In Her Native Ecuador, Bobbit’s Still A Cut Above

Lorena Bobbitt, former wife of John Bobbitt, returned home to a smashing reception by Ecuadorean president Abdala Bucaram.

“Meeting you in person is an extremely high honor,” the president informed Bobbitt. “You look a lot prettier than you do on television.” Bucaram went on to tell Bobbitt, “You are a person who knows how to defend her principles and values. Your presence in the world has meant a lot for the freedom of women.”

Bobbitt was judged insane and served time in a mental institution for cutting off the penis of her then-husband, John Bobbitt, whose penis was successfully re-attached. President Bucaram, by coincidence, has recorded a rock ‘n’ roll CD titled “A Madman in Love.”

Loose talk

Actor Chris O’Donnell on women and their personal habits (in US magazine): “I do not like women with hairy armpits. I think it’s disgusting. I don’t think it’s ladylike. I don’t think it’s feminine. It would horrify me if she leaned over to reach and get something and had a bush of hair coming out of her armpit. Gone. See you later.”

He’ll be here just as soon as he flags down a taxi

Christopher Lloyd turns 58 today.

Then again, Picasso never painted Lorena Bobbitt

In “Surviving Picasso,” Anthony Hopkins portrays the Spanish artist whose “magnetism resided in the huge brown pupils of his eyes.” Biographer John Richardson wrote in the New York Review of Books that Picasso “looked at drawings with such intensity that Leo Stein wondered whether there would be anything left on paper; in old age his eyes become a surrogate sexual organ.” As for Hopkins, Richardson wrote, “all he can muster is an arch twinkle or a sinister glint.”

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, and he was a good friend of Mel’s

He’s known as the Velvet Fog. Since his stroke of a couple of months ago, he’s been more of a Velvet Frog. But Mel Torme is improving daily, says his publicist, Rob Wilcox. After a breathing tube was removed recently, “his voice was a whisper at first,” Wilcox said, “but now you can hear it coming back and getting stronger, so that’s a very good sign.”

Who’s the new Miss Landers? How about Pam Anderson?

Director Brian Levant, the man behind the 1983 movie “Still the Beaver,” is going ahead with his plans to shoot a whole new theatrical version of the “Leave in to Beaver” television series. Among the stars of the new movie, you’ll see Barbara Billingsley as Aunt Martha and Ken Osmond as the new Eddie Haskell’s father. Not signed so far are the original Walley and Beaver, Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers.

Maybe the velociraptor family was tired of stale pretzels

It won’t even be available in book form until April, but Michael Crichton’s new novel already has been sold to Disney Studios for what is being termed a “multimillion-dollar deal.” According to the Hollywood Reporter, the new book - Crichton’s 11th - involves a “frightening on-air incident about an airplane and the subsequent investigation” about what happened.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

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