O.J. & ROMANCE: What’s on the reading...

O.J. & ROMANCE: What’s on the reading list for the sequestered O.J. Simpson jurors? It will soon include a heavy dose of romance novels. The Orange County chapter of Romance Writers of America offered to send the jurors some of its members’ books, and Judge Lance Ito gave the OK. Local romance writers--Rebecca Forster, Susan Elizabeth Phillips among them--will meet Saturday to put together a collection of their works for the jurors to choose from.

NON-PARTY POOPER: When UCLA freshman guard Jamie Oenning, who also played at Woodbridge High School in Irvine, hired on as a “runner” during the recent NCAA women’s basketball tournament, she got more drama than she’d expected. Part of the job: She had to tell a player for Vanderbilt--which had just lost a heartbreaker at the buzzer--that she’d been chosen at random to participate in a standard NCAA drug test. . . . Says Oenning: “I went in there and everyone’s bawling and I’ve got to go up to this senior reserve who hardly even played and say, ‘Uh, excuse me. . . .’ ”

TALKING ‘96: New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman has been touted as a rising GOP star--and maybe even a candidate for its national ticket. Whitman will speak at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace on April 27. Also there April 12: U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), already a 1996 presidential candidate. The library is touting both speakers under the header: “Meet the Next President of the United States (maybe).”

PEARLS OF WISDOM? Pearl Jam won’t include Orange County on the 14-city tour it announced Monday. But it will definitely be doing business here (D1, F1). The rock group is trying to bypass Ticketmaster by selling concert tickets through a year-old group called ETM Network out of Irvine. . . . Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis expects a few “hiccups” with the new system. Not so, says ETM co-founder Peter Schniedermeier: “We’ll be completely automated with almost 5,000 phone lines; it’ll go smooth.”