Playboy

YOU MIGHT call it 3-DD. Playboy's June edition hits newsstands Friday equipped with 3-D glasses, the better to focus on what may seem, at first glance, to be a very blurry Playmate of the Year. "What would people most like to see in 3-D?" asked Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. "Probably a naked lady. " It's thinking like this, no doubt, that keeps Hef's empire - not to mention Hef - going, decade after decade. Hefner made no secret of hoping to capitalize on the popularity of 3-D movies such as "Avatar.

The prison guard who posed for Playboy has her job back. Heather Hull, 29, a corrections officer, was fired after appearing in the March issue under a pseudonym in a pseudo uniform. But after an arbitrator ruled partly in her favor earlier this month, she resumed her duties at Berks County Prison over the weekend - then missed a couple of days because of illness, said Philadelphia attorney Mark Featherman, who handled her case. Arbitrator Charles Long, however, denied her back pay, saying that "she should have known better than to pose in a men's magazine," Featherman said.

Stu Bykofsky picked the wrong example to prove his point about Jeffrey Marsalis. To ask Harry Jay Katz for an explanation of what constitutes a "real" playboy is not good. So it's OK to use a line and "loosen her up with liquor," he says. But don't use "chemicals" - "it breaks the playboy code. " Interesting what Harry thinks is fair in love. Anyway, Marsalis is much better-looking. Ed Galing, Hatboro Tony vs. 'The FBI' Op-ed writer Ann Rosen Spector thinks "The Sopranos" was the best television series ever?

THE L.A. City Council yesterday approved a $1.1 million payment to the family of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. (aka Christopher Wallace) resulting from sanctions imposed by a judge who found that police erred in the musician's unsolved murder case. City lawyers told the council an appeal was unlikely to overturn the Jan. 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper. Cooper sanctioned the city after learning that a detective had withheld documents pertinent to claims made in a civil lawsuit filed by the family of B.I.G.

Playboy has responded to the demands of an irate Jessica Alba that it pull its March issue, which depicts a bikini-clad Alba on the cover. Alba, 24, who is threatening a lawsuit, says Hugh Hefner's flagship has violated her rights and is misleading readers into believing the mag contains a nude pictorial of the actress. (It does not.) She wants compensation for damage done to her image. (Image? No offense, but maybe she ought be paying them for the image upgrade.) "Playboy has done nothing wrong, so there is no reason to pull our issue off of newsstands," a Playboy rep said.

When the Abbey Theatre premiered J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1907, the Dublin audience reacted with howls of protest and a near riot. The renowned Irish company is touring with the play to celebrate its centennial, but some of the decisions about its staging will prompt puzzlement, especially among theatergoers who expect a traditional treatment of Synge's comedy from such an authoritative source. It's entirely understandable and admirable that Ben Barnes, the Abbey's artistic director, should want to offer something more than another polished run-through of what has long been a classic.

Terrell Owens gives some fascinating and potentially inflammatory answers to questions posed by Playboy in the September issue of the men's magazine that will hit newsstands Friday. The most controversial answer from the Eagles' newest receiver was about Jeff Garcia, his former teammate and quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers. Owens was critical of Garcia's ability before and after he left the 49ers, but Playboy's question was not about the quarterback's on-field performance.

IT'S NOT the nudity that has Daryl Hannah upset about her upcoming photo layout in Playboy. It's the fine print. The actress says her appearance in the November issue is "in contention" because the magazine may not have honored her contractual right to sign off on the final photo spread. "I'm supposed to have 100 percent approval, and there might be issues with that," Hannah told Tattle's Laura Randall. It's the first time Hannah, 42, has posed for Playboy, although she swears she didn't take off all her clothes for the magazine.

Cappuccino babes of the world - get naked. Playboy magazine plans to do a picture spread on the "Women of Starbucks," and is asking latte-makers from its more than 6,200 coffee shops worldwide to send in photos. Playboy's Theresa Hennessey said: "Starbucks is such a big part of American pop culture, and Playboy is always trying to stay on top of the latest trend, so it seemed like a natural fit . . . " Starbucks has not warmed to the idea of the joining of these two cultural colossi, saying that it does not endorse the nude-coffee-makers issue.