the woman who is his wife stayed home. The Associated Press reports that the lame-duck pol recently got "red-faced" when a reporter asked him about his love trip. "Let me tell you something, you invade my privacy this way, six months from now, I'll whip your ass," he roared to WBLT's Bert Case. "You have no damn business playing these games." (He's right, Bert. Everyone knows you have to be an elected official to play those games.) A few choice examples of Fordice's frisky fun stuff included buying a $230,000 house in which he stays on weekends but to which he has declined to invite his wife of 44 years. (She has heart-wrenchingly said she knew the house "wasn't for me.") He also had a 1996 crash in a state-owned car after lunching with a woman who was not his wife, while the woman who was his wife was in France. (Fordice, channeling Ollie North or suffering from a cartoon-like post-head-conk bout of amnesia, says he can't remember why he was in Memphis that day.) Fordice's high-profile game of hearts doesn't come as a complete surprise -- he acknowledged back in 1993 that he and his wife had "irreconcilable differences" -- but it has not been going over as big with his constituents or GOPers as it apparently is with the ladies. The AP reported that Fordice's enormous capacity for love may cost him a post as a national campaign co-chairman for Dan Quayle. Now comes word that Fordice is coming clean. The 65-year-old rascal is finally announcing that he and his wife will be divorcing -- and that he'll be making an honest woman out of Memphis widow Ann G. Creson as soon as is humanly possible. Will that get him off the hook with Mr. Family Values? Probably. It was doubtful that Quayle could even spell "hypocrite" anyway. - - - - - - - - - - - - Are you listening, Jar Jar Binks? "I always hated that being intelligent and speaking well was correlated with being white." -- Wonderfully wise Will "Never mind 'Gettin' Jiggy Wid It'" Smith on how he wants his kids to speak "proper English" (unlike a certain linguistically challenged computer-generated amphibian we could name). - - - - - - - - - - - - Better red than dead with no head! It seems everyone's just trying to get ahead these days -- make that get a head. Yesterday it was a two-headed pickled piglet-napping. Today, I bring you news of Vladimir Lenin's missing noggin. The 250-pound capo of the headstrong communist leader was recovered from a Las Vegas thrift store last week, after having been missing for several months, reports USA Today. OK, OK, not the dastardly dead guy's real head. This Lenin head is solid cement and formerly sat atop a 14-foot, 4,500-pound statue that coldly welcomed slot-machine-weary patrons to the Red Square restaurant in Vegas' Mandalay Bay hotel-casino. In keeping with the rampant head-removal trend in Soviet statuary, the gargantuan gourd was lopped off in March by the restaurant's owners. It was soon snatched away and was recovered only after the owners got a head's-up about its musty whereabouts. (Guess the thrifty thieves were just Stalin for time -- oh, ouch, even I know I should have let that one go!) The restaurant will freeze the hefty head in a block of ice, display it in a vodka locker and use it as a centerpiece -- and a charming reminder for hardcore Las Vegas gamblers to stay away from high-stakes Russian roulette. - - - - - - - - - - - - Groovy, baby. Who knew? "I was surprised people got ['Austin Powers'] at all. I thought you'd have to have grown up in my house to have gotten it." -- Modest Mike Myers, expressing surprise for the smashingly randy spy's universal appeal. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you'll get what you need. To wit: Thirty-six years ago, Carlo Little moved on like a rolling stone. And now the ex-Rolling Stones drummer will be selling hot dogs and burgers outside London's whopping Wembley Stadium while his former bandmates rock the house this weekend. The 60-year-old fellow recently told the Express newspaper that he quit because "I couldn't carry on with them as they had only a few gigs lined up and could only offer me a couple of quid for each gig." But, he says, "I have no regrets, even though I could have become a millionaire, but then I remember that I'm alive and happy." Hot dogs! Get your Zen-calm hot dogs here! Boys are fancy on the outside; girls are fancy on the inside, as everyone's favorite land-of-make-believe neighbor likes to say. And now, Mister Rogers has gotten just a little bit fancier. This week, he was awarded the Pennsylvania Founder's Award by the governor of the state in which his beloved show is filmed. Gov. Tom Ridge removed his suit jacket and slipped into a red cardigan before addressing the assembled throngs. "Today we honor a neighbor who has not only taught us right from wrong, but left from right," he said. Meow, meow, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, meow. Any of you NP readers out there have a nasty stammer you'd like to lose? Here's a tip from a British bloke: Study up on U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's speeches. "His confident approach gave me hope," Stephen Hill told the Daily Telegraph Wednesday. "I practiced it in the mirror, imagining I was the prime minister buying a cheeseburger." Now, he says, he's cured ... but only when he talks about foreign policy. salon.com | June 11, 1999