Osbourne family values and other dubious matters

In troubled, uncertain times, people regularly turn to tales of hearth and home to find comfort, solace and diversion.

So it’s no wonder that in 2002, America so heartily embraced the simple life and traditional values of the Osbournes.

We saw triumph with the dinner at the White House (where President Bush singled out Ozzy for his fine example to the youth of the country, and Ozzy showed his vaunted sense of initiative by asking Glenn Close for a Percocet). We shed tears at Sharon’s colon cancer diagnosis. We saluted helmeted Jack-boy’s backyard war games (what a little patriot!). We cheered perky Kelly’s bubbly start of her own singing career (she’s the new Shirley Temple!). We learned more ways to use the term #%*@ than we had ever dreamed of.

The pop world did not lack figures doing deeds of dubious distinction this year, but none were near as deserving of Pop Eye’s annual recognition as the true First Family of Rawk.

Until Michael Jackson dangled his baby over a balcony.

Rapper bites dog

At the MTV Video Music Awards in August, Eminem was frightened not by a dog, but by a dog puppet -- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who tried to get the rapper to call off his feud with Moby. Then Eminem had the nerve to go on stage and refer to Moby as a “little girl” before stating that he would “hit a man with glasses.”

In space no one can hear you lip-sync

That’s just one of the wonderful headlines left unfulfilled when ‘N Sync’s Lance Bass’ bid to be launched into orbit was canceled by the Russian Space Agency after the singer didn’t come up with the $20-million fee.

Michael Jackson’s baby almost took flight, too.

Leave it to the Nuge

When Bass was left at the launching pad, so to speak, Ted Nugent proposed an alternate, and cheaper, adventure for the pop star. For just $1 million, the Motor City Madman offered to take Bass on a bow-hunting trek.

“Bass needs to quit worrying about going into outer space and embrace and celebrate life by learning how to kill his own food,” said Nugent, who coincidentally was promoting a new cookbook (“Kill It & Grill It”) and album.

“A slab of flesh on the back of a deer is the finest source of protein on the planet.”

Home sweet home

For less than $30, you can read Kurt Cobain’s private journals, published amid some controversy this fall.

But for just $95,000 you could have read the journals in Cobain’s childhood home in Montesano, Wash. That was the price the owners settled on after failing to stir up satisfactory bids in an EBay auction that set a starting price at $200,000, although there were several prank bids for tens of millions.

Then there was Eminem’s childhood home, put up for similar auction with a starting bid of $120,000. The price escalated to $12 million, but after phony bids were weeded out, the price plummeted to $75,000.

Wonder if either house has a good baby-dangling balcony.

Will the real Bill

Wyman ...

Bill Wyman got a letter from Bill Wyman’s lawyers in November asking him to stop using the name. To clarify, Wyman, a longtime music journalist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was sent a cease-and-desist letter by attorneys for Wyman, the former Rolling Stones bassist, threatening legal action and stating that the former’s use of the latter’s name was seriously misleading and unauthorized.

The solution, the lawyers proposed, was that Wyman the writer use a disclaimer with his byline to make it clear that he was not the longtime musical partner of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Wyman the writer wrote a satirical essay in which he mused that he might change his byline to “Not That” Bill Wyman. Of course, he also noted that “That” Bill Wyman was actually born William George Perks and didn’t change his name until 1964, three years after Wyman the writer was born.

Speaking of names, it was Prince Michael II that Michael Jackson dangled, not Prince Michael I, right?

Facing the music

The music business got tough in its fight against unauthorized downloading and copying of recordings this year, with lawsuits, attempts to classify downloaders as criminals and a “just say no”-style media campaign. But satiric publication the Onion suggested another culprit: radio.

Spoofing the music business’ campaign against Internet sites that allow people to trade music files for free, the Onion had record industry representatives shocked to learn that radio stations all over the country allow people to hear music for free.

Said one at a press conference, “What’s the point of putting out a new Ja Rule or Sum 41 album if people can just call up and hear any song off the album that they want?”

It’s the devil you know

You know you’re in trouble when you make charges of racism only to have them disavowed by Al Sharpton. That’s what happened after Michael Jackson, miffed by his record label’s failure to make “Invincible” another “Thriller,” leveled such an attack at Sony Music Chairman Thomas D. Mottola at a New York rally with Sharpton in July.

Jackson also referred to Mottola as “very, very, very devilish.”

Other devilish racists: the photographer who snapped shots of Jackson’s patchwork face on the stand in court (Jackson was being sued by a promoter), the spider that bit Jackson’s foot, preventing him from testifying one day, and the architect who designed the balcony from which he dangled his baby.