Buzz Briefs: Foxy Brown, DMX, K-Fed
Rapper Foxy Brown Wants Out Of The Slammer For Ear Treatment
Rapper Foxy Brown is asking to be released from jail so she can go to California for hearing tests and repair of an electronic ear implant.
Brown's hearing problems were revealed during a court appearance in late 2004. Her petition, filed Tuesday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, says her condition is worsening in jail and she needs to go to a Los Angeles clinic to "have her cochlear implant reprogrammed and repaired or else face imminent harm to her hearing."
Brown, 29, was sentenced in September to a year in jail for violating probation.
A judge put her on probation after she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault of two manicurists at a Manhattan nail salon in August 2004.
Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand, had two ear surgeries in New York and both failed, according to court papers
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"Ms. Marchand does not want to risk such a sensitive and complicated process to centers that have failed her in the past," the petition says.
Argument on Brown's request would likely be heard by the Manhattan criminal court judge who sentenced her. No date was immediately set.
DMX Must Pay Up For Failing To Appear In Court
Wayne responded to the comments by filing a $6 million lawsuit against Simmons in Prince George's County Circuit Court in October 2006.
Judge Thomas Smith ruled in Wayne's favor Friday when Simmons didn't appear at the scheduled court hearing. He ordered Simmons to pay Wayne $518,400 in compensation and $1 million in punitive penalties, according to Wayne's lawyer, Stephanie Moran.
"The judgment of the court speaks to the outrageousness of what Mr. Simmons said about Miss Wayne and that such false statements will not be tolerated," Moran said.
Besides his top-selling records, Simmons has acted in films including "Never Die Alone," "Romeo Must Die'' and "Cradle 2 the Grave."
K-Fed Celebrates "One Tree Hill" Debut
Surrounded by friends, bodyguards, record producers, his studio engineer Zach, K-Fed dined on take-out and pizza during a viewing of The Last King of Scotland before the 9 p.m. broadcast of the episode.
His sons Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1 were also present to see their daddy on TV -- a more positive image to see on TV lately instead of their mother, Britney Spears.
"Kevin went upstairs and brought the kids down to play beside him," the source told OK!. "He said to the kids, 'You wanna see daddy on TV?' and the kids were excited."
When his name appeared on screen, the room erupted in a loud cheer, the source added, but support soon turned into teasing as, halfway through the episode, Kevin still hadn't graced the screen as Jason, the lead singer of a rock band discovered by aspiring record label owner Peyton Sawyer (Hilarie Burton).
"They joked, 'Are you sure they didn't just use your name to boost ratings because of all the BS BS (Britney Spears b.s.) and you ain't really in it?'" the source said.
Dormitory Matron At Oprah's School Appears In Court
Tiny Virginia Makopo, 27, faces charges of indecent assault, assault and criminal injury, allegedly committed against six students ages 13 to 15 and a 23-year-old fellow dormitory matron.
Makopo appeared in court with a towel over her head. She did not speak during her brief court appearance.
Police said there were at least three serious cases of indecent assault, and that the alleged abuse took place over four months at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which opened last January.
Before the allegations, Winfrey said she told the pupils she was the "momma bear" who would protect them.
The 53-year-old talk-show host has spoken in the past of being raped by a distant cousin at 9 and then abused by three other men, trusted family friends. She has campaigned for laws in the United States to protect children from abusers.
Cambodia Holds Mia Farrow Back From Darfur-Crisis Effort
The 62-year-old actress, working with the U.S.-based Dream for Darfur advocacy group, had planned to light an Olympic-style torch Sunday at the Khmer Rouge's infamous Tuol Sleng torture house to urge China to press Sudan to end abuses in Darfur.
The group claims China, host of the 2008 Olympics, has protected Khartoum at the U.N. Security Council and sold weapons to the Sudanese government, while making Sudanese oil purchases that have helped fund genocide there.
"We will not allow them to hold the ceremony because they are not doing this for humanitarian reasons but because they have a political agenda against China," government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.
