Oh, craps ...

Looks can't save Clooney and Damon in Vegas; McKellen admits to humanitarian motel vandalism; Samuel Jackson discusses the contents of his kilt.

Published December 4, 2001 5:22PM (EST)

Now that his buddy Ben Affleck is all cleaned up and presentable, it looks like Matt Damon has found a new high-stakes partner to hit the tables with: George Clooney.

And the ex-"ER" star is apparently a much bigger loser than you might expect.

"George ... lost all his money and all of Matt Damon's money," Julia Roberts tells the Toronto Sun of her "Ocean's Eleven" costars' misadventures at the Vegas blackjack tables.

"I ran out of my line of credit and I just walked in and lost everything in seconds," Clooney admits. "And Matt says, 'This is ridiculous,' and starts putting money down."

"Twenty-five hands in a row," Damon marvels. "The odds were mind-boggling."

In fact, Clooney confesses, his bad-luck jag "brought the level of the table down."

Says Damon, "There were professional gamblers in the place who were pulling back their chips until Clooney left."

None of them, I imagine, were women.

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Puddy's latex lament

"Looks good, pro; uncomfortable, con."

-- "Seinfeld" alumnus Patrick Warburton ticking off the pros and cons of parading around in a blue latex bodysuit on his new show, "The Tick," to the Associated Press.

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Ian the ripper

The next time you're hanging out in a hotel room killing time before you drift off to sleep, open the room's complimentary Bible and see if there's something missing.

If you find just a frayed stump where Leviticus 18:22 used to be, Ian McKellen may well have laid his head on your overstuffed pillow before you.

"Whenever I stay in a hotel I always check to see if they have a Gideon Bible, and if they do I tear out a page," the veteran actor told New York gossipist Baird Jones at the premiere party for the film "Iris," which stars both Kate Winslet and Judy Dench as the late writer Iris Murdoch. "I turn to Leviticus 18:22 and rip out that page which is directed against homosexuals; it is one of the Leviticus Laws. I don't know if anyone ever even notices, but I really take exception to that section and I think by now I must have ripped out a few hundred pages."

Vandalism-shmandalism, the way McKellen sees it, he's doing it for the good of humanity.

"Who knows? There might be someone who has insomnia who stays awake all night who reads the Bible because they have nothing else to do and who might be especially vulnerable to what I really think is Leviticus' pornography," he says, "so I just remove it."

But it's not a totally selfless act. "Helps me to get to sleep better," he says. "I'll say that much."

I mean, what are they gonna do, throw the Good Book at him?

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The perfect uncouple

"My relationship with Kate is perfect now."

-- Kate Winslet's husband, Jim Threapleton, on how things are now that he and his wife have decided to divorce, in the London Mail.

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Kilt with kindness

Samuel L. Jackson isn't skirting the issue of how it felt to wear a kilt in his latest flick, "The 51st State," which is being released this week in the U.K.

"From the moment I put the kilt on I felt very comfortable in it, " Jackson tells Ananova.com. "I was very confident. I had this full-length mirror in the hall, so I would walk down the hall and as I walked I could feel the kilt sway and feel the pleats brush against my thigh and it was kind of wonderful."

Of course, the pleats might not have been the only thing brushing against the actor's thigh.

"There were days when I had to go up on a ladder and they didn't want to pay for extra digital erasing, so I had to wear underwear, but most days," he says, "I went" without.

Shaft ... unbound.

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By Amy Reiter

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Celebrity George Clooney