People

By Michele Orecklin

MAYBE HE COULD TRY CONTACT LENSES TOO

ELTON JOHN has never been accused of subtlety, and extravagance comes at a price. This may explain why, despite his ranking as one of the world's richest pop stars, the Versace-favoring singer is seeking a $40 million loan from a London bank. An article in the London Sunday Times last week claimed that John is already carrying debts with British and American banks in excess of $11 million; he is known to ring up as much as $400,000 a week in credit-card bills and is said to stock his British homes with 240 flower arrangements a week. He is also generous to charitable causes and is God's gift to the spectacle and sunglass industry. John's rep says that the singer's finances are in fine harmony and that the loan is merely to help him buy back rights to six of his albums. Has he ever heard of a budget?

AS THE STORY LAY FORGOTTEN

He had already written Light in August and The Sound and the Fury, but in 1948, when WILLIAM FAULKNER submitted a short story to the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's, steely editors at both publications rejected it. This week the Virginia Quarterly Review, a journal apparently with less forbidding standards, will finally unveil "Lucas Beauchamp." The Review, published by the University of Virginia, where Faulkner was a writer-in-residence, inherited the story from the Rev. Patrick Samway, a former literary editor of a Jesuit magazine. Samway got a copy of the manuscript in 1975 but rediscovered it only earlier this year while cleaning out his files. "It seems strange that no one published it," Samway said. "But it wasn't until 1950 when he won the Nobel Prize that [Faulkner's] star rose." One wonders if the editors fared as well.

MAYBE HE COULD SERVE DETENTION

Hollywood may be a grownup version of high school, but you're not actually supposed to bring along your principal. Unfortunately, SETH MACFARLANE, 25, creator of the animated Fox series The Family Guy, had little choice in the matter. Shortly before his show's post-Super Bowl debut last January, MacFarlane was contacted by his former headmaster, the Rev. Richardson Schell. The principal asked MacFarlane to change the last name he had bestowed on his buffoonish cartoon clan, as it was also the surname of Schell's longtime assistant. MacFarlane refused. Schell got epistolary. With homemade letterhead boasting the name Proud Sponsors USA, he wrote advertisers decrying the show's subversive content. He failed to mention that the organization's membership comprised him alone. Fox confirms that at least three advertisers pulled out of the show. Is this the sound of one hand spanking?

FEUD OF THE WEEK

NAME: Alec Baldwin AGE: 41 OCCUPATION: Actor/Clinton backer/would-be politician BEST PUNCH: During an appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell Show, denounced the New York Post as "the worst newspaper that was ever created in the history of journalism" and suggested that more legitimate news could be found in a Bazooka comic

NAME: New York Post AGE: 198 OCCUPATION: Tabloid/Clinton basher/would-be political journal BEST PUNCH: In reporting the Baldwin rebuke, referred to him as "underemployed," "portly" and "pathetic"; two days later, ran an unflattering photo of him, left, under the headline FROM HUNKY TO CHUNKY

WINNER: Baldwin, because he looks like he can throw his weight around