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Bored and exhausted from days of repeatedly violating every orifice of the Mel Gibson story with its throbbing member of round-the-clock coverage, the news media now pauses for a moment on a well-traveled stretch of road in Malibu, contemplates a particularly inviting crack in its asphalt surface, hurls itself upon the ground, and begins anew its vigorous pounding of this Gibson-related opening. Enjoy this excerpt of the AP's brief profile of the Pacific Coast Highway, the serpentine street that has devoured whole some of Hollywood's most accomplished celebrity substance abusers:

Mel Gibson is only the latest celebrity to find trouble on an infamous stretch of the scenic Pacific Coast Highway. A wild-eyed Nick Nolte was immortalized in a 2002 mug shot taken after he was caught weaving along the road under the influence of the drug GHB.

Robert Downey Jr. was taken into custody in 1996 after authorities stopped him for speeding on the winding, beach-side highway and found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in his car.

With a huge number of celebrity homes nearby and murderously twisty terrain, the PCH, as it's known, has ensnared more than its share of superstars.

Filled with blind spots and hairpin curves wrapped around some of the most beautifully distracting scenery in the country, the PCH has been called an accident waiting to happen.

"At best, stone cold sober, and not fatigued and at 2:30 a.m., it is a difficult road to drive," said Arnold G. York, publisher of the local newspaper, The Malibu Times. "No traffic engineer in his right mind would have designed it this way."

In the time it took us to cut and paste the blockquote in this post, news arrived that Gibson's finally been charged with that DUI. We now happily return you to his regularly scheduled humping.