I’ve been reserving judgment, and too scared of turning blue to actually hold my breath, but TMZ is reporting that the weaved wonder, Britney Spears, has actually shown up to her custody hearing this afternoon - on time and without the Brown Boots of Mental Illness. TMZ has the blow by blow report, and sources say that Brit and her slimeball ex, K-Fed, may be close to hammering out a mutual custody agreement out of court.

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have just entered the courtroom and their case is about to begin.

Brit walked in with her hands clasped in front of her, looking down. Someone told her she looked good and Brit just smiled back. According to all accounts, “Brit looks good.”

Kevin and Britney were both sworn into court. A motion to close the court was granted — so everyone was kicked out. FYI — Elliot Mintz, K-Fed’s attorney’s rep, got the boot too.

The Commish has taken a recess and Brit is out in the hall looking very upset. Our spy says that while Britney isn’t actually crying in the hallway — it looks like she might have been crying inside the closed courtroom.

Mom and Pop Spears are still in the courtroom with Brit’s attorney, as is K-Fed and all his people.

Stay tuned …

UPDATE 10:28 AM PT — Brit is back in the courtroom.

UPDATE 10:38 AM PT — Britney is back out of the courtroom, smiling and holding hands with Blair Berk.

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline (along with all their respective parties) are back in the courtroom after spending close to an hour in a private meeting room.

Brit walked into the courtroom hand-in-hand with her mom Lynne.

Could an amicable compromise be on the horizon?

[Compilated from multiple reports on TMZ]

Whatever happens today, Britney should feel good about the following: 1) She showed up at court, on time, appropriately dressed, and without holding a Fanta and a pack of cigarettes. 2) Thanks to her mom and lawyer, she was able to keep her composure on the stand- which may be a first. 3) The photos and court drawings actually make her look pretty good.

I find it more than a little interesting that this is the first post-Lutfi era court appearance, and Brit shows up with no problems. Jump to your own conclusion- I know I have.

Britney is shown outside the gym on 5/5/08, thanks to WENN.

The seemingly endless claims about R. Kelly and his sexual abuse of underage girls are again getting press before his case goes to court this Friday. It seems that a new witness is coming forward, claiming that she had sex with R. Kelly and another girl, who was underage at the time.

In case you haven’t been following it, R. Kelly was initially charged with multiple cases of child pornography in June 2002, following an anonymous donation of a sex tape to the Chicago Sun-Times featuring Kelly and underage girls. The tape was authenticated by the FBI and now the trial should begin May 9 after an incredible series of delays. The woman making the claims says she was once involved in a threesome with R. Kelly and the girl in this tape. In her testimony she will identify the girl, and claim that she was underage at the time.

The Sun-Times has been following the case closely, and here are their full reports.

Prosecutors claim that they have identified the girl in the incriminating tape, while the defense says that it’s not her. The tape mustn’t be of very high quality given all the doubt.

R. Kelly was also rumored to have married his protégé Aaliyah when she was just 15 and he was 27, after she lied about her age to get married. The marriage was said to have been annulled afterwards, with neither artist ever admitting it happened. (Aaliyah died in a plane crash in the Bahamas at the age of 22.) Kelly married dancer Andrea Lee in 1996 and they had three children together. They are said to be in the process of divorcing.

If convicted R. Kelly faces up to 15 years in jail.

R. Kelly is shown at the premiere of his crazy music soap opera “Trapped in The Closet: Chapters 13-22″ on 8/15/07, thanks to WENN.

Wesley Snipes has been sentenced to three years in prison, for three misdemeanors in not filing his taxes. While his lawyer claims he was singled out because of his celebrity, reading this report on his behavior makes me think his aggressive attitude towards government employees is probably what earned him the maximum penalty.

The decision by US District Court judge William Terrell Hodges came two months after a jury convicted Snipes on three counts of willfully failing to file federal tax returns from 1999 to 2001.

The court heard yesterday that Snipes dodged $15 million (£7.5 million) in tax through a campaign in which he concealed millions offshore, falsely applied for tax refunds and bombarded the Internal Revenue Service with frivolous correspondence that threatened government employees, railed about extortion and used twisted legal interpretations to back his claim that taxation was unlawful.

“For nearly a decade, Snipes has engaged in a campaign of criminal tax conduct combining brazen defiance with insidious concealment,” the prosecuting attorney, Robert O’Neill, told the court in a sentencing memorandum. “In the defendant Wesley Snipes, the court is presented with a wealthy, famous and inveterate tax scofflaw. If ever a tax offender was deserving of being held accountable to the maximum extent for his criminal wrongdoing, Snipes is that defendant.”

Times Online

Wesley won’t go to prison immediately, but will surrender closer to his New Jersey home at a later date. This will allow him to be closer to his five children, aged between 1 and 19 years old.

The Times also says that Wesley attempted to give the judge three envelopes, containing cheques totalling $5million, but the judge could not accept them. The IRS did collect the cheques during a recess. I’m not sure if they were trying to prove that Wesley was going to pay debts, or they just weren’t sure who to give the money to.

Wesley’s tax advisors are also in jail, as it seems that he was given bad advice.

Wesley became a tax denier in 1999, where you are part of a movement that believes tax laws are unjust and that you shouldn’t have to pay them. If you can prove that you are a sincere follower of the movement you can avoid criminal consequences, but Wesley’s offshore bank accounts made the court consider him a fraud, not just someone who doesn’t believe in taxes.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Wesley Snipes is shown outside of court on February 1 when he received good news - he was acquitted of tax fraud but was convicted of failure to file taxes. He’s probably not that happy at this point. Thanks to Splash News for these photos.

Author JK Rowling is suing a small publishing firm to try and block the publication of an unauthorized lexicon of her work, calling it “wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work,” and “a Harry Potter rip-off of the type I have spent years trying to prevent.”

Judge calls books hard to follow, urges parties to settle
The judge in NY federal court who will decide whether the Harry Potter encyclopedia can be published or whether it violates copyright has said that he read the first half of the first book to his grandchildren and that it was “hard to follow,” and “filled with strange names and words that would be gibberish in any other context.” The judge also urged parties to settle outside of court and said “I think this case, with imagination, could settle. It’s been brought home to me in the last 20 years that litigation is not always the best way to solve things.”

Authors break down on the stand
Both author JK Rowling and the author of the lexicon, 50 year-old Steven Vander Ark, have testified in court. In often emotional testimony Rowling talked about how the books saved her when she was a poverty-striken young mother. Vander Ark broke down crying during his testimony, saying that fans have attacked him for choosing to publish a book based on a popular Harry Potter fan website he maintained for years.

Rowling says she gave author several chances before suing
Rowling says that litigation was her absolute last choice, and that it’s not about money but about theft of ideas. She claims to have asked Vander Ark several times to add more personal commentary and to change her words so that they were not lifted and passed off as his own.

Lawyers for both sides still have plenty of motions and paperwork to submit and it will be weeks before the case is even close to being decided.

You can’t help but think that Rowling would have done better with a jury trial. If that judge got confused by the first book he never could have trudged through the others and is likely to look upon an encyclopedia favorably, even if it’s just a cut and paste of Rowling’s work.

[Details From Timesonline, BBC News, and MSNBC]

JK Rowling outside of federal court today.
JK Rowling is suing RDR books for attempting to publish a print version of a popular Harry Potter fan website, The Harry Potter Lexicon. The suit was filed last year and Rowling will be in U.S. District Court for hearings this week.

Rowling herself is a big fan of the site, and she even wrote on her website in 2004 that she used the Harry Potter Lexicon site to fact check her own work. Selling an encyclopedia that would include many of her own definitions for such things she invented for the Harry Potter series as spells, potions, magical creatures, Quidditch rules and wizarding history would be an extreme copyright violation, she contends, and is much different than a website. Her lawyer says that she personally compared the lexicon to her work and is prepared to testify about the similarities.

The author of the intended Harry Potter encyclopedia, 50 year-old former teacher and librarian Steven Vander Ark, says that he was initially reluctant to publish the book due to the copyright issues. He had the publisher include a section in his contract that they would provide free legal assistance as well as pay for any damages if a lawsuit was brought against him.

Lawyers for the publishing company are not fighting the copyright claim, but plan to defend that the Encyclopedia is legal because it’s for research or another “greater purpose”:

One of [Rowling’s] lawyers, Dan Shallman, on Friday told Judge Robert P. Patterson, who is hearing the trial without a jury, that Rowling “feels like her words were stolen.”

He said the author felt so personally violated that she made her own comparisons among her seven best-selling novels and the lexicon and was ready to testify about the similarities in dozens of instances.

David Saul Hammer, a lawyer for RDR Books, which plans to sell the lexicon, said the publisher will not challenge the claim by Rowling that much of the material in the lexicon infringed her copyrights.

But the judge will decide whether the use of the material by the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher was legal because it was used for some greater purpose, such as a scholarly pursuit.

In court papers filed prior to the trial, Rowling said she was “deeply troubled” by the book.

“If RDR’s position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet,” she said. “Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.”

[From The Huffington Post]

I read all the Harry Potter books, but I’m not a huge fan and I kind of took them at face value and never tried to dig deeper into the very engaging world Rowling created. You can see how fans would want to get into the fine details of the books and how an encyclopedia of all of the items and history could serve that purpose. That should be Rowling’s decision to put something like that for profit, though. She was supportive of this website until they tried to turn it into a book that would infringe on her ideas and writing, and she has every right to sue to stop its publication.

Update: According to BBC News, Rowling plans to write her own Harry Potter encyclopedia.

Former ‘OC’ actress Mischa Barton, who hasn’t had much of a career since being killed off that show, is supposed to be entering a plea agreement for her DUI bust last year. Barton was stopped last December for suspicion of DUI and the cops also found marijuana on her. Because, why just drink and drive like all those other Hollywood starlets, when you can drink, get stoned and drive?

“O.C.” wanna been Mischa Barton has decided to take a plea bargain in her DUI case — clever girl that one.

A source tells TMZ that at her court date on Thursday she’ll plead no contest to the DUI charge. In exchange, the marijuana charge will be dropped and the driving without a license rap will be reduced to an infraction.

Greasy’s ex-GF will then have to serve three years of unsupervised probation, attend an alcohol education class and pay a fine.

A source tells us this is “fairly standard” for a first-time offender like Miss Mischa, who was arrested last December, adding that she’s “learned her lesson.

[From TMZ]

“Fairly standard,” my ass! Maybe it’s “fairly standard” for Hollywood starlets, but if Mischa had been driving anywhere else in the country, she would be wearing an orange jumpsuit right now. Which might be an improvement over her regular attire. This girl is absolutely useless in my opinion- a shitty actress, not all that pretty and a horrible dresser — and that was before I remembered she actually used to date Brandon Davis. And don’t even get me started on her last ex, Cisco “Bocce Balls” Adler. As for learning her lesson, my guess is that Mischa learned the following lesson: she is not famous or talented enough to turn a DUI bust into a career boost. If it didn’t work for Lohan, it definitely will not work for her.

Mischa Barton is shown after lunch at La Scala on 3/28/08 wearing shorts and a “Bite Butts” t-shirt, thanks to Splash News.

Chris Rock’s testified for about 15 minutes at the Anthony Pellicano trial on Friday. Pellicano was a private investigator to the stars, including Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who now faces charges of racketeering and illegal wiretapping. Pellicano had contacts in the telephone and police department and would regularly run background checks and tap both his clients’ and their targets’ phones. Pellicano was also known to intimidate and harass anyone who got in his way and regularly fed stories to the tabloids on his clients, only to turn around and solicit their business. He’s been in Federal prison since 2002 on an illegal weapons conviction, and is stupidly representing himself in this case.

Rock was said to be accused of raping a woman he had a date and one night stand with during a time he was estranged from his wife in 1998. The woman initially tried to pin a pregnancy on Rock and extort money from him, but when that didn’t stick and DNA tests showed he wasn’t the father, Pellicano told Rock she went to the police and claimed he raped her.

