Sideshow: Surgery to silence Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray

is heroically upbeat about going under the knife.

"I'm having voice surgery on Dec. 16, so we're going to celebrate very quietly," Ray quips. Thankfully, the procedure isn't too serious. Ray's rep says it's "very minor surgery to remove a benign cyst on her vocal cord."

Soon,

Taran Killam

can tell

his

child "How I Met Your Mother." The actor's belle,

Cobie Smulders

, 26, who plays Robin Scherbatsky on CBS's

How I Met Your Mother

, is pregnant, reports People mag. (Taran, who has done a couple of guest stints in

Mother

, was introduced to Cobie by a mutual friend.)

Brooke Burke

says she wants to follow up her

Dancing With the Stars

triumph with a sitcom.

Brooke, who excelled as a host on Wild On, E!'s educational guide to the global party scene, also has had bit parts on Monk, Less Than Perfect, The Bernie Mac Show and Las Vegas.

She tells E!Online, "I'd love to do a sitcom! I just want to make sure that I'm really passionate about the next thing I do, because I poured my heart and soul into" Dancing.

We think B.B. would be perfect for a 21st-century remake of Three's Company - what other show elicits more passion? Quit your snickering. Brooke is versatile enough to play Chrissy (Suzanne Somers) or Janet (Joyce DeWitt).

When

Doctor Who

star

David Tennant

recently delivered the famous "poor Yorick" speech in a new production of

Hamlet

, he didn't address just any prop - he held up a

real

human skull, reports the Melbourne Herald Sun.

The skull was that of Polish concert pianist André Tchaikowsky, who died in 1982 at the age of 46 having never fulfilled his dream of becoming an actor. Instead, he donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Alas, the skull sat unused for 25 years until the new production opened in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Herald Sun says there was one previous attempt to use the skull, in a 1989 production, but the (unnamed) lead actor was really freaked out by handling "real human remains."

Don't worry, Mother Earth: Thou art safe.

Martial-arts beefcake Jean-Claude Van Damme is on the case. The Muscles From Brussels has gone all new-age with his picture Full Love, an indictment of the rape of Gaia and her sacred flora and fauna. The Street Fighter star says the new flick marks a change from his otherwise meaningless, futile life.

"I came out of action movies without too much depth," he tells USA Today. "Now I found in movies something I can believe in."

Full Love goes all-out. "An animal is going to talk" about humans' crimes against nature, Van Damme says. "It's going to be very strong and powerful." He adds that he knows the flick "will not save the world . . . But it's a way of putting my fist on the table." Right on!

The next installment of

American Idol

might feature a few quasi-celebs. So says the New York Post, which reports that the 200 wannabes at a recent "Idol Boot Camp" included one of

Donny

and

Marie Osmond

's nephews; the 2008 Miss New York USA winner,

Danielle Roundtree

;

Anna Kaelin

, daughter of

Dean Kaelin

, who is

David Archuleta

's vocal coach (!); and one of

Idol

finalist

Jason Castro

's younger brothers. No comment from Fox.

The Chicago Sun-Times says divorcees

Whitney Houston

and

Bobby Brown

, whose marriage added so many more woes to their already troubled psyches, may remarry. Citing anon sources, the paper says the couple recently had a string of "romantic" dinners.

Nicole Kidman

tells

Entertainment Tonight

that

Hugh Jackman

, the newly anointed Sexiest Man Alive, really heated up the set of the Aussies' new flick,

Australia

. "When [Hugh] comes on screen no one's looking at me!" says Nicole.

For his part, Hugh tells ET his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, was ambivalent about the love scenes. Hugh said she was impressed by his first on-screen kiss with Nicole: "She leaned over to me and said, 'Hugh, that was great!' "

But Deb wasn't so keen on a super-hot montage of smooching that followed. " 'All right, enough already!' " Hugh said his wife told him.

U2 singer and activist

Bono

says the new MSN.com music subscription service (Red) Wire, to be launched Monday, World AIDS Day, will raise funds for the fight against the deadly disease. The service will premiere with songs and vids from

Coldplay

,

Dixie Chicks

and

Jay-Z

.

The N.Y. Post reports that NBC's

Law & Order

is adapting the tragic death of actor

Heath Ledger

for an episode. It will star

Ryan Locke

as a model who "has a great career and gets all the ladies." One day he is found dead after a heavy night of sex and drugs.