China is one of Cambodia's major trading partners and was also the biggest backer of the Khmer Rouge's communist regime in the 1970s, which led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.
Thousands of Khmer Rouge prisoners were tortured at the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh before being executed outside the capital at the site known as "the killing fields."
The event was intended to "commemorate past victims of genocide and to remind us what happens when the world looks away, as is happening in Darfur currently," Dream for Darfur said in a statement.
The torch has toured countries that have suffered genocide and has so far been lit at the Darfur-Chad border, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cambodia was to be the last stop before it heads to China.
Garth Brooks And Troy Aikman Help Kids Forget Their Illnesses
Two proven superstars, one on the music charts and the other on the football field, were no match for some young patients at Cook Children's Medical Center.
Country singer Garth Brooks and Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman on Tuesday picked up video-playing pointers from hospitalized kids in Fort Worth.
The crooner and the Dallas Cowboy-turned-television-sportscaster helped unveil an updated therapeutic playroom for patients called the Zone Playroom.
Brooks joined forces with the NHL, the NHL Players Association and the entertainer's own Teammates for Kids Foundation to donate the space. The area formerly was known as Aikman's End Zone.
"We wanted to do something for them because they spend all day in their bedrooms," Aikman said, "and we just wanted to get them out of there so they could have a little bit of fun."
Brooks, wearing a cowboy hat, at one point popped the topper on the head of Aikman, whose efforts at video air guitar still failed. Brooks, turning to card games, played Go Fish with several children.
Sean Penn Can't Take A Joke When It Comes To Venezuela's Chavez
Actor Sean Penn's days of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle may be over: The actor now calls the publication an "increasingly lamebrain paper."
Penn offered the critique in a letter published Tuesday, written in response to a tongue-in-cheek article that focused on celebrity interest in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It listed a number of potential matchups between celebrities and dictators or other authoritarian figures.
Penn objected to the characterization, saying Chavez is a democratically elected leader.
Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein took the criticism in stride, calling Penn, "a great actor and a great director."
"People get riled up about a lot of things, particularly in this day and age; they get to express themselves. We were more than happy to print his letter," Bronstein said.
A call to Penn's publicist was not immediately returned.
Penn's past writings for the paper included a five-part series in 2005 about his experiences in Iran.
Matthew McConaughey And Model Girlfriend Are Expecting A Baby
Matthew McConaughey is going to be a dad.
The actor's publicist Alan Nierob told The Associated Press Tuesday that McConaughey and his girlfriend, Brazilian model Camila Alves, are expecting a baby. Nierob said McConaughey is "excited."
McConaughey, a Texas native, has appeared in such films as "The Wedding Planner" and "Sahara" and was People magazine's "sexiest man alive" in 2005.
His latest film "Fool's Gold" is set to be released next month.
Spider-Man Will Become A Bachelor Again
It was bad enough when Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old all-American girl, announced she was pregnant.
But Spider-Man splitting with Mary Jane, his wife of more than 20 years? We didn't see that one coming.
Which is exactly the point, says Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. It was time to shake things up in the life of Peter Parker, the nerdy New Yorker who upon being bitten by a radioactive spider attained the ability to transform himself into a web-spinning world savior. And it was easier to do that, he said, if Parker wasn't married.
Still, as the writer and artist who created the story that transformed Spider-Man into Single-Man earlier this month, Quesada has made himself about as popular with some of his readers as the villainous Green Goblin.
"When we first did it, the reaction was, 'How could you do this? This is a terrible thing to do," he recalled. "But with the first issue of 'Brand New Day' (in which Spider-Man returns to single life), our letters very quickly changed to people saying, 'This is fantastic. This is the Spider-Man we remembered. We didn't know what we'd been missing."
To briefly recap Spider-Man's trials and tribulations, his beloved Aunt May was recently wounded by an assassin. To save her life he and Mary Jane struck a deal with the devil-like Mephisto in which she would be restored to good health if they allowed Mephisto to erase every memory of their time as a married couple.