By Belinda Luscombe

BYRNEING DOWN THE HOUSE

Are three heads better than none? Those who needed counseling after the demise of the nerdily cool Talking Heads, take note: the band is back, but without the talker. Five years after David Byrne unilaterally announced the breakup of the band, JERRY HARRISON, TINA WEYMOUTH and CHRIS FRANTZ have formed the Heads and recorded an album, No Talking Just Head. "We called some of our friends to ask them to sing with us," says Frantz, whose friends include Debbie Harry and Michael Hutchence. "Everyone said yes except for David."

SEEN & HEARD

Uh-oh, culture clash. Crown Prince Felipe of Spain, a mucho eligible bachelor, has been hanging out lately with an American lass, Giselle Howard--to the delight of Spanish paparazzi. One of them, Carlos Arriazu, was overeager, and is being charged with illegal wiretapping after he was caught in a sting operation while trying to tap Howard's phone. Arriazu says he didn't know wiretapping was illegal in America.

Rappers, park legally! When a policeman went to the New Jersey home of Notorious B.I.G., 1995's Billboard rap artist of the year, to tell him to move a car, the cop smelled marijuana. A raid was mounted, and police say they found, along with the weed, an illegal semiautomatic weapon and guns with defaced serial numbers. B.I.G., who has a prior conviction on drug and gun charges, isn't allowed to own guns.

NOTHING FLUFFY FOR ANNA

Oscar winner ANNA PAQUIN likes acting, but she has a tiny complaint. "Not all roles for children have definite personalities," she says. "They're just there. I've been very lucky." Having played two of the saddest girls in moviedom--The Piano's Flora and the young Jane Eyre--Paquin, 14, keeps the melancholy theme going in her next film, Fly Away Home. She plays Amy, who moves in with her estranged inventor father after her mother dies in a car crash. She has to teach wild geese she finds to fly, or a wildlife officer will clip their wings. At least she gets to cuddle something soft.

TOM DEFENDS HIS VIRILITY

Plenty of rotten things have been said about TOM CRUISE in print before, and he has mostly shrugged them off. But one of Germany's biggest magazines has pushed him too far. Cruise, who has two adopted children with wife NICOLE KIDMAN, is suing Bunte for $60 million for quoting him in a Q.-and-A. as saying that he has a "zero sperm count." According to Cruise's publicist Pat Kingsley, "Not only is it not true, but he didn't say it." Bunte, which just lost a lawsuit to Princess Caroline, has fired its deputy editor but says many magazines have made this claim before.