Comic book lovers and graphic novel enthusiasts should be on the lookout the first week of October for Best American Comics 2008. This year’s edition of the annual series is filled with cutting edge work by talented comic strip authors and cartoonists. The anthology, which contains several award-winning authors, is further proof that comics can be smart and literary.

The 2008 edition is guest edited by 52-year-old Lynda Barry, best known for her weekly comic strip, Ernie Pook’s Comeek. The author of the graphic novels Cruddy and What It Is, Barry tells her memoirs cartoon-style about family life from a young female perspective.

I’ve been a fan of Lynda’s since I was a teen. I got hooked on her comic books Come Over, Come Over and My Perfect Life for their refreshingly awkward portrayal of childhood. To my delight, Barry kicks off the anthology with a strip of her own, then taps the talents of an array of cartoonists, both famous (like her pal Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons) and up-and-comers.

In a surprising new list, Playboy celebrates the “Hottest Babes of Classical Music.” The magazine’s editors find sexy people everywhere, so why not the opera and the symphony?

Say what you want about such a list, but I applaud anything that removes the nerd stigma from highbrow pursuits like classical music. If seeing the hotties behind the music encourages people to buy records and concert tickets, I say yay. In fact, I’ve been known to buy a Cecilia Bartoli CD or two based on how sexy she looks singing those arias.

One musician on the list, however, startled me. Is violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn old enough to be “hot”? Seems like just yesterday she was the child prodigy the critics were calling “the talent of the century.” Talent grows up, I suppose, because Hilary is now a lovely 28-year-old woman.

Leila Josefowicz was another child prodigy who began playing violin when she was just three years old. She was playing with symphonies in her teens, and debuted at Carnegie Hall when she was 16. Now Leila is 30, a mom and gorgeous.

Today Us Magazine released its list of "The 25 Most Stylish New Yorkers." The list serves as further confirmation that Manhattan is now merely L.A. on the East Coast, filled with rich kids, fake tans and little originality. I can get on board with choosing little Mr. Fierce and Fabulous, Christian Siriano, but whoever chose the women on this list needs to rethink what style is all about.

Where are the trendsetting New Yorkers of yore? Who is today’s Debbie Harry, Grace Jones or Madonna? (I'm talking about vintage Madonna, with the black spangled bracelets and the fishnets and the crucifixes.) Who do the kids look to copy today?

Kelly Ripa — really?

I love Kelly to bits and I’m sure she is dressed nicely every single day of her life, but is she really one of the most stylish people in all of New York? How hard is it to put on the clothes your stylist tells you to put on?

Good news for fans of the web series In the Motherhood: The show is moving to primetime television on ABC. The network has scheduled 13 episodes based on the popular MindShare series about the zany lives of three mothers and girlfriends, inspired by the real adventures of women across the country who write into the show’s site with their stories.

Though comic actress Chelsea Handler will stay on board, her costars Leah Remini and Jenny McCarthy aren’t involved in the ABC project. That bums me out because I love Chelsea and Jenny as sisters. Check out this clip and try not to giggle:

Who will be Chelsea’s new costars? The buzz right now is that busy Ms. Handler — who also hosts a late night talk show and has penned two bestselling books — will be joined by Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm).

Over the weekend, I read (with some interest) that an Angelina Jolie doll sold for $4,300 on eBay. The doll’s creator, artist Noel Cruz, has also made replica dolls of Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman, but the tiny Angelina is so accurate it’s freaky. Check it out:

Why does this interest me? It might surprise you to learn that I played with dolls when I was a kid. However, back in my day, the celebrity clone doll was a fairly new concept reserved for icons like Cher and, uh, Donny and Marie Osmond.

My Cher doll was top-of-the-line, the kind whose hair you could change from black to blonde by delicately twisting her scalp in circles. I think my parents could only afford one top tier doll for me because, instead of getting a Donny and Marie doll, I got a doll of their lesser known little brother, Jimmy Osmond. The fact that I can’t even find a picture of the Jimmy doll anywhere on the internet says something about its popularity.

I also liked to play with my neighbors’ Star Wars action figures. This was back when Star Wars was all about Luke, Leia and Han, so the most popular figures were replicas of actors Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. I never owned the dolls myself, but at some point, I talked my parents into buying me a bottle of shampoo in Princess Leia’s likeness. (You unscrewed her head and poured out the shampoo.) I’m still fond of Carrie Fisher, I’m going to see her one-woman show this week. If only I still had that shampoo bottle — and a Sharpie.

To honor the birthdays of pop music icons Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson (who all turn 50 this year), Hypeful.com has put together a list of 150 cover songs of their material that other artists recorded over the years. They generously offer MP3s of each song, and some of the performers are favorite female artists and bands of AfterEllen.com bloggers and readers.

