NEWS LITE\Offbeat\Giving voice\to bright idea.

Byline: News Lite is compiled bu Karen Duggy from Daily News staff and wire reports.

Thomas Edison would have been proud of the Amazing Talking Condom, which makes use of one of the great inventor's brightest ideas.

The "voice" of the condom is activated by running one's fingernail down a strip on the underside of the condom, the way a phonograph record is activated by a needle running along the groove. The condom must be wrapped up to talk, as the outside of the package serves as a speaker.

This $3.95 item, created and marketed by Marc Snyder of Oakland, Calif., is available with a variety of message options - "You turn me on," "Let's have a party," "I love you" and "Thank you for your business" among them - and in English, Italian, Chinese, Hebrew and Korean.

'Father of the Bride' can't keep one

Steve Martin, 50, says his "midlife crisis (is) in full throttle" following the recent split with girlfriend Anne Heche, 25, and last week's marriage of ex-wife Victoria Tennant to entertainment lawyer Kirk Stambler. "I've been sorting out what it means to be a bachelor," the actor says in April's Esquire. "I've had these incredible revelations on how completely stupid I've been with women." Says he's taken to reading "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

The Louvre it ain't, but it'll do

The set of David Letterman's TV show has been dismantled and will be put on public display later this year at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. The TV star will unveil a new set March 25. Yes, when the old set goes on display, visitors will be permitted to throw pencils through the window.

The state giveth, feds taketh

Phillip W. Cappella won a $2.7 million lottery jackpot. Apparently, it wasn't enough, prosecutors say.

How to get more? Cappella allegedly "rented" 200,000 losing lottery tickets from a man who collects them as a hobby, and then claimed a phony $65,000 in gambling losses to reduce the tax bite on the jackpot.

Now he's one of the richest men awaiting trial in New England.

"The one consistent theme in virtually all white-collar criminal cases is greed, and it's my view that this case is well within that theme," said Mark Pearlstein, chief of the U.S. Attorney's Office Economic Crimes Unit.

Cappella, 34, a house painter from Pelham, N.H., and his tax preparer, 47-year-old Henry Daneault, a former IRS employee from Lowell, were indicted Wednesday on conspiracy charges.

Cappella won $2.7 million in 1985, receiving $135,000 annually before taxes. In 1989, Cappella reported $135,716 in gambling winnings - and claimed a $65,000 deduction for gambling losses, saving himself about $20,150 in federal taxes, Pearlstein said.

When Cappella was audited, he produced 200,000 losing scratch-off tickets. That means he bought - and scratched off - about 550 tickets a day.

Prosecutors say Cappella actually got them all at once, for $500 and a promise to return them in a month, from William Jenner, a retiree who collected them from many sources, including the trash.

She boldly went, was boldly cut

An alternate juror who wore a Star Trek uniform to the Whitewater trial in Little Rock, Ark., every day was beamed from the case Thursday for violating the judge's prime directive: No talking to the media.

U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. removed Barbara Adams for giving a TV interview about the maroon-and-black costume complete with phaser, tricorder and communicator badge.

In the interview Wednesday with "American Journal," Miss Adams, a 31-year-old print-shop supervisor, said she is a devotee of the series because it is an alternative to "mindless television" and promotes inclusion, tolerance, peace and faith in mankind.

"If it helps to make people think a little bit more what those ideals are, then I'll keep wearing this uniform," she said. She wore the Star Fleet uniform on Thursday for the ninth time in nine court sessions.

During jury selection, neither the prosecution nor the defense struck her from the list of prospective jurors. The judge never admonished her for her wardrobe.

Leading mansaves woman

Tom Cruise, who's played many a film hero, filled the role in real life when a woman was struck by a hit-and-run driver.

The actor was on his way home from dinner on March 4 when he saw Heloisa Vinhas lying in a street in Santa Monica. Cruise stopped and called for help on his cellular telephone, his publicist Pat Kingsley said Thursday.

Vinhas, 22, was in excruciating pain and didn't even recognize her guardian angel, who made sure she got to the hospital.

Cruise checked and learned that the woman had torn ligaments in a knee and would be hospitalized two days.

The actor also found out she had no medical insurance, so he paid the bill, said Warren Robak, a spokesman at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center.

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(1) Tom Cruise Good Samaritan (2) Costumed juror walks to court.