Pellicano was the one who told Rock about the rape claim & Rock never saw police report
The thing that TMZ fails to mention in their salacious coverage of this is that Rock never saw a police report, nor does it sound like the police even contacted him to inform him of these charges. He was definitely never arrested or charged.

It was Pellicano who told Rock about the woman’s claims and thus secured his business, according to Rock’s testimony. That would meant that either Pellicano had an inside police source tell him the story, which never escalated to an actual charge against Rock because there wasn’t enough evidence, or that Pellicano fabricated the story based on dirt he knew about Rock. Rock was first a client of Pellicano’s in 1999 when the woman accused him of fathering a child, and again in 2001 when Pellicano informed him of this supposed rape charge.

Given Pellicano’s record of double-dealing, it’s very possible that he cooked up the whole scheme himself to get more money from Rock.

Even if this woman did go to police, it sounds like her claims weren’t taken seriously and that Rock had nothing to fear. According to audio taped recordings between Pellicano and Rock, Pellicano promised Rock he would “blacken her up,” or smear her and that he had nothing to worry about. It is likely that Rock had nothing to worry about in the first place and that Pellicano just wanted his money:

On cross-examination, Mr. Rock appeared to be even more annoyed about having to be in the courtroom… [When] asked about whether the comedian believed that Ms. Zsibrita’s paternity claim was false and that he’d been “shaken down” by her, Mr. Rock seemed to take umbrage at the form of the question. “I didn’t believe the claim was false, DNA tests proved it was false,” he said irritably. “Someone not pregnant with my child claimed to be pregnant with my child and requested large sums of money.”

Mr. Rock also testified that he learned about Ms. Zsibrita’s allegations that he’d assaulted her from none other than everybody’s favorite private detective, Anthony Pellicano. Mr. Rock said that although he never saw the actual police report, Mr. Pellicano told him about it. He also added that the allegations of assault in the report were false and that he was never arrested. “So, you know that you believe that you didn’t do anything wrong?” Mr. Hummel asked about the assault allegations. “I don’t believe it,” Mr. Rock replied. “I’m here as a free man… I didn’t do anything wrong.” Finally, Mr. Hummel asked Mr. Rock if he knew that Mr. Pellicano was following Ms. Zsibrita. “Not really,” Mr. Rock said, seemingly oblivious to everything that the detective had done to Ms. Zsibrita on his behalf.

[From The Huffington Post]

Pellicano regularly scammed celebrities into hiring him and his cronies
Pellicano did business by digging up stories on celebrities, feeding them to the tabloids, and then contacting the celebrities to inform them about the claims and secure their business, according to private investigator Paul Baressi. Baressi worked with Pellicano on key cases, including a gay prostitute’s claim to have wrestled with Tom Cruise (which I believe was false and a set up by Pellicano, having read Baressi’s account) and found out first hand how Pellicano duped his clients.

In a later chapter, I will explain in great detail how Pellicano had tabloid reporters who routinely tipped him off about stories that were in the works, at The National Enquirer, that could potentially hurt any number of celebrities. Pellicano could then contact the celebrity himself, or the celebrity’s attorney, to warn them that something cooking at The National Enquirer, The Globe or The Star that, if published, could seriously damage the career, reputation and livelihood of the celebrity in question. This methodology would stir up litigation for the $500 to $900 an hour entertainment attorneys with whom Pellicano had established relationships and, at the same time, force the celebrity represented by one of those attorneys to dig deep into his or her pockets to make the problem go away. Little did the celebrity know that Pellicano, with the help of his inside people at the tabs, created the fire, only to return as the hero to extinguish it.

[Excerpt from Paul Baressi’s book “Pellicano’s Enforcer,” found on Hollywood Interrupted]

So if Rock says that the first person who told him about these charges was Pellicano, it’s likely that Pellicano either had a hand in the charges in the first place, or exaggerated their importance, securing thousands in fees.

Chris Rock is shown at Ceasar’s Palace on 11/16/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

Devoted babydaddy or lazy gigolo- will the real Kevin Federline please stand up?