A few of the songs surprised me. For instance, did you know actress Rebecca Romjin recorded a version of Prince’s naughty “Darling Nikki” back when she was married to John Stamos? Others are a bit more familiar like Tegan and Sara’s version of “When You Were Mine.”

Michael Jackson songs:

“I Want You Back”: K.T. Tunstall, Nickel Creek
“Thriller”: Petra Haden

“Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough": Shivaree
“Beat It”: Amy Winehouse and Charlotte Church (Actually, it’s worth watching this train wreck.)

The other night while watching The Closer with my lady love, I had to giggle when she said, “Wow, Kyra Sedgwick’s Southern accent is so thick!”

What my girlfriend didn’t know — and what many of you may not know, either — is that Kyra is a born-and-bred New Yorker with such good acting chops, she can convince you she’s the southernest of Southern belles. Kyra comes from a long line of awesome actresses who can switch up their voices to suit a character. For instance, did you know Golden Girl Rue McClanahan was faking Blanche’s Southern trill? Yep, McClanahan was trained on the stages of New York.

Of course, for every actress who can fake a believable accent, there’s another (two or three) who bomb at it. Let’s take a look at a few winners and losers in the accent department.

The Best:

We would be remiss if we did not start with Meryl Streep, who became so well known for her accents in the 1970s and 80s, people would jokingly wonder what dialect she would conquer next: African tribe woman? Eskimo?

With lots of research and endless attention to detail, Meryl knocked it out of the park when mimicking the dialects of Australians (A Cry In The Dark), Danish (Out of Africa), Polish (Sophie’s Choice) and lesbian (Manhattan). OK that last one is just a joke, but wasn’t it fun to see Meryl play Woody Allen’s Sapphicly-inclined ex-wife?

One of the few contemporary actresses who could go head-to-head with Meryl is the lovely Cate Blanchett. Aussie Cate’s a master of accents from Russian (The Man Who Cried) to American (Babel) to Kate Hepburn’s quirky Connecticut cadence (The Aviator). Cate can even do Bob Dylan (I’m Not There)!

Supermodel Kate Moss is giving Cleopatra a run for her money. A life-size statue of Moss has debuted at the British Museum.

The statue, which cost 1.5 million in British pounds (about $2.7 million) is thought to be the largest statue made of solid gold since the days of ancient Egypt.

The golden Moss, created by British sculptor Marc Quinn, has been christened “Siren,” and it’s part of a display of contemporary art that begins in October. The sculptor explains why he made a Moss of gold:

I thought the next thing to do would be to make a sculpture of the person who's the ideal beauty of the moment … But even Kate Moss doesn't live up to the image.

What model today does? In the 1990s, Christy Turlington’s face was considered so perfectly proportioned, it was used as the prototype for all the mannequins wearing Ralph Pucci designs in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Subscribers to any Condé Nast magazine will find some extra fun in their mailboxes this month in the form of the publishing company’s fifth annual Fashion Rocks supplement.

The magazine features articles and photo spreads chronicling the decades-long affair between fashion and pop music. Just think back to trendsetters like Aretha Franklin with her Capri pants and big hoop earrings, and you realize that rock stars have been setting fashion trends for generations.

Fashion Rocks takes a look at the history of that affair with a piece juxtaposing pictures of the 1960s girl group The Ronettes (and Amy Winehouse) with a bee-hived Chanel model at a pre-fall collection show. The piece also includes photos of M.I.A., Santogold, Joanna Newsom, Jenny Lewis and a vintage Debbie Harry next to contemporary couture-clad beauties modeling the very same styles those artists made popular.

Check out this gorgeous glamour shot of Beyoncé rocking an Armani suit.

Let’s get down to business, girls. Are you ready to talk about the most important thing in the world — our hair — and how much money we shell out to keep it looking good?

The Guardian recently published an article about the staggering prices of women’s haircuts. It was as if the writer had been eavesdropping on my friends and me as we gripe every time a salon trip is due.

Looks like there’s no stopping this Valerie Bertinelli comeback: The girl is on a roll. After losing unwanted pounds, and getting a Jenny Craig spokesperson deal, Bertinelli (former star of television’s One Day At A Time and Touched By An Angel) next penned a best selling book: Losing It — And Gaining My Life Back One Pound At A Time.

The memoir, which dishes the dirt on her rocky marriage and subsequent divorce to Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen, became a bestseller. In the book, Bertinelli details a steamy Sapphic kiss in her past — but that’s not the only reason it shot up the charts: Critics have hailed her for her courageous honesty about everything else in her life, from her divorce to her subsequent weight gain.

Now Bertinelli, a two-time Golden Globe winner, returns to what she does best: acting. The 48-year-old will star in a new as-yet-unnamed TBS sitcom written and produced by Dave Caplan, the man behind TBS’s The Bill Engvall Show (as well as The Drew Carey Show and George Lopez).

