Now that every celebrity has become a human home page, we are assailed by their brand extension at every turn. Each time Martha Stewart announces another new deal it makes me want to slip quietly away and take a nap. In addition to pretending to no longer run her magazine, television and merchandising empire, she has now committed to a 24-hour channel with Sirius satellite radio, a daily NBC-TV cooking show and a spinoff of “The Apprentice.” Not content with this frenzy of rebirth, she has stirred up another feds flap — this one by turning up at the Time 100 Most Influential People dinner at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Time Warner Center instead of staying tucked up at home in her 450-thread-count sheets and locator bracelet.

“Secular and the City” is a weird show to be in at the moment. For those of us who came to Manhattan precisely because you’re guaranteed never to meet anyone who has read the “Left Behind” series, America’s much-celebrated spiritual revival can have its trying moments. The papal marathon of the past three weeks, though, had the paradoxical effect of making the non-born-againers among us feel a little less left out.

At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel luncheon celebrating the Matrix Awards for New York Women in Communications on Monday there was something so glorious about the confident roll of Oprah’s behind in its tight couture suit as she powered up to the podium to present an award to Amy Gross, the editor in chief of O, the Oprah Magazine. “When I interviewed Amy,” the queen of all media declared, “I knew right away she was a real woman, not an aging female.” All the estrogen in the packed room seemed to answer with a collective hot flash of recognition.

LONDON According to the Daily Mirror, when Prince Charles learned that the pope’s funeral had been scheduled for the same day as his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles, he wailed, “Why me?”