Tattle: Craig Ferguson earns a new title: Citizen

OK, YOU CHEEKY little monkeys, your leader

Craig Ferguson

is going to be an official U.S. citizen.

The Scottish-born "Late Late Show" host announced Monday that he got a perfect score on his citizenship test, taken Friday in L.A., and will officially be sworn in a few weeks from now.

It started as a joke last June, when Ferguson received a letter from the mayor of Ozark, Ark., granting him "honorary citizenship" of the town for his kind words about its catfish. Ferguson started a campaign to get the designation elsewhere and is now an honorary citizen of 16,109 communities nationwide.

Deciding to become a citizen of the

nation at-large required him to take a test with such questions as, "What month is the new president inaugurated?" and "Who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court?"

He made it. And in the true American spirit, was already joking that President Bush's final State of the Union address "was like a farewell, special edition of 'Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?' "

Our Knight at Sundance

WOGL's Valerie Knight just returned from the Sundance Film Festival and sent Tattle a brief recap of her trip to Park City, Utah (we get to go only to the Toronto fest in September).

"You can always tell the L.A. people," Val writes. "Skinny chicks in high heels - and not dressed warm enough - making deals on cell phones (or at least acting like they're making deals).

"It was cold this year, and there was a lot of snow. My husband, Frank, skied like it was his last mountain. There's hardly anyone on the slopes - everyone's in town profiling and going to the movies.

"At a Thursday screening of 'Choke' (an award winner) the row in front of us was reserved. In walks Quentin Tarantino and Marcia Gay Harden, both judges in the Dramatic competition at the Festival. Then comes Sandra Oh of 'Grey's Anatomy,' and Diego Luna, also judges. Tarantino wouldn't pose for a picture but I took it anyway. Oh refused a pic, too. They all looked like they just rolled out of bed.

"Tarantino was loud during the film (drawing attention to himself maybe?) and Oh had her hair pinned up and the spikes were sticking up right in my view of the screen. She had her arm around Luna. Hmmmm.

"A rumor Thursday was that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would play at the Star Bar Music Cafe on Main Street at 5:30 (the CSNY 'Deja Vu' documentary was the next night, so I knew they were in town). The line at the Star Bar was too long and it was snowing hard, but I snuck around to the back door. Success! I got in to a packed house, and Neil Young introduces a singer, who's a Marine, and in the movie. Then Young and Nash join the kid for the chorus of his last song - and that's it! No songs from CSN&Y.

"Everyone files out of the bar quietly, and I'm thinking, boy, if this was Philly, the crowd would be booing and maybe not so polite.

"I got into a Hallmark Channel party, but I was probably the most famous person there. When I saw Josh Groban at the Zone Bar, Sharon Stone was there, looking pretty good.

"As for the movies, I loved the Dramatic grand prize winner, "Frozen River," starring Melissa Leo, and told Tarantino he made a good choice when I ran into him at the airport. He was nicer there, actually smiled and said a few words. He was alone but still had a ton of luggage.

"Alas, no Robert Redford sightings this year. He's a tough one. And no Paris Hilton sightings, thank God. But I heard she was there, making out with Jared Leto at one of those parties I couldn't get into."

What a sweet room

Cherry Hill's Ali Larter ("Heroes") will be the pretty face of Godiva's all-chocolate room built for a Valentine's Day contest.

Anyone who buys the winning box of chocolates - for $23 and up - may win the chocolate room. It is to be re-created in a suite of Manhattan's Bryant Park Hotel for a pampered getaway weekend for two in May.

Just hope it's not a hot weekend

in May.

Tattbits

* Martie MaGuire of the

Dixie Chicks is due for another chick.

She and her husband, Gareth, are expecting a third daughter in late summer.

* Prickly, crinkly Mike Wal-

lace, who's given heart palpitations to many an interview subject over the years, is recovering from triple heart-bypass surgery Friday, CBS News said yesterday.

Wallace, who turns 90 this spring, is already walking following the surgery to bypass blockages near his heart. Doctors are calling the operation "a great success," the network said.

* Billboard.com reports that Gnarls

Barkley's second album, "The Odd Couple," will drop in April. No track list yet.

* It's easy to see why the writers are

striking. The studios and networks don't even want to pay their most successful producers. Penn grad Dick Wolf, executive producer of the "Law & Order" franchise, is suing NBC Universal.

He argues that his contract essentially guarantees him a kill fee, or money for producing 48 extra episodes of "Law & Order" even after NBC doesn't want the show anymore. NBC says it made no such promise.

"NBC Universal is trying to rewrite an existing contract," Pam Ruben Golum, a spokeswoman for Wolf, said Monday.

* News of the World reveals "the

astonishing scary truth" that Eddie Murphy and Scary Spice had sex only three times.

"Incredibly that was enough to get her pregnant," writes the British tab.

Actually, kids, the scary truth is that it only takes one time.

* In case you missed it, the new

James Bond film will be titled "Quantum of Solace."

Huh? Is 007 going to battle a sad physicist?

And who's going to write the theme song for that title? *

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

Send e-mail to gensleh@phillynews.com