To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People June 14, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/06/14/doodles Newt won't doodle for charity Gingrich digs a 'do with a "minty feeling"; moms dig Wiggles' butts; Lady Aitken wilts before the press; and Flynt crowns Stephanopoulos "Queen Bitch." - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter At this week's Doodles for Dollars '99, a fund-raiser for the prominent Washington AIDS-services organization Whitman-Walker Clinic, big-pocketed bidders can snap up starry scribblings by the varied likes of Vanna White, Michael Stipe, Lynn Redgrave, Joan Baez, Sam Donaldson, k.d. lang and Beverly Sills. They'll even find a snazzy little sketch from Candice Gingrich -- but not, alas, from her big-haired bro, although Newt's artistic absence is not for lack of trying on the part of the charity's organizers. Doodles spokesgal Kate McFadden tells Nothing Personal that she recently spied the ousted House speaker getting his head massaged by "quite an attractive woman" at Capitol Hill's Bubbles salon. (The Newtster, it turns out, gets his snowy scalp rubbed down at Bubbles every month -- and follows it up with an Ice Cap conditioner that hairdresser Hannah Hailu has said "gives his hair that minty feeling.") Not wanting to disturb the ex-pol's extended moment of bliss, McFadden slipped some Doodles info to him via her hairdresser and slid out. When she called his office the next day to inquire about the cool-scalped speechmaker's willingness to donate a doodle, however, she was told he couldn't possibly lift a pen for her noble cause, as he would be in New York all week. (Nice to know Newt's logic is as sound as ever.) Dr. Joyce Brothers, whose artistic handiwork will be available for purchase, recently offered these deep doodle thoughts in the Whitman-Walker activity fund newsletter: "The studies are sketchy about what can be read into these pieces, if we are to look to scientific research for our clues. Researchers have made one interesting note in their findings. There seems to be a correlation between the size of the doodle and a person's self-esteem. If a person fills up the page, he or she probably feels pretty good about him or herself." "What about the size of their head and the absence of a doodle?" quips McFadden. Easy, Kate, Newt may be a pinhead, but at least his scalp is always minty-fresh! - - - - - - - - - - - - Flower power: Redefined "I have had to sell my story to a newspaper. It's awful it has come to this. But they have offered me lots of money. It's to buy a water-sprinkling system for my house in Ibiza. The flowers are dying in the heat. They desperately need help. It's been worrying me all this week." -- Lady Aitken, mother of Britain's discredited and just-imprisoned (for perjury) former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, on why concern for her garden has uprooted her maternal loyalty and induced her to tell all to a British newspaper - - - - - - - - - - - - Break out the insecticide: The jigglin' Wiggles writhe again! The Wiggles controversy rages down under! Cockroaches fans are crawling out of the woodwork! And it's all because of an innocent little juicy bit sent in by an NP reader gently suggesting that the colorful Australian kiddy entertainers might have been a kind of creepy-crawly when they called themselves the Cockroaches. "I had to laugh at whoever had classified the Wiggles previous incarnation, the Cockroaches, as 'thrash-grunge,'" wrote one roached-out reader. "The Cockroaches produced some of the lightest and most saccharine pop around in the mid-80s -- by no stretch of the imagination could it ever be classified as even verging on rock/thrash/grunge. They did, however, have the reputation for being good Catholic boys -- and most of them were related to one another." "'Thrash-grunge' for the Cockroaches my foot," fumed another. "While three of the now Wiggles were putting themselves through early childhood studies, they were a classic early 80s Sydney pub/pop band. The other played bagpipes with the Australian Army." And this Wiggle word came from a reader named Alison P: "Another way the Wiggles out-do Barney is that the 'Blue Wiggle' won a recent nation-wide magazine competition for Australia's most eligible bachelor. Apparently one of the reasons for their popularity is that mothers don't mind repeated attendance at concerts as they can check out the band's butts while the kids sing along to the 'Mashed Potato.'" Guess there's more than one way to mash a potato (or a Cockroach), eh, Alison? As the Wiggles themselves like to say, "Yummy, yummy." - - - - - - - - - - - - Now that's a @$#!-in' funny shirt! "I canoed down the Rifle River, but don't ask me to swear to it." -- A $12.49 T-shirt for sale outside the absurd profanity trial of cussin' canoeist Timothy Boomer - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits George Stephanopoulos has journeyed far in the last few years -- from President Clinton's side to a commentator's chair on ABC to the back of a donkey's butt. (Well, maybe not so far.) That last stop comes courtesy of Larry "Freedom Fighter" Flynt, who names gorgeous Georgie "Asshole of the Month" in Hustler's August issue. In a commentary filled with enough invective to land Flynt back in court if he happened to fall out of a canoe in Michigan, lash-tongued Larry calls the former presidential adviser "the world's most renowned shit puker" (so prettily put, Mr. Flynt). Objecting to Stephanopoulos' tell-a-little memoir, "All Too Human: A Political Education," Flynt launches a slew of gritty grenades at the man he dubs "Queen Bitch" and accuses him of displaying in his book the "hissy wrath" of a spurned lover. Don't worry, George. Next month, your face will be off the unfortunate donkey's derriere. Hustler tells NP that Charlton "Moses the Gunslinger" Heston will be dodging that swishy tail like a hail of bullets. Today's a big day for erstwhile Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell: She sets off for the Philippines to begin her duties as United Nations goodwill ambassador. (I'm sure this is just what Ted Turner wanted when he donated all that cash to the U.N.) On behalf of the U.N.'s Population Fund, she'll be visiting a family planning clinic and spicing up a discussion group on sexual health issues with students at a college in Manila. She says the fact-finding trip "gives me the chance meet the people who really matter -- women who want to control fertility and young people who are on the brink of making important decisions about their sexual future." Guess it really is a Spiceworld after all. salon.com | June 14, 1999