Teen Idol

Phil Diffy is not your average high schooler. (He and his family are time travelers from the year 2121 stranded in the present.) Neither is Ricky Ullman, who plays the atemporal teen on the Disney Channel series, Phil of the Future (Fridays, 7 p.m.). Ullman, 18, is a seasoned and exotic show biz veteran who has spent more time on stages than in classrooms. That background will come in handy in the next phase of Ullman's life, which promises to be hectic. "I think he's going to be a giant star," says Gary Marsh, the executive vice president of original programming and production at the Disney Channel.

Davy Jones, former singer for the Monkees, has died in Florida, according to a medical examiner's office there. The singer was 66, and is survived by his wife, Jessica, and four daughters. He died in Florida, but also lived recently in Pennsylvania, and was a Daily News Sexy Single several years ago. The medical examiner's office for Martin County, Fla., confirmed it had been notified that Jones had died, but had no further details. The Monkees, in reality a rock band formed for a TV show, had a string of hits in the 1960s.

When he first appeared on the radar in 1998, he was just a kid playing goofball characters on Nickelodeon's sketch comedy All That. Four years later, he marched to his own beat as a hip-hop percussionist in the coming-of-age flick Drumline. Now, suddenly he's slinging semiautomatics in the action-comedy Underclassman (in theaters tomorrow), playing a disco-skating "playah" in the back-in-the-day comedy Roll Bounce (in theaters Sept. 23), putting his improvisational chops to work on MTV's Wild 'N Out, and, with his "Can I Live?"

The bill of Kenny Rogers and Paul Anka at the Spectrum last night was a middle-of-the-road match that pleased fans of both performers. These two singers make easy-listening music of considerable craft and do it on the strength of their limitations: Rogers has a deep, scratchy voice, Anka a higher, pinched one; both have small vocal ranges. But Rogers and Anka have learned the art of popular singing by perfecting styles that offer their songs in a warm, conversational tone. Last night in their sole performance here, each singer performed his own set of songs.

Hard enough to be a teenager and blunder your way into maturity as a private citizen. Harder still for a teen idol to prove his manhood professionally as the fans watch. Leonardo DiCaprio did it. So, too, did Will Smith. Can Zac Efron, boy heartthrob of High School Musical , make the leap? The answer may be Charlie St. Cloud, a Ghost -y weeper starring the former Tiger Beat centerfold as a Stanford-bound student who grieves - and grows - in the wake of family tragedy.

As a teen idol in the early '60s, Bobby Ridarelli was something of an oddball. He didn't have the baby-face cuteness of his South Philadelphia classmates Frankie Avallone (Avalon) and Fabian (Forte.) He was too talented a singer to be lumped with the conventional growlers. There's even some question whether Bobby Rydell's heart and soul were ever really in rock 'n' roll. His idols weren't Elvis Presley and Little Richard, but cooler, cosmopolitan cats like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

As a teen idol in the early '60s, Bobby Ridarelli was something of an oddball. He didn't have the baby-face cuteness of his South Philadelphia classmates Frankie Avallone (Avalon) and Fabian (Forte.) He was too talented a singer to be lumped with the conventional growlers. There's even some question whether Bobby Rydell's heart and soul were ever really in rock 'n' roll. His idols weren't Elvis Presley and Little Richard, but cooler, cosmopolitan cats like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Lou Ferrigno, 53, has gone green. Real green. The former Incredible Hulk (from those great days before brooding action dude Eric Bana and director Ang Lee made the monster so egg-heady) is mad. So mad he's suing his brother and sister-in-law, Andrew and Jani Ferrigno, for using his Hulkish name and his (not so very) Hulking fame to market their fitness equipment store, Ferrigno Fitness of Greenwich Township (N.J.). Filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton, the suit claims the store has a green awning, green interiors, and one green wall covered with photos of Ferrigno in his Hulk makeup.

"Cry-Baby" director John Waters perhaps best captured the intensity of the mania surrounding teen heartthrob Johnny Depp when he revealed that fans on the movie set had offered to purchase the sewage from the actor's trailor. It's hard to imagine that even the most egomaniacal public figure would be comfortable with the idea of commerce in one's own refuse. Depp, in fact, can barely stand the idea of being famous. "It's not something I think I'll ever be comfortable with," said the soft-spoken Depp during a recent session with reporters at Baltimore's Harbour Court Hotel.

Since John Waters movies are specifically designed to be bad, perhaps the worst thing you can say about "Cry-Baby" is that it's not as bad as his other stuff. Famous for pictures that skewer middle-class bad taste and his shock comedies that feature all sorts of rude, deviant behavior ("Pink Flamingos," "Girl Trouble"), Waters has now turned his satirist's eye toward the myth of the teen delinquent. In "Cry-Baby," Waters is playing on the idea that the 1950s version of the juvenile delinquent will seem hilariously quaint compared to its modern, ultra-corrupt counterpart - the heavily armed, murderous drug dealer with a luxury car and Rockefeller-sized billfold.

