The Reliable Source: Sell Those Tickets, Meet the Band

Groupie Alert: Here's a respectable way to get aboard the tour bus with hip-hop funksters Black Eyed Peas or punk hitmakers Green Day.  Organizers of Rock the Vote's 15th-anniversary celebration say they'll bestow a total rock star experience on the top fundraisers for the June 8 bash in Washington.

"Whoever sells the most tickets gets to go on tour with Black Eyed Peas for a year!" event co-chair Terry McAuliffe exclaimed to an overflow crowd of 250 young activists Tuesday night at the Cloud nightclub in Dupont Circle. "And whoever sells the second most tickets gets to go on tour with Green Day for a year!" It was classic McAuliffe hyperbole. The winners actually will  get to travel with the bands -- both ardent Rock the Vote supporters -- on several tour dates but not for a year. But the third biggest fundraiser will get a year's worth of Virginia wine -- and four tickets to a Washington Nationals game. "Anybody can get involved," Justin Paschal, TV's development director, told us. "We're totally bipartisan and nonprofit." (While one  co-chair of the gala is the famed Democrat, the other is Jack Kemp, the '96 GOP vice presidential candidate.)

The Cloud reception, billed as an organizing event, felt like a bash from the Clinton era: loud music, lots of boozy networking, Democrats galore and even a celebrity. We saw "Legends of the Fall" star Julia Ormond dash by with her husband, Jon Rubin, a Rock the Vote founder and board member who helps connect D.C. and L.A. types. (She was in town for the Vital Voices gala at the Kennedy Center.) So did bon vivant McAuliffe flirt with her? "Oh, no," he said innocently. "Her husband introduced me. I'm very deferential," adding: "She did kiss me when she left."

Do You Really Mean It, Kay?

Whistling, cheering and applause burst out at the Kennedy Center Tuesday night when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said from the stage, "I expect to see a woman president in my lifetime." Evidently some in the audience took it as an endorsement of the woman standing next to her: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), widely touted as a  Democratic contender for the White House in 2008.

Clinton just smiled coyly. "It was a brilliant moment," said one Dem who attended the gala for Vital Voices, a global organization that promotes women's empowerment.

Co-host and actress Sally Field later suggested to us that both should run -- as a team. "Hillary and Kay, that's a very interesting ticket," she told The Post's Pablo Izmirlian. 

Chris Paulitz,  a spokesman for Hutchison, assured us yesterday: "As a good Republican, the senator knows that she will see a Republican woman president in her lifetime." Hutchinson is still considering a run for governor of Texas in '06 next year. "You'll learn what she's running for this summer," he Paulitz said. "She could run for anything."

More Glitterati Sparkles

The A-list, updated: For the city's celebrity spotters, here's our final (we promise) addendum on the luminaries who will grace the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the  Washington Hilton Washington Saturday night:

Actors Robert Duvall, Burt Reynolds, Randy Quaid, Ron Silver and Richard Schiff; actresses Anne Hathaway and Patricia Heaton; San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom; and, it goes without saying, President Bush and first lady Laura, Dick and Lynne Cheney, Rummy, Condi and Saddam Hussein. (Kidding!)

The next day, while most are nursing hangovers, conservative shoutmaster John McLaughlin and wife Cristina will host a brunch at the Hay-Adams, where the pundit class, members of Congress and stars who haven't jumped on the first plane out of here will mill about, drink Bloody Marys and chew over the fabulosity of the night before.

As McLaughlin bruncher Christopher Buckley sums up: "For those of us who have been going to the correspondents' dinner since the Taft administration, the McLaughlin brunch has become the main event, the tail that wags the dog. Or given the high density of pundits, the wags that tail the dog." Can't you tell we're groaning already?

SQUIBS

Fans of the late, great Lee Marvin can learn more about his Marine Corps service in World War II and see him in director Sam Fuller's recently restored 1980 film "The Big Red One" at 7 tonight at AFI Silver Theater. Marvin's widow, Pamela, will speak and cast members Perry Lang, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine and Bobby Di Cicco will attend. Tickets are $50, benefiting children of Marines and federal law enforcement personnel killed in the line of duty.

Meanwhile, we're all aflutter about seeing Paris Hilton's performance in "House of Wax," a slasher flick opening May 6.  In its current issue, Stuff magazine asks how she prepared for the role. "I watched a lot of old horror movies," the exceptionally talented actress said. Which ones? "I don't know. I forgot."

But will he wear Spandex? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld teams with costumed superheroes Captain America and Spider-Man today at a Pentagon launch of a new "Salute our Troops" Marvel Comics title. Next month, Marvel will distribute more than a million free copies of the military-themed book to troops and their families here and abroad.

"It was actually very sweet," said Laura Bush, commenting Tuesday on "The Tonight Show" about her husband's handholding with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah earlier this week. Said host Jay Leno: "You're a very understanding wife."

With Anne Schroeder