Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 7, 1993                   TAG: 9306050196
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

I CAN TELL YOU A THING OR TWO ABOUT OLD KIM'S ASSETS

I don't know how your Aunt Zelda feels about Kim Basinger. I think it's probable she thinks Kim is a loose woman who is no better than she should be.

Still, Aunt Zelda's philosophy about the vagaries of human existence certainly apply now to poor old Kim.

It seems like only yesterday that she was running around so beautifully in the first Batman movie, or eating all that fruit in "9 1/2 Weeks," or handcuffed to Richard Gere in that swamp.

Or buying a whole town, and now she's bankrupt because she lost this law suit and has to pay this movie outfit $7.4 million.

They say she gets paid $3 million a movie, which obviously means Hollywood favors young women who look good in plain white petticoats.

Actually, I have every reason to believe she would look good in a suit of armor.

Along these lines, one newspaper report was especially cruel and misleading. It said: "Basinger's liabilities exceed her assets."

That may be true as far as money goes, but when we are talking about the human condition -- as in, frankly, Kim's body and so forth -- nothing could be further from the truth.

As we would have said in Radford, that'll be the day, Trevor.

These physical assets will dwindle some day, but that time has not come.

And I am here today to champion Kim. I don't care whether she has a dime or not. I'd still like to be handcuffed to her in a swamp.

I don't want to suggest here that this support would be financial.

I'm sorry, Kim, we just put a cat in for thyroid surgery and bought a new oven and stove hood. Nobody should be surprised to read, possibly very soon, that we have more financial liabilities than assets.

For the record, our physical assets diminished and then disappeared some time ago.

I'll be frank here and say that, under the best of financial conditions, I'm not sure that the woman with whom I have braved the Sea of Matrimony for more than 40 years would be really pleased with a such a contribution.

Some young single male persons out there ought to be able to send Kim a buck or two. I read somewhere that she spends a whole lot of money every month on her pets.

Come on, you guys can afford it. Just cut back on the Playboy videos and the Madonna CDs. OK?

That Madonna. She should live long enough to look as good as Kim does in a plain white petticoat.