To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People March 11, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/2000/03/11/npw0311 Sex, flames, egos and eggs Extra! Extra! Sharon Stone's just like a lesbian, except not a lesbian; online columnist death match! Walls and Drudge duke it out on Page Six; Plus: Salman Rushdie goes to Hollywood. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter This week saw a terrible new epidemic sweeping Hollywood, but it was to be expected, I suppose. Now that stars' announcing their sexual orientation no longer has the breaking news impact it once did, certain Ladies of La-La Land have taken to announcing which sexual orientation they aren't, but wish they were, except, uh, they aren't, are they? In less confusing developments (or maybe not), a WWF-like Gossipers Battle Royale erupted between online dish demons Jeannette Walls and Matt Drudge. Then, later in the week, that giant sucking sound you heard was Salman Rushdie being pulled into the dreaded Vortex of Showbiz from which no one ever emerges (tip for Salman: no Hair Club for Men commercials). Finally, the week came to a reasonable conclusion with Lucianne Goldberg' suggesting she deserves a statue to memorialize her contributions to Earth, humanity and the universe. I'm for it, and may I suggest that it glow, stand about 6 inches tall and be easily adhered to a dashboard? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Monday: "If these walls could address large crowds" Sharon Stone started it. The recent rash of celebrity I'm-not-gay-but-I-wish-I-were confessions began when Stone told reporters that working on HBO's "If These Walls Could Talk 2" with Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche taught her that she's "exactly like a gay woman except I don't have sex with women." Now Camryn Manheim has piped up with a similar admission. "I really wanted to be a lesbian," Manheim told Australia's New Weekly magazine. "I tried to be a lesbian. I would have made a great fucking lesbian. But no, I had to be a heterosexual, which is no fucking picnic." Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Monday, March 6. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tuesday: "Beach bummer blaze-a-thon" Looks like the Burning Man festival's getting a little competition. Environmentalists in Thailand are reportedly still so steamed about destruction allegedly caused last year by the filming of Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Beach" that they're planning to lynch and burn an effigy of young Leo at the film's Thai premiere Tuesday night. "We are not trying to stop the public watching the movie," Phuket Environmental Protection representative Sirinee Yommana told the Agence France-Presse, "but we are asking them to wait and watch it on video." Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Tuesday, March 7. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wednesday: " Egg on his chest? " I knew the brawl between online gossips Jeannette Walls and Matt Drudge would get ugly, but who could have predicted allegations of a smeared-egg sex fetish? The bickering began when Walls printed the well-circulated rumor that Drudge is gay in her new book, "Dish, " and escalated after Walls hinted that she had refrained from printing even more "lurid allegations" about him. After a mutual friend of both gossips tipped off Drudge as to just what these "lurid allegations" were -- a nasty case of pubic lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre egg fetish -- he began to spread them himself. "Hello, I'm sorry," Walls tells me. "I'm a bit of a junkyard dog. Don't pick a fight with me, please. "It's all very well sourced," she told the New York Post's Page Six. "If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass." Splat! Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Wednesday, March 8. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Thursday: "Salman and the sea of offers" Forget the fatwa. It's nothing but a memory now. Salman Rushdie's going high profile. Last week, New York gossip columns were filled with gushing accounts of the novelist's comings and goings: multiple appearances with his new 29-year-old model/actress girlfriend, Padma Lakshm; a planned move to Manhattan; and news that his third wife, Elizabeth West (who Rushdie says "saved my life" during the fatwa), will remain in England with their son. There's even buzz that Rushdie's going Hollywood. At the opening of Anjelica Huston's "Agnes Browne" last week, Rushdie told tipster Baird Jones that, although a recent London Times item about his upcoming role as a ghoul in a vampire movie is false, he will be making an on-screen debut nonetheless. Rushdie will play himself in Jack Pierson's "Dirty Pictures," starring James Woods and airing on Showtime next month. "I've always been a frustrated actor," the writer admits, "but it did not make sense to try to get parts when there was a price on my head." Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Thursday, March 9. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Friday: "Egomania!" Attention, urban planners: Lucianne Goldberg wants her due. And don't worry, the pigeon droppings won't be a problem. "I really want a statue in the park or something," she told Salon's Daryl Lindsey this week, "because I have really given an awful lot of business to a lot of people." What's more, she said, "Monica deserves one too, and so does Linda, because it was a big industry there for a while." Oh, and she wouldn't mind shaking down all those fine folks who profited from the presidential scandal she helped stir, either. "There's a guy in my neighborhood who makes political buttons. That's his livelihood," the literary agent explained. "And he saw me in the street one day and he just thanked me all over the place. He said, 'If it weren't for you, I'd have gone broke.'" Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Friday, March 10. salon.com | March 11, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Amy Reiter is a staff writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.