NEWS LITE : ROCKETTES MAY KICK UP RUCKUS.

The Rockettes, a mainstay of New York's holiday season, could trade their kick line for a picket line if contract negotiations with Radio City Music Hall falter.

The world-famous dancers - who have been Radio City Music Hall's main attraction since 1932 and perform for more than a million people each year - have been working without a contract for six months.

``We have been conducting negotiations in good faith with the Rockettes since June,'' theater spokeswoman Ruth Sarfaty said in a statement Friday. ``We would be very shocked and disappointed if the Rockettes were to think about taking this step at this time.''

This year's Christmas show started Nov. 7. A gaudy mix of religious and secular themes, it features live animals and the crowd-pleasing toppling of a line of ``wooden soldiers,'' played by the Rockettes. Two casts with a total of 71 Rockettes perform 198 shows during the holiday season.

Performers and crew members entering the theater for Friday's afternoon show wouldn't discuss details of the negotiations. But one production crew member, who declined to give his name, said better contracts and compensation for older dancers were at the heart of the dispute.

A Christmas performance without the Rockettes ``would really be a disaster,'' said Carmela Cudone, 76, of Merrick, who has been seeing the show since she was a girl. ``This is so New York. I would really be hurt if I didn't get to see it.''

Writer to pen book on affair with hermit 

Writer Joyce Maynard kept quiet for a quarter of a century about her nine-month relationship with her famously reclusive first love, J.D. Salinger. Now she plans to break her silence in a memoir.

Salinger, author of ``The Catcher in the Rye,'' wrote to Maynard in 1972 after reading a magazine article the Yale freshman had written. Her photograph accompanied the article, ``An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life.''

She visited Salinger, then 53, that summer at his home in Cornish, N.H., and stayed until the couple broke up the following spring.

Maynard, now 44, will write about the relationship in a memoir to be published in 1999.

``I viewed him as my mentor and teacher and the person I trusted most in the world,'' she said in The New York Times on Friday. ``He was the first man I ever loved. My purpose is not to divulge his story. I'm sticking to my own story.''

Last week, Maynard visited Salinger, 78, for the first time in 25 years. Asked what he thinks about her plans to write about him, she said: ``You better ask him that. I don't for a moment think he would want me to write this.''

Fergie gives royals what for after snub

The Duchess of York thinks she got the royal snub, so she did the royal no-show. After discovering she was invited only to Thursday's public celebration of Queen Elizabeth's 50th wedding anniversary festivities - and not to private family parties - Sarah Ferguson cold-shouldered the entire affair.

``I said, `How extraordinary they want me to be at the public service but they won't invite me to anything else,' '' Prince Andrew's former wife told the Fox News Channel. ``I said, `No, I don't want to play that game.' ''

OFFBEAT: Card game gives a hand to homeless

They played their cards right for the homeless.

Loyola Marymount University students raised thousands of dollars for a Los Angeles charity by playing the card game Uno for a record 145 straight hours.

Mattel, which makes Uno, said the previous world record of 144 hours was set in Finland in 1985.

About 700 students participated in the College Uno Marathon that raised funds for Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles. The students began playing at noon Nov. 3 and continued until 1 p.m. Nov. 9. At least six people were playing around the clock.

Each paid $3 to play and some of the students logged pledges for every game.

Stick Saint Nick in the slammer so near the yuletide season? A traveling circuit judge refused to be the Grinch.

Judge Max Gors passed up the chance to jail the jolly old elf when Dale Buxcel, 47, pleaded guilty to writing a bad check at a South Dakota truck stop last summer.

Buxcel, a rancher who works each year as a Santa, said the $105 check bounced on an account that he shared with his brother.

``I assumed that there was funds in the account,'' Buxcel, holding a cowboy hat in hand, said. ``I should have known there probably wasn't.''

Explaining that the maximum penalty is a fine of $1,000 and one year in jail, Gors asked Buxcel if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty.

``I wrote the check, so I must be guilty,'' the white-bearded Buxcel replied.

Prodded by the judge, Buxcel said he also is an actor.

``I do some movies and stuff like that,'' he said, noting that he had a deal to play Santa Claus.

Gors fined Buxcel $100 and sentenced him to 10 days in jail, but suspended both penalties because Buxcel made good on the check.

OVERHEARD

``It's embarrassing. . . . They're saying a very nice thing about you but the connotation is always that you're an idiot or you're untalented. . . . What it does is boxes you into roles.''

- - George Clooney

commenting on being named People magazine's ``Sexiest Man Alive.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Radio City Music Hall Rockettes dressed as wooden soldiers fall like dominoes in the New York theater's Christmas show. The dancers have been without a contract six months.

(2) Christmas stumper

Douglas Fir, the talking Christmas tree, is a noise- or motion-activated device that says seasonal slogans.

Associated Press