To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Nov. 11, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/11/11/np1111 Blood on the dance floor? Michael Jackson IS Poe; MTV rocks vote, kids vote rock; and artist Mark Kostabi mortified over -- oops! -- premature communication. Plus: This is Newt on a budget. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Edgar Allan uh-oh? Michael Jackson has signed on to play the neurotic 19th century poet in the big-budget indie flick "The Nightmare of Edgar Allan Poe." Filming will start next year in Montreal. Quoth the raven: "What the ...?!" - - - - - - - - - - - - Our prez, the cyberian explorer "[President Clinton] admits he knows nothing about computers or the Internet. Like, he thought 'Amazon.com' was Janet Reno's e-mail address." -- Jay Leno, on "The Tonight Show." - - - - - - - - - - - - Hip-hop the vote! Fugee in the house ... in the White House. According to a new MTV poll, 22 percent of people ages 14-30 would vote for Lauryn Hill for POTUS. (The miseducation president?) A whopping 17 percent of Gen Xers would like the Beastie Boys to fight for their right to party in the Oval Office. Thirteen percent would entrust the country to Madonna. Nine percent would vote for Sarah McLachlan, 9 percent for Will Smith. and 5 percent for Marilyn Manson. Two percent say they'd like to see President Cher sworn in. She's got the gypsy, tramp and thief vote all locked up. - - - - - - - - - - - - The shame of Mark Kostabi Nightmare: Italian style. At the opening for his solo show at Rome's Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna, painter Mark Kostabi planned to give a "long-winded lecture in Italian" about playing the piano. His new CD, "I Did It Steinway," would play in the background. "I got up on the podium," he told tipster Baird Jones, "switched on my CD and began, 'The German philosopher Hegel once said that no middle-aged man should ever make a speech longer than he can make love!' I figured that way my endless speech would be more tolerable." Then he realized he'd left the rest of the speech back at his apartment and brought his laundry list instead. Mortified, he sat down "without saying one more word" and let the CD play on. "I was up on the podium, red as a beet, for half an hour and every girl in that lecture hall was pointing and giggling at me," he said. "[They all] thought that Mark Kostabi had just bravely made a very brief and very odd public admission of extreme premature ejaculation." - - - - - - - - - - - - He don't bring her flowers ... ever Another reason to feel sorry for Callista Bisek. Newt Gingrich's squeeze testified yesterday that the former House speaker has never sent her flowers and that until this year the most he ever gave her was a crummy piece of luggage, a few books and a couple of CDs. Talk about the Gingrich who stole Christmas. salon.com | Nov. 11, 1999