Sideshow: The Boss on the couch

What great American artist other than Woody Allen has been in therapy for 30 years? Try Bruce Springsteen, 62, who reveals his psychic scars in  the New Yorker. "My issues weren't as obvious as drugs. They were quieter, [but] just as problematic," the Boss says. (Pal Dave Marsh says the rocker "was feeling suicidal" at one point.) The Boss says what he felt was an inner tension that defines artists. "With all artists, because of the undertow of history and self-loathing, there is a tremendous push toward self-obliteration . . . onstage," he says. "It's both things: there's a tremendous finding of the self while also an abandonment of the self at the same time."

Yet that conflict imbues art with a salutary power. "We hope to send [the audience] out . . . with a slightly more enhanced sense of what their options might be, emotionally, maybe communally," says the Boss. "You empower them a little bit, they empower you. It's all a battle against the futility and the existential loneliness!"

American Idol, limp, lame, and gasping for air since it lost every one of its big-name judges, has, as expected, hired Mariah Carey, 42, to sit at the once-vaunted judges' table - for a reported annual payday of $12 mil to $17 mil, says Entertainment Weekly. (Husband Nick Cannon recently said in jest that she should get twice Jennifer Lopez's reported $12 mil salary.)

Mariah is sooo excited. "It's gonna be so much fun working on @AmericanIdol," she tweeted Monday.

Speaking of the Boss, bandmate Steven Van Zandt has apologized for dissing the police after they cut short (after three hours) a Springsteen show earlier this month at London's Hyde Park to comply with a noise curfew. "When did England become a police state?" Little Steven tweeted after the show.

"I want to officially apologize for blaming" the police, he writes for the Huffington Post. But, he adds, officials need to stop carrying out rules "rigidly and mindlessly regardless of the circumstance."

We don't claim to understand what has been happening with materfamilias Katherine Jackson, 82, mother of deceased pop king Michael Jackson and custodian of his children. But we are glad she's OK.

A day after her nephew Trent and granddaughter Paris reported she was missing from her L.A. home, KJ was discovered by authorities to be fine and dandy and staying with family in Arizona.

KJ is the legal guardian of MJ's kids, Paris, Prince Michael, and Blanket Jackson. It's not clear who took care of them when she went on her road trip.

What a lovely anniversary, at the perfect time to celebrate. This summer is the 50th anniversary of "Garota de Ipanema," or "Girl From Ipanema," written by bossa nova boss Antônio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinícius de Moraes. Penned in '62, It became a breakout hit two years later when the winsome, wistful Astrud Gilberto recorded her big-hearted version with Stan Getz on sax .

Most summery of summer songs, it's said to be, after "Yesterday" by the Beatles, the second-most recorded tune in the history of the world.

The titular Girl then was 17-year-old Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto. She's now a successful businesswoman and, at 67, she still models. When she passes, each one she passes goes, "Ah!"

Thank goodness for Forbes, which has answered that burning question: How much do celeb chefs make? The mag has 'em ranked in a nifty Top 10 list ranked by how much they made over the last 12 months. Loudmouth Gordon Ramsay leads with $38 mil. The rest of the top five: perky, feisty Rachael Ray ($25 mil), puckish Wolfgang Puck ($20 mil), Paula Deen ($17 mil), and "SideShow" fave Mario Batali ($13 mil      ).

Madonna, 53, ignored police warnings and waved fake machine guns and pistols on stage during her Saturday show in Scotland (where such antics are banned). . . . Todd Harrell, bassist for 3 Doors Down, was slapped with a DUI in Mississippi . . . . Oooo, tumbuddy taw Ashton Kutcher kissin' with big-eyed Mila Kunis. A lot. They were hangin' out at the L.A. "wrap party" for his new film, Jobs .      A couple? Hmmmm.

USA Network's popular George Eliot-inspired WWE series Monday Night Raw celebrated its 1,000th episode.

The multitalented Mindy Kaling will create and write a new Fox sitcom, The Mindy Project, this fall. It'll feature the actor (The Office) and author (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns) as an obstetrician with a miserable love life.

Minka Kelly, 32, may have been only 17 years old when she starred in a sex tape now being shopped around to all the fine porn distributors. TMZ says there's word it was shot just before Kelly's 18th birthday in 1998.

Bad news for Kardashian Kabal fans: Kabal youngsters Kylie and Kendall Jenner tell HollyScoop.com they are not making a Keeping Up With the Kardashians spin-off reality show as rumored.

E! says Katie Holmes is returning to Broadway to star in Dead Accounts this fall at the Music Box Theatre. It's by Pulitzer finalist Theresa Rebeck; her play Seminar, starring first Alan Rickman and then the hilarious Jeff Goldblum, was a hoot this year.

Katie was last on Broadway in 2008, earning good reviews for her work in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. She's also filmed an episode of Project Runway: All Stars and is working on a film titled Molly.

Mel Gibson's stepmother, Teddy Joye Hicks Gibson, charges in divorce papers that because Mel persuaded his dad, Hutton Gibson, to dump her, the actor should pay her legal bills, estimated at $65,000. TMZ says Teddy also claims Mel is trying to force her to move out of the marital home and she seeks a ruling to block him.