Simon Cowell. The American Idol judge has been sued,
along with ABC for allegedly ripping off the concept
for his latest reality project, The Million Dollar
Idea the similarly titled series Million Dollar Idea,
which is already airing in syndication on over 125
stations.

Leelee Sobieski and Ellen Burstyn are joining Nicolas
Cage in Neil LaBute's indie "The Wicker Man," a remake
of a 1973 British horror film.

Cage plays a police officer who investigates the
disappearance of a girl in a small cultlike community.
Sobieski plays a barmaid who is Cage's confidant.
Burstyn plays the head of the cult. The film is
shooting in Vancouver. The original starred Edward
Woodward and Christopher Lee.

Matthew McGrory, a deep-voiced 7-foot-plus actor who
you might know from a role as a gentle giant in the
movie "Big Fish," has died. He was 32.

McGrory, who had size 29 1/2 shoes, He attended law
school and showed up in music videos before starting
his career in Hollywood B-movies.

He played Tiny in the Rob Zombie horror movies "House
of 1000 Corpses" (2003) and its sequel released this
year, "The Devil's Rejects."

I worked with him in "The Dead Hate the Living."

A man annoyed by a noisy car alarm fired at least
three bullets into a Toyota Camry, silencing the alarm
and bringing out police who hauled him away in
handcuffs. David Owen Rye, 48, was arrested and booked
for investigation of reckless discharge of a firearm
and felony vandalism.

The owner of the Camry, a sailor whose ship the USS
Theodore Roosevelt just returned from an eight-month
cruise, was visiting a friend when he heard the
gunfire.

"I mean, that's not a safe guy. I mean, you get upset
over an alarm, over a noise like that, (then) there's
some little kids making too much noise and he decides
to do something awful," the sailor said.

A fan has been released from the hospital, and is in
police custody, after plunging from the upper deck
onto the screen behind home plate at Yankee Stadium.

Scott Harper intentionally fell 40 feet into the
screen during last night's Yankees-White Sox game in
New York. The game was stopped for four minutes.

The 18-year-old was carried from the ballpark on a
stretcher and taken to a hospital, where he was
treated and released.

Police say Harper told his friends he wanted to see if
the screen would hold his weight. He was booked on
charges of reckless endangerment and disorderly
conduct and is being held in a detention cell at the
precinct, awaiting arraignment.

Viewers of an Arkansas cable show helped Fort Smith
police crack a case after they watched a robbery on
live TV. Gary Spirito, host of the Shopping Mania
Auction Show, thought it was a prank. When a man came
in and demanded Spirito's car keys, Spirito informed
his audience that this was no joke. "There's a guy
robbing us, somebody call the police, he came in with
a gun. Somebody call police, there's a guy in here
trying to rob us," Spirito said. That's when Spirito
addressed the alleged robber directly. "Then I looked
up at him and said, 'We're doing a live show here and
there's probably hundreds of people out there right
now calling the police to come down on this building,
just so you know,'" he said. Mary Schell watches the
Shopping Mania Auction Show every night, but still
thought Spirito's call for help was a joke.
"We thought he was kidding at first," Schell said.
"Then I waited a minute after, and then I was like,
'No, he can't be joking. He can't be. Just call.'"
Spirito said the suspects escaped with nothing, but
thanks to the 911 calls made by viewers, Fort Smith
police caught two male suspects early Friday morning.
Fort Smith police said 23-year-old Eddie Crisp and
22-year-old Timothy Suggs are accused of robbing Keith
Cox, owner of the Legacy Motor Co., at 11 p.m.
Thursday. About an hour later, police said the
suspects robbed Spirito.
The men face two counts of aggravated robbery and
probation violations, according to police.

A motorist was asked to drive under police escort to
an optometrist to prove he was wearing contact lenses.

"I couldn't believe it," Silverstream writer Michael
Romanos said, after being pulled over by Wellington
area traffic boss Senior Sergeant Richard Hocken for
not wearing a seatbelt while on his way to do some
shopping yesterday.

A condition of his licence is that he wears either
glasses or contact lenses while driving.

"He asked me to prove I was wearing contacts and when
I said I wasn't going to take them out, that I needed
to have wetting solution to put them back in, he said
he would follow me to an optician . . ."

He received a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt.

William Sanderson spent several years awaiting the
electric chair on a double murder conviction before
having his sentence reduced to life in prison. While
sitting on a metal toilet in his cell attempting to
fix his small TV set, that happened to be a gift from
a group that protested his execution, he bit into a
wire and was electrocuted.

A Jay Courtman, checked the barrel of his old muzzle
loader, Investigators said he was cleaning a
54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing
properly. He was using the lighter to look into the
barrel when the gunpowder ignited. He was killed when
the weapon discharged in his face, the lighter was
blown completely through his skull and was imbedded in
the wall behind him sheriff's investigators said.