People

By Rebecca Winters

THE HOME OFFICE IN WAHOO GETS A CRIB

Proving there is at least one stupid human trick he can perform himself, DAVID LETTERMAN shared a rare piece of personal news with the Late Show audience last week: his longtime girlfriend, former Late Show staff member Regina Lasko, 42, is very pregnant. During the show, sidekick bandleader Paul Shaffer suggested that fatherhood might soften the curmudgeonly host, who underwent quadruple-bypass surgery nearly four years ago. Or maybe not. "If you look at it this way," Letterman told the audience, "at 56, by the time the child has trouble in life ... I'll be long gone. By the time the kid's out stealing cars, Dad will be dead a few years." As for whether he and Lasko will marry, Letterman conceded, "We kind of got the cart before the horse here. But I'm just seeing how much I can get away with." Stay tuned for Top Ten uses for a baby sling.

THE BELTWAY BOOT

It's safe for influence peddlers and ego strokers. But the Capitol building is no place for GEORGE CLOONEY with a minicam, say congressional leaders who banned the crew of K Street, the docudrama about a fictitious Washington lobbying firm that Clooney is producing with director Steven Soderbergh. In a letter sent to Senate staff members last week, the body's Rules and Ethics committees said the filming of the HBO show, which mixes actors with real politicians in unscripted scenes, violates rules against using Capitol space for commercial purposes. A never-aired test episode relied on impromptu dialogue in Senate halls with politicos like Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Days before the program's debut this week, K Street co-producer and G.O.P. admaker Stuart Stevens said he wasn't worried: "We'll just shoot somewhere else." Now if only the real lobbyists would follow them.

HARMONY AT LAST

How terribly strange to be 61 ... and on only your first post--cold war reunion tour. Mellowed folk rockers PAUL SIMON and ART GARFUNKEL, whose chilly friendship had kept them from riding the baby-boomer nostalgia wave to its lucrative peak, told a news conference last week that they would finally reunite for a 36-city concert tour starting next month in Michigan. After more than two decades of on-and-off estrangement, the pair was inspired to launch Old Friends: The 2003 Concert Tour after reconciling for a warmly received performance of Sound of Silence at the Grammys last February. "It's family, the two of us," Garfunkel said. "Our moms know each other." And they couldn't get you to play nice for 20 years?

THEIR BIG, FAT LEAKED WEDDING

Maybe it was the flower girl who spilled their secrets. Or that malcontent Matt Damon. In any case, by the middle of last week Hollywood reporters seemed to know every detail of BEN AFFLECK and JENNIFER LOPEZ'S widely anticipated Santa Barbara, Calif., nuptials, from the barbecue rehearsal dinner to the hired decoy brides. And so the celebrity spectacle, a.k.a. Bennifer, felt compelled to issue a statement calling off the wedding. Because of "excessive media attention," it said, "we began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives would be compromised." Bennifer watchers speculated that the four-sentence press release was 1) a ploy to throw off the paparazzi while the pair elopes, 2) a sign of Affleck's cold feet or 3) legit. It may also be a way to postpone their probable divorce.