Pussycat

Angelyne, the healthy bleached blonde non-celeb who has spent years on L.A. billboards promoting herself, gets her break: "Earth Girls Are Easy," now nearing completion from De Laurentiis Entertainment. Starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, it's a musical comedy about three men from a distant planet who come to Earth and land in the Valley. Director Julien Temple ("Absolute Beginners") described Angelyne's role as "what we call a walk-on-part--a lean-in part.

Simon Cowell: feckless boss or PR genius? You decide. Word landed early Monday that after weeks of rumors, British pop singer Cheryl Cole was officially out as a judge on "The X Factor," Cowell's new singing contest that premieres on Fox this fall. She will be replaced by Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the pop group the Pussycat Dolls. "Fox, Fremantle North America and Syco TV today confirm Nicole Scherzinger will be replacing Cheryl Cole on the judging panel of 'The X Factor,'" the companies behind the show wrote in a terse statement Monday morning.

One man's opinion: While Kirk Triplett was taming Riviera by winning the Nissan Open, Riviera got a modicum of revenge by turning Tiger Woods into a pussycat. JOE LYOU Gardena

Tura Satana, an actress who gained cult status for her role in the 1965 Russ Meyer movie "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!," died Friday of heart failure at a hospital in Reno. Satana's death was confirmed by her manager, Siouxzan Perry, who said Satana was 72. In "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Satana played Varla, the leader of a "daredevil trio of sports car-driving vixens," wrote film critic B. Ruby Rich in the Village Voice in 1995. "She drove her Porsche like a bat out of hell, delivered her dialogue with an arched eyebrow that let the audience in on the joke and tossed men into the air like they were pancakes.

Re "Law Doesn't Deter Cuban Smugglers," June 25: Intimidated witnesses. Juries who refuse to convict the guilty. Judges who hand down pussycat sentences. A populace that regards criminals as heroes. The Klan is alive and well in Miami. HENRY OSTERMILLER Costa Mesa

The CW will move its Monday comedy lineup to Sundays beginning Feb. 10 as part of a series of schedule changes. "Everybody Hates Chris" will air Sundays at 8 p.m., followed by "Aliens in America," "Girlfriends" and "The Game." Replacing them at 8 p.m. Mondays will be the first-year teen drama "Gossip Girl," starting Jan. 28, followed at 9 p.m. by the unscripted series, "Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious," whose season is set to begin Feb. 18. Reruns of "Pussycats Dolls Present: Girlicious" will air at 9 p.m. Wednesdays, after "America's Next Top Model," whose 10th season begins Feb. 20.

Given the bombast and harsh assault of Queen's biggest hits, it's a shock to find that the heart of the British quartet's 16th album is made of soft, sweet, sticky, sentimental goo. The goo actually goes down well: The nostalgic reverie, "These Are the Days of Our Lives," and "Delilah" (in which Freddie Mercury makes a likable fool of himself singing a love ode to his beloved pet pussycat) both have a mellow, straightforward appeal.

Roberto Duran, who will fight Sugar Ray Leonard in Las Vegas Thursday night, remains one of the most enigmatic figures in sports. Some of the different faces of Duran: Felix Pinango, a television producer and longtime friend of Duran, told USA Today: "He's a primitive. Money doesn't interest him. He believes in his own destiny. For him, fighting has no end. He's like Jack Palance playing Barabbas the gladiator.

Bill Manoff's romantic comedy "The Owl and the Pussycat," in which an author and a prostitute move in ever-tighter concentric circles, left its mark on Broadway and in Hollywood, courtesy of the screen adaptation starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal. Starting this weekend, it lands in Oxnard, in a production by the Elite Theater Company. * Elite Theatre Company The Petite Playhouse, 730 South B St., Oxnard Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; ends July 13 $12 to $14 (805) 483-5118

Arizona's Childsplay Theatre will present its unusual production of "The Owl and the Pussycat" on Jan. 7 at 2 p.m. at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, for ages 4 and older. The jazzy, fanciful romance, based on Edward Lear's classic nonsensical poem, has a twist: It's sung in English, but the owl hoots in Portuguese, the cat purrs in German, and on their whimsical journey, they meet a French pig and a Serbo-Croatian turkey.

Clive Donner, who was part of the British new wave of directors in the 1960s with films such as "What's New Pussycat?" and "Nothing But the Best," has died. He was 84. Donner, who had Alzheimer's disease, died Tuesday in London, according to British news reports. A former film editor who began directing in the late 1950s, Donner gained notice with "The Caretaker" (later re-titled "The Guest"), a 1963 drama that Harold Pinter adapted from his own play about the interactions between two brothers and a tramp who is brought home by one of the brothers.

Alice Schiller was a bit of a prude who didn't swear, drink or smoke, much less endorse women disrobing for entertainment. So when her husband told her he wanted to turn his struggling Hollywood nightclub into a striptease house, she cried. But once she dried her tears, she got down to business, transforming an erstwhile Latin dance and jazz club on a rundown stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard into a Los Angeles landmark: the Pink Pussycat. Opened in 1961, it was pink through and through, just like the inside of Schiller's house and her entire wardrobe.

They tell me right from the start that Brock Lesnar is going to be really scary, like the big brute is going to be any more difficult to interview than Lisa Leslie. You'd have to go to a Sparks' game to talk to her, and once there, she's no treat.

Edward Albee, without question our nation's greatest living playwright, lives just the way you might expect him to -- in a rarefied artistic ozone that feels completely at home to him. African sculptures and 20th century European and American paintings proliferate in his TriBeCa loft, like wildflowers on a sunny hillside.

If there was any question about Asia's exposure to the U.S. financial contagion, this week left no doubt. Japan's stock market crashed, South Korea's currency convulsed and Singapore said it was in recession. Suddenly, Asia doesn't look to be the strong cushion that some had counted on to soften the falling global economy.

Pussycat Dolls "Doll Domination" (Geffen) 1/2 It's shaping up to be quite an autumn for American feminism. First, we have Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, about whom you might have read something in the last few weeks. Now the Pussycat Dolls, a burlesque troupe turned top-40 act, have made a collection of electro-pop songs that are the opposite of sex: belligerent come-ons and odes to singledom stripped of pleasure, adventure or anything resembling fun. Both instances capture a particular moment in the woman-as-cultural-cipher debate, but at least Palin's nouveaux-"Fargo" accent doesn't come with a leather corset.

Edward Albee, without question our nation's greatest living playwright, lives just the way you might expect him to -- in a rarefied artistic ozone that feels completely at home to him. African sculptures and 20th century European and American paintings proliferate in his TriBeCa loft, like wildflowers on a sunny hillside.

By all appearances, "The Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious" is like any other competitive reality show. The grand prize is a spot in a new group, contestants must face a judges' panel, and celebrities such as N'Sync's JC Chasez are treated like royalty. But there was a moment in the CW series' third episode when Robin Antin, the choreography maven who dreamed up the burlesque troupe in West Hollywood clubs in the mid-'90s, cut to the heart of the major-label music business in 2008.

A Pussycat Dolls lingerie show, a photo op with former porn star Jenna Jameson and the runway debut of "The Hills" star Lauren Conrad's new collection can mean only one thing: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Los Angeles is back at Smashbox Studios. Like a television network shuffling its fall lineup for maximum effect, event organizers IMG Worldwide and Smashbox continue to dispense with the drama in favor of sizzle. The result? A week long on sex and celebrity, but short on the sort of bankable -- or even recognizable -- designers needed to give the week resonance beyond the next cycle of supermarket tabloids.