To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Nov. 3, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/11/03/np1103 Oops-O Farrakhan's calypso days come back to haunt. Plus: Lewinsky, art lover; Regis gets aggro; and Hasselhoff, Hasselhoff, let down your trunks ... Knight Rider leaves "Baywatch" in the dust. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Before he was a Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan was Louis Eugene Walcott, calypso singer. And according to Bostrox Records spokeswoman Zoe Warner, he was pretty good. "He's just a really talented calypsonian," she says. Now, thanks to a reissue of lost Farrakhan tunes (circa 1953-54) from Bostrox, you can enjoy the controversial minister, who was then known as "The Charmer," singing songs like "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" (about the mysteries of transsexualism), "Don't Touch Me Nylon" and "Female Boxer." They're all right here! And according to the album notes, they're better than Belafonte: "Where Belafonte was the consummate 'nice' performer, The Charmer would gyrate and fill his songs with double-entendres." Get down, get militant. - - - - - - - - - - - - Getting Jiggy without it "Don't worry. I've got a new word on the album I'm working on now. I can't tell you what it is. But rest assured, it's twice as jiggy as 'jiggy.'" -- Will Smith, making sure he's the prince of freshness, in GQ. - - - - - - - - - - - - La Lewinsky sucks in some art Looks like Monica Lewinsky's quickly getting acclimated to the arty New York scene. New York party guy Baird Jones tells me he spotted the handbag designer looking "svelte and happily chatty" (thanks, Jenny Craig!) at the Mary Boone Gallery's Timothy Greenfield-Sanders exhibit, "Art World," on Friday. Jones overheard Monica tell artist Mark Kostabi (she's a "big fan" of his) that she owned the portrait Greenfield-Sanders took of her for the back of her book, "Monica's Story." "All I had to do to pay for it is give him one big ... smile," she boasted. Gulp! But all is not hap-hap-happy in Monsterland. "I feel so gagged because I'm not writing another book," she announced to a group of fans. A familiar feeling? - - - - - - - - - - - - The dark side of Regis "I'd like to strap Alex Trebek in the chair -- the big shot with all the answers and all of his French pronunciations! How about Smarty Boy [David] Letterman! Let's see how he stands up without his 14 writers." -- "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" host Regis Philbin on his dream contestants, in TV Guide. - - - - - - - - - - - - Scarier than Soy Bomb! Who's gonna take beauty tips from Shania Twain? Not me. For dry skin, the country gal with the perpetually visible bellybutton recommends Bag Balm. And if you think that's available at your local department store makeup counter, think again. "It's a sort of petroleum jelly that's used on cows' udders to keep them from getting sore when they're milked in the winter," Twain explains in the London Telegraph. "When I've been flying a lot and my skin is really dry, I'll rub it over my face and on my hair and leave it there all day." Getting all greased up like a giant cow teat? That don't impress me much. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Stephen King's 25 broken bones and collapsed lung may heal, but the psychic injuries he suffered after being run down by a van may never mend. The writer told the London Mirror this week he was "totally incapable of writing" during his early recovery. "There was an awful minute when I thought 'I'm not sure how to do this any more,'" he said. "I still don't know how much I'm going to write but that's not the most important thing." Talk about misery. The fellow joined "at the Beltway" to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman at the veep's Halloween party turns out to have been none other than Gore's chief of staff, Charles Burson -- a University of Michigan classmate of Glickman's 34 years ago. The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove reports that the self-dubbed "White House Twins" were also handcuffed together -- and when Glickman's wife "accidentally" broke the key, Secret Service-supplied bolt cutters had to come to their rescue. Gives a whole new meaning to "Go Blue!" Johnny Cash has stepped out of that burning ring of fire; he was released from a Tennessee hospital Sunday after a nasty bout with pneumonia. The man in black is back. A gay stringer for the Star says it was a gay-bashing hate crime. Wallace Langham, who plays ambiguously gay Josh on "Veronica's Closet," says it was a setup and an extortion plot. (He was defending his girlfriend's tattoos from the stringer's slurs, he says, as any red-blooded American hetero would.) Either way, it sounds like the scuffle the two men got into in a Hollywood market several months ago was quite a scene. They'll try to work it out in court, but perhaps it's really a matter for the Ambiguously Gay Duo to resolve. David Hasselhoff's leaving his little red swimsuit flapping in the Hawaiian breeze. He's ditching his starring role on "Baywatch" in order to star in another show, "AKA Picasso." Europe hasn't been this devastated since Hannibal crossed the Alps. It's going to get a little less exciting at your friendly neighborhood supermarket checkout counter. American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, the Star and (my favorite) the Weekly World News, has just announced that it will also snap up the Globe and Sun tabloids. Now they can all run the same pictures of JonBenet Ramsey. Oh, yeah, they already do ... salon.com | Nov. 3, 1999