It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since the curtains opened on Rent on Broadway. That’s a pretty impressive run for a Broadway musical these days, especially one not adapted from a film and then turned back into a film. In fact, when the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical ends its run on Sept. 7, it will be one of the 10 longest-running shows ever on Broadway.

I’ll never forget seeing it for the first time, when the curtains pulled apart at the Nederlander Theatre to expose the set and the piano-driven opening of “Seasons of Love.” I fell in love with the simple everyday-ness of the storyline and the modernization of La Bohème that drove it. I was also pretty fond of the fact that the trials and tribulations faced by a lesbian couple were central to the plot — not something that happens often.

I was even dazzled by the film version when it hit theaters. Of course the fact that Rosario Dawson made her appearance as Mimi didn’t hurt the film at all. Neither did the incredible Tracie Thoms’ turn as Joanne and the film’s fond treatment of one of my favorite moments: Joanne and Maureen having it out during “Take Me or Leave Me.”

I can’t be alone on this one: I used to have to sneak around to watch Married With Children. My mom was so not down with me watching that show. I didn’t totally get it (until later), but I loved Christina Applegate enough in her role that I even watched when she was on 21 Jump Street. I also watched when she starred in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. I tuned in to see her in Mars Attacks! and The Sweetest Thing.

Let’s not forget her fierce Emmy-winning performance on Friends, and the brilliance that is Anchorman.

She’s always been one of those actresses who is not only so hot, but is also so full of artistic integrity that you can pretty much bet whatever she’s in is going to be good. Her latest project, Samantha Who? seems a perfect addition to her canon. After years of great performances in good roles, there was something about her role as Samantha that was just haunting. So it saddened me to hear that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

We all know that Angelina Jolie can kick a lot of ass. In case anyone’s unsure of her ability to carry an action film, I submit Tomb Raider, Gone in 60 Seconds, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wanted — need I say more?

Yet it’s notable that she may be taking on yet another rough-and-tumble action flick. Variety reports that the stunning actress is close to a deal with Columbia Pictures to play a role previously intended for Tom Cruise in the film Edwin A. Salt. According to Variety, her character is “a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish her innocence.” (Does this mean Angie will sport a hot Russian accent at some point?) There’s nothing about that role that sounds intrinsically male to me, but we all know how the movies work, and it’s quite notable that a studio has opted to go with a female actor to play a role originally written with a man in mind.

Like everyone else on the planet, I spent much of the weekend watching the Olympics. I tuned in late on Friday, and was surprised to see a commercial for General Motors that featured Brandi Carlile singing “The Story.” First of all, as much as I love that song, it doesn’t exactly scream “cars and trucks” to me. But, I was more surprised that Carlile, who I know to be an environmentalist, would agree to the commercial.

After all, Carlile announced last year that she would be donating a portion of every concert ticket sold to help offset all the emissions from her fall tour. In a journal entry on her Web site, she wrote:

The money will help support Reverb's mission as well as NativeEnergy's family farm methane projects, which help reduce global warming pollution by reducing the amount of fossil fuels the farms themselves use for heat, cooling and electricity or by preventing emissions of methane gas from manure stored in lagoons. By helping build new clean and renewable energy projects with NativeEnergy, we''ll reduce CO2 pollution by helping change how power is made.

Clearly the telepathy between Brandi and I is strong, because she posted another journal entry this weekend, explaining that she agreed to the commercial only after GM indicated the song would be used to help promote alternative fuel options and eco-friendly car styles.

Back in May, we got you pumped for the summer debut of the so-gorgeous-we’d-watch-her-in-anything Rosario Dawson’s role in the web series Gemini Division. I’m not totally sure about this whole web series thing — this one, for example, will run 50 episodes that will be five to seven minutes each. I guess it’s good for people obsessed with sci-fi, but with attention spans too short for an actual television show. Anyway, I am sure that I love TV shows and movies that feature hot women kicking ass. Of course Dawson fits that bill for this series.

