SALON

Tuesday, Apr 2, 2002 11:07 PM UTC

Just brilliant

Mensa calls Sharon Stone's bluff; Robin Williams goes berserk over sappy-haters. Plus: Crosby disses Britney, 'N Sync; Lyle Lovett's a hero, and that's no bull.

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Topics: Celebrity, Britney Spears,

Attention, Sharon Stone. Mensa’s mad at you.

First there was all that talk about you being a member of the smarty-pants organization, which last week you finally admitted wasn’t true. But no sooner had you cleared up one misconception than you burbled out another blatant untruth.

“It’s delightful to finally see Ms. Stone admit that she’s not and never has been a member of our society,” Jim Blackmore, Mensa’s national marketing director for America, tells me. “But then she goes on to say, ‘I went to a Mensa school.’ Not so.”

Blackmore says there’s simply no way that Stone could have attended a school sponsored by the organization, since there hasn’t been any such thing since the early ’60s, when the group briefly experimented with classroom education at the college level.

“She may have been to a school for the gifted and talented,” Blackmore allows, “but Mensa did not run any schools, especially when she was a kid.”

Then again, Blackmore suspects that Stone might be smart enough to be a member, should she choose to submit the results of tests taken by the hospital after her recent brain ailment.

“My gut feeling is that she would definitely qualify,” Blackmore says, noting that Geena Davis belongs to the group. “But that’s just based on what we’ve been told by other individuals.”

Komodo dragon episode notwithstanding.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Flush with fame

“In the proper venue, attention is fine but not if I’m on the toilet in an airport washroom.”

– Ashley Judd on expressing her heartfelt desire to be left alone on the crapper, in the Calgary Sun.

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Death to critics

Stand back.

Robin Williams has some pretty choice words for people who suggest playing a villain in the film “Death to Smoochy” is the antidote to his sappier turns in “Patch Adams” and “Bicentennial Man.”

“This is my response [extends both middle fingers] — fuck you!” Williams barks to E! Online when the antidote-to-mush suggestion is made. “Mush! Bullshit! I like people! What the fuck is that? ‘Turning to mush.’ For those people, I say, ‘If you really want an antidote to “Patch Adams,” there is “Snatch Adams.”‘ They could run them back to back. And there’s ‘Good Will Humping.’ And ‘My Beautiful Behind.’”

Williams may be joking about the anger thing, but he admits he was seriously hurt by all the criticism he faced for his work in those two films.

“It was personal,” he says, “but I realized the people writing these things have issues. They were reacting to something that was way beyond the movie. People got so vitriolic about it, and I’m going, ‘It’s a movie!’ Was it that it had the Make-a-Wish kids in it? Or an unorthodox doctor? You can’t explain it, so you just accept it and move on.”

Or try to, anyway.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Juicy bits

Talk about kicking the young folks when they’re down. In the midst of nursing their newly broken hearts, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake now have to suffer a public flaying from David Crosby. “There’s some good people out there, but there’s a lot of fluff [too],” the rocker tells the Associated Press of music he scornfully labels “shiny and new.” “Things like ‘N Sync and Britney [Spears]. These people are about as deep as a birdbath.” They resemble that remark.

Lyle Lovett: full-fledged hero. It may take him months to recover from the severe leg injuries sustained after being charged by a bull last week, but, according to the musician’s uncle, Calvin Klein (no relation to the designer), Lovett should be walking tall with pride. Lovett attracted the bull’s attention to prevent the animal from mauling his uncle. “If it wouldn’t have been for Lyle,” Klein told the Houston Chronicle, “I wouldn’t be here talking to you.” And that’s no bull.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.

More Amy Reiter.

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