TVSquad

Evel Knievel doesn't mince words. When talking about his lawsuit against a Kanye West music video, he says, "That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I've ever seen in my life." He's talking about the video for the song "Touch the Sky", where Kanye suits up as "Evel Kanyevel" jumps a canyon. Knievel says West didn't have the right to dress like him (in a snazzy red, white and blue suit) or ride a motorcycle that closely resembled the one Knievel used when he jumped Idaho's Snake River Canyon in 1974. Knievel says the video is "vulgar and offensive" and it damages his reputation.

Well, I agree with Evel Knievel on one point: that video did really suck. But, this lawsuit just makes Knievel sound like a grumpy old man waving his cane in the air.

[Via Pop Candy]

This is the type of news that would have led Elaine Benes to shout "Get out!" and give one of her patented two-handed shoves, but I like to just call it a "too stupid not to be true" story:

Andy Griffith, the actor best known for playing Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and Ben Matlock on Matlock, is suing a man who ran and lost for sheriff of Grant County, Wis., for taking his name and using it during the campaign. I shit you not, TV fans: William Harold Fenrick legally changed his name to Andrew Jackson Griffith and ran for the sheriff's office under that name (the plaintiff's full name is Andy Samuel Griffith, by the way).

Boy, $13,500 per month really doesn't buy much in New York these days, does it? After SNLer Maya Rudolph and her husband, director Paul Thomas Anderson moved into a 3rd floor luxury loft in New York's Soho section, they found that they and their daughter were getting bitten by bedbugs. Bedbugs!

What's worse, they couldn't leave their apartment to escape the critters because the elevator was broken for six of the first eleven days they were in the apartment (what, they couldn't use the stairs?). After an exterminator told them to leave the apartment for a few weeks for the sake of their baby, they decided to never come back. Now they're suing the landlord, Francis Feeney, and the broker, Halstead Property, LLC, for $450,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

Jeez, for $13.5k a month, I'd expect a hermetically-sealed apartment that lets in nothing but hibiscus-scented air. But that's just me.

Over the summer, if you recall, ESPN fired baseball analyst Harold Reynolds for undisclosed reasons. Well, "undisclosed" was the official reason and what they told Reynolds. In fact, word had leaked out that Reynolds was fired after one too many incidents of sexual harassment, and Reynolds himself felt that was the case, even though he never got a chance to defend himself.

Because of this, Reynolds is suing ESPN for wrongful terminataion and breach of contract. In the lawsuit, Reynolds and his lawyers state that he was fired over a work-related dinner incident with a female intern. Reynolds felt he just gave her an "innocuous hug," and that the intern didn't express discomfort. But the company felt otherwise.

NBC is finding out that it's not a good idea to piss off the under-sink garbage disposal industry. According to Zap2It, the parent company of disposal manufacturer In-Sink-Erator is suing NBC to block re-airings of the pilot of Heroes. Apparently, they're not happy with the scene where cheerleader Claire tests her power of indestructability by sticking her hand in an In-Sink-Erator disposal and flipping it on. Emerson, the parent company, claims that it casts their disposals in a bad light, telling audiences that a person could actually get injured if they accidentally stuck their hand inside a moving disposal. Yeah, I'm sure those spinning chopping blades are completely safe.

But a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch got the real scoop from a company spokesman: they're mainly suing because NBC never got permission to use the product name on the show. "It's a trademark thing," the spokesman told the paper. What they're saying is, "Pay us a licensing fee and you can show our product mangle as many hands as you want."

[via Pop Candy]

The British won't get to see the infamous episode of South Park, which outted Tom Cruise something like 13 times in 22 minutes. Cruise, who has a crazy fear about people thinking he's gay, complained about the episode to Paramount and the production company agreed not to play it again. According to The Register in the U.K., Paramount got worried that Cruise would sue them, as he has sued so many tabloids in the past whenever they 'out' him.

The episode in question aired November 16th here in the states. It featured Nicole Kidman and John Travolta characters who kept pleading for Tom to "come out of the closet." At one point, Kidman's cartoon character says, "Don't you think this has gone on long enough? You're not fooling anyone." It really was a funny episode and I'm sad that our friends in Britain won't see it but I'm sure if you scour the internet hard enough, you'll find it.