"Frankly, I feel like most of this is wasting my time," Galleycat quotes the judge in ICM v. Richard "Ari Gold-Plated" Abate as saying yesterday. (The lit agent jumped from ICM to Endeavor; wrangling ensues.) We don't want to imply that Galleycat is doing the same with its 9-paragraph dissection of what the first day of that trial was like, but if you're short on time and care about figuring out whether ICM is shadier than Abate or vice versa, here's the juicy stuff so far.

Naomi Campbell reported for her first day of community service at the Lower East Side Sanitation depot yesterday, and she wore some clothes! As the 90s supermodel expiated her phone-throwing sins, the Post reports that she maintained a luxe look: "Campbell wore green yoga pants, stiletto boots, a black empire-waist coat, diamond-studded earrings, a newsboy cap and large, black sunglasses on her first day of real work." Someone who knows things about fashion would probably be able to find a bunch of errors and omissions in that sentence—even our untutored eye can discern a Chanel logo on that newsboy cap and Louboutin-red soles on those boots, and that's no empire waist. But more importantly, anyone who has ever seen an episode of any modeling-themed reality show knows that the "first day of real work" thing is bullshit. You've gotta work. Everyone knows that.

Every time a new communications platform comes along — the video sharing site, virtual worlds, the internet itself — the tech true believers persuade themselves that the world's been made anew. But, like stubborn legacy code, evil endures: the family of one cocaine trafficker, who was cooperating with the government, received a video death threat over Youtube. The Google video site has been served with a search warrant for records. It's not like this is the first time a new medium has been poisoned: Al-Qaeda, which uses free email services such as Hotmail to disseminate instructions to operatives, has proven more adept in using the web than the US government.

Han Sup Shin, the purple latex glove enthusiast who's been stalking San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, was arrested in Union City after he allegedly broke into a house in San Ramon in pursuit of a former lover, then tried to run over the absent lover's roommate with his car. Cops found Shin hiding in a closet at his parents' Union City home; he must have acted out still more, as he's also charged with battery on a peace officer. The Chronicle further notes that Shin had been admitted to a psychiatric facility in 1998, but soon escaped. And so ends our mockery of an obviously highly disturbed individual. Even our cold, shriveled hearts feel bad for the guy at this point.

New York State kids Saverio Mondelli and Shaun Harrison pled out on charges of extorting $150,000 from Myspace by way of a program they wrote to surreptitiously collect e-mail and IP addresses from Myspace users. Mondelli and Harrison demanded a "consulting fee" of $150,000 in exchange for ceasing to distribute their program (for which they charged users $30). The best part of the case, though, is that the pair were duped into flying to Los Angeles to meet with Myspace bagmen and collect their cash. Of course, the only people waiting for them in LA were the Secret Service and district attorney. If you're trying to squeeze money out of Rupert Murdoch, best be a little more circumspect.

Also, the Post nailed the three alternate names Paul Cortez suggested for his old band.

On the heels of good news about her TV show, former politico Jeanine Pirro must now face an bead investigation. As part of a wider probe into her potential wiretapping naughtiness as Westchester district attorney, Pirro's embarrassing hobby of crafting beaded necklaces and selling them to acquaintances has also drawn the feds' attention. (This is, for our money, potentially an even more embarrassing personal quirk than her husband's yacht-bound ass-fingering.) So what's the story on those beads?

In addition to finally copping to her cell-phone maid assault, Naomi Campbell has somehow scored a sweet interviewer's gig with British GQ. This supposedly came about due to Naomi's stellar performance when grilled for GQ by an old enemy, i.e. columnist Piers Morgan; he had to pay her $1.7 million in damages in 2004, back when he edited the Daily Mirror and his paper invaded her privacy by running pictures of her attending NarcAnon meetings. One assumes that most of Naomi's interview questions will revolve around the location of her jeans.

To be sure, Simpson never explicitly admits to slicing his ex-wife's neck so savagely that he almost decapitated her.

Rex Farrance, senior tech editor at PC World, was shot to death during a break-in by four masked intruders at his home in the Bay Area suburb of Pittsburg, California. Farrance's wife was also pistol-whipped during the attack. Police are calling it narcoviolence, saying "We have substantial reason to believe that the victim and his wife were involved in the possession and, potentially, the distribution of illegal narcotics." The Farrance's son claims the only drug present was his medically prescribed marijuana stash, grown and stored with his parents' permission. (Though of course, just because the pot was legal doesn't mean the thugs didn't come to steal it.) Either way, harsh.

Imaginary Socialite claims that on Tuesday night, the NYPD raided a 23rd-Street counterfeit fashion ring, grabbing "over 25,000" fakes in "the largest counterfeit crackdown in New York history." Perhaps it's just the early-morning chill and pre-caffeine shakes, but we're not seeing this reported elsewhere. Thoughts?

Well, besides us and everyone else who matters. If you'll recall, back in the day (well, back in November), we linked to the Daily Intel's story about the "stylishly kitschy" hotspot's possible looming shutdown, which featured an especially adorable denial from owner Guy Jacobson: "I have a license to sell one drug; it's the one behind the bar." Today, however, a tipster alerted us to the fact that the bar, which was featured in yesterday's Styles 'Boite' column, was closed on Friday night, and that a coke bust was the rumored cause. Could a place whose denizens say things like ""I'm an enthusiast and I express myself sensually and I can barely hold myself in . . . I can tell that there's an element of the pulse, of neurotic, erotic perfection" really be a secret purveyor of high-grade snortables? We're scratching our heads and rubbing our noses spastically in confusion.

Figurative and literal anal-penetration victim and Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis has beaten 34 of the "more than 40" felony and misdemeanor charges against him for videotaping minors having real and/or simulated sex. "Hundreds of hours" of damning tape seized from Francis's homes and plane were suppressed from evidence because of improper search warrants; a few counts remain on the docket due to potential testimony from the videographer and photographer in question. So other than a few fines and community service, things are looking good for Joe. Perhaps he'll go beat up a reporter to celebrate!

The holidays can be very stressful for Staten Islanders. When residents of the fifth borough suddenly feel the need to wreak havoc, we certainly know where they're coming from, having been there ourselves many, many times. There have been several occasions this very week, in fact, where your guest editor has been overcome by a sudden urge to douse his temporary coworkers' faces with dangerous chemical substances.

Certainly, it sucks to be Timothy McDarrah, former Us Weekly and Las Vegas Sun columnist who was convicted December 20 for soliciting Internet sexing with little girls. After McDarrah's 2005 arrest, the sordid details of his proclivities were inflicted on an unfortunate public. Nevertheless, it's a stroke of bad luck that McDarrah was found guilty at the start of a dead holiday news cycle, as all it takes is an AP retread of last week's news to spawn a raft of "new" reports about how McDarrah was "just convicted." Cheer up ... only a couple more days before we can all stop phoning it in.

You people are killing each other at a much higher rate this year, and we don't know why, although we're liking the idea of a "reclassified homicide," which is where one New Yorker kills another one, but the one who's been killed doesn't die until the following year. 2006 gave us an unusually high number of reclassified homicides, so we suppose we can take comfort in the fact that hospital care is improving, if nothing else.

Today, an article in the Post indicated that marijuana procured from the crime syndicate headed up by recently nabbed (jeez, "nabbed"? We need to go on a Post diet) "diamond-studded, bling-wearing" kingpin Orlando Torres was the most costly ever at $560 per ounce. Hmm. We're too high on schwag to figure out whether this is actually true, but we figure that someone out there reading this is a big pothead who likes the fancy stuff (you know, maybe). So let us know. If it turns out that the Post is wrong about something, we give up on the whole Santa = real thing too.
Update: Omg, the Post was wrong!

You know, when we took this job, we didn't really know what to expect. There was a lot of uncertainty. But there was just one thing that we were absolutely sure of: that we would one day be writing an item about promising indie actress turned crackhead flameout ne plus ultra Natasha Lyonne.

Lindsay Ratowsky — the former assistant to Lindsay Lohan, outed as the "LR" that Lohan rails against in her crazy rage-mail — has her own darkly criminal past. Ratowsky may be temporarily protected by her status as new assistant to Jessica Biel, but if Biel really is sorta "dating" NY Yankee Derek Jeter, Ratowsky could find herself drawn dangerously close to Lohan's home turf. (Incidentally, we personally spotted Derek Jeter sunning his golden physique on a Dominican Republic beach this past weekend, and he was complaining about some non-Biel chick he was trying to bone.) Anyway! Goldenfiddle runs a reader mail detailing Ratowsky's extremely amateurish attempt to steal a boutique necklace while masquerading as Lohan's assistant, even though she had already parted ways with the other Lindsay. Expect her to try and lift Jeter's 2000 World Series ring if not carefully monitored.