Celebrity gossip is one of those strange phenomena that just sort of seeks you out, whether you care about it or not. Perhaps you glimpsed a headline of a magazine in the checkout line, heard a snippet of the news as you were changing channels, or caught wind of it on your friend’s Facebook page. Somehow our heads are filled with all these useless details, these fixations on other people’s unfortunate breakdowns. With 2010 wrapping up, let’s take a look back at some of the most outrageous and notorious celebrity moments of 2010…
1. Charlie SheenCharlie Sheen is one of those misogynist creeps you really can’t hear enough about. He snorts cocaine, he binge drinks, he parties with hookers, he skips paying the bill on said hookers, he threatens to kill them, he trashes hotel rooms, he yells slurs at the cops – all while playing the role of “Father and Husband.” Oh Charlie, what can’t you do?
This year was a doozy for Mr. Sheen. He spent much of it in rehab for drugs and alcohol, but still managed to make headlines with his wild nights out on the town. The debacle began with a few $5,000 bottles of champagne and some blow at Daniels Restaurant in New York. Then his porn star concubine Capri Anderson refused to have sex with him in the restaurant bathroom because he still owed her $12,000. His assistant found him naked on the toilet with cocaine covering his face.
Later, Sheen had trouble finding his wallet back at his Plaza Hotel room, which caused him to fly into a violent $7,000-hotel-damages-bill sort of rage and lock his naked hooker pal in the closet. This was while he was in town to see his children, with ex-wife Denise Richards staying another room over, mind you. The best way out? Have a spokesperson say you had an allergic reaction to a medication and go to the hospital, post haste.
2. Lady Gaga
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Lady Gaga is a world-class weirdo. Yet, to her fans, it’s precisely this oddball fetish that draws them to her. They love her lavish Marie Antoinette hairstyles and meat dresses. They love her bright red lipstick and her topless crowd surfing at Lollapalooza.
Jerry Seinfeld and Mets fans were not impressed when Lady Gaga got real drunk and flipped everyone off continuously, while wearing a leather jacket and a bathing suit. Later, she caused an even bigger stir when she watched the Mets vs. Yankees game at Yankee Stadium with her bra hanging out of a half-buttoned Yankees jersey. She guzzled her whiskey and sauntered into the locker room like she owned the place, groping herself and seeing if there were any takers. (There weren’t.) Hal Steinbrunner banned her from the clubhouse indefinitely.
3. Mel Gibson
We all like to think of Mel Gibson as heroic Benjamin Martin from “The Patriot” or Scottish rebel William Wallace from “Braveheart.” Maybe you even think he’s a bit romantic, given his roles in “What Women Want” or “Forever Young.” Well, he’s come a long way, baby.
In 2010, his most notorious moment involves his contempt for breast implants. The highly publicized call with Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his lovechild, began with Mel ripping into her for breast feeding with “fake t*ts.” She, of course, denies it and he launches into quite a rant. He told her they look like “a Vegas whore,” that she looks like a “bitch in heat.”
The real contention comes when he told her, “If you get raped by a pack of ni**ers, it will be your fault, alright? Because you provoked it.” Yikes. It’s bad enough that Joan Rivers and Winona Ryder say Mel is a “horrible anti-semite,” but now he had to pull the race card and add another monkey to his back… way to go…
4. Lindsay Lohan
If you were looking forward to seeing Lindsay Lohan cast as Linda Lovelace from "Deep Throat," then you can think Lohan’s penchant for cocaine and boozing for dashing your dreams. Producers find her capricious, unpredictable, up-all-night partying ways to be “100% uninsurable.”
It seemed Miss Lohan just couldn’t stay out of jail and/or rehab this year. It was as if she just couldn’t wait to get out, get busted again, and see what she could get away with this time.
She served 14 days of a 90-day sentence the first time. She stayed at her rehab treatment facility for 23 days out of 90.
She then served a few hours and paid $300,000 bail to get out of a 30-day sentence for violating her probation.
At one of her court hearings, she reportedly had the words "F**k U" painted on her nails, which led many to believe she's not very serious about her recovery.
On October 22nd, she was ordered to remain in rehab at the Betty Ford Center until January 3, 2011. Despite all her weepy theatrics, do you think she’s “trying the best she could?”
5. Alec Baldwin
Of all the characters in the Top 5 of 2010 notorious celebrity list, Alec Baldwin seems the most unlikely to land here. Yet, his firebrand daughter is really pushing him to the brink of insanity. This year, a 2007 voicemail was released where he called Kim Basinger “a thoughtless pain the ass” and his 11-year-old daughter Ireland “a rude thoughtless little pig.” He threatens to hop on a plane to “straighten her ass out,” which doesn’t really sound like father-daughter bonding time.
Three years later, he apologized for his embarrassingly public speech. Yet, in another phone conversation, he told Ireland, “I'm tired of this… I'm going to take some pills… I'm going to end this," prompting her to make a frantic call to 911. He was checked into a hospital to make sure he was in no danger of harming himself and you’d better believe the Paparazzi were waiting for him outside the hospital. When reporters were still dogging him after he got out of work that day, he flew off the handle, paranoid that Kim Basinger had put his daughter up to calling 911, and attacked NY Post photographer Tim Wiencis. Is Baldwin a man pushed to the edge by circumstance, or is this just the beginning of his mid-life crisis?
