People

By Michele Orecklin

GEORGE MICHAEL: LOO AND OUTSIDE

In his latest video, singer GEORGE MICHAEL employs that wry British humor to spoof his conviction earlier this year for committing a lewd act in a public rest room. The video for the song Outside, which MTV plans to debut this Wednesday, features a public bathroom morphing into a disco as Michael, dressed as a policeman, sings of the pleasures of alfresco sex while dancing with a harem of underattired women. The video was shot 15 miles from the Beverly Hills, Calif., park where the singer was arrested last April. It seems the judge who sentenced him possessed a slightly less evolved sense of humor and prohibited Michael from ever returning to the scene of the crime.

NORSE FLY

Having effectively curtailed the more traditional modes of criminal misbehavior (murder, mayhem, what have you), New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani now tops his most-wanted list with jaywalkers, squeegee men and a Norwegian guy who thinks he's a fly. Last week THOR ALEX KAPPFJELL, 32, raised the mayor's ire following a Big Apple airborne binge in which he parachuted from the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. After jumping from the latter, the dreadless Norseman hailed a cab and disappeared. (No word on whether he wore his seat belt.) Giuliani referred to the flights of fancy as "irresponsible" and "jerky" and ordered N.Y.P.D. officers to arrest Kappfjell when, and if, they find him, but reportedly, the fly has already made a beeline back to Norway.

STARS POP UP ON PUFFY'S BIRTHDAY VIDEO

He's rich. He's powerful. He's turning 28, and this week SEAN ("Puffy") COMBS, no fan of the small gesture, will throw himself a birthday bash of czarist proportions. To help produce a suitable invitation, he called upon such Puffy pals as Oprah Winfrey, CHRIS ROCK, Ben Stiller, ELLEN DEGENERES, SAMMY SOSA, Magic Johnson, Tommy Hilfiger, Will Smith, MARIAH CAREY and many others who no doubt saw the merit in assisting one of the decade's most successful music producers. The eclectic ensemble vamped for a videotape sent to Puffy's illustrious invites, revealing the party's date, time, suitable attire (fabulous, natch) and the number for an answering machine that would record RSVPs. The otherwise talkative talent was tight-lipped on the gala's exact locale. That information was to be provided at the last minute on a strictly entitled-to-know basis.

ROAD WORRIER

Is it possible that Beat bad boy JACK KEROUAC was as pragmatic, as structured, as hopelessly square as everyone else in the Eisenhower '50s? In the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly, historian Douglas Brinkley deflates the myth that Kerouac pounded out On the Road in a three-week burst of manic energy sustained by jazz and Benzedrine. After sifting through documents to which he was recently granted access by Kerouac's estate, Brinkley reveals that the author, who died in 1969, actually planned, plotted and outlined his homage to nomadic nonconformity well before writing the novel's final draft in 1951. Kerouac said he wanted to write as fast as he could because the "road is fast." Apparently, it is also paved, landscaped and banked.