People in the news for June 2, 1997

Monday, June 2, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The key to understanding current events is seeing the obvious. "If you look hard enough," notes the publication Pizza Today, "you can find a pizza connection to every major news story." How true! Watergate: Deep Throat -- deep dish! The Kennedy assassination: the so-called "second topping" theory! And in this item, about a man suing Michelle Pfeiffer for stealing his idea for "Dangerous Minds," well, clearly he wants a pizza the action. Still, there is more to this story than bad Italian-food puns. Lawrence Booker, the suer, is also the father of a child adopted by Pfeiffer, the suee. The actress adopted the baby under an open agreement that allows access by the birth parents. It was during a visit by the birth mother, Booker alleges, that Pfeiffer got her plagiarizing claws on "Barrio Kids," his film treatment about inner-city high-school students. His work, he insists, was the basis for the film's opening and several other "non-dialogue" scenes. He's asking for more than $75,000, preferably delivered to his house in 30 minutes or less.

Gushing Fawcett

Five words that always make us drop our pizza: "Farrah Fawcett, nude performance art." Whoops -- anchovies on the carpet again! It seems Fawcett was filming a Playboy pay-per-view special on the very day in February that Hollywood rumors had her finding ex boy pal Ryan O'Neal in the arms of another angel. "I was doing a 24-hour shoot," Fawcett says, so, although O'Neal may very well have been fooling around, she didn't catch him. And while she's in a setting-the-record-straight mood, Fawcett also denies allegations that she stole actress Kristen Amber's clothing in a jealous rage over movie director James Orr. "I never saw the girl. I have never seen her clothes," Fawcett says. In fact, she apparently hasn't even seen much of her own clothing: Her June 11 pay-per-view, "All of Me," will feature Fawcett using her nude body as a paintbrush on a full-length sheet of chiffon. Whoops -- there go the anchovies again.

Mr. Rogers' wedding

It must have been a lovely wedding: the groom in his tailored suit, the bride in her special gown, the protesters in chicken suits. Yes, in an item that somehow defies the Pizza Theory of News Judgment, chicken entree-preneur Kenny Rogers married girlfriend Wanda Miller Sunday at his Lexington, Ga., estate. On hand were a pair of activists for PETA -- damn those bread-pocket fanatics! Can't they leave decent people ... wait, actually these were the poultry-suited shock troops of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who claim that chicken suppliers for Kenny Rogers Roasters de-beak and de-claw the birds without anesthesia. They stood in the street, waving signs and throwing pellets of chicken feed. Meanwhile, unimpeded by the chicken snit outside, the ceremony continued in a barn on the estate, Rogers being de-beaked and de-clawed in unanesthetized matrimony for the fifth time. Say goodbye to those chicken nuggets, Kenny!

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets