Brace yourself for the latest in mashup entertainment: karaoke meets Ultimate Fighting. Last year a Washington woman was hauled off to prison for assaulting a bar patron for his karaoke version of Coldplay's 'Yellow.'

Now comes news of a Wisconsin man who flew off the handle over another customer's karaoke rendition of Dio's 'Holy Diver.' Police say 24-year-old Kyle Drinkwine had a blood alcohol content more than twice the legal limit when he throttled 28-year-old James Mischler for his allegedly irreverent impersonation of onetime Black Sabbath lead singer Ronnie James Dio.

Before the attack Mischler hit back at Drinkwine's heckling, telling the Smoking Gun that he zinged his antagonist, who'd earlier performed an Eminem song, for wearing an oversized crucifix. "I told him he should find a better vending machine for his jewelry," said the budding comedian.

But if he shook off the subsequent assault, the singer remains stung by the insinuation that he was making fun of Dio with his off-key rendition. "I genuinely love Ronnie James Dio!" he insisted.

Rock 'n' roll is a hard life. Ginger Baker has the scars to prove it.

And he's prepared to expose a particularly private scar in court, if he has to. Baker, the 69-year-old former Cream and Blind Faith drummer, has accused a South African woman charged with 27 counts of fraud. He claims the woman, bank clerk Lindiwe Noko, embezzled about $60,000 of his money after he hired her to oversee his finances.

Noko contends that the drummer gave her the money in the form of gifts during an alleged relationship they had. But Baker denies it, and says he has the goods -- specifically, a scar in a bodily region he claims the woman never visited -- to prove it.

"It's there and she doesn't know it's there," said Baker. "I'm quite prepared to strip."

And may it please the court.

On a crowded rush hour train, folks are easily annoyed by even the slightest of offenses -- a sneeze, a yawn, an accidental butt graze. In England, however, it seems the most irritating behavior to commuters is iPods at high volume.

According to a survey of British travelers, cranking up the volume on a music player is more annoying than people who spread out large newspapers, as well as those who fall asleep and drool on others.

While we agree that being stuck next to someone blasting Avril Lavigne may not be the best of treats, we'd certainly prefer that to spittle. Well, most days, anyway.

100 million Rick Astley fans can't be wrong, can they?

Dismantling a field of ho-hum competitors for the honor of Best Act Ever at the MTV Europe Music Awards -- the Beatles, U2, blah, blah, blah -- the 42-year-old office-radio soul man behind the 1988 chart-topper 'Never Gonna Give You Up' sailed to victory by drawing more votes than the rest of the field combined. Seriously.

It's the culmination of a phenomenon known as Rickrolling, in which a few devoted (tongue-in-cheek?) fans direct unwitting viewers to Astley's YouTube videos by mislabeling them. Omitted from the original shortlist, Astley won with an avalanche of ballot-box stuffing as a write-in candidate.

As a famous wag once wrote, the average voter knows what he wants -- "and deserves to get it good and hard."

Dave Stewart showed the world that he knew a thing or two about beats per minute during his stint in Eurythmics, but he's taking that concept to a decidedly new level in his latest venture --marketing a high-end line of vibrators.

The grizzled rocker has joined forces with sex toy manufacturer JimmyJane to market a pair of the gadgets, which will be in the hands of consumers in time for the holidays.Proving that, despite the hippie veneer, he's not exactly a proponent of free "love," Stewart is asking fans to unzip their wallets and come up with 200 bucks for the basic chrome version of the vibrator, while the really fab phallus -- featuring a base encircled with an "eternity band" of 28 round-cut black diamonds -- will cost a cold, hard two grand. Stewart has even unsheathed his pen to write a promotional tune called 'Let's Do It Again' -- a title that's inscribed on the devices themselves -- and will make it available at jimmyjane.com starting on November 18th.

We have to give Stewart credit for being secure enough to link his name to the company's 'Little Somethings' line -- an association most trouser-stuffing musos would never make.

George Michael has repeatedly told fans he's ashamed of himself for being arrested over incidents involving public lewdness, driving under the influence and being unnecessarily mean to pigeons -- oh, it's only a matter of time for the last one transpires -- but his self-esteem doesn't seem to have suffered all that much.

