THE LEFT LANE
Sir, schmirr

JAGGER

"It's a paltry honor," the Rolling Stones co-founder sniffed.

The singer should have held out for a lordship, Richards said. Instead, he has been thrown into "the same bin" as Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John.

Ouch.

Richards, whose fondness for hard living makes him an unlikely candidate for any royal honor, said he would never stoop to calling his sidekick Sir Mick.

"You can call him what you like," Richards said. "We have other names for him."

Local 'Survivors'

When CBS launches its fifth edition of "Survivors" at 7 p.m Sept. 19 on KGMB-TV, two of the 16 castaways will have Hawai'i ties, albeit remote.

Helen Glover, a Navy water survival instructor, was born in Honolulu but now lives in Middletown, R.I. Jed Hildebrand, a student at Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, spent several summers on Maui, working as a surfing instructor, waiter and adventure sports consultant.

Contestants will be fit to be Thai'd, spending 39 days on Koh Tarutao, an island off the coast of Thailand, in the heat of the typhoon season, trying to outdo each other in their quest to collect a cool $1 million prize.

Blog 'til you bleep

A form of Web publishing called "blogs" — slang for Web logs — took another step toward acceptance by mainstream journalism earlier this month when Salon.com, the Web magazine, opened its site to amateur authors who want to publish a "Salon Blog" for $40 a year.

Blogs are hyperlink-rich online diaries, with short entries displayed in reverse chronological order. Salon cleverly designed its blogging section to rank the authors by how many people read them.

Pro writers at several major-media sites, including MSNBC.com, Fox News, the Financial Times and Microsoft's Slate, have started blogs. But Salon.com is the first to host amateur bloggers. The site: www.salon.com/blogs/.

Springsteen on SNL

Springsteen and his E Street Band will appear on the season opener of "SNL" Oct. 5, his second visit to the show, but the first with the full E Street Band. The show has not yet named a host for the Springsteen show.