To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Oct. 18, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/10/18/np1018 Sad moms scarf Jif This is Marie Osmond off drugs; music lovers to Nancy Kerrigan: "Why you?"; and Mark Harmon, potty mouth. Plus: Mare and Rho return! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter She's a little bit country, and a little bit bummed. In an upcoming issue of TV Guide, Marie Osmond reveals that there's one sad, sad lady behind that smiley, smiley face. Osmond says she first found herself in an "incredibly dark place" after the birth of her seventh child, Matthew. It hit her one night in the kitchen. "I remember opening up the refrigerator and the cupboard, thinking nothing is here," she recalls. "I opened up a jar of peanut butter and ate it with a spoon and it was at that point I think I started to go into the depression." (The Skippy done her in.) Down, down, down she spiraled -- then she just took off on her own. "I basically gave the baby to the babysitter, gave her the credit card, got in my car and just really felt that my kids would be better off if they did not have a mother," she tells the magazine, "and I just left, never thinking I would come back, not really knowing where I was going or what I was doing." Her husband, Brian Blosil, managed to reach her on her cell phone and talk her into pulling over and checking into a hotel. And when she returned several days later, the doctor put her on Zoloft -- but only briefly. "I couldn't handle it," she says of the anti-depressant. "Not only did it take away the low, it took away all the joy." Osmond says she still struggles against the darkness daily. That "little bit of music in her soul" sounds pretty bleak. Maybe Donny could lend her his lucky purple socks. - - - - - - - - - - - - The Magic Bus is rollin' on gold "We're such tarts, we're very expensive tarts. Even Bill Gates couldn't afford us." -- Roger Daltrey on the Who's decision to perform later this month at a corporate event in Las Vegas for an undisclosed sum. - - - - - - - - - - - - The ice lady sings Here's an album that's sure to sell out faster than you can say "Why meee?" -- a compilation of figure-skating music called "Reflections off the Ice: A Musical Tribute to Skating," featuring a single sung by none other than ice princess Nancy Kerrigan. Kerrigan's dance tune was sent out to radio stations last week, but Ms. Frosty says she recorded the bonus track just "for fun." She has no intention of forfeiting her ice time for a career in music. "I don't expect everybody to like it," she recently told the press. "I'm not trying to be Barbra Streisand or something." Babs'll be so relieved. - - - - - - - - - - - - Careful, Ms. Rivers. You might break a nail "She's on her way through here, honey, and then it's outta here. Hillary's going through the state so fast that her campaign button has the back of her head on it." -- Giuliani supporter Joan Rivers, taking a shot at the first lady in the New York Daily News. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Matt Drudge is reporting it, so it must be true. According to Friday's Drudge Report, Ken Starr feels mighty sorry for a certain tape-recorder-wielding little lady and is doing his best to make sure she's emotionally provided for once he leaves the Office of the Independent Counsel. "She came to us, and she risked her well-being for us," Drudge, who maintains he once saw Ken and Linda hug, says Starr told one of his deputies. "We must not, indeed we will not, let her down." Uh, could you speak into microphone, Mr. Starr? They say "shit happens." And now they say it on prime-time TV, or at least Mark Harmon does. As Dr. Jack McNeil, he belted it out loud and proud on "Chicago Hope." By letting the epithet pass -- for purposes of "artistic truthfulness," according to the Associated Press -- CBS has done what no other network TV station has done before. But, warns network spokesman Chris Ender, "Clearly this is not something happening on a weekly basis. This is an isolated incident. It's not a sign or a signal that CBS is loosening its standards." Fuck no. So much for saying aloha to the new millennium, mates. Michael Jackson has canceled his millennial concerts in Australia and Hawaii in order to concentrate on recording a new album. Well, he couldn't very well blame it on Debbie and the kids. Guess they couldn't get Vincent Price's niece's cousin's son. Edgar Allan Poe's great-great nephew, Edgar Allan Poe, will appear on an upcoming episode of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" as the ghost of his namesake. It's Poe's TV debut. Will he do it again? A little bird tells me "Nevermore." So, did Mary Richards make it after all? And how did old Rhoda fare? Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper are teaming up on a TV movie that catches up with Mary and Rho. TV Guide reports that Mary is a widow working as a "lowly segment producer" at a TV station and coping with a daughter who has dropped out of NYU to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. Rhoda, meanwhile, is a twice-divorced mother, whose daughter, pre-med at Columbia, hates her. Geez, what would Mr. Grant say? salon.com | Oct. 18, 1999