“Running to the Edge of the World,” which Manson released on his Web site days ago, revolves around the ever-popular snuff-movie theme. The singer sets up a video camera, and the first several excruciatingly slow minutes feature the 40-year-old clenching his fists, looking mopey and singing about “destruct-shuu-uuuuuuuuun.” But as Manson croons, “Sometimes hate is not enough," the camera pans over to a frightened, locked-up Evan Rachel Wood look-alike in her underwear and Manson beating her, repeatedly, in the face. I counted 10 distinct blows. But wait, there’s more. He also grabs her by her bra, thereby giving her an opportunity to run her hands all over her naked, bloodstained breasts. The clip ends -- spoiler! -- on her limp body, bloody panties around her knees. Also, spoiler -- the song itself sucks.

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Much of the time, Lara Croft is being played by a man, baby.

According to the London Daily Mail, Jolie's body double for some of her more perilous stunts is a fellow outfitted with Croft-like brown hair, designer sunglasses and tight garb.

Oh, and a couple of other things, too.

"We managed to fit him with a pair of false breasts, which didn't look too bad," an insider on the set recently told the tabloid.

But then there were a few other problems.

"When it came to Lara's tight-fitting trousers there was very little we could do about this guy's shape," the source said. "His relevant bits were strapped down, and it can't have been very comfortable for him, but with clever camera angles and lighting, the audience will never know the difference."

Now they will.

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Eminem: Mama's boy?

"People should know that when they look at Eminem and think what a cool, tough guy he is, they should remember that he actually lived at home with his mom until he was 26."

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That's right: The stick-figure model is ripe with child.

In an interview with the London Mirror, Moss confirmed that she and her boyfriend of more than a year, magazine editor Jefferson Hack, are looking forward to becoming parents in October.

"I couldn't be more delighted," the superskinny supermodel told the tabloid.

Moss apparently declined to comment on rumors that she and Hack are planning to wed -- or on whispers that she has significantly toned down her hard-partying lifestyle.

Anyone in the market for a maternity-underwear model?

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The sanest woman in Hollywood

"I don't think there is anything good about fame. 'Tables in restaurants.' People say that but, then again, why don't you just call the day before? Or go eat somewhere else?"

-- Jodie Foster on the invariably losing nature of the fame game, in the Toronto Sun.

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Lucky Liza?

Some honeymoon.

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The cozy couple are so attached to each other, they've reportedly begun to coordinate their trips to the bathroom.

At a recent Los Angeles dinner with Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, the London Express reports, Cruz announced that she had to use the facilities and Cruise rose to go too.

"They were both holding hands until they had to go their separate ways," a source told the paper. "When Tom finished his ablutions before Penelope did, he patiently waited for her and they went back to their seats hand in hand, where they continued to cuddle and kiss as they chatted with Steven and Kate."

Well, you know what they say ... the couple that pisses together kisses together. Or something like that.

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More terlet talk

"She actually sneaked into my room once and cellophaned my toilet. Puh-lease! She's strictly amateur night."

-- George Clooney on Julia Roberts' inadequacy as a practical joker, in Controversy magazine.

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Smith apparently thinks so. The rapper-actor says he feels destined to be U.S. prez. And he doesn't care how randomly ambitious that might sound to you.

"People say that's arrogant, and when you see it in print, it is arrogant," Smith told Oprah Winfrey recently. "So I'll sit here before you and say what I truly believe. I think that I have a wonderful delusional quality. You know, that I honestly believe. As I sit here, you know I'm silly and I joke, but I honestly believe if I set my mind to it, I could be the president of the United States."

One person's delusion, he says, is another's destiny. "I don't believe that God has blessed me with the gifts that he's blessed me with just to be an actor or just to be a rapper," Smith insists. "I think the connection that I have with people I want to use for more than making money."

Now where have we heard that before?

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In case you wondered ...

"I'm very much a people person."

-- Brad Pitt on his love of the human race, in the Calgary Sun.

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A certain concert security guard probably doesn't think so, but a mother in Scotland insists the Goth rocker is just a big ol' softy. Rona Raphael, whose teenage daughter Nicola committed suicide after being teased for her goth style, said she was "touched" by Manson's invitation to meet her after a Glasgow concert over the weekend.

"Despite all the controversy about him and his shows, he just seemed like a normal man to me," Raphael told the Scottish Daily Record. "He was very caring and considerate."

Raphael said she was anxious to tell Manson how much his music had meant to her daughter, who was buried with her ticket to the Glasgow concert, and found the experience of meeting him "incredibly helpful."

"When I walked into his dressing room he just got up from his seat, shook my hand and gave me a big hug," she said, adding that Manson, who dedicated a song to Nicola from the stage, "had removed all his makeup but I noticed he still had his weird contact lens in."

I guess some antichrist superstar habits die hard.

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Irish journalist (and occasional Salon contributor) Ian O'Doherty, who travels in the same social circles as O'Connor, tells me that the singer and her journo fiancé were, in fact, not married in a "secret ceremony" some weeks ago, as was widely reported earlier this week.

