Barbour said he can't pick Akin “out of a line-up with the Spice Girls,” but “I just don’t want us having Harry Reid’s favorite Republican running against Claire McCaskill.”

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And so, in much the same way the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics will be remembered for Danny Boyle's unmistakably British salute to that green and pleasant land – complete with a parachuting James Bond and Queen Elizabeth – Kim Gavin's closing extravaganza was a spectacle that could only have been made in England. Beijing might have been huge on pomp, and we're sure Rio will bring its party spirit, but the U.K. really owns it in the pop stars, supermodels and quirky eccentrics department. The closing ceremonies summed up the British spirit exquisitely -- a mad mix of decorum and silliness. And after a night of royalty and Pet Shop Boys, Kate Moss and a giant octopus, and Russell Brand as the walrus, when we close our eyes and think of the empire, these are the moments we'll most remember.

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According to the BBC, Costner has told interviewer Michael Parkinson that, at the time of her death in 1997, he and the Princess of Wales were deep in talks about her starring opposite him in a sequel to "The Bodyguard."

"I had talked with Princess Di a couple of times. I explained to her that I was going to try to make this movie for her and she was genuinely interested," Costner told Parkinson in an interview airing in the U.K. on Saturday.

While Costner says Diana "never committed to saying that she would do the film," he promised to show her the script when it was done. "She was genuinely excited to see it," he said, but fate would have otherwise. "The day the script was delivered to me, we lost Diana."

So, alas, we'll never know if the Princess of Wales would have been as fine an actress as Whitney.

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Channeling the king of Queen

"Freddie would go, 'Oh wonderful.'"

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Although Chisholm, who has managed a certain amount of success as a solo act, told Reuters on Thursday that she doesn't "intend to do any more work with the Spice Girls," the band's rep denies the split.

"Really, I've not been comfortable being in the Spice Girls for probably the last two years," Chisholm said in what may have been a rare moment of unguarded honesty. "It doesn't really feel that natural to me anymore. I've grown up and I just feel that I want to do things my own way and not compromise."

The whole concept, she said, is kinda old news. "We were such a huge phenomenon and there's not really anywhere else to go with that."

That may sound reasonable to the rest of us. Even wise. But to the Spice Girls' spokesman, it apparently sounds like heresy.

"Melanie C hasn't left the Spice Girls. Everyone wants to say it's over but it isn't, the group have still got strong ties," the Girls' spokesman Alan Edwards insisted to the BBC. "What she said is that we've got no plans at the moment and it's been exaggerated into the final split and it isn't the final split ... It ain't over until it's over and it ain't over."

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You and the rest of the world may have thought the couple's promise of end-of-show nuptials was one o' them Tom Green pranks, but Variety's Army Archerd is convinced all systems were set to go before Drew pulled out at the last minute.

Not only had Green secured a license and a minister to perform the ceremony, but the couple's buddies Cameron Diaz, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Harvey Weinstein and Sara Gilbert were waiting in the wings to witness the joyous event, Archerd reports. And SNL honcho Lorne Michaels has confirmed that, until five minutes before the hitching was to take place, the couple had planned to take their vows.

So what happened? Barrymore apparently got cold feet -- and decided to delay their wedding until sometime this summer. An on-air ceremony, she concluded, would be "inappropriate."

At least someone learned something from Darva and Rick.

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That was fast

Has Melanie Griffith kicked her addiction already?

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I'm dead serious.

"And, well, that's a hard type of scene to do," Winslet says in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine of her role in the film "Quills," about the Marquis de Sade. "I mean, sex with a corpse -- that's a bit much. And then you add in that it's a priest, having sex with a corpse, in a church. You couldn't get more controversial if you tried."

Did I mention that she is the naked corpse? "Lying on a slab with no clothes on was hard," Winslet admits, "but the scene was not gratuitous."

It's a distinction she believes is essential, and one that helps her get over periodic concerns that "my bum is fat."

"Everyone always asks me about nudity because I guess I've taken my clothes off in almost every movie I've done," she says. "But in each case, the nudity has been there for a reason. Frankly, I hate every second. But I can't stand seeing a film and thinking, Why is that woman having sex in all her clothes? She should be naked."

Regardless of the size of her bum.

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The New York Daily News contends that President Clinton's onetime accuser will doff her duds for Penthouse, as was reported and subsequently denied months ago.

"If it's true, it's the worst thing she could have done," Jones' former handler Susan Carpenter-McMillan told the paper. "I don't think anyone will approve of it."

Including, we suppose, the magazine's own readers.

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And you thought Hugh was a big crumb ...

"Now I can sleep with all the crumbs and dog hair I want."

-- Elizabeth Hurley, looking at the bright side of life without Hugh "No dog hair or crumbs in bed" Grant.

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Breast friends

What won't those Spice Girls do for a little attention?

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"I have never been beautiful in clichi terms," the actress, who's making her directorial debut with the film "Beautiful," confesses in the upcoming issue of Us Weekly. "There are parts of me that I feel are beautiful, but they don't have anything to do with my nose."

Um ... OK.

And while she admits that "being a movie star has a lot to do with your 'f---ability quotient," she says she's not nearly as good at being a movie star as, say, Goldie Hawn. "Goldie is like a neon light and I am not."

Now, now, Sally. We like you. We really like you.

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Bottoms up!

"There is a reluctance to talk about bowels and bottoms in Britain."

-- Prince Charles, probing British mores at a bowel cancer awareness fundraiser.

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Don't blame the dog!

Who let the spicy one? Blame Sporty Spice Mel C. The Spice Girl says she has a "problem with trumping," which I'm told is British slang for cutting the cheese.

