Her Name Is Yoko, But Just Call Her Mrs. Lennon

Being the professional widow of a murdered musical megastar has done wonders for the artistic career of Yoko Ono.

Not that we’re making light of John Lennon’s death. We’re not even suggesting that Ono’s reaction to that death was anything less than genuine grief.

Still, she hasn’t exactly avoided the spotlight during the years since the ex-Beatle’s 1980 shooting. And the, uh, art that she has done lately draws on the memory of that event.

In a New York exhibit titled “Blood Objects from Family Album,” Ono’s works include bronze high-heeled pumps, a splintered bronze baseball cap and a bullet-shaped mirror - all splattered with red paint.

“All of us have a very bloody beginning,” she told The New Yorker magazine. “That is the first violence we experience.”

Loose talk

Roseanne outlining the similarities between herself and 80-yearold Frank Sinatra (at his recent tribute): “You beat somebody up, I beat somebody up, you fire somebody, I fire somebody, you sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ - and I’m asked NOT to sing it.”

Campaign ‘96 cry: ‘Ya Gotta Have (Ha-Ha) Hart’

Gary Hart turns 59 today.

And she’s helping with young Rocky’s revival

Sean Lennon, the 20-year-old son of Yoko Ono and the late John Lennon, is no art critic. Responding to his mother’s latest art exhibit (see lead item at left), the younger Lennon said, “I’m not so presumptuous as to give her criticism. She makes art on another level than most of us plebians.”

Think maybe that it’s a hotel in California?

Don Henley, the ex-Eagle, has this to say about his new LP, “Actual Miles”: “It’s another in a series of hotel songs, because I think hotels are a great metaphor for life. We check in and eventually check out.”

You need at least a B average to get in her audience

Comic Ellen Degeneres, whose sitcom “Ellen” is one of several “Seinfeld” variations (and that’s being kind), has a generous view of her audience. “There’s a studio audience that laughs and lets you know if the scene is going well or not,” she says. “Sometimes when they don’t laugh, it’s still going well, it’s just that they’re stupid. That’s how I look at it. I always try to make myself feel better.”

And some viewers wish she would give it back

“Friends” star Jennifer Anniston, she of the heavily layered hairstyle, says she doesn’t know how her locks got so popular. “It was a mistake,” she says. “I got it at Supercuts.”

Just call them stupid human cooking tricks

The forthcoming book “Home Cookin’ with Dave’s Mom,” for which David Letterman’s mother Dorothy Letterman was paid $1 million to write (with Jess Cagle), includes 200 or so recipes from the Letterman family files plus a couple or three from Letterman’s staff. “But we don’t know if the staff’s recipes are for real,” Cagle told the New York Times. “One is for dog food and another is of scrambled eggs and tuna.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster