Our rough calculations bring us to Day 17 of Kiefer Sutherland's 48-day stint in the Glendale pokey—perhaps the writers strike can lend us their ring girl— and while we've already established that this would be a bleak Christmas (and birthday) for Kief, bereft of cupcakes, hearty Tannenbaum tacklings, and single malt holiday cheer, we barely knew the extent of it:
The Independent Commission into Possible Police Censorship of Certain Jew-Baiting, Sugartit-Disparaging Comments Spoken by the King of Malibu Upon His Cazardores-Fueled DWI Arrest has reached its findings, concluding there was no cover-up in the omission of Mel Gibson's now-legendary statements from the initial L.A. County Sheriff's report. Their reasoning: "Because of a concern about certain information gathered during the arrest falling prematurely into the hands of media sources and because there was no clear Departmental guidance provided on how to handle this scenario presented, supervisors made spontaneous decisions with regard to how to package the information and describe the arrest." [TMZ]
David Chase took to the stand on Tuesday to offer his defense in a lawsuit alleging that the Sopranos creator bilked Robert Baer, an early contributor to the series, out of financial compensation. David Chase has responded by calling Baer "self-delusional." Chase's lawyer has adduced evidence to corroborate the charge of mental illness: Baer liked the dream sequence episode. [AP]
Conan O'Brien's parent company NBC Universal has just been sued over a Clay Aiken gay joke. (Is specifying "gay" joke a waste of typing?) The catch: the suit hasn't been filed by Mr. Aiken. This one comes straight from bodybuilder Dennis "The Menace" James, the Idol also-ran's punchline lust-object:
In an odd bit of slimy serendipity, Eater LA just yesterday noticed a promo for new Bravo reality show The Millionaire Matchmaker featuring none other than Dolce Group co-owner and criminal complaint target Lonnie Moore, essentially turning his televised search for Miss Right into Accused Rapist Love Connection. We'll be back in two-and-two. [Eater LA]
Because nothing says Christmas like the sound of a self-inking stamper ka-chunking the word "FILED" onto a criminal complaint accusing one of L.A.'s most high-profile nightlife impresarios of rape, we bring you this disturbing story: Last August, Skye-Anne Smith was an underage patron of local professional catfighting arena Les Deux. She claims Dolce Group co-owner Lonnie Moore, partner of Big Brother All-Stars winner Mike "Boogie" Malin, plied her with drinks, then led her to what she believed was the VIP area, but was actually a dimly lit "manager's lounge" equipped with a bed:
Andre Birleanu, the angry Russian who has spent a season on VH1's America's Most Smartest Model valiantly attempting to prove that being photogenic doesn't necessarily preclude knowing stuff like the square root of nine or how to correctly use the word "preclude," is now undoing any progress made with his complaint that the higher-ups at the net are "destroying" his career. Come on, Andre, you know what photosynthesis is and you don't know that stints on third-tier reality television tend to ruin their participants? Don't they teach you that in the radioactive pro-Communism indoctrination shelter where Moscovites go to high school? We learn this stuff in eighth grade. From Page Six:
As we scrawl yet another red X on our 12 Months of Torture: An Official '24' 2007 Calendar—bringing us to Day 8 of what will eventually be 48 days behind bars for Kiefer Sutherland—we've been on the lookout for reports on how the actor is faring behind the razor-wire-enforced walls of the Glendale City Jail. One encouraging report suggests Sutherland has been deluged in fan mail in the days since beginning his sentence:
Oft-troubled mother-of-two Britney Spears, photographed yesterday wearing a pink wig on an aborted field trip back to the Hustler store (perhaps to return the fluorescent hairpiece to its rightful mannequin owner), has failed to show up to K-Fed attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan's offices today to deliver a deposition in her ongoing child custody dispute:
In a Chicago courtroom today, Shia LaBeouf has been cleared of all charges relating to an incident last month in which he was arrested for drunkenly refusing to leave a Walgreens. LaBeouf reacted to the news with a smile—a great relief to fans concerned the star of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would crack under the pressure of criminal prosecution, eventually dropping to his knees and begging the judge, "Nonononononono!" [Fox News]
The Great Paparazzi Wars continue with news that a freelance photographer, who alleges he was sucker-punched by Pierce Brosnan after snapping the actor and his son outside a Malibu restaurant in October (see before-and-after pap-pummeling photos here!), is going forward with his lawsuit against the hairy-chestiest Bond since Connery:
The Sopranos creator David Chase, who once dismissed the series's fans as an unruly mob of closure-obsessed Tony-turncoats, has made the pilgrimage back to his old stomping grounds to testify in a federal lawsuit brought against him from a former judge who claims he was never fairly compensated for helping to create the now-legendary series:
Charlize Theron is the latest victim of what the media has dubbed the Hanukkah Bandit (OK, maybe we're the only ones to dub them that), having returned from a weekend away to discover "that property was missing from her home." No word yet on what exactly was taken, but mark our words: If he dared touch the Oscar or her bronzed Aileen Wournos prosthetic mouth-mold, there will be hell to pay. Curse you, Hanukkah Bandit! [ETOnline]
As a parked RV full of vigil-standing Defamer commenters idles outside of the Glendale City Jail, Kiefer Sutherland sits in his solitary cell just a few hundred feet away, beginning Day 3 of what will eventually be 48 days in the correctional facility. His only crimes? An illegal U-turn and perhaps loving life too much. Still, a repentant and cooperative actor appears to have accepted his fate, with one jail spokesman going so far as to describe him as a "model prisoner":
Truth be told, we're a little unclear on the details of the arrangements the court has established for the care of Sean Preston and Other One Spears-Federline during their parents' ongoing custody dispute; as far as we can tell, they're primarily under K-Fed's care, with Spears' visitation rights now temporarily curtailed to a single, heavily supervised visit a week, in which the children and their favorite toys are placed inside a protective plastic bubble while a court-ordered monitor observes every interaction between troubled mother and offspring through that impermeable membrane. Whatever the specifics, today brings news that Spears' parenting time could soon take another hit pending an investigation into "multiple child abuse and neglect" allegations by the L.A. County Department Of Broken Pop Star/Background Dancer Family Services:
Some 13 months after the theatrical release of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's mockumentary about an intellectually curious Kazakh journalist's travels across the U.S. and A to engage in cultural exchanges with as many litigious Americans as possible, one might think that any of comedian's on-camera victims who hadn't already filed lawsuits had grudgingly accepted their cinematic notoriety. Amazingly, legal papers are still being filed, with the latest coming from the driving instructor tasked with teaching the foreigner how to operate a non-mule-powered vehicle:
Some developments in the Dennis Quaid twins overdose nightmare: While it seems like his newborns will be fine, the actor and his wife are suing Baxter Healthcare Corp., makers of the blood-thinning drug Heparin, in the hopes that it will force the company to stop packaging differing doses in identical vials. [THR/AP]
Alas, not every post-American Idol story ends in record deals and sellout tours—for every Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson, there is a Jessica Sierra, the husky-voiced, bad-girl contestant from the show's fourth season who's had repeated run-ins with the law since being ejected from the karaoke showcase Eden without so much as a creepy, lingering embrace and promise of, "I'll be in touch," from Clive Davis. But nothing has yet compared to Sierra's performance Saturday night, after being taken into custody outside a Tampa bar for "cocaine possession, battery, and disorderly intoxication." From The Smoking Gun:
