TVSquad

Egad.

According to the New York Post, Criss Angel's wife, Joanne Sarantakos (Sarantakos is Angel's actual surname), is suing her husband for divorce, claiming that he kept their marriage a secret to help his career and make him more appealing to fans.

Their marriage was enough of a secret that I had no idea he was even married, though it's not as if I spend every waking moment keeping up with Angel's personal life. Still, whenever a girl was by Criss' side on Mindfreak, she was always just credited as "Criss' girl" as far as I remember.

A couple new commercials for Jack in the Box's new sirloin burgers has spurred CKE Restaurants to file a lawsuit against the fast food chain. In one of the offending ads, Jack, the mascot, tells his fellow board members about the new sirloin burger. When he's asked to point to the "Angus" part of the cow, he says, "I'd rather not," indicating that it comes from the part of the cow that could be described as "Angus" without the "g." CKE Restaurants owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr., both of which serve Angus burgers.

(S11E12) In my other King of the Hill review I mentioned that the secondary characters can be just as fleshed out as the main characters, and I think the same holds true for Lucky, who is still a rather new addition to the King of the Hill universe.

Lucky started out rather one-note, a kind of street-wise redneck whose only means of support stemmed from a cash settlement he received for slipping on a puddle of urine at a local store. This season, however, we've gotten to know Lucky a little better, and while I love his character, I'm pretty sure I would loathe him if he were an actual person.

Almost a year ago, Bob linked to a segment from The Tonight Show in 1973 in which professional "spoon bender" Uri Geller was exposed on national television by Carson and frequent Carson guest and professional debunker James Randi. The clip, via YouTube, was part of a larger documentary about hoaxes.

Recently, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Geller's company, Explorologist Ltd., demanded the clip be removed for violation of copyright. YouTube suspended the account of the user who posted the video.

You folks might recall that a man running for Sheriff in Grant County, Wisconsin changed his name from "William Harold Fenrick" to "Andrew Jackson Griffith" so he could run under the name "Andy Griffith" and hopefully use the iconic name to win the election.

He didn't win.

He did, however, have a lawsuit filed against him by Andy Griffith, the actor who played Andy Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show. Recently, however, a judge dismissed the case, saying that Fenrick did not violate any copyright and that what he did was protected under the First Amendment. I'm not a fancy big city lawyer, so I can't say much about this.

Here's how it all went down:

Paris Hilton taped a "funny" sketch on MTV (the article doesn't specify which show it was for) that showed her wearing a "What Would Paris Do" bracelet and taking the bracelet's advice by dancing with a cop to get out of a ticket. The segment was taped in January. The following month, Hilton was arrested for driving on a suspended license, and now she's threatening to sue MTV if they air the clip, which was meant to mock her drunk driving arrest from last September.

To summarize: Paris felt it was okay to mock her own drunk driving, but now that she's been arrested again the sketch is no longer funny but embarrassing. I would think she'd be more embarrassed by endangering the lives of other motorists by getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated, but what the heck do I know?

I'm going to say "probably not," but this fellow, who once drew a face on a household sponge, feels differently. Cartoonist Troy Walker created a character named Bob Spongee in 1991. Years later, in 1999, Nickelodeon premiered SpongeBob SquarePants, created by marine biologist and former teacher Stephen Hillenburg. Walker is convinced his idea was stolen, and has filed suit against Nickelodeon parent company Viacom for $1.6 billion in damages.

Sorry I'm a few days late reporting this news, but I took some time off to volunteer at my neighborhood's annual Soup Kitchen and Hobo Scrub. This year I was on "soap and hose" duty, so it would have been total disaster had I not been there.

At any rate, if you haven't heard yet, Jane Pauley is suing the New York Times because she claims she was duped into being interviewed for an ad supplement which she thought was an actual interview about her bout with bipolar disorder. The ad supplement was for pharmaceutical companies, and Pauley is suing both the Times and DeWitt Publications, saying she was tricked and that she has never appeared in an ad or endorsed any product before. A spokeswoman countered by saying Pauley's assistant was informed that the interview would be for an ad supplement in the New York Times Magazine.

Fans of Everybody Hates Chris know that Chris' mother, Rochelle, is a woman who doesn't take any BS from anyone, a "ghetto snob" who isn't afraid to tell you exactly how she feels, and often at full volume. In fact, sometimes she can be -- what's the word I'm looking for? Oh right, a total bitch. That's okay, though, it makes her character stand out from the crowd and creates a nice dynamic between herself and the rest of the family.

As I've said in my reviews of the series, Everybody Hates Chris is highly fictionalized, but as Hunter S. Thompson attempted to demonstrate in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, sometimes fiction can reveal something that's even truer than the truth.

This season's premiere of Dog the Bounty Hunter had Dog and his crew flying to San Francisco to capture a suspected drug dealer named Samu Savea who had been eluding them for years. He was rumored to be playing on a semi-professional football team called the Daly City Renegades. Dog's team staked out the practice field, and spotted one player who they thought was Savea, but was actually Simaile "Cisco" Lutu, a nightclub promoter. Dog's son Leland was the first to approach Lutu, but it was soon revealed he wasn't the man they were after. Now Lutu has filed a lawsuit against Dog and his bail bonds company. He claims he was handcuffed and held at gunpoint by police officers on two separate occasions following his encounter with Dog.

I actually saw the episode in question, and what puzzles me is that the lawsuit claims Lutu asked not to have his image shown on television. That may be true, but during the scene on the practice field he was doing everything he could to be seen on camera, and so did many of his teammates. At the time, it appeared that he was absolutely enthralled with the idea of being the center of attention on a popular reality program. Dog also says that Lutu called him after the show aired and thanked him because all the girls loved seeing him. It will be interesting to see if this lawsuit actually goes anywhere.

[via TV Filter]

Tivo has been suffering in the marketplace due to so many people opting to purchase satellite systems with DVRs already included, as opposed to buying the stand alone Tivo boxes. A new lawsuit the company filed recently against EchoStar, however, could change that. At least, that's what experts are predicting. The case centers on a key patent in DVR technology, one which Tivo believes EchoStar stole for its own DVR system. Tivo argues that EchoStar is infringing on its patent, thus making it difficult for the company to compete. If Tivo wins the case, which reports say is all but inevitable, the company would see damages paid from EchoStar possibly as high as $300 million. In addition, it would result in licensing deals with cable companies who currently use their own DVRs.

[via Lost Remote]