An Icon Of The Acid Era, Tim Leary Still Tunes In

To some, he was the voice of a generation. To others, he was an intellectual buffoon.

But however you see him Timothy Leary still is a symbol for the age that produced him - the tune-in, turn-on, drop-out era of the ‘60s.

Leary, now 75, is about to do the latter - drop out, that is - for good. Suffering from prostate cancer, Leary has been receiving some kind support of late.

One source of support was the British band The Moody Blues, which in its 1974 song “Legend of the Mind” had sung the line “Timothy’s Leary’s dead.” In a recent phone call to Leary, the group sang the same line with a slight difference: “Timothy Leary lives,” they warbled.

So how did the line come to be written? “They were drunk and stoned one night,” Leary was told. “That’s all. It was rock ‘n’ roll.”

Loose talk

Walk of Fame Chairman Johnny Gray on the defacing of Marlon Brando’s star over the actor’s comments about Jews controlling the movie industry: “The guy was honored for his professional achievement. Politics and irrational behavior have never caused us to remove a plaque. This IS Hollywood.”

If he were evil, he’d be known as Meany…

Oleg Cassini turns 83 today.

In this corner, presidents don’t mind playing ball

The Baseball Hall of Fame has a president’s corner. On display: George Bush’s college baseball mitt, the glove worn by Dwight Eisenhower to throw out the first ball in the Washington Senators’ 1956 opener and baseballs autographed by Franklin Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Jerry’s now just little bit of Indian jetsam and flotsam

Not everyone, it appears, was happy at news that the late Jerry Garcia’s ashes now float on India’s Ganges River - deposited there by Garcia’s widow, Deborah Garcia, and Garcia’s Dead bandmate Bob Weir. Said Garcia’s ex-wife Carolyn Garcia, “There was no reason on Earth to take Jerry’s ashes to India, a country he’d never been to, and dump them into the most polluted river on the face of the Earth.”

Friends? Partners? They tend to break up with speed

OK, so Tate Donovan stars on “Partners,” Jennifer Aniston stars on “Friends” and Donovan once went steady with movie star Sandra Bullock (“Speed”). Now it’s reported that the trio is involved in a three-way affair. And, apparently, they are not happy about it.

Yo, home boy, pass me more o’ that Lapsang souchong

Talk-show diva Oprah Winfrey wants to do more movies, if she can find the right non-violent types of roles. “I’m just waiting for a movie in which people sit on the porch and drink some tea,” she says.

An endangered Hollywood species: The ‘flying whatever’

There were problems galore on the set of Barbra Streisand’s movie “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” But actor Pierce Brosnan came to the director-star’s defense. “I’ve seen male directors throw tantrums and nobody says a peep,” he says. “If this picture makes big bucks, no one’s going to give a flying whatever about how it got made.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

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