The Fix

Barry Manilow breaks his beak, Geraldo breaks the rules, and Princess Stephanie bonks the gardener. Plus: David Beckham takes off his pants!

Published June 4, 2003 12:52PM (EDT)

The ever delightful and always objective Geraldo Rivera told the "Live With Regis and Kelly" TV audience yesterday that "the war with Iraq was totally justified" and that, even though WMDs weren't found, "what the United States did was strike a blow for humanity. We did a great thing." Guess that's how you get hired at Fox News. (N.Y. Daily News)

Poor Barry Manilow had an accident tailor-made for the joke writers. Seems he woke up in the middle of the night at his Palm Springs home and walked into a wall, knocking himself out for four hours and breaking that famous nose of his. Since he's laughing at himself, it must be OK for the public to chuckle a bit, too: "I may have to have my nose fixed," the singer said, "and with this nose, it's going to require major surgery." Let's just hope Barry doesn't go to the same plastic surgeon who worked on Michael Jackson. (Desert Sun)

A TV Movie of the Week should be made about Monaco's Princess Stephanie, who reportedly got in hot water with her dad after he found out she had flings with not only the butler but also the gardener. This has led to a hilarious new syndrome people are calling LARS (Lady Chatterley Acute Rogering Syndrome) or AOWSTH (An Obsession With Shagging the Help). And Steph has been suffering from this decadent disease for years, starting in the mid-'90s when she hung out with a bodyguard, then moved to a ski instructor, and eventually found romance with a circus elepant trainer. Gotta love those royals. (N.Y. Observer)

Gotta love those other royals, David and (Posh Spice) Victoria Beckham, who are touring the United States in an attempt to be as hugely glam across the pond as they are in the U.K. They shot a Vogue cover with hot photogger Mario Testino and caused commotion at supermodel Naomi Campbell's recent wedding. Seems the bride asked her guests to wear white, which was probably lovely, but David spilled red wine on his trousers and decided to take them off and continue partying. Victoria took one look at the ladies looking at her hubby's lingerie and quickly made a sarong for him out of a tablecloth. And that's how new fashion trends begin, folks. (Liz Smith)

Organizers of New York's Tribeca Film Festival have gotten cutely creative. They're going around the city putting up plaques where movie scenes have been filmed, under their "Set in New York" program. One of the first ones to go up? A marker at Katz's Delicatessen, where the famous fake-orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally" was shot. Here's a challenge for those guys: I want to know where they shot the Luca Brasi murder scene in "The Godfather." (ABC News)

-- Karen Croft

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Sen. Hillary Clinton's memoir, "Living History," isn't out until Monday, but a few choice quotes have started to seep out. The former first lady says her husband didn't tell of his affair with Monica Lewinsky until two days before he had to admit to "inappropriate intimacy" before a grand jury. And when he did, Clinton says, "I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?'" "I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged that I'd believed him at all," she writes, adding that she wanted to "wring Bill's neck." And yes, they slept in separate bedrooms for a while.

So what does that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, have to say about all this? "Monica isn't really thinking about this book," a source close to her tells the New York Daily News. "She's moved on with her life and is trying to do other things."

Speaking of shocking revelations, Bruce Willis will get nekkid and strut his stuff in "The Whole Ten Yards," the sequel to -- could you have guessed? -- "The Whole Nine Yards." Willis says the film-going public will discover that he has a "nice keister." (Access Hollywood via the Associated Press)

What you see is what you get? Most students at Rutgers University in New Jersey are too young to remember Flip Wilson in his sassy, Geraldine-dressin' prime, but they now have a reason to go back and study up on the late comedian. The university is unveiling the Flip Wilson Journalism Scholarship, a grant for African-American j-school students funded by Wilson's estate. To compete for the $23,500 annual endowment, students must write a 500-word essay "on some aspect of Flip Wilson's work and impact on television or comedy." (New Jersey Star-Ledger via Romenesko)

Spike Lee wants his impact on television to include putting the kibosh on Viacom Inc.'s plans to rename the TNN cable channel "Spike TV." He contends that it's "obvious" that "Spike TV referred to Spike Lee" and he's taking the media giant to court -- and including affidavits from the likes of Sen. Bill Bradley and Ed Norton -- to halt the name change. Viacom says it is "confident that the court will reject any legal claims by Mr. Lee to the popular word and name Spike." (Hollywood Reporter)

While the rest of us have been scratching our heads over the peculiar dustup between Vincent Gallo and Roger Ebert, a bunch of other people have apparently been scratching at their keyboards ... hard. Fark.com has a raging debate about, among other things, Gallos curse on Eberts colon. (The latest? Gallo clarifies in today's New York Post that "what I actually said was that I put an unremovable black magic curse on his prostate, which will enlarge into a large cancerous ball by the fall," which is, of course, so much nicer.) Some posters have even been inspired to write poetry on the topic: "So, Gallo has cursed Ebert's colon?/ I wonder when he got that rollin'?/ It's too bad it's cursed,/ Poor Roger might burst/ If he should get any more swollen!" writes one Farker. Responds another, "There once was a film called 'Brown Bunny'/ Which critics found anything but funny,/ the director was crass,/ and put a curse on an ass,/ Now Ebert's poo is all runny."

Hard to top as those lovely verses may be, the Fix would like to invite readers to send us their own poetic paeans to the bizarre brouhaha. (E-mail them here and use the subject line "Poetic Justice.") If we like it, and haven't lost interest in the whole thing by then, we'll print a few.

And if you think your poetry's bad, just check out this dreck by ground zero architect Daniel Libeskind published a few years back and unearthed by the New York Post: "This poseur -- lesbian whose medallion of wishes is effaced by training in history -- holds a rare quarto from Utah, strives for new lies. But imagination is so thin that the past often breaks right through her sex Torah." Sex Torah?

-- Amy Reiter

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