May 5, 1999 | It may take the diplomatic skills of the good Rev. Jesse Jackson, fresh from his triumph shepherding U.S. hostages to safety, to smooth things over between a Yugoslav girl pop group named, perhaps no longer aptly, Models and Playboy magazine.

As an act of protest against the United States' role in the NATO bombings, the sassy singing Serbs have backed out of an agreement to pose nekkid for the American nudie mag. The good-lookin' gals also told racy weekly Svet magazine that they sang to protesters who were making a "human shield" to prevent one of Belgrade's major bridges across the Sava River from destruction.

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And Models aren't the only Yugoslav celebrities using their girl power to make an anti-U.S. statement. Folk singer Zorica Markovic said she'd like to cook for the Serbian troops, scrub their uniforms and "fight the enemy." And Jelena Karleusa, who has been described as "the voluptuous queen of 'turbo-folk,'" a combination of traditional Serbian folk and throbbing techno music, bemoaned the fact that she couldn't fight because she wasn't a man. But, according to Svet, she did what she could: She donned a black G-string and some low-slung army fatigues and sent word to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milozevic that "all Serbian women love you." Geez, at least Saddam Hussein was never that big with the ladies.

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The secret dreams of the rich and famous

"It's embarrassing really. If there is something I've always wanted to be, it's a really good painter."

Ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, whose first art show recently opened in a small town in Germany. (The Guardian)
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What's next, Eau de Jesse Ventura?

Wrestler Diamond Dallas Page has taken a flying atomic knee-drop into the perfume ring. Yup, he's got his own scent: Nitro, created by Perfumania and World Championship Wrestling. You might expect it to smell something like blood, sweat, rubber and raging testosterone, but Perfumania CEO Ilia Lekach contends, "It's an upscale, classy fragrance."

Lekach says the world can blame her 17-year-old son, Zalman, for the men's fragrance, which will hit the stores in December. "He kept nagging at me," she told USA Today, "and I threw him out of the room -- until he said wrestling has 35 million customers." And just think how much stinkier the world would be if they all wore cologne ...

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Their dognesses' royal booties

Talk about the lapdogs of luxury. Queen Elizabeth II recently noticed her pet pedigree corgis were encountering persistent paw problems from the gravelly grounds of Buckingham Palace, so she's done what any conscientious dog owner would do: She's had shoes made for them.

Originally designed as prison-dog riot gear, the rubber-soled reinforced boots, made from the synthetic nylon fabric sometimes used in mountain footwear, are not available to the general public. But when the queen's staff heard about them, they sniffed out the inventor, Douglas Buchanan, and commissioned him to bark up a few made-to-order sets for the royal pooches.

"It's quite complicated fitting them to the dogs because their front paws are larger than their rear ones," Buchanan recently told the Sunday Times of London, explaining that he was unable to make certain queen-requested adjustments "because different species will stand on their paws in very different ways."

Having doggedly overcome early reluctance from shoe-sporting prison pups to lift their paws, Buchanan's boots may soon outfit police-force and fire-department hounds. And, he says, "We might look at a slipper for dogs."

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But can it belt out a tune?

"This ride has big features and curves, just like me!"

-- Dolly Parton, on the opening of the Tennessee Tornado, a shapely $8 million roller coaster at her Dollywood theme park.

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Judyth, is that you?

No sooner had a I run my third installment in the continuing saga of Judyth, the book-writing gal who claims to have been alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's secret love-connection, than Salon People received a missive in a similar breathless, addle-brained style to the one I was first sent by Judyth.

The sender, however, asserts she is not Judyth, but rather a colleague who is not allowed to talk to the press (coincidentally, Judyth's agent, Peter Cox, has forbidden her to speak with me) and who is using Judyth's e-mail rather than her own "so she can't know it was me ... she would shoot me if she knew I was doing this" (watch those casual remarks). According to the brave e-mailer, Judyth is "for real ... I have seen her evidence. Even check stubs ... Must say I was impressed." (By the way, the correspondent so intent on concealing his/her identity that he/she hijacked Judyth's computer to send me an e-mail, signed the message with an alleged first name.)

And I clearly touched a nerve with my casual dismissal of Oswald's puny purported token of affection -- apparently one of Judyth's central pieces of evidence. Writes the writer who is not Judyth, "I saw the green glass (not that plain)."

If this correspondence keeps up, I may collect all these e-mails and put together a book of my own. What do you think, Mr. Cox?
salon.com | May 5, 1999

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