Dawson plays undercover NYC cop Anna Diaz, who’s investigating the murder of her husband. What she discovers is an elaborate U.S. government conspiracy that involves simulated human soldiers (“sims”) suspected of being terrorists. Of course her husband was a sim, so she has to decide whether she’s fighting the sims or the U.S. government that employs her. Tough stuff.

The trailer is pretty intense, ending with Eugene Alper, as Dr. Thaddeus Lazlo, warning Dawson’s character: “Don’t do it, Diaz. Don’t choose the wrong side.” Dramatic pause, music, fade to black.

Considering the James Bond films have a habit of including hot women in every installment, and considering Alicia Keys has a habit of being a hot woman, it makes perfect sense that Keys is joining the Bond universe for their next chapter, Quantum of Solace. (The title of the film makes me scratch my head, but I find it’s best to not think too long and hard about these things.)

No, the lovely and talented Keys won’t be the newest Bond Babe. Thankfully, she’s sticking to what she does best: making music. She’ll join Jack White for a duet on the film’s theme song — the first duet in Bond theme song history, in case you’re keeping track. Considering Keys’ and White’s musical styles are pretty much exactly opposite, it should be an interesting collaboration. But, I’m betting it’ll be a little moment of brilliance ala Alison Krauss/Robert Plant.

While Alicia won’t be making an appearance in the film, we will be treated to yet another femme fatale, Olga Kurylenko, whose character Camille has one of the more benign names in Bond history.

Forbes has released their ”Entertainment All-Stars Special Issue” in which they named Vince Vaughn the number one actor for bringing in money at the box office. Of course, Julia Roberts was right up there — at number three, in fact — bringing in just $25,000 less than number two, Tobey Maguire. (If only she’d been in one more movie in the last year!)

I pretty much figured Roberts and Jennifer Aniston would be included, but was surprised to see Naomi Watts cracking the number five slot. According to Forbes magazine’s complicated algebraic formula they use to quantify this top ten list, Watts raked in more dough than George Clooney, Matt Damon and Ben Stiller. Go on, girl!

Being the crazy Heroes fan that I am, I have to admit I was kind of excited curious when I heard “cheerleader” Hayden Panettiere had a new album in the works. It’s been a week since I heard the news, and since Hay-Pan went on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show to share some tracks and talk about her skills. I’m only posting on this now because it’s taken me all this time to absorb the songs I’ve heard and come to grips with the fact that the dolphin-saving surfer/actress’s foray into music is not that great. By “not that great,” I mean maybe she should leave the record-making to Paris and Lindsay.

A friend of mine said it reminded her of the “pop music they play in Hawaii, only worse.” Best Week Ever canned the video for “Wake Up Call,” where 18-year-old Hay-Pan sings lines like “You don’t by me drinks” and “I think I’m gonna have to cheat to keep your eyes on me.”

It’s kind of unfortunate that most people think of Yoko Ono as the woman responsible for breaking up the Beatles. If you appreciate envelope-pushing ladies, you probably know there’s a little more to her than that.

In addition to her far-reaching humanitarian work, Ono has always been fearless about jumping on the cutting edge of art and music production. She’s already released a small handful of electronic dance remix albums, but her most recent release marks a notable music anniversary.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 39 years since Ono joined John Lennon in bed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal for the historic bed-in for peace. It was there that they teamed up with a bunch of friends and recorded — from their bed — the anthem, “Give Peace a Chance.”

Now, to commemorate the occasion, she’s teamed up with some new friends who know their way around electronic music (such as Tommie Sunshine and Johnny Vicious) to create Give Peace a Chance (The Remixes). Because remixing for peace isn’t enough, Ono’s record company is releasing the singles completely digitally to create less waste and lessen their footprint on the environment.

I’m just going to get the embarrassing truth out of the way: I was never really into The X-Files, even though the show featured the extraordinarily attractive Gillian Anderson. It took the first X-Files movie to sell me on the actress (the jury’s still out on I Want To Believe, as it’s not due out until July 25).

I don’t know what took me so long. I mean, come on:

I do, however, enjoy a good bio-pic about a historically relevant woman played by another, gorgeous female actress. So it pleases me to no end that Anderson is signed up to play the role of Martha Gellhorn in a film about the journalist’s life.

Gellhorn lived quite a dramatic life. She was a war correspondent, the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, and a novelist who killed herself at age 89 after falling so ill with cancer, she was practically blind. She reported from the field on just about every major world conflict that happened in her lifetime, including the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Due to her unshakable dedication to her career, there’s even been an award for excellence in journalism created in her name.

As if Heroes wasn’t already one of the most inspired shows on TV: The producers of the hit series have announced that they’re adding the gorgeous Brea Grant to the cast for next season. Grant, who you may recognize from her guest spots on Friday Night Lights and Cold Case, will play a character named Joy whose super power is "uncanny speed."

Grant's character will first appear stealing paintings from a museum and getting called out by Hiro. It sounds like she’ll be one of those mysterious types, leaving us all to wonder if she is good or evil.

Alongside Ali Larter’s doppelgänger hero and Hayden Panettiere as a bad ass, indestructible cheerleader, Grant ups the cast’s "pretty" factor a few good notches. They'll all return (along with the rest of the Heroes cast) on September 22. Can you wait that long?

The interwebs are abuzz with talk about Lily Allen's upcoming record — rumors about a duet with hot mess actress/"singer" Lindsay Lohan, and talk about her team-up with producer Greg Kurstin (The Bird & The Bee). There's also the dubiously provocative album title: Stuck on the Naughty Step, about which Allen told Rolling Stone, "Like a timeout, you know? I feel like I'm stuck in a hole where people say, 'Lily, you’re bad. Go think about what you’ve done'."

You may recall Allen's career shifted into high gear two years ago, after the popularity of her song "Smile" swept across MySpace. Certainly, MySpace has proven effective for her, as her profile has been viewed nearly 19.5 million times. That's more profile views than even Madonna has received. Crazy.

As for the rumored duet with Lohan, it sounds like it was born out of Allen's friendship with Lohan's (alleged) girlfriend Sam Ronson, who introduced the two over dinner. The duet is titled "Wherever You Go."

Back in 1988, when the general consensus was that artists only made independent records because they couldn’t get a major label deal, Juliana Hatfield and her band the Blake Babies started a run that produced four indie releases. Then, she got signed to Atlantic and entered the ‘90s with a string of slightly more mainstream hits like “My Sister,” which, even though I loved my sister, seemed like a good thing to blast from my bedroom speakers while I went through my “various phases” phase in high school.

Remember when she appeared on My So-Called Life as some sort of angelic character? It just kind of seemed like Juliana Hatfield’s music was at every turn of my pre-coming-out pubescence. Her sweet, subtle soprano sang out over those introspective indie-rock tunes, back when it was called alt-rock. I eventually became distracted by the whole riot grrl thing and moved on, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Hatfield’s work.

Over the past several years, she’s gone indie again, and has been releasing albums on her own. Of course, now putting out an indie record is a whole different (some would say easier) ball of wax than it was 20 years ago, in the heyday of Blake Babies. Still, Hatfield’s work continues to garner praise from fans and critics alike. Hers is a pretty good story, especially in a time when it seems almost impossible to imagine a major label act sticking in the business for 20 years.

The mile of the Long Island Expressway that Bette Midler is responsible for cleaning has always kind of amused me. I perk up driving into Manhattan from Long Island, just for that one stretch of road where an outside chance exists of spotting the Divine Miss M (in high heels, I imagine, with her capri pants rolled up past her knees) standing in dirty grass, one of those trash spears in her hand. As most of the Bette Midler-themed scenarios in my imagination do, this one has Bette singing to herself, backed by a slew of lovely chorus girls with feathers on their heads ... and, yes, trash spears in their hands. This scenario remains in my imagination, though, as I've never actually spotted Ms. Midler on the LIE.

Her Vegas show, The Showgirl Must Go On, has been running since February — the one where she's backed by 18 sets of well-sculpted chorus girl legs, sans trash spears. But meanwhile, back in the City, Midler's backing one million well-sculpted tree trunks. Her effort to green NYC started back in 1995, when she founded the New York Restoration Project. Now, she's teamed up with Mayor Bloomberg to plant one million trees by 2017.