Did you know Beth Ditto is actually the frontwoman of a rock band? Did you? We had no idea. We thought she was just some girl NW Magazine began trotting out a few months back whenever they decided to do a celebrity 'curves' themed issue, but we were very wrong and have chastised ourselves for not keeping our finger on the pulse of the music world.

Anyway, the woman Keira Knightley once admitted had a body she only wished she could have been born with has posed naked for the cover of the latest copy of British music magazine NME, according to No Rock & Roll Fun.

This week's NME features Beth Ditto as naked as Avril Lavigne on the cover. For confused but well-intentioned reasons. Those of you with long memories will recall the last time a semi-naked woman was on the front of the NME, it was Lesley Rankine and Silverfish, who were in turn parodying the Polly Jean Harvey cover from a few weeks before. PJ and Beth Ditto were both on the cover as a riposte to traditional ideas of female beauty and societal nomrs - both had hairy armpits, for example.

The trouble is, it's all a bit muddled. Because NME, for all its other faults, doesn't usually have FHM-style covers, so the value of putting Ditto on the front, without pants, is a little lost. Kate Jackson, it's fairly safe to say, hasn't been lined up to slip out of her corset for the next Long Blondes piece, because that would bring a stream of letters calling them for trying to flog magazines with sexist pictures. Likewise, the Twang don't turn up with only a well-positioned tree to preserve their modesty.

So, is NME they saying it's okay for Beth to be on the front nude, because she isn't 'conventionally attractive'? And if that is the case, isn't that simply endorsing the idea of there being 'conventionally attractive' in the first place?

Or does the paper feel that a naked Beth Ditto is, from its reader's point of view, every bit as desirable as, say, a naked Amy Winehouse? In which case, isn't it a little bit Felix Dennis to be selling music magazines with female flesh?

Certainly food for thought.

Look out, boybands across the globe. Boys On Wheels just threw down the gauntlet.

We are apparently going to hell.

Utterly worth it, don't get us wrong, but perhaps it's best for parents to get Coming Out Insurance regardless.

No stereotype left unreferenced!

And for today's YouTube Clip Of The Day, we proudly present the bastard child of Star Wars and Boogie Nights.

This also reminds us of how disturbingly incestuous the relationship between Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker was.

Thanks to FourBaboons for the heads up!

Good news for everyone out there worried that children's television characters the Teletubbies were not, in fact, characters created for the nefarious purpose of indoctrinating infants with a love for all things bumming related. Poland has investigate the foursome and concluded that they're totally gay free.

Poland's child rights ombudsman says she no longer suspects The Teletubbies, the British television show for infants, of promoting homosexuality.

Ewa Sowinska, who had earlier announced her suspicions about the Teletubby named Tinky Winky, said that her fears had been allayed by an expert.

"The opinion of a leading sexologist, who maintained that this series has no negative effects on a child's psychology, is perfectly credible," she said in a statement today.

And so one of the biggest issues facing the modern world appears to have been resolved. Thank god.

When we read the headline "'Queen of Pop' jailed for 12 months" on smh.com.au, our mind immediately began racing towards the irrational conclusion that Mexico must have some pretty strict laws when it comes to being the Other Woman, and Our Kylie had been sentenced to hard time for her involvement in the apparent break up of her 'close friend' Alexander Dahm and his pregnant wife, but it turns out we were totally wrong.

They meant former Australian Queen Of Pop Allison Durbin has been jailed for drug trafficking, amongst other things.

Durbin, now known by her married name Allison Giles, was handed a 24-month jail term today but half of the sentence was suspended.

The reclusive former pop star, who shot to fame in the 1960s and 70s, had pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to trafficking a drug of dependence, cultivating a narcotic plant and theft of electricity.

The court heard Giles, 57, had a hydroponic set-up at a house in West Footscray and supplied cannabis to drug dealer and father of snatched baby Montana, Giuseppe Dom Barbaro, in 2003 and 2004.

In sentencing, Judge Ian Robertson said as a rehabilitated heroin addict Giles should have known the harm and misery caused by the "insidious trade" of drug trafficking.

Drugs are one thing, but stealing electricity? Throw away the key!