In the months following the Britney-K-Fed divorce, the ongoing custody battle, and the slow, steady Brit meltdown, Federline has kept a fairly low profile and done a good job of keeping their two children protected. But recent documents revealed that K-Fed many have been lying about his income in order to get his ex-wife to pay his legal bills- and that the single dad likes to blow money on strippers, nightclubs, booze and ridiculous tips.

K-Fed lied about his income and charged up ridiculous expenses, including insane tips, according to new court documents. Britney Spears’ newest lawyer, Stacy Phillips, filed documents challenging the legal fees that Brit was ordered to pay for Fed-ex. Phillips claims K-Daddy “understated his income by at least $200,000.” She also says Federline buried all sorts of personal expenses and pretended to have $800,000 worth of business expenses. PopoZão!

According to the legal papers, Federline grossed $544,074.73 from his production company, “Gooseneck Productions” in 2007, and his expenses totaled $841,128.67. Phillips says Federline’s so-called business expenses included “extraordinarily high tips for food and beverage services [e.g., $1,100.76 tip on $2,782 bill; $200 tip on $371.29 bill; and $2,000 tip on $365 bill].

K-Daddy got Britney to pay his legal bills, claiming relative poverty. But, as her lawyer calls it, “Bank of Britney” may have been taken for a ride — specifically, from L.A. to Vegas. According to legal docs, in a recent eight-month period, Federleezy blew $50,489.71 on hotel rooms and refreshments in Vegas.

In one day alone, K-Fed dropped $2,632.50 at TAO Beach (the pool club at The Venetian). And on one wild evening, he spent $2,862.60 at TAO nightclub. One day at the Hard Rock Beach Club — $3,008.33

Oh yeah, and there’s this…. at Scores strip club, he once spent $365, but left a $2,000 tip.

[Compiled from TMZ]

Juxtapose these legal findings with the public image of a caring dad trying to create a stable enivronment for his two young sons, and I don’t know what to think. I do remember K-Fed spending a lot of time at clubs while Britney was home with two small boys, which led up to their divorce. It seemed as though he’d given that up after becoming the sole custodial parent, but maybe not. Also, how did K-Fed earn anywhere near $500k though his “production company”? What exactly did he produce, besides Sean and Jayden? I’d be willing to bet that all that money he blew in Vegas was courtesy of his ex-wife. Last time I checked, having a two-minute cameo on “One Tree Hill” doesn’t pay well enough to justify that kind of spending.

Picture note by Celebitchy: K-Fed is shown at his 30th birthday party on March 21, for which he was said to have been paid $175,000. That might explain where he got the money. Thanks to WENN and PRPhotos.

So Britney somehow hired a new lawyer to represent her in court to challenge the ruling that her father be made conservator of her estate. The judge ruled against Britney’s side, saying that her father, Jamie, can remain in control of her finances and all medical decisions regarding his daughter until February 14th.

Britney’s lawyer, Adam Streisand, who is said to be Barbara Streisand’s second cousin, requested that Northern Trust bank and Howard Grossman, who is Britney’s business manager, be appointed instead as Britney’s conservators. He argued that having her father run her estate is unnecessarily frustrating for Britney. His request was denied and the judge said that Britney wasn’t even mentally competent enough to have hired Streisand to represent her. She will presumably be represented by a lawyer appointed by the court. That court-appointed lawyer visited her in the hospital on Sunday and told the judge that she’s not capable enough to understand the legal case or to have hired her own lawyer. A physician will examine Britney to determine her level of competence and report to the court on February 13.

The lawyers for Britney’s father, Jamie, wanted to have Britney’s legal team of Trope and Trope, who are said to be aligned with Sam Lutfi, fired. That request was not granted and Britney can retain their services. It’s not clear why they did not represent her in this specific case and how she obtained a different lawyer.

The judge addressed the restraining order against Lutfi, saying that the order is that Britney have absolutely no contact with him, including phone calls or e-mail. She is rumored to have been talking to him on the phone. When the conservators of Britney’s estate tried to serve the restraining order personally to Lutfi yesterday, he refused to open the door.

