To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People August 19, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/19/reitthur Of plummeting pants and racing roaches Charlize Theron: "I drop trou all the time ..."; a couple of cockroaches named Gore and Bradley; Hef sez: Thumbs down on Nick Cage. Plus: Newt spares no expense on his horn-blowin' honey. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Some beautiful women get mad when their images are exploited. Some get even. Charlize Theron apparently does both. The slinky young actress, who is in litigation over nudie photos of her published in Playboy, has a way of getting fine folks around her to drop their pants. Los Angeles magazine reports that Theron is "notorious" for worming her way into the hearts of film crews and then persuading them to remove their slacks during breaks in shooting. (Cut! Drop 'em!) "She's like a tornado," writer/director Rand Ravich, who's working with her on the upcoming film "The Astronaut's Wife," tells the magazine. "If you don't dig your fingers into the tree, she's gonna suck you up. She likes to have fun." But Theron sees it as a matter of tit for tat. "Oh, come on," she fires back. "I drop trou all the time in the movies!" According to NP's calculations, Theron's due for a Sharon Stone/Michelle Williams "I have great breasts" confession any minute now. - - - - - - - - - - - - Hey, Ken, you gonna let him get away with that? "Kids, if you're out there and you want to do something good for your Drew Carey doll, let Barbie sit on his face." -- Drew Carey, sharing his purple plastic fantasies with the kiddies, in -- where else? -- Maxim. - - - - - - - - - - - - Run, roaches, run! The dangers of presidential candidacy apparently know no bounds. Now Democratic contenders Al Gore and Bill Bradley must be wary of not only each other and the slowly shrinking field of Republicans but also roving cans of Raid. Today at noon, the New Jersey Pest Control Association will race two Madagascar hissing cockroaches named Al Gore and Bill Bradley around a 6-foot-long track in its 10th Annual Cockroach Derby. The results of the "thoroughbred" race, the association's jocular spokesman Alan Caruba contends, will predict who will become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. "It's at least as good an indicator as the Iowa straw poll," Caruba tells Nothing Personal. "And you don't have to spend a million dollars to compete." Although the race will be run fair and square, Caruba admits to a slight personal bias toward the bug named after Bill Bradley. "After all, he was our senator for 18 years," says the Jersey boy. He says he also suspects that the Gore roach will "just sit there at the starting line, trying to figure out all the ways racing would be bad for the environment." Scoff if you like, but in 1992's cockroach-run presidential predictor, Caruba points out, "Bill Clinton won by an antenna." - - - - - - - - - - - - Playboy of the Midwestern world "[Nicolas Cage is] wonderful at eccentrics, but is he a Midwestern boy?" -- Down-home Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner on why he'd prefer to have bizarre genius Rupert Everett play him in his in-the-works bio pic. - - - - - - - - - - - - The mind-blowing magnanimity of the minty-headed monster He may be a two-timing, double-talking, wife-ditching, ethically challenged stinker, but you can't call Mr. Minty Head a cheapskate (or niggardly, for that matter, particularly in a public forum, in D.C.). Nothing Personal's just been handed a tasty little tidbit about naughty Newt Gingrich's wealthy wooing ways. According to a certain well-connected source, the Newtster was known to have taken his horn-blowing young mistress, Callista Bisek, to the very chi-chi Inn at Little Washington to celebrate her birthday during Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings. The fact that the sleazy ex-speaker saw nothing wrong with feeding the media moral-code claptrap with one hand while feeding his plucky plaything scrumptious delights like seared duck foie gras with country ham and huckleberries, lump crab meat with spinach mousse and lavender-scented crème brûlée (to name just a few of the Virginia restaurant's high-end offerings) with the other won't surprise many. But his willingness to shell out the big bucks -- $128 a person on Saturday nights -- does come as something of a shocker. Why, it's almost enough to make an honest young D.C.-based writer sacrifice her own moral code and take up with the first available congressman with pockets deeper than his commitment to doing the right thing. After all, one upside-down pineapple "tart" deserves another. salon.com | August 19, 1999