Of all the ways an extended family can show its love, we can't think of any quite as heartwarming as wagering hard-earned dough on one of its members. Relatives of Brit singer Joss Stone apparently feel the same way, particularly now that a fistful of bets has earned them quite a windfall. Some of the seventeen-year-old's aunts and uncles pooled their dough to lay bets that she'd have a British Number One before she was, as they say, legal. Sure enough, Mind, Body and Soul hit that peak in ol' Blighty last month, making for a very tidy return for one aunt, who bet a 100 pounds at twenty-five to one odds. If Brit bookies offered a wager on how long it'll take before Joss hooks up with Colin Farrell, we'd be plunking our pennies down right now . . .

In a move that's certain to have a ripple effect across the Borscht Belt -- not to mention the membership of the Jan Murray fan club -- Madonna has been named to the list of Most Powerful Jews in America, issued annually by the Forward newspaper. The singer, who's spoken, sung -- heck, probably even sky-written -- about her adherence to the mystical Jewish sect of Kabbalah, landed at Number Fifty-one on this year's tally, despite her press flack's insistence that "Madonna is not Jewish." The paper's editor begged to differ, saying "She's practicing the Kabbalah, so she's practicing Judaism for Christ's sake. Well, not really for Christ's sake, but she is probably the world's best-known practitioner of Judaism right now." Try telling that to Harvey Fierstein . . .

Further confirming that Ashlee Simpson is this generation's answer to the Yugo, a group in New York City has gone to great pains to determine her trade-in value, which is surprisingly generous, if you ask us. In the wake of her lip-sync debacle, a gaggle of concerned music lovers -- dubbing themselves Horrified Observers of Pedestrian Entertainment, or HOPE, for short -- has arranged for the singer's fans to get something more than just a thank-you note from the trash man for copies of her Autobiography album. All folks have to do is swing by New York City's Knitting Factory club between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. (or go to the hopeinamerica.com Web site) and they'll be able to trade the coaster for an album featuring real singing. We wouldn't mind seeing what we could get for our stash of tunes by Ashlee's big sis -- a couple bags of pork rinds seems fair to us . . .

A group calling itself Improv Everywhere has successfully put P.T. Barnum's thesis about a sucker being born every minute to the test on a group of musicians -- which would strike us as being akin to shooting fish in a barrel, were the results not so funny. The New York pranksters got it into their heads to invade a show by a totally unknown band en masse, but not to heckle or toss entrails; instead, they went to great pains to make the members of Vermont's Ghosts of Pasha believe they were superstars, complete with fans willing to learn every lyric and even get tattoos of the band's name. The whole shebang is chronicled on the www.improveverywhere.com Web site -- complete with responses from the hoodwinked combo, which go along the lines of, "We rocked the place that night and you know it." Fred Durst couldn't have said it better.