Wondertrash®

Things may be about to get dicey on Planet Oprah. As you may recall, Lady O fell afoul of a dastardly blackmailer. The heavy in the piece is a Chicago "businessman" ( I didn't mean to imply anything by the use of quotation marks, I just think that it's cool to use them sometimes), one Keifer Bonvillain. Bonvillain was in the habit of having long telephone converstations with Todd Davis , an employee of Harpo Productions(source TMZ.com). Unfortunately for Oprah, Bonvillain was also in the habit of tape recording those telephone conversations. Just like Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office! So you can see right off what sort of a man we are dealing with here!

Now being an upfront individual, Bonvillain wanted everyone to know right away that there was stuff on these tapes so bad that it could ruin Oprah's public image. Furthermore even though these tapes were his property, and could get him a bundle, he was willing to destroy them. What's more, he'd do it for the bargain basement price of 1.5 million dollars. For those keeping count, that's 0.1% of Lady O's 1.5 billion estimated net worth!

I'm sure that Bonvillain thought that he was doing Oprah a big favour. Oprah didn't see it that way, and went straight to the FBI. The next thing you know, poor Mr. Bonvillain is under arrest, and his tapes seized as evidence! It just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.

As along as we're bandying about the truisms, that brings us to the latest development in this very sordid tale. It seems that the charges against Kiefer Bonvillain have been mysteriously dropped. A condition of Mr. Bonvillain's deal is that he allow his tapes to remain sealed. This Bonvillain is happy to do, in exchange for his freedom. Even more so because the deal neglected to mention anything about possible copies (someone really dropped the ball this time!), which Bonvillain claims to have. What's more, he's promising to release them over the Internet. Bonvillain claims that during the some 12 odd hours of tape, Mr. Davis spills the beans on Oprah's relationships with Steadman Graham, Gayle King, and shares her catty remarks about guests, and Hollywood notables. Bonvillain promises us that this stuff is dynamite, and enough so to blow Oprah out of the water. Still, Oprah's the lady who brought us the daytime TV 'heart to heart', where everyone has to know everything about everyone else's business. So I'm sure that she'd want the world to know what sort of person she really is (I'm not being facetious , I'm being fatuous!). At the very least it's highly ironic!

By the way, news is just in that Moral Majority leader, and anti rock crusader, Jerry Falwell, is dead at 73. He's the one who opened people's eyes to the dangers of backward masking in heavy metal, back in the 80's. In fairness, Al Gore's wife, Tipper, was quick to pick up that ball, and run with it!

Entertainment Trivia:

Originally a punk band, The Beastie Boys had a female drummer named Kate Schellenbach. However, when the band signed with Rick Rubin of Def Jam and became more rap-based, Kate soon developed creative differences concerning the band's new musical direction. Kate officially left the band after Rubin purchased matching track suits for each of the boys, but failed to buy one for Schellenbach(such a petty little slight!). She then went on to join Luscious Jackson in 1991.