The singer is reportedly getting ready to shell out over two million dollars for a rendering of his face made of 24-karat gold studded with diamonds, the medium of choice for artist Laban Roomes, who was featured on a recent BBC documentary about folks able to reel in well-heeled suckers (or, as the Beeb prefers to put it, who "demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit). We'd never begrudge ol' George his bust, but we hope he's willing to throw a bone to former Wham-mate Andrew Ridgeley by ponying up a few bucks for his own doppelganger made from aluminum foil and Raisinets.

Every city has them: hardworking musicians who find that their only sure route to a paycheck is to interpret the music of bands more famous than themselves. There are countless Beatles cover bands, of course, and plenty more devoted to the music of the Ramones, U2 and AC/DC, to name a handful.

Few, however, mess with the original sound quite as much as a certain Pink Floyd tribute band based in Toledo, Ohio. They're called Polka Floyd.

Not surprisingly, the group started on a whim. While waiting for some members to arrive at a rehearsal a few years ago, guitarist and bandleader Ken Haas idly began playing 'Comfortably Numb' to a polka shuffle.

Now this rock-band-with-accordion makes its living traveling the Midwest, playing 'Another Brick in the Wall' and 'Hey You' reimagined for Oktoberfest. "I have original material that I poured my heart and soul into for 10 or 15 years, but no one wants to listen to that," says Haas.

He's not complaining: he's a huge fan. The band can, and sometimes does, perform the albums 'Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Wish You Were Here' in their entirety. And if they sense some skeptical Floyd fans in the audience, they'll pull out an obscurity like Syd Barrett's 'Jugband Blues,' just to mark their turf.

We're guessing they're partial to 'Brain Damage,' too.

Like most business owners, Satan occasionally has to take stock of his inventory and make room for newer models -- and with elections taking place in every nook and cranny of this fair land, he's certainly bought up plenty of souls in recent weeks. As such, the Man Downstairs looks to be unloading some of his older purchases -- like the soul of Robert Johnson, which is currently up for just sold for $66 in an auction on eBay.

Legend has it that the blues legend traded his eternal spirit to the devil down at the crossroads -- which, depending on your interpretation, could've be a dusty Mississippi intersection or a corner office in the Big Apple -- for everlasting fame, a deal that didn't end up working out all that well since he died in obscurity just a couple of years later. We're not sure what sort of deal Beelzebub will cut for this exchange, but since he now takes PayPal, perhaps the buyer could work out a package deal including John Bonham's liver and Jim Morrison's little black book as well.

It must've sounded like a natural fit at the ad agency: Joan Jett's mildly naughty 'Do You Want to Touch Me (Oh Yeah)' in an ad for Hewlett Packard's new TouchSmart personal computers.

Apparently, though, no one checked the copyright. The song was originally co-written by onetime glam-rock star -- and convicted pedophile -- Gary Glitter.

Oops. As soon as the watchdog group ChildAbuseWatch.net called for an apology, noting that the disgraced singer stood to earn tens of thousands from the campaign, all traces of HP's use of the song vanished. Guess that pretty much rules out 'What Your Mamma Don't See' for the online dating services.

To many Americans, the British accent can be divided into two distinct categories that have more to do with status than region. There's the stiff-upper-lip elocution of the aristocracy, and there's the marble-mouthed Cockney of the working class. (Think Noel Coward vs. the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones.)

In reality, there are dozens of regional accents in the UK, just as there are in America. The Brits have the near-Irish lilt of Liverpudlian Scouse, the indecipherable, every-statement-a-question singsong of Welsh and the thick tongue of "Brummie" (the Birmingham accent), to name just a few.

The hotel chain Travelodge has just conducted a survey of Britain's most hated celebrity accents. Among the biggest offenders: Ozzy Osbourne, who mumbles in Brummie; Charlotte Church, whose classical pedigree can't mask her broad Welsh accent; and Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles, who mocks Cockneys in motormouth Tyke.

Topping the list, however, are two rough-and-tumble Cockney women of song who are no strangers to negative publicity. We can just hear fellow Eliza Doolittles Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen reacting to their latest dubious achievements: "A load of old pony, that. Ye can hit and miss me Khyber pass!"