• July 23, 1990
• Vol. 34
• No. 3

Chatter

By Peter Castro

LIVING IN AN ETHEREAL WORLD [BR] Actress SHERYL LEE is anything but down-to-earth, it seems. As murdered Laura Palmer, she washed up on the shores of DAVID LYNCH's Twin Peaks this year, and this August she descends from the heavens as Glinda the Good Witch (based on the Wizard of Oz character) in Lynch's film Wild at Heart. But Lee says she's happy in the netherworld. "I'm fascinated with channeling and the supernatural," says Lee, 23. "I believe in reincarnation. It's my foundation and my hope. Without it, there would be no point in being here." Lee says her more grounded parents didn't worry about her astral penchant as much as they did about her involvement with Lynch. "My sister said to me, 'Don't call Mom and Dad for a while, because they just saw Blue Velvet, and Mom needs to cool off.' " [P] DON'T TAKE THE RAP [BR] Actress MORGAN FAIRCHILD wishes that the folks complaining about raunchy rap music would redirect their energies. "I get upset about this guy in Florida [LB]Miami antipornography lawyer JACK THOMPSON/ gaining so much notoriety by going after 2 LIVE CREW," says Fairchild, 40, whose new made-for-TV movie, Murder at the PTA Luncheon, will air on CBS next season. "I watched on TV as the police drove through a corrupt neighborhood, en route to the rap concert, passing crack dealers and prostitutes all the way. If they want to clean up the moral climate, arrest them. The kids should be able to listen to what they want." [P] WAS A LITTLE BAFFLED [BR] In what had to be one of the more incongruous rock and roll bills in recent memory, the eclectic funk band WAS (NOT WAS) found itself on tour last summer with those muscle-bound cover boys MILU VANILLI. "To have our 11-piece soul band on that tour was like sending COUNT BASIE out to open for NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK. We were lost on the audience," says David Weiss, better known as DAVID WAS, co-founder of Was (Not Was). The band's new album is called Are You Okay? As for Milli Vanilli's propensity to lip-synch its songs in concert, Was, 37, says, "I think the next step in the music business will be a holographic Milli Vanilli. I mean, why waste the money on the gas you need to put them on a bus and get them to the show?" [P] DUMB LUCK [BR] MARY STEENBLRGEN remembers suffering from a bad case of teen angst while growing up in North Little Rock, Ark. "There were all kinds of different-looking people," says Steen-burgen, 37, who stars in Back to the Future III. "But when you're 16 and you're gawky and skinny and have naturally curly hair when you're supposed to have sleek hair, you take note that everybody else looks perfect. At that time there was a way to look and a way to behave. Not only did I not look right, but I didn't behave right, either. There was some pressure to be dumb and bubble-headed pretty." As for the single life following her recent divorce from actor MALCOLM MCDOWELL, with whom she has two kids, LILLY, 9, and CHARLIE, 7, she says, "Dating is so much fun. It's so much sexier now." [P] YOUTH BE SERVED [BR] As a member of NEW EDITION since 1980 and now as a principal in that band's offshoot R&B group, BELL BIV DEVOE, singer RONNIE DEVOE always shunned being a teen idle. "We found out about the whole girl situation basically when we started out as 11-, 12-and 13-year-olds, "says DeVoe, 22, whose Bell Biv DeVoe album is titled Poison. "It was cool walking down the street [in Roxbury, Mass.[RB] and having the girls on your block wanting to do this and that to you. At 11 and 12, though, you basically only do the stuff you see on TV. Then you get to be a teenager and having girls scream at you, come on, you want to get to the fans. I remember thinking at the time, 'I can't believe this is happening to me.' I still think that." [P]