If any of you out there are still scratching your head and wondering what could have made Paula Jones decide that peeling off her tight duds to pose for Penthouse was the right thing to do, Paula explains herself thusly: She did it for the kiddies.
In the article that accompanies the sleazy, unflattering photos of the woman who allegedly refused to kiss the presidential "it," Jones tells Joe Conason she got the "raw end of the stick" as the poster girl of the far right. "I felt that I should have got more than what I got," she says.
And so she's making things right by putting her body and naiveté on display in exchange for a little cold, hard cash.
"Hopefully, this will secure my children's future," she says. "I know that I will predominantly be supporting my children, and I wanted to put up a college fund for them."
Besides, she says, she doesn't find the pictures depicting her feeling herself up by a swimming pool and in a variety of other settings at all "vulgar." Oh no. On the contrary, she contends, "I think they're very tasteful."
And she's known for her excellent taste.
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Speaking of excellent taste
"He has clean teeth. I notice that Norm brushes his teeth a lot. Which is good if you've got to kiss someone."
-- "Norm" costar Faith Ford heartily endorsing Norm Macdonald's oral hygiene.
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Little ditty 'bout Stephen and John
I'm so frightened I can barely type.
Stephen King and John Mellencamp are joining forces to write a Broadway musical. Not surprisingly, it was the little-ditty singer's idea. In fact, Mellencamp tells Billboard magazine, he made a special trip to Florida to sell King on his ghostly stage concept.
But King says he wasn't too hard to convince. "I'm like everyone else, I think he's great," King says of the artist formerly middle-named "Cougar." "He's from the Midwest; he's got a nice, sort of 'common people' thing." What's more, King says, "I liked the story."
"[It's about] two brothers; they're 19 years old or 20, maybe 18 or 21, who are very competitive and dislike each other immensely," Mellencamp explains. "The father takes them to the family vacation place, a cabin that the boys hadn't been to since they were kids."
Ghosts of the father's brothers, who apparently murdered each other in that very same cabin, come back and "sing to the audience," as do the other characters, in various styles -- rap, country, Sinatra-esque. "I intend to cover any type of music that Americans have invented," says Mellencamp.
But the singer says he and King will take a little time out of town to iron out the show's kinks before taking it to Broadway. "See, that's the great thing about this for Steve and I both," says the grammatically challenged crooner. "We don't really have to do this."
No, they really don't.
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Juicy bits
For want of Britney Spears? A vigilant Tennessee mom has apparently put the kibosh on her teenage son's plan to gun down the boys of 'N Sync during their concert in Atlanta last weekend. After finding what authorities are calling "a pretty detailed plan" in a folder labeled "Operation Death Strike" in her 17-year-old son's room, the mother called police, who reportedly brought the murderous youngster in for psychological testing. Police told the local paper they suspect his motive was simple: "The group gets all the good girls." Awww.
That nutty George W. Bush! While taping a sketch for the upcoming special pre-election edition of "Saturday Night Live," "Presidential Bash 2000," which will be broadcast on Sunday Nov. 5, Bush was to lampoon his tendency to stumble over polysyllabic words. The script called for him to say "ambilavent" instead of "ambivalent" and "offensible" rather than "offensive" -- but, according to the BBC, the governor had to retake his part twice because he pronounced the words correctly.
And in other peculiar presidential candidate news ... All eyes are on Al Gore's trouser snake after reports began to circulate last week that the Vice Prez's nether region got a little helpful fluffing from the photo department at Rolling Stone, on whose cover he currently appears. But the magazine's associate photo editor, Audrey Landreth, insists that "we didn't enhance it or anything." "His pants just happen to be baggy, and you're not used to seeing him at that angle, with that light," Landreth told New York magazine's Web site. "Once I saw the shoot I was like, 'Wow. Okay ... now you're gonna vote for him, right?'" Unless you find the whole thing offensible and are still feeling ambilavent.
Looks like they don't call Isaac Hayes "Chef" for nothin'. The man who brought the world the "Shaft" theme song is now set to release his own cookbook, "Cooking With Heart and Soul." In it, he serves up some of his grandma's down-home recipes and a few love potions of his own. "I got an aphrodisiac omelette that will, you know, put a woman in the mood," he tells the Toronto Sun, along with "a lemon meringue pie that'll make her melt." Key ingredient? Hot, buttered soul. Oh baby.
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