One Tupac Behind Bars Is Worth Two On The Stage

Prison put the careers of Mike Tyson and Michael Milken on hold. It may ruin the careers of O.J. Simpson and Heidi Fleiss.

But it is doing little to inhibit the marketing of Tupac Shakur.

The self-styled gangsta rapper, serving a 4 1/2-year sentence for sexual abuse, has a No. 1 album - “Me Against the World” - on the weekly Billboard chart for three weeks now. MTV is running a video of “Dear Mama,” a single from the LP, using old photos and old film clips.

Videos may be a problem in the future.

“We’re going to have to keep coming up with fresh ideas on how to make videos without him,” said music executive Tom Whalley.

Loose talk

Actress Glenn Close on her engagement to carpenter Steve Beers: “What excites me now is the Katharine Hepburn school of relationships - that is, love someone but don’t marry him, let him live next door.”

Ha, ha, what a riot - Oprah? Uma? Oprah? Uma?

David Letterman turns 48 today.

And a woman once called Tanya knows about madness

When asked why she agreed to appear at fashion-designer Thierry Mugler’s Paris fall/winter runway show wearing a feathered, sequined bodysuit, Patricia Hearst said, “I guess it was a moment of madness.”

And anyway, the bouquet cost a whole dollar

Here’s our nominee for sitcom line of the week, from “Murphy Brown” (Christopher Rich said it to Faith Ford): “You can’t go out with a beautiful woman without bringing her flowers - at least that’s what the guy on the offramp told me.”

Maybe she beat drugs and had affairs with her husbands

In his book “Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor,” author C. David Heymann reports that the actress was beaten by two of her husbands, had an affair with Frank Sinatra and once popped prescription drugs like candy. Taylor denies all and is suing. “Most of the supposed incidents never occurred,” Taylor’s attorney, Neil Papiano, said Monday. “It was written for scandalous purposes and has no basis in fact.”

And you shouldn’t quote the man during Miller time

If you’ve read that rocker Rod Stewart is planning to retire, forget it. “As I remember it, I was asked if I was going to retire and I said one of these days, yes,” Stewart told reporters in Glasgow on Tuesday. “To be absolutely honest, I had a few (beers) yesterday afternoon.”

En Cuba, Vinnie Vega no puede comprar un Big Mac

Bill Griffith, the cartoonist responsible for the comic strip “Zippy the Pinhead,” can think of at least one good thing about Cuba. “This is a country that is yet to have a McDonald’s,” he says. “And how many countries on the face of the Earth can you say that about?”

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