People

By Rebecca Winter Keegan

SCREEN TEST

Quick! Brush up on your pop culture before tonight's cocktail party. Nobody likes a guest who doesn't know her Kabbalists.

1) Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie have celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim by dressing as all but which of these?

a) A flapper and a cop, in 2007

b) A nun and a Pontiff, in 2005

c) Sonny (her) and Cher (him), in 2004

d) A French maid and an Indian, in 2006

2) Which potentially career-threatening injury befell soccer star David Beckham, who just signed a $250 million contract?

a) He banged his head while attempting to snowboard and text-message simultaneously in Utah

b) He hurt his right knee--roughly $125 million worth of his equipment--while playing in Madrid

c) His nose got out of joint when he and wife Victoria weren't invited to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' Oscar party in Malibu, Calif.

d) He threw out his back while trying to bend it, old school, on the dance floor in Brooklyn

3) FBI agents recently visited Steven Spielberg because:

a) There were allegations he had tampered with Oscar ballots to help Martin Scorsese finally win the award for Best Director

b) He discovered he owned a Norman Rockwell oil painting that had been stolen more than 30 years ago in St. Louis, Mo.

c) They wanted to settle a bet about the release date of the fourth Indiana Jones movie

d) They had a script they thought he might be interested in

Q&A RAINN WILSON

The Office's Rainn Wilson swaps jobs and personalities to play a hippie-ish science teacher in The Last Mimzy.

The Last Mimzy is kind of complicated. Can you explain it?

Some children find a box of toys sent from the future. The toys start to teach them, and it turns out the kids have a role in saving mankind. It's kind of a spiritual scientific journey.

Did being of the Baha'i faith help you understand the spirituality?

As a Baha'i, I believe in all the spiritual beliefs: Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity. I definitely responded to some of the spiritual vibrations in the story.

On The Office you play the butt kisser. Have you reached the stage of your career where people are kissing yours now?

I'll just be walking down the street and I'll feel someone grabbing my pant leg and they'll be literally planting one on me, and I'm like, "O.K., enough. I can't get you a job."

But your show-biz gig looks a lot like every job in America.

Exactly. I put on a really ugly suit, sit under fluorescent lights and waste a lot of time at my desk. Sometimes I'll go, "Oh, that's right. I'm not in an office. I'm on a hit TV show making oodles of money and making people laugh."

What's the advantage of a show where some of the actors are also the writers?

A unique-looking cast. A lot of shows on TV are set in hospitals and police departments where everyone looks suspiciously like they've done runway.

By contrast, your first lead was being dismembered in a horror movie.

The only direction Rob Zombie ever gave me was, "Do it again and try not to be such a dork." I wasn't able to, and I think the scene was cut.

ZIMMERMAN 101

Hard-core BOB DYLAN fans will find no rolling stone unturned at an ambitious symposium at the University of Minnesota's Weisman Art Museum later this month. "Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World" includes a bus tour through the folk bard's hometown of Hibbing, Minn., and chats with authors and musicians on such topics as "Einstein Disguised as Robin Hood: The Enigmatic Jewishness of Bob Dylan" and "Hotter Than a Crotch: Bob Dylan at the Borderline of Sleaze." Symposium organizer Colleen Sheehy, explaining Dylan's appeal, says, "He's someone people love to argue about."

AN AUTHOR OUT OF THE BUSH LEAGUE

Looks as if JENNA BUSH may shed her label as the naughty twin. The President's blond daughter, perhaps best known for taking creative license with her driver's license, is writing Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope, a nonfiction book due this fall about a 17-year-old single mother who is HIV-positive. Bush, 25, who has been interning in Latin America for UNICEF (which will get a portion of the proceeds), says she hopes to "motivate young Americans to increase their awareness of other young people around the world." If only she had connections, the book could be a hit.

ANSWERS: 1) C; 2) B; 3) B