Frances Bean hearts Kelly Clarkson

Since you been gone.

And we quote:

"She's got Kelly Clarkson as a screen saver on her Mac," [Courtney] Love says, laughing. "Punk is for the old folks."

The above bon mot is lifted from Hilton Als' crack-licking profile of Courtney (Hilton's most embarassing fawning since Remnick let him give PJ Harvey a tongue bath), peeled from the pages of Conde Nasty's Anna Wintour-edited "Fashion Rocks" maggie tie-in -- which, fucking horrorshow, came shrink wrapped to our New Yorker this week! Other Courtney news: she's doing another record with Linda Perry, and hot on the heels of those best-selling Kurt diaries comes . . . yep, the illustrated Courtney diaries, for which the Als piece is essentially an infomercial. Soon u, 2 will be able to own Courtney's daily scribbles, such as the undated, handwritten note titled, "Celebrity Callers of the Day":

Drew Barrymore (Eric's GIRLFRIEND)
Cher (didn't take it)
Madonna (Oh my God.)
Chrissie Hynde but I was hiding in my bed.

You don't count. Neither does Michael S. and he called. it was so good. he's so good to me. i have no clue why. i'm three miles of bad road.

Anyway, you get the drift. This mag is such a TRAIN WRECK and we can't put it down. We'll probably do something totally homo like hang the Luella Bartley/M.I.A. spread on our wall. The Times has been all aflutter about the ingenious synergy of a TV benefit with its own magazine (whatever), though the big international news from this thing is an interview where Justin Timberlake dares to suggest that Taylor Hicks "can't carry a tune in a bucket," and then puts forth the odd hypothetical "If, God forbid, he's gay . . ."

Which was amusing, though not as amusing as the Herald's Christopher John Treacy, who inadvertently outed himself as having left last Saturday's JT concert a little early without attribution -- this is known locally as "pulling a Steve Morse" -- by making a big deal in his review about Justin having not introduced his band. Which was very, very stupid, because anyone who stayed through the end of the show knows that JT spent a good 10 minutes doing exactly that: very elaborately introducing each member by name, with accompanying walkoff solos. It was actually kinda boring, but this Herald guy's editors can't be too pleased.

Meanwhile, back in the actual New Yorker, as opposed to the shrink-wrapped fashion-porn mag, SFJ has a review (that we couldn't agree less with) of the Christina Aguilera and JT albums that're worth reading just for his musical descriptions. Like us, he's still bewitched by last album's "Beautiful" -- "her 'Rocky' moment. You know she's going to raise her fists and jump when she reaches the top of the steps, but you get goose bumps anyway" -- and check his color on "Ain't No Other Man": "Premier provides a compressed drum pattern that pushes along and then pauses, like a mindful pedestrian, for the zooming delivery truck of two huge horn blasts." "Does anything need bringing back less than sexy?" he asks of the new JT single. "It's like proposing to bring back petroleum, or the N.F.L." Petroleum!

Oh, right, also: Marilyn Manson. Is. Still. Unfuckwithable. At least when it comes to casting weird little British models.