Congratulations to last year's Australian Idol winner Damien Leith. Not only did he manage to prove Mark Holden wrong and win the talent quest despite his Big Book Of British Smiles dental situation, he also just became the father of a second baby boy.

Celebrity Baby Blog reports...

Damien Leith and his wife, Eileen, welcomed their second son together today (Wednesday the 30th, Australian time). They already have a son, Jarvis, 20 months. The baby was due around May 20th, so it looks like the little boy was a few weeks overdue. According to Damien's father, he weighed 3.9kg and 50 cm in length. Photos and a name should follow in an Australian magazine in the coming weeks.

· Today's pleasant surprise: TB Guy (already greenlighted to 2008 sitcom pilot by ABC, incidentally) has a hot wife! Also: Fuck you, TB Guy! says HuffPo blogger, rest of world's humans. · This just in: shitty ratings are not good for network president job security. Mind-blowing, we know. · Another great reason (even better than $1300 pre-teen Mystic tans) to love our city: the bike-by shooting. · The Biel Spiel is unquestionably the best fake Jessica Biel blog out there. · Can someone whip up one of these deals for L.A. before the summer's over? We could really use some exercise.

At first, we thought that some editor at Parade (motto: "When the Cerritos Pennysaver's celebrity coverage is too hard hitting, we're there for you.") was trying to slyly undermine the above pullquote (from this Sunday's issue) about Jessica Alba's ambitious plan to produce movies with empowering female roles by reminding everyone that her greatest critical accolade is the coveted "Sexiest Performance" Golden Tub of Popcorn. But then we realised that when the actress really gets her producing career rolling, those are exactly the parts she'll develop for herself, proving to the white males who control Hollywood that she no longer needs them to cast her in the stripper roles that best show off her talents.

• Jessica Alba - Web Exclusive [Parade.com]

Who could have imagined that a Lindsay Lohan drink driving arrest (with the ever-popular "usable amount of cocaine" option), some embarrassing sleepy-time photos, and a hasty trip to Promises would generate so much media attention, even days later? We retreat into our defensive round-up posture to handle this morning's onslaught: · This entrancing mash-up arrived in our inbox this morning. Never have sobering images of a young starlet's self-destruction been so soothing. [YouTube] · The NY Times examines Lohan's prospects for future employment in Hollywood in the post-second-rehab era. Reminisces former studio head Nina Jacobson about the comparatively innocent days of Herbie: Fully Loaded, when warnings about her partying seemed almost cute: "I told her before the movie began, 'This is the moment in your career where you either become Kristy McNichol or Jodie Foster." At this point, McNichol might be a career-trainwreck upgrade. [NY Times]

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On the bright side, four of the five words prominently featured on the official website for upcoming revenge thriller The Brave One are presented correctly, a fact that Jodie Foster's agent is sure to take into consideration as he calls Warner Bros. to politely ask, "How many fucking Oscars does my client need to fucking win before someone over there can learn to spell her fucking* name?" [*As we've all learned from Entourage, agents are delightfully foul-mouthed.]

• The Brave One [WarnerBros.com]
• The Brave One [IMDb]

While admittedly not every competitive reality venture devised by format innovator Mark Burnett could be categorised as a runaway success (e.g., On The Lot has yet to connect with audiences, and seems headed towards granting the guy who made the retarded-guy-in-Heaven movie a corner office on the DreamWorks lot), he nevertheless boasts an impressive batting average in the unpredictable genre. His latest effort, Pirate Master, premieres tonight on CBS, and seems a sure a thing as they come, pairing the Darwinism-for-dollars premise that made Survivor such a runaway hit with the public's enduring fascination with all things buccaneerish:

"It's high adventure that they're on this pirate ship, and there's actual money being discovered in the form of gold every week," as opposed to a single winner-take-all payout, Burnett says. Using maps, 16 contestants compete in physical challenges in search of hidden coins around Dominica, the Caribbean island where the show was filmed. A "captain", elected by the group, takes half of each week's booty and lives large in a fancier cabin with better food and no deck-scrubbing. But "if he doesn't handle it right, if he (ticks) them off, there can be a mutiny."

