- The not-so-long trend of celebrities wrecking properties they have rented from other rich people now has a second participant. Vastly overrated musical “icon” Prince really kicked things off by renting a home from NBA player Carlos Boozer and hitting it with a ridiculous Prince-esque paint job and makeover inside and out that included coloring most everything in sight purple, but the loathsome Courtney Love may have gone just as far overboard with a New York property she has been renting the for the last 10 months. The woman who is famous because she gravy trained the fame and career of late husband Kurt Cobain is being evicted from her home after the property's owner accused her of wrecking the house and owing over $50,000 in unpaid rent. Donna Lyon has gone to court to remove Love from the house in part because the Hole frontwoman allegedly decorated the property without Lyon’s consent and ruined its designer interior by wallpapering and painting over its walls. Toss in $50,000 worth of unpaid rent and it’s not difficult to see how any homeowner would be pissed. The case is scheduled to go before a judge in Manhattan's civil court on December 21. In her lawsuit, Lyon claimed: "[The house] was decorated by the previous owner, interior designer Steven Gambrel. One of the requirements of the lease is that nothing should be done to the interiors. Courtney has wallpapered and painted a large portion of the property without my consent. I learned about this when I wanted to sell the house and had photographs taken. They sent me the brochure and I said, 'This can't be my property.'" Wait……are we talking about the same Courtney Love? The humble, modest, bland and overly respectful one who never so much as curses, wears something garish or acts like a total scumbag? Just kidding. Lyon also said she traveled to New York to see the home and was “horrified” by what Love had done. “The walls that had been hand-painted and glazed were ruined, covered in damask wallpaper and ice-blue paint,’ she fumed. Love has already had a bad day or two in court this year, having been ordered by a judge to pay $93,000 to a jeweler after she failed to return items she borrowed for a charity event. This case seems likely to continue that trend…………
- Russian men, you voted and you have what you wanted. Specifically, you have a former skin mag skank, er, model, representing you in parliament. As one of the winners in disputed elections last week to select a new parliament for the communist nation, Maria Kozhevnikova won a parliamentary seat with Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party. Kozhevnikova, who once graced the cover of the Russian version of Playboy, was selected to represent Tomsk in the Russian Parliament. She is a former “actress” and “model” who took her clothes off for Playboy in 2009. Kozhevnikova was understandably excited about winning a seat in parliament despite no discernable qualifications for the gig. "For me this is an absolutely big event in my life," she said of winning her seat. Perhaps she was one of the beneficiaries of the rigged election process and defending Putin’s actions throughout the electoral process paid off…….but odds are it doesn’t matter to the lecherous men who voted for her because they like the idea of a porn star representing them. Kozhevnikova has continued to defend Putin as protests have raged across Russia over the election results. Spouting the party lines perfectly, she echoed the dictator’s statements that the protests were funded by Western interests. "I've seen Putin close up several times and I want to say that this man has very strong vibes," she said. "I've watched how people have changed when they got close to Putin, not because they are afraid, but because they feel a calm and strong confidence. Because of this, the West is afraid of him, and that is understandable.” He’s giving off “vibes” and intimidating the West? Someone really is drinking the Putin Kool-Aid. But Ms. Kozhevnikova wasn’t done, adding, “A 'strong Russia' cannot be controlled. Mass rallies have never solved the people's problems and answered their aspirations. The people were always just a weapon in the struggle for power." The people WERE just a weapon in the struggle for power? How about in Russia, they still are? Next time, stick to what you do best: taking your clothes off for money………….