The marriage announcement was "a hoax to throw the press off the scent of their actual wedding," which is set for this weekend, O'Doherty says.

Although they didn't go as far as Brooke Shields and her husband, who actually faked their wedding and sent photos (and faux invitations) to the press in order to ensure a press-free ceremony some weeks later, O'Doherty points out that O'Connor and Sommerlad's case has its own sticky wicket.

"Nobody in Ireland really gives a shit about her anyway," O'Doherty, who's no fan of O'Connor, tells me, "but the fact that she got Nick [a respected journalist] to actually spread false information to other journalists has not gone down well."

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Popstars (8:30 p.m. Fri., WB) ends its first season with Eden's Crush on their way to stardom, or something close to it. Next week: "Making the Band" returns! On Joan Lunden's series Behind Closed Doors (9 p.m. Fri., A&E), Lunden goes behind the scenes of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "All My Children." Egg: The Arts Show (10 p.m. Fri., PBS, check local listings) opens a new season; the series profiles artists, famous and obscure, from all disciplines. Alec Baldwin hosts Saturday Night Live (11:30 p.m. Sat., NBC), with music from Coldplay. Hank becomes an unlikely environmentalist on King of the Hill (7:30 p.m. Sun., Fox). On The X-Files (9 p.m. Sun., Fox), the born-again Mulder and the suspicious Doggett get into a turf war. E! True Hollywood Story (9 p.m. Sun., E!) looks at the history of the Comedy Store, the club where Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, David Letterman and others honed their chops. On The Sopranos (9 p.m. Sun., HBO), Christopher has trouble getting with the program; so does Anthony Jr. America Undercover (10 p.m. Sun., HBO) presents "Naked States," a documentary about photographer Spencer Tunick and his quest to take pictures of nude people in public in all 50 states.

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The ever-reliable Scottish Daily Record is reporting that tennis great Boris Becker has alleged that a woman who may have borne him a daughter stole his sperm (after an oral sex encounter) and impregnated herself with it in an extortion attempt involving the Russian mafia.

"She would have had 10 minutes maximum" to redistribute the sperm, one "fertility expert" told the paper.

Becker, however, has released a statement saying the wacky reports, also put forth by the German newspaper Bild, are -- surprise! -- total fabrication.

"There has been the wildest speculation about criminal forces, Russian mafia and other sensationalism," Becker says. "All that is not true."

Well, except for the paternity suit part. "There is a baby called Anna. And a DNA test will prove who is the girl's mother and who is the father."

And that may take a little longer than 10 minutes ...

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Send in the clowns ...

"My life is definitely a circus, but I'm not the ringmaster."

-- Jennifer Lopez on her hectic, high-wire life, in Fashion Wire Daily.

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First Manson claimed he was a Bush man. Then a few weeks later he was stumping for Gore. And now the goth rocker tells the Toronto Sun he didn't vote in the presidential election "because I didn't think that either one was worth voting for and I didn't want to settle for one."

But he won't feel bad at all if George W. Bush takes the White House, he says. On the contrary. "I think music and all art really flourishes and becomes much more exciting under a conservative president because there's a need to react against limitations," Manson says, sounding rather Nader-esque. "If it's right-wing, it just instantly makes me want to push the envelope more."

More?

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Ever heard of Elvis, boys?

"We thought it would be cool to do something that no one has ever done."

-- Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson on the band's new superdeluxe tour jet (complete with gold fixtures and king-size vibrating bed).

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Ben Affleck may be dipping into the Viagra again.

Witnesses tell me that the ever-randy actor got a little too frisky with a comely Secret Service agent during a photo op at a Los Angeles rally for Al Gore on Tuesday. Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Ed Begley Jr., Martin Sheen and alleged onetime armpit-sniffer John Cusack were also in attendance -- but Affleck was the only star against whom the married female agent had to use a little self-defense.

"He's very bright and I'd love to sit down and talk to him sometime, but I was on duty," explains the agent, who says she was forced "to bend his thumb back" to break a rather constrictive hug.

Nookie monster Affleck also propositioned the hapless agent within earshot of reporters, suggesting that the two repair to a Holiday Inn. "I've always wanted to lay a Secret Service agent," he said.

Listen, Ben, it's not that kind of Secret Service. Next time, try an intern.

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(Note: Amy's audio dish DOES NOT replace her written column.)

This week Amy gives us the scoop on Boy George's love of Eminem, Marilyn Manson's hatred of poor grammarians, Shirley Jones' potential padding and Russell Crowe's nuts and bolts.

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But if the U.K. tabloids are to be trusted, the Daddy of Puff may have more in common with fellow rap-man Eminem than just legal troubles: He may have big-time women woes.

The Daily Star is reporting that Jennifer Lopez has dumped Puffy after overhearing him having a steamy phone conversation with someone who was, she quickly deduced, not her.

"Puffy had no idea Jennifer was overhearing his X-rated chat -- he thought she was having a shower," a "friend" reportedly told the tabloid. "She said, 'I've always suspected Puffy's had a roving eye, but catching him was the last straw.'"

