Midnight tokers

The terrifying clown pictured at left is actually Heath Ledger, if you can believe it. Don't get all excited like I did and assume Heath is taking the stage as "The Emcee" in Cabaret (which, oh my god, I can't even think about)—he's actually made up as the Joker for the currently-in-production Batman movie, also starring Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. If you put aside the Gacy-ness of the look, it's pretty hella cool.

Per usual practice, my train of thought upon viewing this pic chugged faster and faster before dramatically derailing and killing all coherant notions innocently standing in its' homocidal path. "Hey, the Joker," I thought. "That totally reminds me of the Steve Miller Band!" Then, I had a sudden urge to Photoshop a speech balloon next to Heath containing the words, "I'm a lover and I'm a sinner, but I sure don't wanna hurt no one!" Once again, I've turned a perfectly logical discussion about an upcoming movie into a reference to cheeseball classic rock that no one except me would find amusing. Why stop there? I'm already thinking about midnight tokers, so I may as well post a few stories on some jokers who have hit the news in the last week for some general snark. Sorry about that. But, you know, what the hell. No one's calling me Space Cowboy, the Gangster of Love or Maurice, so why not see how far I can run this lame-ass joke into the ground, shall we?

• People talk about me, baby/Say I'm doin' you wrong
History's grossest sex tape purveyor and all-around douchaholic Scott Stapp was arrested this weekend for throwing a bottle of Orangina at his wife's head. The bottle missed, which means I owe her a bonk on the noggin simply for marrying a prick of such astounding proportions. And is it wrong that I was disappointed that it was a bottle of pop? I was hoping it was a Blatz 40, which would have been way funnier. The other horrifying footnote to come out of this tale is the news that Stapp and the missus live in a $5 million mansion in Boca. That's it: I'm taking a nap on the train tracks.

• Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey all the time
Am I the only asshole watching
Celebrity Fit Club? If so, I'd like to know what's up with Dustin Diamond. Remember the episode of Saved By The Bell where Jessie got hooked on speed for a half hour and danced around the room screaming "I'm so excited!! I'm...so...SCARED!"? Well, I'm scared and not excited about Screech's alleged career in the porn industry, where he is attemping to profit from a sex tape of his that was leaked to the 'net, as well as market a line of adult toys. Even as I type this, I can feel the bile rising in my throat. You may remember that I rarely turn down an opportunity to view and assess celebrity sex tapes, but this is the second one that I wouldn't watch for a million bucks. I'd rather watch green Paris again than this.

Speaking of which, this raises an interesting, albeit stomach-churning, question. Say you have some vital information that could bring down the church of Scientology, and the Sea Org caught you and is now torturing you as a means to confess your betrayal. You've already had sharp sticks driven under your fingernails, your teeth yanked out and your toes chopped off. As one last means to make you crack, they decide to force you to watch a celebrity sex tape. Now which one would do it: Screech or Stapp? I have no clue how to answer this myself and am tempted to simply choose suicide as an option. We should all carry around an emergency cyanide tablet to eat in case such an instance should arise. It's always best to be prepared.

• Really love your peaches/want to shake your tree
Pretend for a moment that Britney's boy toy of the hour is singing that lyric to her, because it seems like she would go out with someone who would. And pretend this is the face she makes upon hearing this romantic gesture from her latest honey.
Aww, ain't that cute? Actually, no, it's totally not. And since this was taken of Sarah, Clean-and-Sober while she was whooping it up in Miami over the weekend, it seems that she's still shaking her peaches in a lot of trees. Plus, what is up with that budget weave she's sporting? It looks like she cut off Trigger's tail and Fun Tak-ed it to her bald head. Janis from the Muppets' hair looks more realistic than this polyester mop. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Sixteen Candles when the popular bitch gets drunk and gets her hair caught in a door and then Jami Gertz cuts it off with scissors and when she holds it up later, it's like five shades darker than the hair that's left on her head and you can totally tell it's fake. Remember that?

Anyway, while Bargain Weave '07 is funny in itself, the best Shitney story of the week is that during her 12-minutes-of-meh "mini-concert" in Orlando, her stupid CD skipped and left our little lip-syncing tartlet blinking vacantly and unable to summon the hamster in the wheel that powers her pea brain to spring into action and cook up a fast fix. A reader from the delicious gossip site Dlisted saw the whole sordid scene go down:

Tonight's show in Orlando at the House of Blues during "Do Somethin'" Britney's track starting SKIPPING and then the vocals went out. Bitch looked like a deer caught in headlights—looked frantically around to the backstage wings, then turned her back to the audience and kept dancing. I was totals hoping for a wig slip, but OMG wha a M.E.S.S.

There's actually a clip of this floating around YouTube, but sadly it's not close enough for us to see her panic-striken terror, and instead of racing off the stage like Milli Vanilli or breaking into a bizarre jig like Ashlee Simpleton, she simply does what she usually does when trying to distract people from her latest failure: turns around and shakes her ass a little bit. Of course, this drives the stupid crowd into a frenzy. These people should be ashamed of themselves. Who in the world would pay any amount of hard-earned money (let alone hundreds) to see this dumbass lip-sync for less than 15 minutes. Shameful. Let's hope this wonderfully snarky correspondent from Dlisted managed to wedge herself into a pack of skanks and sneak in without paying a dime.

Time to get some lovin' on the run, peeps...