April 20, 1999 |Sharon Stone's got a thing for newspaper editors; after all, she's married to one. But a fair number of them might not have a thing for her after she meandered, giggled, scolded and jump-cut her way through a speech at an American Society of Newspaper Editors luncheon last weekend.

"If you're wondering why the hell I'm the speaker today," the panty-eschewing actress told the group of 300 hapless journalists, "I look at it like this -- I have become the offspring of your illicit imaginations."

Her qualifications for MENSA membership (yup, the illicitly imagined offspring boasts of possessing an IQ of 154) were apparently not on display as she leapt from a plea for greater reporting accuracy to a joke about the besmirched duds of a woman as infamous for flaunting her underwear as Stone is for going without. "A little bit of accretion and a blue dress," she riffed. "I don't think we have to go there anymore."

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Digesting the red snapper, the chocolate mousse and the "Basic Instinct" bad girl's bizarre 16-minute speech on such disparate topics as Tennessee Williams, "stupid" Hollywood flicks, war, schizophrenia and how she intends to "keep my legs crossed," one editor remarked, "She's making Jerry Brown seem lucid." Sharon Stone for president? Don't think we have to go there either.

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Monica's dad on Linda Tripp

"Last night I had a dream that I spit in her face, and that is what I would like to do, I would spit in her face."

-- Dr. Bernard Lewinsky on Univision's newsmagazine program "Aqui y ahora"

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Monica's dad on President Clinton

"I hate him. I hate him as a man. As a man, I have no respect for him. As the president of the United States, naturally, I respect him and I think he is a good president. But there are two sides to this person. He knows how to handle political issues, but his character as a man is horrible and hateful."

-- Dr. Bernard Lewinsky on Univision's newsmagazine program "Aqui y ahora"

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Departing tele-matriarchs

Wil-maaaaaaaaaaaa!

Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone's Yabba-Dabba-Do time has now passed. Actress Jean Vander Pyl, the voice of Wilma and little Pebbles on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon "The Flintstones," died last week at her home in California at age 79. Condolences to Fred, Barney, Betty, Bam-Bam and Dino are not necessary, however, as she was the show's last surviving original cast member.

Pyl's son Michael O'Meara calls his mom "an anonymous celebrity." No one would recognize her when she went out, he says, but "all she'd have to do was go 'Fred!' and people would say: 'Wilma Flintstone! I grew up with you!' She'd light up the room."

Here's wishing her a gay ol' time in the great Bedrock beyond ...

Grandma Walton

Walton Mountain just got a little quieter. Emmy Award-winning actress Ellen Corby, who played the tough-loving grandmother on the '70s family confection "The Waltons," died last Wednesday in California at age 87. In addition to her years primly presiding over the plucky Walton clan, Corby had a long career in Hollywood playing fussy spinsters and window-peeping busybodies in films ranging from "Shane" and "Vertigo" to "It's a Wonderful Life" and "I Remember Mama."

G'night, Grandma.

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Vials of vile soapy water

Who would want a vial of used swimming-pool water? Well, if Heather Locklear, Andrew Shue or Alyssa Milano once dived into the deep end, some people might treasure a few drops of the pool's chlorinated contents. At least that's what the marketing geniuses at Fox network are banking on.

When those manipulative, back-stabbing, sex-crazed characters in Aaron Spelling's master-soap "Melrose Place" say their final let's-do-lunches next month, the show's oddly obsessive fans can drown their tears in some bona fide water from the set's courtyard pool. According to TV Guide, the network will distribute hundreds of plastic vials of the stuff to its affiliates, radio stations and press outlets to hand out to devoted "Melrose" fans.