Sideshow | Nicholson, timid and shy?

In an interview with Men's Journal, Oscar-winning thesp, rabid Lakers fan and consummate ladies' man

Jack Nicholson

(right) reveals that he is not the invincible manly man we have come to expect. No, Jack has

fears

.

"You know, I'm phobically frightened of public speaking in a way that I find very unattractive," Jack said. "I get my household in a dither before such occasions. I call in everybody for their two cents."

Jack is shy when it comes to his heroes. "I don't know that I want to be on intimate terms with people that I really admire," said Jack, whose heroes include NBA coach

Phil Jackson

and baseball great

Joe Torre

.

Jack, who was married to

Sandra Knight

from 1962 to 1968, might be a playboy, but he's old school when it comes to one thing: He loathes quickie marriages. "Try to at least understand what in the name of conscience it is you're doing in entering marriage," he said, "something I obviously did not fulfill."

Lindsay Lohan

denies allegations she was like totally blotto during an '05 incident when she drove her Mercedes-Benz into a van and injured its driver,

Raymundo Ortega

. LiLo is being sued for negligence by Ortega, a busboy, who says that before the crash, he saw the then-underage starlet belt down a few at the Ivy restaurant, near Beverly Hills.

"I did not consume an alcoholic beverage or any type of medication or drug" before or during a stop at the Ivy, Lohan states in papers filed last week in L.A. Superior Court. A waiter from the Ivy, which is also named in Ortega's $200,000 suit, has filed a declaration stating that Lohan did not order any booze.

Lohan is countersuing Ortega on the basis of a California Highway Patrol report which says the busboy was at fault in the accident because he made an illegal U-turn.

Atlanta hip-hopper

Yung Joc

(

Jasiel Robinson

), who was busted Sunday in Cleveland for trying to take a loaded semi-automatic handgun onto a Delta Air Lines flight, added dim-witted insult to doltish injury by skipping his arraignment yesterday. This means that the 27-year-old artist, who was to be booked on a felony charge of carrying a concealed weapon, is now also a fugitive.

Mr. Joc's lawyer

Stanley Jackson Jr.

, apologized to the judge and said his client skipped court because he had family obligations. Yung Joc, whose '06 debut CD,

New Joc City

, sold one million copies, says he did not know the gun was in his totebag when he went to the airport. (Don't you hate when that happens?)

Domestic Daeva

Martha Stewart

gave her demonic devotees a real treat on the Christmas Day episode of her TV show: She showed off a ceramic Nativity scene she made during those halcyon days she spent behind bars at a West Virginia prison in '05.

Martha lovingly molded, baked and glazed the

entire

scene - consisting of nearly a dozen figures, including baby

Jesus

,

Joseph

,

Mary

and three camels - in just five months. Regularly, inmates are only allowed to fire off one figure a month.

"Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month," Martha said, "I begged because I said I was an expert potter - ceramicist, actually - and could I please make the entire Nativity scene."

Remember, that's

ceramicist

, actually.

The Anti-Defamation League yesterday said it accepts

Will Smith

's explanation that remarks he made about

Adolf Hitler

to a newspaper were not meant to be taken as praise.

"We welcome and accept Will Smith's statement that Hitler was a 'vicious killer,' " said

Abraham H. Foxman

, national director of the ADL in a statement.

It all began when Scottish paper the Daily Record quoted Will saying that in Hitler's own mind he probably thought he was a good man. Before quoting Will, the writer made the incorrect observation that "remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good," implying that even Hitler was good.

A national survey by Ladies' Home Journal found that 24 percent of Americans would rather go to a karaoke party with

Hilary Clinton

than any other presidential candidate from either party.

Barack Obama

was second, at 15 percent.

"What's

he

doing there?!" quips

Jeremy Sisto

, formerly of NBC's

Kidnapped

(R.I.P.) and of HBO's

Six Feet Under

(R.I.P), when he spots himself on film in an episode of

Law & Order

.

Sisto, who was a perfect teen psychokiller in

Hideaway

, tells the Associated Press that he has joined

L&O

for its 18th season as Detective Cyrus Lupo, who will be partnered up with Detective Ed Green (

Jesse L. Martin

).

The understated

Linus Roache

also joins the cast as chief assistant district attorney Michael Cutter, replacing

Sam Waterston

's (insufferably self-righteous, yet so huggable) Jack McCoy, who has been elected as the district attorney.

(Here's a nice stat: The A.P. says Sisto and Roache become the 23d and 24th actors to fill the show's six slots for cops and prosecutors. But is either a ceramicist, actually?)