Side show

WORD UP. AND DOWN: Coming to a CNN Headline News scrawl on your TV screen:

Hey, y'all, let's check out wassup with our dawg Dubya. He and his homeys in Congress are just about done addin' flava to that Iraq thing they're workin' on. But some of those dudes in the U.N. still think they're whack.

Headline News general manager Rolando Santos wants to mix "the lingo of our people" into newscasts to attract young people, he told the San Francisco Chronicle this week.

And New York's Daily News reported that one of the network's managers sent each of his headline writers a copy of a slang dictionary so they can be "as cutting edge" as possible. In an accompanying e-mail, the manager wrote, "Please use this guide to help all you homeys and honeys add a new flava to your tickers and dekkos."

Tickers and dekkos are the graphics on the screen.

Last year CNN gave Headline News a makeover in an effort to attract young viewers. Among other things, it added graphics to the screen and made the stories even shorter, breezier and more tightly packaged.

Its ratings have been improving among the young, the Associated Press reports.

SPEAKING OF POINTLESS ATTEMPTS TO BE HIP: Birkenstock's fall catalog includes a slide shoe with a gold leather strap over the feet and the traditional sandals with silver straps and fake rhinestone buckles. We're sure they both look great with big, baggy gold and silver socks.

BODIES OF WORK: If you saw Patricia Heaton (Debra Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond) on the Late Show with David Letterman this week, you might be wondering about the identity of the "very famous actress" on the "cover of a big fashion magazine" she mocked for expressing revulsion at plastic surgery.

Msnbc.com puts forth Michelle Pfeiffer as the likely candidate.

Pfeiffer is on the cover of the latest Harper's Bazaar. In a story, she says, "Plastic surgery really scares me. Even Botox scares me."

On Letterman's show, Heaton talked about her plastic surgery. She said that she recently read a fashion magazine interview with an actress who was on the cover, and the actress said that surgery and Botox scared her. "And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting because I just interviewed the (plastic surgeon) that did you," Heaton said.

WE KNOW THEY'RE NOT A HOPELESS CASE: Who says music industry executives are just money-grubbing egomaniacs?

We do.

But that didn't stop a bunch of them from naming Bono the most powerful person in music, as much for his political lobbying and social activism as for the success of his band, U2.

No. 2 in the survey, conducted by the British music magazine Q, was Doug Morris, head of the world's largest record company, Universal. No. 3 was Eminem, cited for writing lyrics the execs called challenging but many of us call foul, profanity-filled, sexist, homophobic, violent diatribes. And right behind him was L. Lowry Mays, chairman and CEO of U.S entertainment monolith Clear Channel Communications, which has a heavy Tampa Bay area presence.

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