A Jedi Knight's Tale

HEALTH WATCH Turns out Lance Bass' heart was out of sync. Us Weekly reports that the 23-year-old 'N Sync singer had an irregular heartbeat corrected three weeks ago via surgery. His spokesperson has called the procedure ''minor'' and said it was done on an outpatient basis. Bass had the defect corrected to improve his chances of being picked for a seat on the Russian space shuttle. He's gone to Moscow for medical tests and has been vying for a spot against some foreign tycoons. In recent weeks, Michael Jackson and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler have also expressed a desire to be launched into orbit, making the space race suddenly very crowded.

TUBE TALK On Friday morning, Bryant Gumbel said goodbye to his hosting job on CBS' ''The Early Show'' -- and to two decades as a morning news icon -- by toasting himself with a glass of red wine. His departure was almost without fanfare, his tenure ending with a cooking segment in which he got to sample braised ribs, mustard glazed salmon, and wild mushroom duck risotto. ''This is not right, it's not really a job,'' he said. ''It's a privilege more than anything else.'' CBS has yet to name a replacement for him (its top candidates, CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz and Meredith Vieira of ABC's ''The View,'' have already turned down the job), but frequent guest host Tom Bergeron will be filling in during the interim.

Gumbel gives a farewell interview tonight, not to his own network, but to ABC's Barbara Walters on ''20/20.'' He discusses the impact his divorce last year may have had on the struggling ''Early Show'''s ratings (''I'm sure for some women it was a very big deal,'' he says. ''But there was no way I could change that.''), his chilly relationship with former ''Today'' colleague Katie Couric (''What sometimes she thought was funny I would think was not; what I thought was funny, she thought was juvenile. We got along for television purposes and off the air we got along, but we weren't particularly close.''), and the difficult hours he worked during nearly 20 years of morning TV. Noting Couric's on-air complaint about her ''brutal'' hours shortly after she signed a $65 million contract last winter, he says, ''I kind of promised myself that if you're going to get up and do it, don't complain about the hours. There are an awful lot of people in this world who get up very early for an awful lot less [money]... and the last thing they need is to hear Bryant Gumbel griping about his hours.'' Still, he tells Walters, ''You'll never see me working five days a week again. I'm still going to continue to do television [he still hosts the monthly ''Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel'' on HBO]. I'm just not going to do morning television.''