Naboo-boo

TUBE TALK Oh, my God! They killed Kenny! And they killed him once and for all. After suffering various horrible deaths in 80 ''South Park'' episodes, Kenny died one last time in the Dec. 5, episode, and this time, as he wasted away from a muscular disease, the other characters were actually moved. ''It was the one episode where [all the characters] cared [he was dying] for once,'' series co-creator Matt Stone told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. ''After that, we said, 'Why doesn't he just stay dead?' And it was like, 'Okay, let's just do that.' It was that easy of a decision.'' He added, ''I think a lot of people probably haven't noticed. I couldn't care less. I am so sick of that character.'' Stone and co-creator Trey Parker apparently felt they had reached a dead end with the mute, accident-prone Kenny. He's already been replaced, in both the opening credits and as a new target for abuse, by towhead schoolmate Butters. That could change, too; Wednesdays episode features the gang firing Butters as their ''replacement friend'' and holding auditions for a new pal....

With Oprah Winfrey leaving the book-promoting business, NBC's ''Today'' plans to fill the book-club vacuum. Starting in June, best-selling writers will pick the newcomers and announce their selections on the air, and a month later, as on ''Oprah,'' the books will be discussed and their authors interviewed. Unlike ''Oprah,'' ''Today'' will feature non-fiction as well as fiction and will focus strictly on up-and-coming writers. That should ensure a supply of writers who are all eager and grateful for the exposure and keep out the snooty Jonathan Franzen types....

After just two weeks, ABC has benched ''The Court,'' and CBS has grounded ''AFP: American Fighter Pilot.'' ABC will replace the low-rated Sally Field show with another legal drama, Kim Delaney's ''Philly,'' while CBS will fill the ''AFP'' slot with ''JAG,'' ''CSI,'' and whatever other acronym shows it can drum up....

The game is over for sports cable network CNN/SI. The AOL Time Warner-owned channel will shut down May 15, to be replaced by the yet-unnamed basketball channel, which AOL Time Warner owns but which will be managed and programmed by the NBA.

TROPHY TIME Among yesterday's winners was Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer for drama. She got the award for her play ''Topdog/Underdog,'' which just opened on Broadway to rave reviews in a production that stars Jeffrey Wright (''Shaft'') and rapper-actor Mos Def. Other winners include novelist Richard Russo for ''Empire Falls'' (beating Jonathan Franzen's ''The Corrections''), biographer David McCullough's ''John Adams'' (he won a few years ago for another best-selling presidential bio, ''Truman''), historian Louis Menand's ''The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America,'' poet Carl Dennis' ''Practical Gods,'' non-fiction writer Diane McWhorter's "," and composer Henry Brant's ''Ice Field.''

PASSING NOTES John Agar, a star in many westerns and war movies in the 1940s and '50s who ultimately became a sci-fi cult favorite, died at 81 on Sunday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif. An Air Force sergeant and physical trainer who didn't enter show business until he met and married Shirley Temple in 1945 (he was 24, she was 16; their union lasted only four years), Agar befriended John Wayne and appeared with him in several movies, including ''Fort Apache,'' ''Sands of Iwo Jima,'' ''The Undefeated,'' ''Chisum,'' and ''Big Jake.'' After alcoholism derailed his mainstream Hollywood career, he appeared in ''Mystery Science Theater 3000''-worthy fare like ''The Mole People'' and ''The Brain from Planet Arous,'' the 1957 cult favorite that made him a monster movie immortal, a staple ever after at sci-fi conventions and in casts of movies like the 1976 remake of ''King Kong'' and Clive Barker's ''Nightbreed'' (1990).

Maria Felix, the queen of Mexican cinema, died of heart failure at her Mexico City home on Monday, her 88th birthday. A femme fatale in Mexican movies from the 1940s through the '70s, she was renowned throughout Latin America for her Marilyn Monroe-like glamour but was all-but-unknown to English-speaking audiences, as she never worked in Hollywood. Ironically, her best-known film internationally (and one of which she was proudest) was the French-language ''French Cancan,'' in which she starred for director Jean Renoir in 1955.