Side show

SMOOTH, BUTTERY, EARTHY AND ELEGANT -- THE COFFEE, THAT IS: It's good to know that Starbucks has its standards in its quest for world coffee/espresso/Frappuccino domination.

The company is not thrilled that Playboy is recruiting its female employees for a "Women of Starbucks" issue.

"Starbucks is not affiliated with this project and does not endorse it," it said in a terse statement last week.

Playboy's photo department came up with the idea, magazine spokeswoman Theresa Hennessy tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"It is a natural fit," she says. "Playboy tries to stay on top of the latest trends."

She did not specify what that trend is, given that coffee has been around for a while. Maybe it's businesses that aren't going bankrupt.

Playboy has received a lot of submissions (the deadline is April 1) and will select 10 to 15 women for an issue that likely will appear before the year is over, Hennessy says.

BUT THE TITLE WILL BE CHANGED TO 'DENTU-CREME': Olivia Newton-John tells Australia's Daily Telegraph that she and John Travolta have signed up for a third installment of Grease.

HOW BAD IS IT?: Civil War re-enactors are referring to the re-enactor-filled movie Gods and Generals as GAG and, we hear, not just because it's an acronym for the title.

SPEAKING OF GAG: Gods and Generals' $60-million cost was paid for in full by Ted Turner, and the media mogul also forked over $30-million more for advertising and the manufacture of more than 1,700 prints.

What's $90-million to Turner? When he took on the project, it was 1 percent of his assets, "so it didn't really matter that much," he tells the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It matters a little more now that his AOL Time Warner stock has nosedived. The amount is "15 percent of my liquid assets," he says. So how the movie fares "is important as hell."

AND SPEAKING OF MONEY PROBLEMS: That crazy, mixed-up Joe Millionaire sort-of couple, Evan Marriott and Zora Andrich, have signed with the same agent to book speaking appearances, and their fees are $15,000 and $10,000, respectively.

Mike Esterman tells the Smoking Gun Web site that Marriott has attracted a lot of interest, and he has 10 "tentative" dates for the construction worker who has listed his previous annual income as $19,000. The sometimes speech-challenged Marriott will not be speaking, however. He'll do what he does best: sign autographs and pose for pictures for a few hours.

There's no word on what Andrich would do, because no one has shown enough interest for anyone to bother to come up with something.

Esterman says he would consider joint appearances.

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