· Norman Mailer and Dennis Miller are waging a public war in the pages of the Wall Street Journal about who's more irrelevant. Mailer on Miller: "Just because the two big guys who flanked you on 'Monday Night Football' took away your [bleeps] and left you with a giggle in replacement doesn't mean you have to suck up to the Wall Street Journal." Miller on Mailer: "With six marriages under his belt, one would assume Mr. Mailer has a stranglehold on warfare. One would be wrong." [Ed. noteI'll settle this. You're both irrelevant.] [Page Six]
· Mark Baker, Richie Akiva and Jeffrey Jah plan to launch "The Deck at Pier 59," a smoker-friendly, mostly outdoor restaurant and bar at Chelsea Piers. [Page Six]
· Axl Rose was spotted with a sexy Asian woman asking the deejay at Suite 16 to stop playing "Paradise City." [Page Six]
· Quentin Tarantino's mom, Connie: "He wrote sad Mother's Day stories. He'd always kill me in them, then tell me how bad he felt about it. It was enough to bring a tear to a mother's eye." [Cindy Adams]
· Liz Smith says something snarky (gasp!): "I all but fell on the floor laughing during Madonna's otherwise excellent sit-down with Matt Lauer when she insisted her friends would tell her the truth if she did a movie that sucked. Listen, if pals had been truthful with Madonna, they would have moved heaven and earth to prevent the now infamous remake of 'Swept Away.'" [Liz Smith]
· In "Black Hawk Down," script writer Stephen Gaghan wanted to use a true-life detail from Somalia that the filmmakers wouldn't let in. "The Somalis were recycling rice bags that said 'Gift of the USA' as body bags," he said. "It was a great detail, but they said, 'Don't make the U.S. look bad.' I thought, 'What is this, Mogadishu: the Musical'?" [NY Daily News]