Davy Jones, former singer for the Monkees, has died in Florida, according to a medical examiner's office there. The singer was 66, and is survived by his wife, Jessica, and four daughters. He died in Florida, but also lived recently in Pennsylvania, and was a Daily News Sexy Single several years ago. The medical examiner's office for Martin County, Fla., confirmed it had been notified that Jones had died, but had no further details. The Monkees, in reality a rock band formed for a TV show, had a string of hits in the 1960s.

Robert P. Marcucci, 81, the music mogul who discovered and managed South Philadelphia teen idols Fabian and Frankie Avalon, died of esophageal problems and diabetes Wednesday, March 9, in a suburban Los Angeles hospital. The 1980 movie The Idolmaker , in which Ray Sharkey played a wheeler-dealer named Vincent "Vinnie" Vacarri, was based on Mr. Marcucci's life. Fabian sued producers over his depiction, but Mr. Marcucci later told interviewer Gary James: "Some of it was accurate, and some of it was movie.

Hard enough to be a teenager and blunder your way into maturity as a private citizen. Harder still for a teen idol to prove his manhood professionally as the fans watch. Leonardo DiCaprio did it. So, too, did Will Smith. Can Zac Efron, boy heartthrob of High School Musical , make the leap? The answer may be Charlie St. Cloud, a Ghost -y weeper starring the former Tiger Beat centerfold as a Stanford-bound student who grieves - and grows - in the wake of family tragedy.

When the phone rings for R&B star Ne-Yo, it's probably a woman on the line. That's hardly odd for a teen idol. But in Ne-Yo's case, it's not necessarily a fan hoping for some personal attention. It's just as likely to be a diva looking for a song. In the last few months, 24-year-old Ne-Yo has become the go-to writer for top female singers in search of a hit. Ever since he co-wrote the unstoppable No. 1 smash for Beyonce "Irreplaceable," (her biggest single ever), Ne-Yo has been speed-dialed by women like Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls' Nicole Scherzinger, and Jennifer Hudson (who appears on his new CD, "Because of You," out this week)

Lou Ferrigno, 53, has gone green. Real green. The former Incredible Hulk (from those great days before brooding action dude Eric Bana and director Ang Lee made the monster so egg-heady) is mad. So mad he's suing his brother and sister-in-law, Andrew and Jani Ferrigno, for using his Hulkish name and his (not so very) Hulking fame to market their fitness equipment store, Ferrigno Fitness of Greenwich Township (N.J.). Filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton, the suit claims the store has a green awning, green interiors, and one green wall covered with photos of Ferrigno in his Hulk makeup.

Imagine if three rappers in the Top 10 all attended Simon Gratz. That's what it was like in the early '60s, when Overbrook High served as a nursery for singing groups, making Philadelphia the epicenter of the pop universe. That eminence was largely due to local record label Cameo Parkway (and the promotional bonanza provided by American Bandstand, a homer if ever there was one). Five months after the release of a boxed set celebrating the label's rich diversity, the long-inaccessible Cameo vaults have now yielded seven "best-of" packages, retrospectives of the label's most successful acts.

When he first appeared on the radar in 1998, he was just a kid playing goofball characters on Nickelodeon's sketch comedy All That. Four years later, he marched to his own beat as a hip-hop percussionist in the coming-of-age flick Drumline. Now, suddenly he's slinging semiautomatics in the action-comedy Underclassman (in theaters tomorrow), playing a disco-skating "playah" in the back-in-the-day comedy Roll Bounce (in theaters Sept. 23), putting his improvisational chops to work on MTV's Wild 'N Out, and, with his "Can I Live?"

Parents, I went on a little reconnaissance mission at the Electric Factory Saturday night, and I'm happy to report that your teenage daughters are safe with 22-year-old lightweight pop star Ryan Cabrera. So his Chia Pet-meets-Tina Turner coif frightens you a little, and some of his post-Dave Matthews grooves could lead to suggestive dancing at the prom in a couple of months. But check this out: With a sold-out house of shrieking girls - some accompanied by good-sport boyfriends - in the palm of his hand, he opened his 65-minute show with a song about not rushing into "things" called "Let's Take Our Time.

Phil Diffy is not your average high schooler. (He and his family are time travelers from the year 2121 stranded in the present.) Neither is Ricky Ullman, who plays the atemporal teen on the Disney Channel series, Phil of the Future (Fridays, 7 p.m.). Ullman, 18, is a seasoned and exotic show biz veteran who has spent more time on stages than in classrooms. That background will come in handy in the next phase of Ullman's life, which promises to be hectic. "I think he's going to be a giant star," says Gary Marsh, the executive vice president of original programming and production at the Disney Channel.

It all seemed easy to a young Australian performer by the name of Richard Springthorpe when he dropped out of school at age 15, bounced around in a couple of bands that didn't do much, joined a popular teen group called Zoot, and then had a smash hit with the record "Speak to the Sky" as a solo artist. So when American record labels beckoned - feeling that this kid would have no trouble duplicating his Down Under success with teens in the States - he left his native soil at age 22 and headed east for the glory and riches that were surely his to take.