Chatter

BUT DON’T TRY CALLING HIM A LITTLE SHAVER

Swimmer Matt Biondi, 26, who won five gold medals at the 1988 Olympics (plus a silver and a bronze), stopped en route to the Barcelona Olympics and shared a secret to his speed. It’s shaving. “I do it on a regular basis,” he says, and laughs. “We shave everything: arms, legs, chest, the whole deal. When I was swimming in college, my best time for the 200 freestyle unshaven was 1:38. My best time shaved was 1:33, which is the equivalent of three or more of my body lengths. It’s physics, but it’s also psychological.”

FOOT FEAT

Actress Lela Roehon has only a few scenes in Eddie Murphy’s Boomerang, but you wouldn’t know it from the movie’s omnipresent promotion clips that have been showing up on television. “I’m in just about every one,” says Rochon, who plays the gorgeous dog walker who catches Eddie’s eye. “I’m not complaining, but never once have I heard my name mentioned. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just showed my clip, but when they start off talking about Robin Givens starring in this movie and then they show my clip, it makes no sense. People think I’m Robin Givens, and I don’t like it.” Rochon’s big scene in the movie has Murphy checking out her feet and then rejecting her because, as he later tells his buddies, her tootsies were “Hammertime.” Since the movie opened, says Rochon, 26 and single, “the pickup line I’ve been hearing the most is, ‘Baby, I don’t care what your feet look like.’ ”

STAR-SPANGLED BANTER

“I’ll use any excuse to gel a free ticket!” said Pat Sajak, 45, climbing into the broadcast booth at Baltimore’s new Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Not many fans cried vowel when the popular Wheel of Fortune host, a self-confessed Chicago Cubs fan. pinch-hit as a guest announcer at a recent Orioles—Brewers game. (Since marrying Marylander Lesly Brown in 1989, Sajak has lived four months a year at their place near Baltimore.) So how did he like announcing? “So far, all they’ve told me is, ‘Be quiet and don’t talk until we tell you to say something.” ” Sajak confided before the opening pitch. “Hey, that’s just like being married, right?” Sajak earned $45 for his announcing stint. “And that’s before taxes,” he said, adding that he will keep his day job at Wheel. “Of course, ill could negotiate my way up to $50 or $60….”

MORE THAN A MEAL

Finding Mr. Flight is tough enough, but what happens when a child joins the mix? It sounds like a sitcom, but Kate Capshaw, 38. remembers that when she returned to the dating game around 1980 following her divorce, her daughter, Jessica, was 3. “Dating is hard with a child,” says Capshaw. “Sleep-overs are hard to negotiate. But I must say I found it a wonderful screening device. If they didn’t last through that dinner where you introduce them to your child, the weren’t worth having.” Capshaw. of course, is now married to Steven Spielberg, whom she (and Jessica) started dining with when she starred in his Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). She says she has no plans to appear in another of his movies: “I’d rather be in life with him than make a movie.”