Cougars want Cole Hamels on their mound

LET'S JUST START BY saying we know this is an item that's even sillier than usual, but the Phillies have been having a rough enough go of it this year that we thought they needed some good news.

Or another excuse to rib 1-8 Cole Hamels.

CougarLife.com, one of the countless Internet dating websites aimed at niche hook-ups - has named Hamels the second-most desirable baseball player in their survey of 11,000 cougars.

The bad news is that our Phillie lost out to a Met - third baseman David Wright.

Given that Hamels is married to the former Heidi Strobel (a Playboy model and "Survivor" contestant) and Wright is engaged to model Molly Beers, cougars are going to have to get their claws out to bring these cubs back to their lairs.

Rounding out the top three, Matt Kemp of the L.A. Dodgers. He once dated Rihanna.

Got to give the cougars credit for aiming high.

If the Big 10 can have 11 teams, or 13 teams or however many teams, why can't "Two and a Half Men" replace its half-man with a half-woman?

As the show enters its already shark-jumped 11th season, deadline.com reports that September will bring a new character, as yet uncast, who will play Charlie Harper's long-lost daughter.

She'll show up looking for her father, since deceased, and move in with the two bachelors played by Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, adding a new child character to a long-running sitcom used to be commonplace. "Diff'rent Strokes," "Family Ties," "Family Matters," "The Cosby Show," "Married . . . With Children" and "Growing Pains" all did it.

* Former Daily News graphic artist/cartoonist Brad Guigar (creator of the paper's comic strip "Evil Inc.") will be at Booth 257 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center this weekend as Wizard World's Philadelphia Comic Con returns.

* Horsham-based Zenescope Entertainment will be at booth 417 for the weekend, but Saturday at noon in Room 108 Zenescope will show the Philadelphia premiere of the pilot episode of "Grimm Fairy Tales Animated," based on its popular series of comics.

The screening will be hosted by Zenescope co-founders and producers Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco and director/ producer Jon Schnepp.

* P.S.: Happy 75th birthday, Superman. You're still looking good.

Must be the Pilates.

* Elvis Costello and The Roots (it's Roots Picnic Saturday at Penn's Landing) have teamed up for a new album, "Wise Up Ghost," due to drop Sept. 17.

The 12-track album will feature both new songs and songs from Costello's catalog.

For more on The Roots, see Page 37.

* Bette Midler's one-woman Broadway show, "I'll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers," has recouped its $2.4 million investment in just over eight weeks.

Written by John Logan, the play is a straightforward biography of a girl with a heavy German accent who turned herself into a mover-and-shaker in Hollywood.

Amazingly, the show didn't get a single Tony nomination, so it's all Bette pulling in audiences.

* Jon Bon Jovi and his band are waiving their performance fee for a concert in Madrid as a gesture to their Spanish fans hit hard by the country's severe economic crisis.

El Mundo newspaper and other media outlets said yesterday that tickets for the band's sold-out concert June 27 cost between approximately $23 and $50, roughly half normal prices for such concerts.

The paper's website quoted the singer as saying they initially planned not to play Spain, fearing poor demand from cash-strapped fans.

But he told El Mundo, "I didn't want to let fans down," so the band decided to drop their performance fee, meaning the ticket money will only cover the other costs of staging the concert.

* If, however, you want to attend the June 22 premiere of Johnny Depp's "The Lone Ranger," tickets will set you back $1,000 each, kemosabe.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the premiere will be held at Disney California Adventure Park, and all revenue collected from ticket sales is being donated to the American Indian College Fund, which provides scholarships to 34 different tribal colleges.

"Ranger" opens over the Fourth of July holiday weekend and costs a whopping $225 million.

For a Western.

We don't have time to do the math, but Tattle's bet would be that you could add up the budgets from every episode of the "Lone Ranger" TV show, plus every Western ever made by John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and every non-Wayne, non-Stewart Western directed by John Ford, Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway and you still wouldn't get to $225 million.

* Oprah Winfrey spoke at Harvard University's 362nd commencement on Thursday.

"You get a degree! You get a degree! You get a degree!"

- Daily News sports writer

Tom Mahon and wire services

contributed to this report.

Phone: 215-854-5678

On Twitter: @DNTattle