Off the clock with The Checkout Girl: The gossip gravy train

When you’re a pop culture junkie like me, there are droughts that feel like mashed potatoes with no gravy. However, lately fate has kept me in celebrity shenanigans like you wouldn’t believe. That’s the gravy, folks, and this Summer has already been hot and juicy.

July 12, 2010; 11:48 AM • by The Checkout Girl

When you’re a pop culture junkie like me, there are dry spells — times when you are so bored with society that you fantasize about another Braniston becoming Brangelina or Eddie Murphy being caught with a second transvestite prostitute. Those droughts feel like mashed potatoes with no gravy. In other words: gross. However, lately fate has kept me in celebrity deaths and extramarital affairs like you wouldn’t believe, and I have a hard time even choosing what to gossip about. That’s the gravy, folks, and this Summer has already been hot and juicy. This week I present to you celebrity news so titillating it just HAS to be fattening.

Lindsay Lohan had a little bit of trouble this week. The front runner for Miss Hot Mess 2010, who has had two DUIs and three trips to rehab, went to court for violating her probation by missing some court-mandated alcohol education classes and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 90 more days in rehab. This is AFTER she was fitted with that giant, alcohol-detecting ankle robot from the future, which she totally rocked with her gladiator sandals and Lindsay Lohan brand self-tanner. But she won’t need futuristicanklerobot where she’s going because it’s hard to get a good Vodka Red Bull in jail. Oh, and cocaine is practically illegal in there. I KNOW. Let’s just hope that at least one of her fellow inmates has smuggled in a hypodermic full of the good stuff. I mean fat. For her lips. Those things don’t enhance themselves, people. As a final act of rebellion, she painted “fuck u” on the nail of her middle finger for her court date. Too bad the judge had stenciled “you’re going to jail, bitch” on hers. My guess is she’s got a Freaky Friday or two in her future.

Mel Gibson is up to shenanigans again. After three decades and seven kids together, he and his wife split up last year. You’d think that a guy who’d been tied down since the late 1970’s would take a minute off from sexytime to just be alone. But this is Hollywood and if celebrities could validate themselves they wouldn’t need us or a never-ending string of romantic relationships. So, he hooked up with Oksana Grigorieva, a Russian pianist with a striking resemblance to Octomom Nadya Suleman both in facial features and fertility. She gave birth not long after his divorce was final and they broke up five months later. Ah, l’amore. So fleeting. Anyway, this week someone released audio tapes of some hate-filled rants by Mel toward Oksana. On one, he can be heard using the dreaded n-word and saying she looks like a “pig in heat”. I’m starting to think this guy doesn’t know what women want at all! Oksana says it wasn’t her that leaked the tapes. Mel says it was. Either way, what he doesn’t say is that it wasn’t him on the tapes hating on a variety of ethnic groups. Is there solace to be found in the fact that Mel seems to hate almost everybody? Hey, don’t ask me, I’m just watching the parade, not leading in it.

Jaleel White, the disappointingly UN-nerdy actor who played Steve Urkel on Family Matters, is under investigation for alleged assault on his, as they say on the coasts, “baby mama”. She says that he punched her in one of her breast implants while they were driving. He says it never happened and she is trying to “tarnish his name”. Two questions: 1) Someone had sex with Urkel? 2) Jaleel White has a name worthy of tarnishing? Domestic violence is never funny. What IS funny about this story is how TMZ was like “EXCLUSIVE” about it. Um, yeah. Legit news outlets rarely run “a child star from the 90’s punched my breast implant” stories.

LeBron James is being sued by a man claiming to be his father. The father. Is suing the son. For four million dollars. The man claims he took a paternity test and it was negative but that LeBron and his mother tampered with it because James’s story was more inspirational as a poor, fatherless kid from the projects than the son of a Princeton graduate … who earned a law degree from the University of Chicago … and then became a Senior Legal Advisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Not quite a Spike Lee joint, right?

It’s my hope that this week celebrities stay interesting and exciting, but dial it back just a teensy bit. My TMZ and Perez Hilton runneth over, and I’ve got other things that need my attention. Now, has anybody seen my kids?

The Checkout Girl can usually be found with her laptop attached to her fingertips, updating thecheckoutgirl.net or, more frequently, fuckyeahmotherhood.com. She also tweets/twits/twats as @thecheckoutgirl or @fyeahmotherhood. She loves all things dishy and is looking for a manicurist who will scrawl obscenities in her nail polish, because she’s THAT cutting edge.

July 12, 2010 11:48 AM 1