- Kobe Bryant sounds happy as a new NBA season dawns. The Los Angeles Lakers star does not seem at all bitter about the three-team trade that was nixed by NBA commissioner David Stern last week, ultimately preventing the Lakers from acquiring Chris Paul. Stern asininely vetoed the trade because of "basketball reasons" but never explained what those reasons were. He sounded like a flustered parent telling his or her child to go to bed or stop doing something because, “I said so.” Bryant doesn’t buy Stern’s logic either and placed a chunk of the blame for the foiled trade on some of the commissioner’s cronies. "I think other owners did not want the Lakers to make significant improvements again," Bryant said after practice Thursday. "We always contended as players that the lockout was really more so about the owners fighting amongst themselves, which is what you just saw [with the vetoed trade]. You got Chris Paul coming here and the other owners weren't with that, because you don't want another great player coming to L.A., and all of the sudden Los Angeles has another player that can carry them on well after I retire. So, it's more about the owners bickering amongst themselves." Beyond those observations, Bryant stated his belief that the Lakers were "getting hammered" rules of the recently ratified collective bargaining agreement. A more punitive luxury tax system that will severely penalize the Lakers unless they cut down their $83 million payroll between now and 2013-14 could indeed make life miserable for the basketball kings of Los Angeles. In addition to Bryant, Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss reportedly remains livid about Stern's decision, even if he will never say so publicly. Stern fanned the flames on a conference call Wednesday night by claiming that the trade between the Lakers, Houston Rockets and Hornets was dead before he put the burning slug in to the back of its head. Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak backed up his star player and owner by saying that the team "did the best we can to express our displeasure" to the league. Following the failed trade, forward Lamar Odom was so upset over being included in the swap that he demanded to be moved anyhow and the Lakers panicked and shipped him to top rival Dallas for virtually nothing in return. Now the Clippers have acquired Paul, Caron Butler and Chauncey Billups this offseason to complement talented young stars like Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan and suddenly basketball in L.A. is not a Lakers-only matter. Ever the defiant competitor, Bryant insisted he likes it that way. "It's about damn time," he said. "We had one year there where they were doing something in the playoffs and we weren't [in 2006]. And now it looks like it can be something that's more consistent." Consistent and with a major edge to it……………
- Memo to all racist d-bags drifting through life and trying to foist their bass-ackwards views on the rest of the world: Know who you’re starting a fight with or you just might get knocked the heck out in a hurry. Take the story of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho resident Daren Abbey as a life lesson and allow it to guide you going forward in life. See, Abbey was at a local watering hole in Coeur d’Alene doing his skinhead, neo-Nazi thing. Being the blatant bigot he is, Abbey threatened to stab a man, Marlon L. Baker, who is black, because Baker dared to come into a bar in the United States in the 21st century and expect to be a) served and b) not hassled by someone due to the color of his skin. Baker rightly realized that this is not 1940 and that he was not going to a beer hall in pre-World War II Germany with Adolf Hitler in charge of the country. Abbey realized neither of those things and informed Baker that “blacks were not welcome in Bayview,” according to police. Baker attempted to be the bigger man and stood up to leave in order to avoid a confrontation. Had Abbey been smart (or literate) he would have allow Baker to leave without accosting him further. Being the ass-hated skinhead he is, however, he followed Baker and allegedly poked him in the chest. When Baker turned around with bad intentions, perhaps Abbey had a split second to read the words emblazoned on Baker’s t-shirt: “Spokane Boxing Club Champion.” That shirt was clearly not one Baker picked up at the local thrift store because he showed off his pugilistic skills by knocking Abbey’s sorry ass out with one punch. Abbey went down in a heap, neo-Nazi tattoos and all, and later told officials that he felt he had been “hit by a brick.” When he woke up, collected his wits and spent some quality time without local law enforcement, Abbey was charged with felony malicious harassment (Idaho’s hate-crime law) and battery. He suffered facial fractures and had to spend a night in the Kootenai County jail. He also left officers with a true race relations gem that the world would do well to abide by. He informed police that he told Baker that if he “behaved” himself around the whites everything would be “cool” and he would be allowed to stay in Bayview. He also asked officers while being arrested, “What, you’re arresting the white man?” Yeah, that’s kind of how it works when the white man commits a felony…………
- Haven’t chimps given enough to the scientific community? According to the Institute of Medicine report, headed by bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the answer to that question is yes. Emphatically. The report recommends that science halt medical experiments on chimpanzees, except perhaps for preventive vaccines for Hepatitis C and some drug therapies where there are no better alternatives. Even though chimpanzees are the closest cousins to humans in the animal world, the expert panel that wrote the report believes the time has come to ease up on chimp-centric studies. Battles between animal rights advocates and medical researchers over the 937 research chimps held at five institutions nationwide have raged for several years and Kahn’s team largely sided with the bleeding heart liberal side of the debate. The reported recommended that medical experiments on chimps should only be done to advance public health in cases where no other lab animals would be satisfactory. The report found immediate acceptance with at least one important member of the scientific and medical community. "I have decided to accept the Institute of Medicine report recommendations," National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins said following release of the report. "Effective immediately, NIH will not issue any awards for research involving chimps.” Collins’ decision will have a substantial impact, as he estimated that half of the roughly 40 currently NIH-supported research projects, studying hepatitis, malaria and other ailments, would end as a result. NIH and other institutions have relied on chimps for decades to do everything from test drugs to conduct behavioral tests. It was chimp studies that produced advances in understanding malaria and in identifying Hepatitis C, a disease that chronically infects more than 130 million people worldwide and can lead to liver cancer. The medical chimp population surged due to efforts to breed research chimps for NASA's 1960s space race and that led to a moratorium on breeding in 1995. Breeding or not, a high number of chimps remain at research facilities and now those chimps won’t have anything to do if the panel has its way. "Most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary," the 12-person panel concluded. Other than the U.S., Gabon is the only other country that permits chimp medical experiments. In other words, there isn't even a market for us to move our chimps on craigslist or eBay. They may be 99 percent similar to humans genetically, but what the heck are we supposed to do with them now? Do they have any marketable skills should they be released from captivity? Even if they cost only about $45 a day to house, they would still be a burden a faltering American economy just doesn’t need…………
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