I don’t know if it’s a fluke or just my warped perception, but it seems like there’s an extra amount of Hollywood drunken-while-drivingness lately. Ray Liotta was arrested in February after he drunkenly hit not one, but two parked cars. That takes talent. It takes a certain level of skill just to hit one parked car. What with it just sitting there, taunting you. But then to go after another… that guy must have been really hammered. Though if you ask him, he just had an unfortunate interaction between two medications. I’m guessing it was more like two medications and the twelve beers he washed them down with, but whatever. Technicalities I suppose.

Ray’s been given a pretty lenient sentence, compared with a few of our jail-serving celebrity friends.

Actor Ray Liotta has pleaded no contest to a reckless driving charge after police say he drove into two parked cars. Liotta initially was charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He could have faced up to six months in jail if convicted of that charge, Mateljan said.

“Ray had some unexpected drowsiness from the interaction of some medications prescribed by his doctor,” said his attorney, Blair Berk. Under the terms of his plea, Liotta was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to enter a 12-hour alcohol education program, according to court documents.

Liotta was arrested in February following the non-injury crash in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles. He will have to pay $1,328 in restitution and fines and pay the owners of the damaged vehicles, the court papers said.

[From Yahoo! News]

I have to tell you, while I understand extreme sleepiness, if it were that bad, I’d pull over. If you’re so tired that you’re swerving into parked cars, I imagine the only thing on your mind would be finding a parking space. Hitting one car, and then going on to hit another, probably won’t get you home into bed any faster. I’m continually amazed at how many celebrities drink and drive. If broke college students can manage to get it together and call a cab, I think you can too. Seriously, when you can now legitimately be compared to Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Lindsay Lohan, wouldn’t it have been better to just pull over and take a nap in the gutter?

Picture note by Jaybird: Header image of Ray and his daughter at the “Bee Movie” premiere on October 28th. thanks to PR Photos.

Have you seen those commercials with Montel Williams? He drives around on a bus, doling out prescriptions (or I guess prescription assistance) to Americans who don’t have insurance, all the while assuring us that America’s drug companies really do care about our health. How calming and reassuring. It turns out Montel isn’t just the pretty face for their television ad campaign. He actually does go around doing publicity for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. No word on if he actually does it in the big PPA bus though.

Montel was giving an interview in Savannah on Friday when Courtney Scott , a high school intern reporter, asked him, “Do you think pharmaceutical companies would be discouraged from research and development if their profits were restricted?” Seems like a fair and well thought out question. Apparently Montel didn’t agree. He very angrily responded, “I’m trying to figure out exactly why you are here and what the interview is about. I’m here as a patient advocate talking about the fact that medications available today are saving people’s lives, that’s what’s saving mine and after that, this interview is done.” Seems awkward and weird, but I doubt anyone would have made anything of it. Except that was just the beginning.

When the Savannah Morning-News reporters later returned to the hotel for an unrelated assignment, he approached one of them - high school student Courtney Scott, an intern at the newspaper. “As we were preparing to film, Montel walked up with his bodyguard and got in Courtney Scott’s face pointing his finger telling her ‘Don’t look at me like that. Do you know who I am? I’m a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up,’” said Joseph Cosey, a web content producer for the newspaper. “At this time he was randomly pointing at all of us.”

Scott said she wasn’t sure how to interpret Williams’ comment. “I’m not sure if he meant ‘blow me up’ and ruin my career or really blow us up, but it was threatening,” Scott said.

Williams, a patient advocate since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, later issued a statement apologizing for the outburst. “I mistakenly thought the reporter and photographer in question were at the hotel to confront me about some earlier comments,” Williams said. “I was wrong, and I apologize for my overreaction.”

[From the Huffington Post]

Sounds like Montel might want to consider adding a few antipsychotics to his pill regimen. I’m guessing that’s the equivalent of swag with the PPA. From his apology, I don’t think Montel quite understands what he did wrong. The problem wasn’t that he threatened the reporters even though they weren’t there for him; the problem was that he threatened them at all. Even if they were there for him, it’s probably not a good idea to threaten to blow people up. Especially in a public setting. Oh, and especially with reporters. What with that great access to the press and all. Probably also not the greatest plan to threaten to harm a high school student. Again, that’s just me, but I’d at least aim my comments at the adults. But I’m old fashioned that way. When I threaten to blow someone up, I get a glance at their driver’s license first, just to be safe.

