SALON

Thursday, Dec 5, 2002 5:58 PM UTC

Said the spider to the fried

Tarantula attacks arachnid-loving Jacko (or so he says); shower play for David and Courteney Cox Arquette.Plus: Angelina Jolie in talks to play the original Deep Throat.

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Topics: Michael Jackson, Celebrity,

Michael Jackson’s old flack Michael Levine said it so well the other day when he told the Associated Press, “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, Michael Jackson finds a way — an unprecedentedly creative way — to make it worse.”

Because, I mean, really, who would have predicted that the nose-free pop star would follow up the Berlin baby-dangling incident by hobbling into a California courtroom boasting about a crippling spider bite?

“I love tarantulas,” a crutch-carrying, one-shoe-wearing Jackson, in court to defend himself against charges stemming from the cancellation of two millennium concerts, told the press, “but not the little kind.”

How bad is the bite?

“It is real bad,” he barked. “If I showed it to you, you’d be shocked. It hurts very much.”

I’m sure it’s nothing a little plastic surgery couldn’t fix.

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Why most giraffes don’t talk

“I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I’d think, no, actually I’m a giraffe.”

– Richard Gere offering up the baffling quote, to the U.K. Guardian in June, that has just earned him the 2002 Foot in Mouth award from Britain’s Plain English Campaign.

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Courtney’s double-header

David and Courteney Cox Arquette are into water sports. But the “Friends” star insists it’s all good, clean fun.

“I’m a shower person,” Cox Arquette declares in the upcoming issue of Movieline magazine.

And so, apparently, is her husband.

“We installed a big marble shower with two shower heads,” she shares. “I love taking a shower at the same time David does. We have more fun in the shower …”

But don’t get her wrong.

“I don’t mean sexually,” she hastens to add. “I’m just saying that we play there. We’ll sing and have fun.”

Why, what did you think I meant by “water sports”?

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A real wiseguy

“There are five stages to an actor’s career: There’s ‘Who is Joey Pants?’ Then ‘We want Joey Pants.’ Then ‘We want a Joey Pants type.’ Then ‘We want a young Joey Pants.’ And finally ‘What ever happened to Joey Pants?’”

– Joe “Joey Pants” Pantoliano waxing philosophical about the fickleness of fame in the upcoming issue of Maxim.

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Juicy bits

Angelina Jolie in “Deep Throat”? PeopleNews reports that the lippy actress is in early talks to play Linda Lovelace in a biopic of the late porn star turned anti-sex-industry campaigner. “It’s early days and there’s no director yet, but she’s been approached and she’s definitely interested,” a source told the entertainment Web site. Still, this is one movie that’s guaranteed to suck.

What a surprise! That $99.9 million offer on one of three of Eminem’s old houses recently put up for sale on eBay — the 5,000-square-footer with swimming pool and Jacuzzi that he moved into back in 1998 and out of in 2000 — has turned out not to be viable. The bidder “said he talked to his bank and they wouldn’t let him borrow that much,” the current owner, Darren Martens, told the Detroit News. Martens figures the next highest bid, $20 million, is probably a phony, too, but, he says, “We think we have some real bona fide offers at $2 million.” A steal!

More Amy Reiter.

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