There was also yet another custody hearing for Britney and K-Fed on Monday. It was said to have been scheduled before she was hospitalized for this second time. The verdict is that there will be no changes for now and that she cannot see either of her boys. Britney’s legal reps in the custody battle wanted to request that they be taken off the case, but have withdrawn that request given their clients extreme recent problems.

Meanwhile Britney’s paparazzi boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, attempted to visit her in the hospital bearing roses. He was seen looking upset while leaving about 20 minutes later, and OK! Magazine reports that it is unknown if he was actually able to see her.

Details from People, AP, TMZ, and OK! Magazine.

Header image from 1/22/08 from Splash News.

Amy Winehouse may get some much-needed respite from her probably-abusive husband, layabout Blake Fielder-Civil. Blake faces up to life in prison after it was revealed by police that he’s under investigation for arranging to interfere with his upcoming trial by paying off the man he is accused of beating up. Yesterday police staged a dramatic raid of Amy’s London home, with JayBird guessing that it was due to drugs. It turns out that super smart JayBird isn’t psychic, because The Sun reports that the raid was related to the trial-fixing charge and has nothing to do with controlled substances.

Skinny Blake and his friend Michael Brown were due in court today to face charges from beating up a barman, James King. Instead his home was raided and he was taken into custody. It is alleged that Blake concocted a scheme to pay £210,000, about $443,000 USD, to the victim in exchange for him dropping the charges and refusing to testify at trial. What’s more is that Blake supposedly hired two guys to take the man to Spain and “babysit” him until he was in the clear.

Instead of doing the job, the two men Blake paid turned on him, and talked to a newspaper about it. The story is a little confusing to me, but the guys Blake hired supposedly had videotape of him and Brown beating up the barman. Either they were friends of his and were taping it, or they just happened to be there and got footage of the incident. Then Blake tried to pay them off by hiring them to cover it up and take the victim out of the country:

A Metropolitan police spokesman said: “A thorough investigation is being carried out into claims of conspiracy to pervert justice in connection with a trial.

“Three men have been arrested and are being questioned. We’re expecting to make further arrests.

The alleged conspiracy is reported to have emerged after two men named ANT and JAY contacted a newspaper in October claiming to be in possession of footage of the alleged attack on King by Fielder-Civil and Brown.

Ant then went on to allege he and Jay were to be paid for organising a deal between King and his claimed attackers and for “babysitting” the barman overseas until charges were dropped.

A film is reported to have been made of King claiming he would withdraw his court statement regarding the alleged attack as soon as £210,000 was deposited into his bank account.

A meeting is reported to have happened behind a seedy boozer in central London where Ant, Jay, Brown and Fielder-Civil thrashed out details of the plot.

After the meeting King is alleged to have appeared on video saying: “Fifth November 2007, I James King hereby without pressure or duress wish to withdraw any legal statements previously made or written concerning the arrest of Blake Fielder-Civil and Michael Brown over the GBH charges relating to my injuries. I have no intention of going to court or helping any further.”

“I feel this is in the best interests of mine and my family’s safety.”

Reports go on to claim flight tickets from London to Marbella were due to be booked yesterday.

However, Ant and Jay were arrested outside a pub yesterday.

Fielder-Civil is due in Snaresbrook Crown Court, East London, with Brown on Monday.

[From The Sun]

That’s serious! It sounds like something a dumb ass young rich guy would do, thinking he could easily make it all go away. Blake is going to be the one going away instead, and it may be for a very long time. It’s bound to hurt Amy at first, but given how obviously difficult her marriage is with Blake, it sounds like a big break for her. Maybe she’ll be able to concentrate fully on her career once the creep is behind bars.

Here’s Amy Winehouse yesterday before the big raid. She went to the post office, to a convenience store, and to her accountants. She was playing hooky from her job that day, and cost her record company $150,000, as JayBird reported earlier, by telling them that she would come to a video shoot momentarily but failing to show up all day. Thanks to Splash News for these pictures.