The paper claims that Puffy's people have confirmed the report and have admitted that the rapper's "been catting around." But Lopez's people are denying the "catting" and the split.

Mee-yow!

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Still a wallflower

"That's absolutely not true -- I'm as miserable as ever."

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Richard Hatch, the TV actor who made something of a name for himself with roles on "The Streets of San Francisco," "Battlestar Galactica" and "All My Children," is pretty steamed about having his good name and hard-won fame hijacked by the manipulative booty barer.

"I have to tell you, it feels very violating," the actor gripes to TV Guide Online. "We forget there are other people with our name and somehow we feel an ownership with our name. Honestly, this is one of the strangest experiences that's ever happened to me in my life, and I'm having to deal with it."

But the actor apparently had a little trouble dealing with it when his own voice-over agent called recently asking him to sign an autograph for someone who had him confused with his naked namesake. "I said, 'Are you kidding? He's from Rhode Island; he's not an actor! He's 39 years old; we're 15 years difference in age! I have a son who's 33 years old!"

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Scotland's Daily Record has Grant snogging with a 21-year-old Hurley lookalike, Lady Rosanagh Innes-Ker, whose name has been bandied about as a possible match for Prince William, at a charity golf tournament. ("I do not want to talk about this. You had better ask my father," demurred the lady when asked for comment.) London's News of the World, meanwhile, says Hugh's searching for a home within "a stone's throw" from the London town house he and Hurley shared for the last decade.

Hurley, for her part, is said to be in the midst of a tabloid-fueled feud with Anna Kournikova after the tennis star reportedly told a Russian Vogue reporter she found Hurley to be "so ugly" in person. Now, according to the London Daily Mail, a neo-Nazi Hurley fan has threatened the tennis star with bodily harm.

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And it felt so cool to be one in a pack of many such attired teens walking high, wired, drunk, illegal, truant, loik, a fugitive, yah, after a punk rock shew in, loik, the middle of the night and, loik, write the name of your fictional skateboard team (i.e. Crew Burgie!) on a wall in a tunnel in the bus grime with your finger? It was se-oo cool. Those were the righteous sweet days of, loik, youth?

Do I miss them? Nope.

We were all horribly depressed, debased, self-medicating miserably, the blind leading the retarded leading the unable-to-walk down squalid, spray-painted hallways into frightening restrooms. A pack of overprivileged yet deprived lower-middle-class teenagers fallen through the cracks of the societal porch and becoming sad, gutless, soft, dumb, unambitious and ineffectual monsters-under-the-house, most of whom would either die ignominious deaths before they hit 30 or become lifelong addicts with incurable problems.

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(I am entranced by this couple because of a story about them their daughter told me. Last year at their annual Thanksgiving fete -- when they all dress up in vintage Pilgrim outfits for dinner -- an elderly aunt in full Pilgrim regalia started inexplicably and without warning vomiting green stuff onto her plate. Everyone kept on talking calmly and handed napkins over without looking, pretending nothing was happening. "Are you OK, Ninnie?" asked the hostess politely, putting another bite of roast into her mouth. This is the behavior of true wealth. Old money. If somebody vomited on my dinner table I'd probably flip the whole thing over from excitement, peasant that I am.)

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My suspicions are confirmed: You guys are a bunch of sick twists. And so, without further ado, I bring you the 1999 Nothing Personal Readers' Choice Awards.

1) The celebrity you deem most likely to have named a body part:

The winner is ... Celeb: Mike Myers. Part: Schlong. Moniker: "Mini Me."

Honorable mentions: Sylvester "Rocky" Stallone's cojones: "Pebbles," Marilyn Manson's breasts: "Publicity" and "Stunt," Ricky Martin's booty: "Dinero," Monica Lewinsky's privates: "Humidor," Mick Jagger's lips: "IMAX."

2) The celebrity you'd most like to have make your dreams come true:

The winner (at least the weirdest) is ... The Rev. Jerry Falwell: "My recurring dream is that Jerry Falwell has undergone male to female transexual surgery. The new Falwell changes his, I mean her, name to the Divine Reverend Ms. J and holds a press conference to tell the world that during a previous life she was the Ms. J. who wrote the Bible."

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As investigators get closer to producing an official report about the Columbine High School massacre, it is already clear that much of what was reported last spring about the motives and methods of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold was untrue.

Multiple sources close to the Columbine investigation have disclosed key findings to Salon News, including a glimpse into Harris' infamous "diary." Lead investigator Kate Battan broke five months of virtual silence with her public comments. The sources say that many of the most notorious events from the shooting spree -- repeated over and over in news reports, on TV chat shows and now in a bestselling book -- simply never occurred.

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The book chronicles a year with the hard-living Navarro at his Los Angeles house and features photographs of each unwitting soul who happened on that grim setting, including prostitutes and delivery boys from the Pink Dot, the local convenience store. "The theory is that those who stay in your lives are the ones who just drop by, whereas friends and family desert you," Strauss told Salon Books.

Given the bleakness of this premise, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Navarro was struggling with depression at the time. He and the Chili Peppers had just parted company, and USA Today was reporting that he had returned to hard drugs.

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