HOW MUCH FOR THE JUMPSUIT?
Infamous hacker KEVIN MITNICK is forbidden by the terms of his prison release to use a computer or the Internet. But those hackers are a wily sort. Using his father as an agent, Mitnick has been conducting an online celebrity auction (if you consider a techno-felon a celebrity), selling off his cell phone for $355 and getting $510 for his TRS-80 computer. Geek love ran wild when Mitnick's prison ID card went up for sale; that's when eBay decided there might be some legal issues here. After the site stopped the auction and Yahoo and Amazon also refused to participate, Mitnick found a willing auctioneer in dutchbid.com where six bidders have moved the card's price to $2,010. Coincidentally, Amazon's site crashed on Thursday.
I'LL TAKE MY MAGIC ON THE ROCKS
It was not so much a magic trick as a really stupid dare, which is why it's only appropriate that DAVID BLAINE's first words on emerging after 61 hours of standing entombed in a giant block of ice were, "Ow! Ow!" Blaine, a self-proclaimed "mystifier," entered his glacial prison on ABC's Good Morning America on Nov. 27 wearing only cargo pants, a wool hat and boots. He either forgot a shirt or figured his smokin'-hot abs would keep him warm. Unexpectedly balmy conditions, however, made the ice cave unstable, and doctors implored Blaine to don an emergency sweater. Reluctantly, he obliged. Skip ahead 60 hours: Blaine made his egress during a live ABC special that included quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and beefcake shots of the mystifier atop a volcano. With cameras jostling for shots, Blaine, Rocky-style, called for his girlfriend and gave her a kiss before being whisked off in an ambulance. Houdini would have been proud. Houdini's publicist would have been prouder.
GOODBYE TO LAST YEAR'S MODEL
That old biddy CINDY CRAWFORD was finally put out to pasture last week by the folks at Revlon. Crawford, 34, thanked the cosmetics company for 11 years of lucrative employ but expressed dismay at the undercurrent of her parting. "They don't want the story out there that they're firing me because I'm too old," Crawford told USA Today. "That will alienate a lot of customers." Revlon has had recent financial problems, and Crawford's large annual salary hasn't helped matters. Neither has a promotional campaign that makes that fabric-softener bear look cutting edge. "I agree, the advertising needs to be updated," says Crawford. "It would have been easy for Revlon to capitalize on my evolution...They might have used me in a more modern way." Especially if she were 19.
HARD TO FIND GOOD HELP THESE DAYS