This Just In ...

Your latest postal rate hike put to good use. The US Postal service is spending what I'm assuming is a gazillion dollars to turn post office mailboxes into R2D2 replicas in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Oh, and by the way, the 2008 cost to mail a post card will be $2.49.

The Post ran an interesting piece on Ronnie Spector, star of the 60's girl group the Ronettes. She's about to be inducted into the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame. And she's been locked in a fascinating if not tragic spiral of mean spirited madness with ex-husband, hair victim and alleged murderer Phil Spector for the last 40 years. I worked at a club that Ronnie performed in for the last several years. She wasn't particularly odd as performers go. She never left her dressing room until it was time to get on stage. Backstage, she never removed her sunglasses and never looked up at anyone. After the show, she returned to her dressing room until everyone had gone. But the article paints a woman obsessed with her supposed fame, neglectful of her adopted "children" and willing to place the blame for every bad thing that ever happened to her squarely at the feet of her sad little ex-husband. Here's an excerpt from the last few paragraphs of the article:

As for what became of Ronnie's adopted children with Phil, the eldest, Donte, was last reported to be HIV-positive, homeless and living in a car blocks away from Phil's mansion in Beverly Hills. He and his brother Gary have both spoken on the record about the physical and sexual abuse they claim to have suffered at Phil's hands.

"I met Gary," Ribowsky says. "He grew up in a mansion, but they locked the door to his bedroom on him. He had to go to the bathroom in a pot. You can't make this stuff up."

Ronnie claims to have a good relationship with her adopted sons - especially Donte, "the half-breed like me." She pauses. "Four years ago, Donte's saying, 'Mom, I have AIDS.' I don't know if that's true - he may be trying to distract me from what I'm doing."

She says she heard from Gary last Mother's Day, but that call didn't go so well either. "He called me saying, 'Mom, Dad's the celebrity.'" She was outraged. "I'm like, 'I'm the celebrity!' " She says they have caused her so much anguish she can't deal with them anymore: "I had to let my husband Jonathan deal with the kids so I could deal with my own life," she says.

Which, for her, reaches its culmination when Keith Richards inducts the Ronettes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ("I wanted Keith! They wanted Cher," Ronnie says). Talley will be seeing her cousin for the first time in 15 years this Saturday, when the Ronettes rehearse. "It should be interesting," Talley says, laughing. "Welcome to my world!"

Ronnie, however, is thinking only of her legacy, which she now regards as secure. "I was at a private party [for inductees] the other night, and they gave me a chocolate disc with my name on it, and it was the best party I ever had. The guy from the Village People hugged me - that's my reward. It was all about me." She pauses. "I'm so, so happy to be getting my due. And it is due to me."

So sad ...