Mariah weathers stormy times

New York ” What was the big deal? That’s what Mariah Carey wondered after her spontaneous striptease on MTV’s “Total Request Live” caused such a stir last year.

The singer talks about the July 2001 incident, and the subsequent emotional breakdown that landed her in a hospital, in “Mariah Carey: Shining Through the Rain,” which airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on MTV, Sunflower Broadband Channel 57.

“The drama, the saga of the ‘TRL,'” Carey recalls. “Like we were doing ‘Dateline’ and suddenly I went into like a striptease burlesque show. I’m like, it’s ‘TRL,’ I thought you were supposed to feel at home and do stupid stuff.”

Osbournes plan New Year’s bash

New York ” Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne plan to make New Year’s Eve a quiet night ” with about 600 of their closest friends.

The couple are renewing their wedding vows in Beverly Hills, Calif., in honor of their 20th anniversary. They got married July 4, 1982, but delayed the anniversary celebration because of Sharon’s battle with colon cancer.

“We’ll write our own vows and have our marriage blessed again,” the 50-year-old Osbourne family matriarch says in the Dec. 9 issue of People magazine. “It will be one New Year’s we’ll never forget.”

The little Clooney that could

Santa Ana, Calif. ” Despite his friendship with Steven Soderbergh, actor George Clooney wasn’t always the director’s first choice for “Solaris.”

Soderbergh said he didn’t initially approach Clooney about the role.

“I thought he could do it, but I didn’t know if George thought he could do it now,” the director said. “Maybe in a year or two, when he was in a place in his career when he was more comfortable and had more faith in his skills, he would realize that he could do it.”

A few months later, Soderbergh received a letter from Clooney. “It said, ‘I think I would like to try to do this,'” the director recalled. “As soon as I read the letter, I knew he was ready to play this role.”

Pantoliano joins Broadway mob

New York ” Joe Pantoliano may feel right at home on Broadway.

The actor, whose character on the HBO show “The Sopranos” recently was retired in a rather violent fashion, is set to make his Broadway debut Jan. 1 in the hit revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune.”

The 51-year-old joins a mob of “Sopranos” actors now on Broadway: Lorraine Bracco has been taking it all off as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” Jamie-Lynn Sigler is the beauty half of “Beauty and the Beast” and Saundra Santiago will appear in the Roundabout’s revival of “Nine.”