Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

POP/ROCK

Olympic House of Blues: The former site of Atlanta’s 93-year-old Baptist Tabernacle church is being transformed into a temporary House of Blues location for the upcoming Olympics by club founder Isaac Tigrett. The three-level, 62,000-square-foot venue, which will be open to athletes and the public alike, will feature the usual, folk-art heavy HOB decor and will include such club staples as the popular Gospel brunch. Dan Aykroyd and the Blues Brothers are scheduled to perform July 19 at the venue’s opening night. Confirmed performers during the Olympics include Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, the Mavericks, Al Green, George Clinton, and 7 Mary 3. After the Games, the site--which is within walking distance of the Olympic Village--will be returned to its original structure.

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Drugs and Music: Adversaries of explicit music lyrics called on the record industry Thursday to prove its commitment to fighting substance abuse by pledging to stop selling records that “celebrate” drug use. In a statement, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), former drug czar William Bennett and C. DeLores Tucker, chair of the National Congress of Black Women, demanded that the major record conglomerates stop selling pro-drug songs by groups including Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Cypress Hill, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. and Blues Traveler. The move comes in the wake of recent meetings organized by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to address drug problems within the music industry.

TELEVISION

More Comics on TV: Fox Children’s Network has signed a long-term production deal with Marvel Comics Group, giving Fox rights to such popular characters as Silver Surfer, Daredevil and Captain America. In addition to current Fox children’s series based on Marvel characters--including “The X-Men” and “Spider Man”--the network has committed to production orders for at least four more Marvel character-based TV series over the next seven years.

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Gay Coupling: MTV will air a same-sex edition of its dating game show “Singled Out” at 11 tonight--but the program will be preempted from the show’s earlier 7 p.m. time slot because MTV’s standards department thought the show’s content was “too mature” for early viewing hours. A spokesman said there was no specific conduct on tonight’s show that differed from the usual “Singled Out” episodes, except that contestants are being fixed up with people of the same sex. A previously aired “Singled Out” episode will run in the earlier time period.

COMEDY

Do Fries Come With That Joke?: Coming on the heels of last week’s announcement that producers Quincy Jones and David Salzman will join Laugh Factory founder Jamie Masada in launching the Laugh Factory Funhouse restaurant chain, Caroline Hirsch, founder of New York’s famed Caroline’s Comedy Club, this week announced plans to launch Comedy Nation, a competing chain of comedy theme restaurants. Hirsch aims to open her flagship restaurant, an 18,000-square-foot space in Times Square (directly above the existing Caroline’s Comedy Club), in early 1997. Plans call for additional restaurants in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Orlando, London and Toronto. Comedy Nation is being billed as a string of “highly interactive” venues that will include a bar area resembling a late-night TV talk-show stage and “living rooms” featuring furniture from the sets of sitcoms such as “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Roseanne.”

QUICK TAKES

Actor Burt Reynolds was ordered Thursday to pay off a $140,000 talent agency commission debt that piled up after the cancellation of his CBS TV series “Evening Shade,” and his acrimonious divorce from actress Loni Anderson. Reynolds was also ordered to pay interest to the William Morris Agency Inc., which sued the actor for failing to make monthly payments set up in 1995 to retire the debt. . . . Cable’s Lifetime will premiere “Traders,” a Canadian drama about a woman who takes the helm of a traditionally male-dominated investment firm that’s in trouble, on Sept. 3. . . . The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau will honor L.A. Philharmonic Managing Director Ernest Fleischmann during the group’s annual luncheon in Century City today. Fleischmann will receive the Los Amigos de Los Angeles Award “for enhancing the image of Los Angeles” by bringing both the Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl Summer Festival to international prominence during his 27-year tenure.