People

By Lev Grossman

YOU'RE EMBEDDED IN MY HEART, BABY Who is the new "Scud Stud"? These journalists are trudging in Arthur Kent's dusty footsteps

NAME David Bloom (NBC) CALL HIM "Bunker Buster" CREDENTIALS Veteran of both Simpson trials. Hair musses extremely well RATING: [2 microphones]

NAME Patricia Sabga (NBC) CALL HER "Satellite Dish" CREDENTIALS Covered 9/11 from New York City. Ashleigh Banfield is seriously jealous RATING: [3 microphones]

NAME Richard Engel (ABC) CALL HIM "Big Baghdaddy" CREDENTIALS Taught himself to speak Arabic. Is young and sensitive RATING: [3 microphones]

NAME Rageh Omaar (BBC) CALL HIM "Desert Fox" CREDENTIALS Oxford educated. Skin stays dewy fresh even under harsh desert conditions RATING: [4 microphones]

The Queen Is Read

Lisa Halaby was a blond, Princeton-educated, all-American girl when she married the late King of Jordan and became QUEEN NOOR. She tells her story in a new memoir, Leap of Faith.

Have you been watching TV coverage of the war in Iraq?

I believe the American media have an opportunity here to really build confidence and trust among our cultures by trying to project an objective and comprehensive view, and by focusing on the human perspective.

Did your husband really woo you with Abba's Take a Chance on Me?

I can't say why, but he did like that song. He always drew upon whatever sources there were out there, whether they were Arab or Western, to try to bring people together.

The King and I--love it or hate it?

When we were first married, we took his three youngest children to see The King and I with Yul Brynner. So that was a magical family moment.

A GLOVELESS MARRIAGE

LISA MARIE PRESLEY releases her debut album, To Whom It May Concern, next week--following a bunch of revelations about her marriage to Michael Jackson. "I absolutely fell in love with him and fell into this whole thing, which I'm not proud of now," she tells Rolling Stone. Near the end she suspected him of using her to improve his reputation. "It was a scary thing," she says, "somebody who's constantly at work, calculating, calculating, manipulating. It just got really ugly at the end." She makes it sound like this Jackson fella is a little disturbed.

They Slept with Steve Martin Too

The surprise breakout stars of this year's Oscars are cute and huggable, but they aren't Adrien Brody and Michael Moore. They're the CHUBBCHUBBS, the little Tweety look-alikes featured in the cartoon that won the Oscar for best short animated film. The ChubbChubbs were originally created to test animation software that Sony Imageworks was developing, but now execs are grooming them for a stand-alone DVD release and possibly a full-length feature. The story of The ChubbChubbs! revolves around Meeper, a resident of the planet Glorf, who--well, the story doesn't matter. What does matter is that these furry little critters are more merchandisable than a herd of Ewoks drinking Diet Pepsi.