ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ROUNDUP

THE FIVE-O LETS HOUSTON GO
Whitney Houston has adhered to all of the court-ordered requirements after pleading no contest in November to marijuana possession charges in Hawaii, and prosecutors said Wednesday (3/7) her case has been dismissed. Houston copped a plea in Kona District Court following her near-bust by Hawaiian airport security, which allegedly found half an ounce of pot in her carry-on bag. Houston, nonetheless, left the state before she could be arrested. To remove the misdemeanor from her record, Houston was ordered to pay several fines, donate money to an anti-drug group and submit to a substance-abuse assessment. Instead, sources said Houston offered up her husband, Bobby Brown. "Bobby really hasn't done much of anything career-wise in the past seven years," she was overheard saying. "Jail time might be just the boost he needs."

AND HE'S NOT JOKING…
Howard Stern is seeking a replacement for Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling, the longtime comedy writer and sidekick who walked off Stern's show this week after contract re-negotiations broke down, The New York Post reports. "I told him I hope he gets all the money he wants somewhere else, but I don't know that he can," Stern told his listeners Wednesday (3/7). "He goes, ‘I didn't want to involve you in the negotiations,'" Stern said. "I go, ‘What negotiations? You work with me 15 years and you don't pick up the phone to say goodbye and tell me what's on your mind?" By all accounts, Stern was truly pissed. When a caller asked if the door would be open for Martling to return [as he did after a six-week "strike" three years ago], Stern was emphatic. "No!" he said. "We're done with each other." Observers liken Martling's departure to such remorseful ego-driven moves as David Lee Roth's exit from Van Halen and McLean Stevenson's departure from "M*A*S*H."

HE THINKS HE'S ON "OZ"
Jailed rapper DMX was accused of assaulting two officers after learning bad behavior would extend his stay behind bars for several more days. DMX (Earl Simmons) was scheduled to be released from the Erie County Correctional Facility Tuesday (3/6) after serving 10 days of a 15-day sentence for driving without a license. But a prison committee revoked DMX's "good time" credit, resulting in his release being postponed until Friday (3/9). Prison superintendent H. McCarthy Gipson said Simmons had been written up for disciplinary problems four times since entering the facility. "Only four write-ups in 10 days?" asked fellow rapper/inmate Ol' Dirty Bastard. "That's child's play...I got six in one day!"

WELL, WE ALL KNEW THAT HE LOVED KIDS
Michael Jackson made a tearful appeal to introduce a children's bill of rights that would ensure that parents read bedtime stories to their sons and daughters and make them feel loved. In a lecture Tuesday at Oxford University in London, a weeping Jackson urged children to forgive their parents as he spoke of the difficulty of growing up under the spotlight of stardom. "My father is a tough man, and he pushed my brothers and me hard, from the earliest age, to be the best performers we could be," said the 42-year-old man-child from the antiseptic safety of a pure oxygen bubble. "I wanted more than anything else to be a typical little boy. I wanted to build tree houses, have water balloon fights and play hide and seek with my friends. But fate had it otherwise… Now that I am enormously wealthy and so far from typical, I can revisit the time that I lost as a youth. Any other young boys out there interested in rediscovering childhood fantasies are free to visit me at the Neverland Ranch."

AND THEY CALLED IT THE "PUPPY LOVE" TOUR
After a five-year run as the lead in "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," Donny Osmond is preparing to launch a solo tour that will showcase Broadway tunes, according to a Pollstar report. The theater trek begins May 12 in Detroit and will hit 21 U.S. cities. "This is about me and my love for show tunes," he said. "I've been carrying my sister Marie for way too long, and I now need to venture out on my own." After gratuitously mentioning his sister and show tunes in the same breath, Osmond encouraged people not to jump to any conclusions about his sexuality.

ROSENBERG UPPED TO KOCH PRESIDENCY
Michael Rosenberg has been promoted to President of Koch International. He will report to CEO Michael Koch, who gave up the President part of his title for Rosenberg, who joined the company in 1987, and was most recently Senior VP. HITS' resident rabbi Roy Trakin applauds the news of Rosenberg's uppance. "It's nice to see that Jews in the music industry continue to rise to the top," he said. "Which reminds me, why am I still working here? Hey, pass the hamentashen!"

BURNS DOESN'T FIDDLE
"Ken Burns Jazz," the five-CD companion to the PBS documentary of the same name, has been certified Platinum by the RIAA, meaning it has shipped 200,000 individual copies, the first time in history a jazz boxed set has reached that milestone. The set was a joint project of Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings, who had domestic rights, and The Verve Music Group, which distributed the set internationally. The announcement was met by protest by members of the "Spike Jones Appreciation Society," which claimed its namesake was under-represented on both the box set and the TV show. Said Wynton Marsalis: "What does Spike Jones have to do with jazz? Didn't he direct ‘Being John Malkovich'?"

NAME THAT COLUMN ITEM
VH1 is launching a new game show series, "Name That Video," based on the old "Name That Tune" quiz program. The show premieres this Monday (3/12) at 11p.m. ET/PT, with a repeat at 7:30p.m., and will run daily. The show incorporates state-of-the-art video and graphics technology for its categories, such as Tainted Tunes, Finish the Phrase and Bid-A-Vid, and is hosted by former MTV, TBS and FX Cable host Karyn Bryant. Can you name that video in three blinks of an eye?