Sideshow: What a surprise: Charlie Sheen fired

In a stunning development that will stun no one in the whole world, Charlie Sheen has been fired from CBS's cash-cow show Two and a Half Men. What - he wasn't before? No, actually, he was just suspended, after one of the most tumultuous years of any star's life . . . although, well, yes, it smelled like a firing. Now it's official. Warner sent Chas a letter yesterday telling him, and now Charlie's a true winner. The show itself was suspended for the season on Feb. 24. Warner reps say the studio has made no decision on the future of Men - only that, whatever happens, the gaunt, staring Sheen won't be part of it. Chas has been threatening to sue since his suspension. He's going to be in court a lot: He and Brooke Mueller, whom he is trying to dis-pouse of, are tussling over children Bob and Max, and whether they can visit Chas. She wants a monitor present whenever they're at the house. He doesn't want that.

Revered band The Decemberists will play Philly in the spring. Yea! In support of their new album, The King Is Dead, they'll invade the Academy of Music at 8 p.m. June 15. Opening band: Best Coast. Tickets: $40. Call 215-893-1999, go to KimmelCenter.org, or the Kimmel Center box office, open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, yo!

Yesterday, Disneykind Demi Lovato posted a special! exclusive! video on Cambio, in which she thanked her fans for supporting her through "the darkest time of my life." She pulled a minor Sheen last year, accused of assault by dancer Alex Welch while on the Jonas Brothers World Tour, and checking into rehab in November. She's out now and ready for what's next.

Know what's sweet? Nicole Kidman's 2-month-old sweetnums-bootie-bink, Margaret Faith, born by surrogate on Dec. 28. Mom was tiptoeing with babe through San Francisco International, praying for privacy . . . when Us mag took the first public snaps of the widdle num-num. The baby's middle name, Nicole says, reflects the faith she and husband Keith Urban needed during the arduous fertility quest. Margaret Faith joins Kidman/Urban child Sunday Rose, 2, and Kidman/Tom Cruise chilluns Isabella, 18, and Connor, 15.

We like Al Pacino way too much to think he's a weasely, oleaginous tax cheat. He's too cool. But now Uncle Sam is all over Al's assets. The IRS has leaned a lien on Al, claiming he stiffed the gov, meaning you and me, of $169K-plus in 2008 and another $19K-plus in 2009 (at least, he was improving!). Al's rep blames it on Al's disgraced agent, Kenneth Starr (no, not that Kenneth Starr). This Kenneth Starr was sentenced Thursday to 71/2 years in the slammer for bilking folks like Al, Martin Scorsese, and Uma Thurman of lots of dough.

Nikki and co. win big

at NAACP awards

Know who else is cool? Nikki Giovanni, the poet, that's who. Her book 100 Best African American Poems won the poetry prize at the NAACP Image Awards Friday night. Terry McMillan won for fiction with Getting to Happy. Condoleezza Rice won for youth/teen lit with Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me. TV award winners included  Sofía Vergara, Vanessa Williams, and Philly's own Terrence Howard and Jill Scott. Honored filmists included Tyler Perry, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, and Samuel L. Jackson. Recordists included Usher, Mary J. Blige, Mavis Staples, and Philly-related individuals Willow Smith, John Legend and The Roots.

As John Maynard Keynes once is said to have said, "In the long run, we're all dead." And if you're a star, you can be dead before you actually die - thanks to that latest, dumbest Internet fad, the wildfire dead-celebrity rumor. Latest faux-corpse is Adam Sandler, dead, according to a weekend whisper, of snowboarding in Switzerland. Untrue! He lives! The silly bit is that this is a recycled rumor from December. Don't matter - the Web will run with anything! Others recently rumored to have turned in their locker keys are Charlie Sheen (he's everywhere!), Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Justin Bieber, Matt Damon, Miley Cyrus, and Jeff Goldblum. All still alive and praisin' the sunlight. One guy about whom the rumors are not exaggerated: Mark Twain

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Want proof there's a recession on? OK, the Martin House in Oak Park, Ill., built by genius guy Frank Lloyd Wright, is selling for a piddly $1.38 mil (down from $1.58 mil) - seriously, an astonishingly small price for a work of art with 59 original windows! About 20 FLW houses are for sale across the country, an unprecedented number, and for really low prices. . . . Meantime, our Jennifer Aniston just put her Beverly Hills hovel on the market for $42 mils . . . whaaa? C'mon, you know you're payin' for the view. . . .

 Phil Collins, longtime Genesis front man and solo-act King of the '80s, tells FHM mag he's quitting music. . . . That semi-pirated version of the Kanye West vid for "Monster," the one with dead women tastefully surrounding Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Nicki Minaj, has been banned by MTV. It "leaked" (yeh, right) to the Web in December. But feminist groups, ticked, petitioned to get it yanked, and now they win. . . . Rubina Ali, 12, (Slumdog Millionaire) is homeless after a fire swept through Mumbai Friday. She and her family were waiting to move into a new home provided by a trust fund set up by the film's director, Danny Boyle. . . . AOL's TV Squad has created a bogus but faintly interesting list of the 100 most memorable TV female characters. Number one? You bet: Mary Richards, of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, played by Mary Tyler Moore. The next nine: (2) Laura Roslin, Battlestar Galactica (Mary McDonnell); (3) Lucy Ricardo, I Love Lucy (Lucille Ball); (4) Peggy Olson, Mad Men (Elisabeth Ross); (5) Elaine Benes, Seinfeld (Julia Louis-Dreyfus); (6) Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (Sarah Michelle Gellar); (7) Carmela Soprano, The Sopranos (Edie Falco); (8) Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell); (9) Claire Huxtable, The Cosby Show, (Phylicia Rashad); (10) Edith Bunker, All in the Family (Jean Stapleton).