I really like Drew Carey. I don’t find him to be the funniest guy around, but he’s taken what life’s given him and worked with it pretty well. He’s a chubby dork and he works it like no other. He doesn’t pretend to be cooler than he is - I mean when you host “The Price is Right” how cutting edge can you be? Drew has started doing videos for the nonprofit Reason Foundation. His first video was about hellish Los Angeles traffic. Pretty mild topic, most people would agree with what he has to say. His second video? Legalizing medical marijuana. Probably a bit more controversial. I can’t help but wonder what his 73-year-old “Price is Right” viewers would think about that.

Drew Carey has his issues—with the federal government, that is. “I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it—safely and easily,” Carey said, describing the point of “Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana,” the second installment of The Drew Carey Project, his ongoing short-form documentary series posted on reason.tv.

In the new video, Carey first stands on a Brentwood—”where O.J. used to live”—street corner and points out all the places, including a pharmacy, a liquor store and Starbucks, where you “can get anything you want to bring you up and down.” The former sitcom star then visits a West Hollywood facility that sells physician-prescribed pot, which is legal in California, to people suffering from a range of debilitating ailments, from chronic back pain to cancer. The video also features interviews with average, gainfully employed, middleclass people who use medical marijuana to ease what ails them, as well as with L.A. County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Steve Whitmore, who says that “dispensaries are low on the priority scale of law enforcement,” in terms of who is partaking of pot within those walls.

“I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana,” Carey, standing in a gas station parking lot, says in closing. “If that bothers you, it if makes you nervous that people are out there using marijuana to ease their pain, drive down to any old gas station in America like this one, buy yourself a nice, cold brew and pop the top. They really take the edge off.”

[From E! News]

Drew Carey actually makes some pretty good points, in terms of how readily available much more dangerous drugs are. I’m not really going to throw myself into the old medical marijuana debate – we’ve already established that I am adorably naïve and randomly old-fashioned, so we’ll leave it at that. I do generally understand the arguments both sides make. Here’s Drew’s video for the Reason Foundation:

That’s one of those headlines I wish I were creative enough to have made up all on my own, just to make you all laugh. But each word in that delicious title is entirely true. You may remember that the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards suffered from a bit of an injury after he fell from a coconut tree in Fiji last year. What was Keith Richards doing up a coconut tree? That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. What would Keith Richards not be doing up a coconut tree? Now that makes more sense. As a result of the fall, he had to have brain surgery. Yeah it must have been a pretty severe fall to necessitate opening up his cranium. I’m guessing that the doctors had gotten confused and assumed the coconut had somehow slammed into Richard’s head so hard that it knocked his brain clear out of his body and the coconut now resided where his brain was supposed to be. Yeah that sounds far-fetched, but this is also the guy who - since this accident – has claimed that he snorted his own father’s ashes. So I’m thinking having a coconut for a brain could make a lot of sense, medically.

Well since the accident, Richards has had to take Dilantin to prevent seizures, causing many to be concerned for his health.

Keith Richards sparked fears for his health after slurring his way through an acceptance speech. The Rolling Stones rocker - who picked up the prize for Best Cameo at Spike TV’s Scream 2007 awards for his performance in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’ - rocked back and forth as he mumbled his thanks to fans and co-star Johnny Depp in a pre-recorded video message. Keith, 63, said: “Thank you all fans voting for me in, you know. It’s a first - it’s not my land, usually, to do this sort of stuff, but due to enormous public pressure. I’ve got to say thank you very, very, much and also to Johnny - who insisted that I play his father.” He added: “We had a great time and it was a wonderful thing. Driving into the Disney studios, I laughed. God, at last I’m working for Mickey Mouse.”

It has now emerged Keith’s slurred speech - which had the audience at the glitzy Los Angeles ceremony on Friday (19.10.07) in hysterics - could be a side effect of the medication he takes daily to prevent seizures. The guitarist has taken the powerful drug Dilantin - which slows down nerve impulses in the brain - every day since undergoing brain surgery after he fell out of a coconut tree in Fiji 18 months ago. Keith - a former heroin addict - has previously joked taking Dilantin means he has to limit his intake of illegal substances. He said: “The drug I’m on now because of the brain job, Dilantin, means you can’t take cocaine any more, which is fine with me.”

[From Divine]

I have to say, he still sounds the same to me. Isn’t Keith Richards known for being an incoherent mess? Now he just has a reason that makes you feel sorry for him instead of judging him. I am pretty sure that the Dilantin isn’t the problem – I think there’s a 99% likelihood that the aforementioned coconut is still living in his brain. Or it ate his brain. One or the other.