Ellen Degeneres

THERE MAY soon be a baby crawling around the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston mansion. Only it won't be Brad & Jen's. Or Brad and Angelina's. Or Jen and Vince Vaughn's. The Star reports Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are eager to snap up the $20 million fixer-upper and Ellen and Portia are talking about having a baby. Goodness knows what it's going to cost to childproof the place. "Having a child was a decision Ellen and Portia agreed to table for a while," a friend told the Star, "so they could get to know each other.

Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue, 36, has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will undergo immediate treatment. In a statement, Minogue, who hit big in '01 with Fever, said her Australian Showgirl Tour will have to be canceled. "I . . . am sorry to have to disappoint my fans. Nevertheless, hopefully all will work out fine and I'll be back with you all again soon. " The BBC says Minogue's pop-star sister, Dannii, is cautiously optimistic: "The news is very upsetting. Although as the cancer has been diagnosed at such an early stage, we are all very optimistic that everything will be OK. " "We're all very thankful for the endless messages of love and support Kylie has been receiving.

SO IF YOU were a terrorist and wanted to kidnap iconic American celebrities to freak the country out, would Russell Crowe be on that list? Duh. He's Australian. But perhaps all criminal masterminds aren't as savvy as we are. Crow tells Australian GQ that the al Qaeda network wanted to kidnap him as part of a "cultural destabilization plot. " What other "Americans" are they planning to target? Boy George? Elton John? Kylie Minogue? Paul McCartney? Crowe says that FBI agents told him about the threat just months before he won a best-actor Oscar for "Gladiator.

As the world continues its sustained shriek at the loss of Edvard Munch's definitive portrait of proto-existentialist angst, The Scream, we shriek "Oh God!" in cinephilic angst (or is it a cinephobic angst?) over a surreal cinematic move: a remake of the '77 New Age-ish comedy Oh God! starring Ellen DeGeneres in the title role. According to Variety, prolific producer Jerry Weintraub (Ocean's Eleven and Twelve, The Firm, The Karate Kid) is remaking his own sappy but charming flick about a grocery manager chosen by God to spread kindness and such.

The autumn audio book season is blazing with star-quality voices, many on recordings being released simultaneously with the hardback versions. Look for Kate Mulgrew, star of the Off-Broadway show about Katharine Hepburn, reading the book version of Tea at Five, by Matthew Lombardo (September, HighBridge). Author Toni Morrison, who has read her fiction before, is back narrating her new novel, Love (October, Random House). Barbara Bush is back, too, reading Reflections, a follow-up to her memoir.

If all goes as planned for Ellen DeGeneres' current tour, which will stop Tuesday at the Tower Theater, it will be the last of her career. The comic-actress will add another credential to her resume: talk-show host. DeGeneres plans to devote virtually all of her creative energy to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which is scheduled to air in September on NBC. "I really hope this is my last tour," DeGeneres said while calling from her Los Angeles home. "I love stand-up, but it's time to move on to this [talk show]

WHAT'S UP with Rosie? Wait a minute; I'm not joining in on the what's-wrong-with-Rosie- O'Donnell drumbeat. I'm wondering why everyone else is so obsessed. I can barely turn around without seeing her face on the newsstand. Hmm, she looked happy on People, so that must have been a positive article. She looked crazed on one of the tabloids, so I guess that one speculated on her sanity. Even the local newspaper that comes to my home asked, "What's with Rosie?" and further declared, "The former talk show host is making headlines with her baffling behavior.

Hollywood Squares, the celeb television version of ticktacktoe, will have two new center squares - Ellen DeGeneres and Alec Baldwin. The two will split duties in King World Productions' revamped show, taking the place of departed star Whoopi Goldberg, who had been the center square since 1998. DeGeneres will be the illuminated middle when the series opens its fifth season Sept. 16. Baldwin's dates are still being worked out. He will donate his Squares paycheck to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, named for his mother, a breast cancer survivor.

Ellen DeGeneres is looking for advice on how to do a talk show. The comedian told New York Magazine that she'd want sexpot Anna Nicole Smith as the first guest on her syndicated talk show set to begin in fall of 2003. For now, DeGeneres is concentrating on her comedy tour, which comes to New York on June 19. With TV station managers sitting in the audience wherever she performs, "I don't think it's an audition so much as it is a reassurance that I'm not some big, scary, gay-agenda woman.

A couple of our TV gal pals return to the tube tonight in new series that play to their strengths, but that are nothing to write home about. Neither of their characters needs to write home, since both wind up there, following the old prodigal-child-returns format that has been popular for about 5,000 years. The reason the format's back on TV this year is that it was successful last year, in the guise of Ed, the bowling alley lawyer, on NBC. Tonight's new series are pleasantly watchable, but neither has a shard of the originality that makes Ed distinctive.