NEWS LITE : FRANKEN CAN'T HOLD TONGUE.

Unapologetic liberal Al Franken, author of ``Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot,'' was court jester over the weekend at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner attended by 2,800 voters, including President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their wives, Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner, Dean Cain, Aerosmith's Steve Tyler and Montel Williams. Recalling the Don Imus March presidential flap, Franken said he was told he couldn't joke about ``Newt Gingrich's first wife, Bob Dole's first wife, Phil Gramm's first wife, Dick Armey's first wife, Rush Limbaugh's first wife, Rush Limbaugh's second wife, Rush Limbaugh's third wife.'' He endorsed Christie Whitman's GOP vice presidential candidacy, saying that Americans love royalty and the New Jersey governor is ``a dead cross between Princess Di and Prince Charles.'' Gingrich berated Franken at first, but then said it was ``all in good fun'' after getting a Clinton-Gore invite to an after-dinner reception.

There's money in Evita-mania

A retired Argentine hematologist will auction off three drops of Evita's blood - from the real one, not Madonna - to ease his financial situation. Gonzalo Perez Roldon, 79, who said his pension isn't enough, withdrew the blood from Eva Peron just months before her 1951 death.

Hip crowd digs `old guys'

Citing the new heroes of the hip - Don Rickles (``more star power these days than most actors a third his age''), Rodney Dangerfield (``one of the coolest sites on the World Wide Web'') and Johnny Cash (``performs at the Viper Room and reduces the fatally hip crowd to awestruck silence'') - Catherine Seipp of Buzz magazine praises ``old guy chic.''

``The craggier, the more seen-it-all the face, the more it seems we want to see it,'' writes Seipp. Among the other heroes: Tony Bennett, Clint Eastwood, Harry Dean Stanton (``Hollywood's Grooviest Old Guy''), Peter Falk, Walter Matthau, Paul Newman and Jack Palance.

Seipp insists that it's not only a matter of age. Charlton Heston and Anthony Quinn fail to make the grade, in her estimation, because they try too hard. Robert Mitchum ``would be chic, except for the eye lift.''

Decaying dolls shed `tears'

In merry old England, dolls are dropping like flies. The British journal New Scientist describes ``sad doll disease,'' a ``deadly plague'' infecting plastic dolls 40 to 50 years old.

Symptoms of the affliction, which is contagious to other dolls, include ``brown viscous tears'' falling from the eyes, misshapen heads, and the overall stench of vinegar. Scientists examining the victims have diagnosed a chemical chain reaction between the plastic of the dolls' bodies and the iron of the pins joining the body parts. ``The problems appeared to originate from iron spigots in the eyeballs,'' said Howell Edwards of the University of Bradford.

Researchers say that the problem has not been confined to England, and that a doll hospital in Sydney, Australia, reported treating 100 victims a week. Stricken dolls should be washed with soapy water and then thoroughly dried.

Cruise fulfills `Impossible' dream

Tom Cruise drew on his boyhood love of action-adventure stories to produce and star in ``Mission Impossible.''

``I was like a kid in a candy shop,'' Cruise said in the June issue of Vanity Fair. ``I felt like I was 10 years old again, back in the theaters. `OK, what would I like to see? What would be the coolest thing?' ''

Cruise said he wanted to dispel any notions that the $64 million ``Mission Impossible'' was just a vehicle for an indulgent star. He deferred his usual $20 million salary in favor of a percentage of the profits.

The movie, a remake of the TV espionage series, will open May 22.

`X-Files' star no longer spacey 

The responsibility of motherhood is having a calming effect on Gillian Anderson of TV's weird ``X-Files.''

``I'm much milder than I was before,'' she said in an interview in the June issue of McCall's magazine.

As a teen-ager in Grand Rapids, Mich., she spiked her hair, pierced her nose and ran around with a rock musician, she said.

``When I became a mother, something inside me shifted,'' said Anderson, 27, whose daughter, Piper, is now 18 months old.

Offbeat He's feeling the pinch

A Canadian convicted of pinching a woman's behind says the U.S. government is unfairly squeezing him out of this country.

Paul Toutounjian, 33, of Montreal is suing the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which denied him entry into the United States. He claims U.S. officials are making too much of the 1986 pinching.

``He was inebriated, he was on a Montreal street, and a nice-looking young woman walked by. He put his hand on her posterior,'' his lawyer, Robert Kolken, said Monday in Buffalo, N.Y. ``Although we don't condone his actions, a simple pinch on the fanny does not render him inherently depraved.''

Toutounjian pleaded guilty to sexual assault and commission of an indecent act and received two years' probation.

In 1992, Toutounjian was heading to an Armenian music festival in Boston when American immigration officials barred him from getting on an international flight.

An immigration judge and an appeals board later upheld the ban. U.S. law says foreigners can be barred from crossing the border if they have two convictions for crimes of ``moral turpitude.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

PHOTO (1) Don Rickles: Hip hero

(2) Tom Cruise: Felt lik e kid again

(3) Gillian Anderson: Had far-out look

?3Compiled by Karen Duffy from Daily News staff and wire reports