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.

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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).

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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.

Amy Reiter Amy Reiter's column appears daily on the People site, Monday through Friday. + Biography + Archives Got a hot tip? Tell Amy!

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.

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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.

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