Interesting Gossip from around the pages ...

November 26, 2005 -- MARK Lisanti, the defamer.com writer Los Angeles Magazine just crowned "the most influential and intimidating gossip in Hollywood," is so acerbic and disrespectful, he makes us feel like milquetoast.
The irreverence of this goateed 31-year-old is shocking, as shown in some recent zingers from the Web site:
* "Producer Brian Grazer's Special Skin-Tightening Assistant cranked the winch on the back of Grazer's neck one too many times, rendering him unable to blink or close his mouth."
* "Malibu feudal lord" David Geffen was congratulated for allowing "access to the public beach blocked by his enormous Gay Mafia Xanadu" a "mere 22 years" after promising to do so.
* Director Bret Ratner was chided for repeatedly parking his Bentley in handicapped-only spaces at fancy restaurants, but Defamer allowed that his "lack of natural born ability with a camera" constitutes a legitimate disability.
* CBS President Les Moonves was described as a "generously betoothed future galactic despot."
* Of Tara Reid: "As long as there's not prohibition, she'll always be in the news."
Nicolas Cage's decision to give his newborn son Superman's birth name, Kal-el, proves "the actor has finally made a clean break with reality."
* When Defamer ran photos of 9-year-old Tom Cruise dressed up as Dorothy in a grade-school production of "The Wizard of Oz," lawyer Bert Fields wrote to say: "At 9, he once put on a costume in the picture for a Halloween party. He did not go around dressed as a girl as your report suggests." This prompted the headline, "Defamer clarification: Tom Cruise only dressed as Dorothy once."
* Another headline read, "White Men Can Hump: Woody Harrelson to Reproduce."
Lisanti is philosophical about his role. "People should not care about Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid, but this is what the cultural tennis ball machine is firing at us. This is what I have to swing at," he told Los Angeles mag. "I'm basically a guy writing jokes about famous people."
PAGE SIX does agree with Lisanti on at least one point he recently expressed: "We should never believe the first, second, or third-through-17th thing that issues forth from a publicist's mouth." (pagesix)