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Here goes ...

Marlon Brando, naked from the waist down.

Liz Smith reports that His Corpulence has been waltzing bottomless around the set of his latest film, "The Score," possibly in order to make absolutely sure that the camera captures him only from the shoulders up. His godfather of bellies, he apparently believes, might be just a tad too great for public consumption.

Not surprisingly, his exposed nether region has caused quite a stir on the Canadian set, particularly among his fellow stars, Angela Bassett, Ed Norton and Robert De Niro, according to Smith.

Imagine that!

Now try to stop ...

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You know you wouldn't want it any other way

"I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child and I'm a mother."

-- Yasmine Bleeth, describing her character on NBC's upcoming Aaron Spelling series, "Titans."

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My winter home is far, far away, small and quiet, close to the Guatemala border. We call it Puerto Perdido. When I am there, I live just outside of town in a small trailer in the orchard we call "La Huerta." It's an acre or so of lemon, mango, orange and palm trees. There's a tiny creek filled with icy water and a couple of huts looking out over a valley.

Twenty years ago, when I started going to Puerto Perdido, there was no electricity, no television, no stores to speak of, one doctor (who, it turned out, was actually a veterinarian), no paved highway into town and very few cars. It's changing, but, in truth, Puerto Perdido is still small-town '50s America.

The kids leave their bicycles outside, unlocked. People congregate in the streets at all hours, male or female, young or old. The one park in town is busy until 2 or 3 in the morning, filled with food carts and balloon men and shy-of-light lovers. The public market is noisy, sometimes odoriferous -- especially where they sell the pig meat -- filled to overflowing with cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, satsumas, ugly (but delicious) oranges, five varieties of banana, 12 varieties of pepper (hot and cool). And my favorite: potatoes that have been dyed red to hide their age.

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They're calling it "clean slate syndrome."

Divorce lawyers in particular -- but marriage counselors as well -- say that they've been inundated with calls from disenchanted spouses since New Year's Day. These callers see the new millennium as the perfect time to either question, or to end, their not-quite-so-perfect relationships.

Celebrity couples, too, greeted the New Year by kissing their spouses goodbye. The former Spice Girl Melanie Brown, better known as Scary Spice, announced that her marriage to the Dutch dancer Jimmy Gulzar was ending -- 15 months after they took their vows. (In the United States, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda announced their separation on CNN's Web site this month following eight years of marriage.)

Vanessa Lloyd Platts, of matrimonial law specialists Lloyd Platts & Co., calls it "matrimonial millennium madness."

"We have a flu epidemic in Britain, but we also have a [divorce] epidemic. If people continue to call us as they are now, there won't be anyone left to get a divorce in 10 years," she said.

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In some ways, Spice Girl Mel C -- aka Sporty Spice or Melanie Chisholm -- is an anomaly. With "Northern Star," her first solo album, she is stepping out with the blessing of her once and future bandmates.

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You may know Philadelphia-bred Eve as Eve of Destruction from the Roots' "Things Fall Apart." She also sang "What You Want," where she played the stand-out chick at the Ruff Ryders' sausage party, "Ride or Die, Vol. 1," and provided the only remotely musical moments on the back-to-school locker room jam of the year. Here she changes up a bit. Hard as hell but head over heels in love, she offers the toughest admission of vulnerability you'll hear on the radio all year. A stunningly naive pursuit of old-fashioned pop bliss that feels innovative without crossing over into Mary J. country, it's simultaneously wistful and hardcore -- the thug-hop "Be My Baby."

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"Look, honey, you're invited to a party this Saturday," you croon to your darling offspring.

Inwardly, you cringe, knowing exactly what this means: a precious weekend afternoon squandered at an ear-splittingly loud kiddie restaurant in a soulless suburban strip mall.

The chaos of two-dozen 6-year-olds vying for attention and plopping coins into impossibly noisy video games. The screeching. The clanging of bells, the pulsating music, the stage show featuring animated characters that no one seems to be watching as they tear into their pizza, their little mouths smeared with greasy orange sauce. And then there is the aftermath -- a sugared-up, over-stimulated kid clutching a ripped goodie bag, furious that the festivities have ended, refusing to put her shoes on and whining about how unfair it is that Megan got a Rugrats stamper as a prize and she didn't.

The question I silently pose to myself each time is this: Take the Extra-Strength Tylenol beforehand as a preventative, or wait for the headache to actually kick in?

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Mellencamp's roots lay in the Stones-ish swagger of the bar-band rock of his early days as John Cougar. In this regard, Mellencamp's most valuable player was drummer Kenny Aronoff, who put the thump into tunes like "Crumblin' Down" and "Lonely Ol' Night." Aronoff's now gone, but that doesn't explain why nearly all of Mellencamp's new songs embrace similar mid-tempo grooves. A more plausible explanation, perhaps, is that these compositions owe more to the strum of the songwriter's guitar than the sizzle of his band.

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Coming out of the speakers, "ATRNRM" sounds really raw, even tinny, as if it were flowing through some old transistor radio or blown-out car speakers. But the DIY feel is just a cover for some very pro playing. Guitarist Donna R, bassist Donna F and drummer Donna C are tight as can be; their unpolished sound is cultivated, not inevitable.

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Originally conceived by a British father-son music management team, the Spice Girls burst onto the international pop music scene two years ago and immediately captured the imagination and wallets of legions of mostly young, mostly female fans. Worried that their managers might not be up to the task of total world domination, the Girls dumped them (yes, this is still real life) and endeavored to deliver their spunky message to the largest audience possible.

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