Comedian takes responsibility

Huntington, N.Y. Paula Poundstone says she can’t hide from her arrest last year on child abuse charges as she tries to resume her standup comedy career.

“I am not a victim,” Poundstone told Newsday before an appearance Friday night on Long Island. “I am absolutely responsible for what has happened in my life, and it is safe to say there has been some unfairness.”

Poundstone lost custody of her three adopted children after pleading no contest last year to a felony count of child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of infliction of injury on a child. The endangerment charge involved driving while drunk with children in her car.

The children were placed with a court-approved foster parent, a friend of the comedian’s. Poundstone, 42, sees the children daily but the visits are monitored.

Bono called ‘most powerful’

London Bono, the globe-trotting, conscience-tugging singer with the Irish rock group U2, is the most powerful man in music, according to a poll of music industry figures.

Bono, whose given name is Paul Hewson, tops a list compiled by music magazine Q.

U2, formed in Dublin more than 20 years ago, remains one of the world’s top-selling groups.

Bono, 42, also has emerged as a powerful lobbyist for causes such as relieving the debt of the world’s poorest nations.

Earlier this year, he traveled through Africa with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Time magazine profiled him under the headline “Can Bono save the world?”

The magazine will publish the full list in its November issue.

Antonio Banderas as himself

Mexico City Antonio Banderas will play the title role in the HBO Films production “And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself,” directed by Bruce Beresford.

Shooting will begin Monday in the old Mexican mining town of Guanajuato, it was announced.

The movie, also starring Alan Arkin and Jim Broadbent, is based on a real incident in which Villa, eager to raise funds during the 1910-17 Mexican revolution, sold the rights to a film about himself to the nascent American movie industry.

It follows a group of U.S. filmmakers as they shoot actual battles for the 1914 silent movie “The Life of Pancho Villa.”

Banderas, 42, has also starred in “The Mask of Zorro” and the “Spy Kids” films.

Trekkies land in Texas

El Paso, Tex. Trekkies in town for the city’s first “Star Trek” convention won’t need star charts to find the birthplace of Gene Roddenberry, creator of the sci-fi TV series.

By the time the convention begins this weekend, the central El Paso site where Roddenberry was born in 1921 will be marked with a wooden plaque at Sylvia’s Flowers.

The plaque reads: “He created a universe for his future and that universe was ‘Star Trek,’ which became a worldwide phenomenon.”

Roddenberry died at 70 in 1991.