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We incorrectly assumed that as the end credits rolled on the American Idol finale, a designated producer would rush up to judge Paula Abdul, hand her a fist-sized pill for "nerve pain" to gnaw on for a few minutes, and then prop up her slumbering body in a janitorial closet, reviving her from her off-season hibernation only when the first group of Idol hopefuls arrived at January's cattle-call auditions. Abdul, however, has been quite active in the rags since last Wednesday night's sign-off show. She recently railed against how every slurred, on-camera utterance is unfairly scrutinised (can't a popular TV personality chemically manage her chronic pain without people jumping all over her when she momentarily forgets the order that makes strings of words comprehensible?), and today finds herself the subject of a Page Six story describing a "meltdown" she allegedly had on a conference call in which she "seems to be talking to a group of publicists at some point during the last week" about how her former flack wasn't properly servicing her crazy-person needs. An excerpt:

Ranting about [former publicist Howard] Bragman, who apparently didn't appreciate her enough, the petite former pop star says: "I do a call-in every week for OK! Magazine on 'American Idol.' Because of my brilliant job, they want to do a cover on me. I'm being told by Howard Bragman that I'm too old and no one will ever want to do a cover.

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The news millions of children (and socially awkward adults who enjoy playing wizarding make-believe in their leisure time) have been waiting for has finally come: Plans for a Harry Potter theme park have been announced, in which the series's enchanted cobblestone walkways and ivy-covered walls will be painstainkingly recreated on the grounds of the equally magical Universal's Islands of Adventure. Reports the AP:

"The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" is set to open at Universal's Islands of Adventure theme park in late 2009, complete with the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade village.

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The long road to recovery and redemption for Saving Private Ryan star Tom Sizemore is paved with countless arrests, hearings, and court-ordered humiliations. (They'd outfit him with SCRAM-type ankle monitoring device, but any self-respecting tweaker would gladly saw off their own foot for their next hit.) Even his booking last month in Bakersfield on possession charges continues to reap unwelcome dividends for the troubled actor:

TMZ has learned that a Los Angeles County judge has issued a bench warrant for the Sizemore's arrest, after he was booked on drug charges in Bakersfield earlier this month.

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· Finally, some good news for Lindsay Lohan: After convincing Poor Things producers Shirley MacLaine and Rob Hickman that she's confident she'll be able to step right in and disrupt their production with blown call times and suspicious absences the moment she gets out of rehab, they've agreed to rearrange their shooting schedule to accommodate the troubled actress's inconvenient trip to Promises. [Variety] · Proving once again that there is no comic book franchise Hollywood won't take a crack at adapting, Warner Bros. is producing a live-action version of DC sidekick title (Robin! Kid Flash! Aqualad! The Bastard Son Who Keeps Tagging Along When Green Lantern Is Trying To Fight Sinestro!*) Teen Titans. [THR] · Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt, contracted to script a remake of the 1939 comedy Midnight for Universal, might need to get some better dreams: "Being given the chance to update the film with Reese [Witherspoon] in the lead is simply a dream come true." [Variety] · Just throw a brick through your TV screen and buy a new one in the Fall: So You Think You Can Dance wins Wednesday night for Fox. [THR] · How hot is 1939 right now? Writer/director Diane English is going forward with a long-gestating remake of 1939's The Women, assembling what she hopes is the ultimate chick flick cast, one that spans generations and levels of acting ability: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, and Candice Bergen. [Variety] [*Probably not a real character, so please, no e-mails.]

Disney has hopefully ended the studio dick-measuring contest over Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's duelling claims to the record for the biggest worldwide opening (six-day) weekend, splaying its box-office inches across a two-page spread in today's Variety. While the (technically?) triumphant studio's design team was initially going to allow the huge number and curiously tiny #1 WORLDWIDE OPENING OF ALL TIME copy speak for themselves, they couldn't resist surrendering to their cruder instincts with a message taunting their rival and its humbled, slump-shouldered hero. [Image: Digital Variety]

• 'Pirates' treasure grows overseas [Variety]
• Box Office Catfight By Hollywood Studios [DHD]