And how’s this for irony: Bertinelli, who shot to stardom playing the daughter of a single mom on One Day At A Time will play the role of the single mom. Although ever-perky Val doesn’t look much older than she did when she played loveable Barbara Cooper, she is the real-life mother of a teen-ager, Wolfgang Van Halen, last seen playing bass with pop’s band on tour.

Alanis Morissette’s angst-ridden “You Oughta Know” was the first hit for the Canadian singer/songwriter. It was also a big slap across the face to some idiot cad who had the nerve to break Alanis’s heart. Whatever this guy did to her, listeners thought, she got him back ten-fold by exposing the intimacies of their relationship, right down to the promises he made and broke and the kinky things the couple did in movie theaters.

Naturally, as soon as “You Oughta Know” hit airwaves, everyone in their right mind wondered who the song was about. Oh, how I wish you guys could have been there the first time I heard the rumor that Alanis penned “You Oughta Know” — the ultimate hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-dumped tune — about comic actor Dave Coulier.

“Dave Coulier?” That dufus from Full House?” I cried. Looking back, I know wasn’t the right thing to say. Dave seems to be a fine man; both Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen gravitated toward him when they were kids and they grew up levelheaded. I guess I expected the guy who devastated Alanis to be more, I don't know, heartbreaker-y. It was hard to imagine Uncle Joey lovin’ them and leavin’ them, but, what do I know of heterosexuality? And to my credit, the only famous Canadian people I know are lesbians.

Lady comic book lovers should be on the lookout for The Apocalypstix, a new animated adventure about an all-girl rock band that needs to save the world — pronto.

A mash-up of Tank Girl and Josie & The Pussycats, the story is created by the Canadian duo Ray Fawkes (Spookshow, Mnemovore) and Cameron Stewart (Catwoman, Seaguy), and it provides a comic touch for an end-of-the-world tale. Artist Stewart explained the evolution of the project to a Canadian newspaper:

We created these characters about five years ago. I was working on Catwoman at the time, and getting a little burned out, because of drawing Gotham City with all these buildings and backgrounds. It was just a lot of stuff that I didn't enjoy drawing very much. And I was hitting a point where I was interested in drawing something of my own and something that was really fun.

I started by making a little list of what I wanted to draw. Something with cute girls, which anyone who knows me or my work, that should be really obvious. I'm a big music fan so I wanted to do something with music, and as joke, I thought the exact opposite of drawing Gotham City would be a desert.

The duo said the story, which will be concluded in a second book, is heavily inspired by B-movies and 1970s horror flicks. The Apocalypstix pages are filled with girls with guns and guitars and the men are not much more than squealing fan boys. And, in the wacky world of comics, anything goes: our multi-culti warriors Mandi, Megumi and Dot share top billing.

Do you cover your eyes when you see gore on TV? Do your friends make fun of you for being a big 'fraidy cat when you watch horror movies? Good news, it’s not your fault that you’re a wimp — it’s in your genes.

Scientists in Germany have recently discovered that variations in the COMT gene in women can be the reason why some of us flinch at the sight of violence while others can find the entertainment value in it. The study, done at the University of Bonn, centered around the all-important COMT gene, which weakens the effect of the signaling chemical, dopamine, to the brain when emotions are involved. The women, who all had variations of the COMT gene, were shown a series of pictures that ranged from pleasant (babies, kittens) to neutral (pictures of hair dryers) to unpleasant (crime scenes photos).

The women’s responses to the pictures ranged according to the make-up of their COMT genes. In short, some women are genetically predisposed to deal with stress — and gross stuff — better than others.

Hipsters have been mad for British electro-rock singer songwriter M.I.A. since she released her debut album Arular in 2004. Now, four years, another album and endless critical praise later, M.I.A. has finally scored a Billboard hit and it’s thanks to a television commercial.

M.I.A.’s song “Paper Planes,” from her 2007 album Kala, is that catchy song you hear every time a trailer comes on television for Pineapple Express, the new Judd Apatow-penned comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. “Paper Planes” shot to the middle of Billboard’s Hot 100 and cracked the iTunes Top 20 after that spot aired — even though the song isn’t included anywhere in the movie itself.

M.I.A. is just the latest of countless indie artists who crack the mainstream via commercials. Pop songs and commercials have always gone hand in hand, but big corporations once only banked on bona fide hit makers. In 1987, The Beatles’ “Revolution” was used to pimp Nike shoes. Just a few years before, Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” sold Heinz ketchup. There used to be endless debates about artist integrity: Was it tacky for big name musicians to sell their tunes to corporations? How much money did these people need?

Nowadays, clever ad execs are using more obscure artists to peddle their goods. The results are big time attention for little known acts that wouldn’t otherwise receive airtime on the radio. Having a debate about the evils of selling out for these upstarts isn’t as relevant when you consider independent artists on small labels have no way to crack the mainstream. Most of them don’t have megabucks either so getting paid to have your song heard on TV could be a very attractive deal.