Alicia Guastaferro, an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant who was featured on ABC’s “Wife Swap” with her shallow parents, is suing the network for $100 million. In preposterous number form, that’s 100,000,000 American dollars. From the New York Daily News:

[Guastaferro] says she has panic attacks and suicidal tendencies because of her 2008 appearance, in which she memorably berated her mom and sniffed, “I do feel sorry for people that are not gorgeous people.” The suit accuses ABC and parent company Walt Disney of staging scenes to “maximize [Guastaferro's] public embarrassment.”

The show… made Guastaferro the object of ridicule among her western New York peers and forced her to transfer schools, the suit claims.

No, I think it’s safe to say Guastaferro made Guastaferro the ridicule of her peers. Keep reading for more ridiculousness, plus the jaw-dropping clip of the show that features her awful, awful family.

Read the rest of this entry »

Victor Willis, the guy who performed as the cop in the Village People, is threatening to sue Fox for insinuating that he provided the voiceover for a likeness of himself that appeared on “The Cleveland Show.” Wow, that’s incredible. Someone actually saw an episode of “The Cleveland Show.”

The episode… featured an animated version of the Village People cop parading around in shorts before “eventually jumping on the backside of a male after effeminately yelling, ‘Dog pile!’”

[His lawyer] added: “Victor is appalled by the show’s portrayal. He never wore shorts as the original Village People lead singer and cop. So how does Fox justify such an outright false portrayal, while publishing to the world that Victor Willis did the voiceover? And now it’s all over the internet, clearly suggesting to the public that the cop character portrayed in the show is Victor Willis.” [Digital Spy]

Yeah! What the hell?!? He was OBVIOUSLY the butch one!

I was going to say that this litigious nancy needs to untwist his panties, but then I actually suffered through eight and a half minutes of the episode in question to get the screen capture you see above. And dear sweet Jesus, that show makes cancer look like Dave Chappelle. I mean, “Family Guy” can be kind of harmless and watchable, but “Cleveland” is like waking up with an aborted fetus in your bed. It is AWFUL. So sue away, oversensitive gay has-been. Take ‘em for all they’re worth.

NOTE: some small liberties taken with Photoshop

Dr. Phil McGraw — the drawling provider of straight talk who achieved fame on Oprah’s show — has been slapped with a lawsuit by a woman who claims she was the victim of sexual harassment at his office in 2007. TMZ says…

According to the suit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, a woman named Shirley Dieu claims she went to Phil to seek therapy in 2007 — but instead she claims the doc tried to “brainwash” her and force her to endure all sorts of physical and emotional abuse.

In the docs, Shirley claims Phil forced her to “be in the same room with a completely naked live man while he exposed his entire naked body, genitals and all.” [a.k.a. "foreplay" - Ed.]

Shirley alleges she tried to escape the building, but “was blocked by the staff to prevent her from leaving.” In the docs, Shirley also claims Phil “touched her left breast during her therapy session.”

Of course, anyone can sue anyone for anything, so I have no idea whether these allegations are justified or completely fabricated or somewhere in between. But just look at Dr. Phil. I know it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover, but you have to admit that that looks like a book about unwanted groping.

Twenty years, forty pounds, and 500 hair plugs ago

A reality television production company is suing A&E and Steven Seagal, claiming that they first approached Seagal with the possibility of doing a reality show and that the new show “Steven Seagal: Lawman” (AKA The Greatest Show Ever Made) was their idea.

“Seagal did not agree to sign anything in writing,” reads the suit, “but said that his handshake is his bond and that ‘we have a deal.’”

Oh man, someone’s never seen Jerry Maguire.

According to the suit, the producers initially pitched ideas to cable networks titled “Steven Seagal’s Sidekick” and “Kung Pow,” both of which featured wannabe action stars competing to become the actor’s protege.

A&E was interested in working with the actor, but wanted an idea that was more based in reality rather than something so clearly contrived. Plaintiffs claimed they proposed following Seagal’s real-life work as a New Orleans deputy sheriff and that A&E loved the idea. [THR]

I don’t know about their claims.  Steven Seagal is a good man, he wouldn’t do anything dishonest or in his own best self-interest.  Like when it was Steven Seagal Day at Planet Hollywood, and the clamoring masses couldn’t get into the chain restaurant because it was snowed in.  Steven Seagal donned his Native American-themed jacket, channeled the ancient spirits of the snow plow, and cleared that walkway in no time.  And this is only tangentially related, but his spirit animal is a circus bear.

Real estate agents Scott and Melinda Tamkin (pictured) are suing “CSI” writer Sarah Goldfinger and CBS for $6 million, claiming that the hit show defamed them when an episode that aired in February featured an S&M-loving realtor couple named… Scott and Melinda Tamkin.  Uh oh.

In “Deep Fried and Minty Fresh,” an episode that aired in February, the characters in question — mysteriously deceased Melinda and her husband and suspected killer Scott — are referred to as the Tuckers. But the suit contends that the surname was Tamkin in the original script and that Tamkin was used in casting calls and in synopses of the episode later posted widely online on “spoiler” sites and other pages.

A lawyer for the Tamkins, who live in Westwood with their three children, wrote in the suit that the “eleventh hour” name change was “for all intents and purposes an admission that [Goldfinger] had stepped over the line.” The suit alleges that even after the switch, Goldfinger, who was also a producer on the episode, helped choose actors who resembled the Tamkins for the roles. [LA Times]

Wow, this is a tough one for the jury of me.  On the one hand, I can’t stand CBS and its lineup of unoriginal procedural crime dramas.  On the other, every realtor on the planet deserves death by sodomy with a halberd.  So I guess I’ll be rooting for a courtroom bombing.  Again.