Jerry Seinfeld, whom we most recently had the pleasure of hearing robotically introduce the nominees for Best Animated Short through the guise of the CGI star of his egregiously under-publicized Bee Movie, is currently being sued by cookbook author Missy Chase Lapine for comments he made on Late Show with David Letterman. On the show, he called Lapine, who had expressed concern that Mrs. Seinfeld had stolen the basic concept of her book, a "wacko" waiting "in the woodwork," "hysterical," and "a three-name woman...and many of the three-named people do become assassins—Mark David Chapman, James Earl Ray..." Now Seinfeld's lawyers are trying to have the suit thrown out, claiming the comments were jokes, no more harmful to Lapine's reputation than an exasperatedly humorous observation about airplane-peanut packaging:

Since Seinfeld, Seinfeld has done a whole lot of nothing. His primary pastimes over the past decade have included tending to a fleet of Porsches, buying and selling real estate, and lavishing money on his socialite wife, Jessica Sklar Seinfeld.

On Sunday, the New York Giants play the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game. In order to jinx Giants quarterback Eli Manning, the Green Bay Fox affiliate has decided not to play their reguar Saturday night Seinfeld repeat. Because Eli lives in New York, you see, so it's probably his favorite television show. In retaliation, the Giants have announced plans to destroy the eerily aging portrait of Brett Favre that hangs in a Lambeau equipment closet. And to hide his painkillers. [Fox 11]

[Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld leaving an Upper East Side restaurant last night; image via Splash]

"1/15/08, 10:30 — 92nd & Lex — Power couple alert! Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise and Jerry & Jessica Seinfeld dining together (along with their security detail) at Italian restaurant Sfoglia Trattoria on 92nd & Lexington. They lingered at the restaurant past it's closing time possibly trying to outlast the growing mass of paparazzi outside." Topics of conversation at dinner? Feel free to speculate. One commenter channels Jerry Seinfeld: "So, Xenu blew them all up with atomic bombs, and that released the thetans to haunt the earth for milennia, and yada yada yada, now everyone thinks I'm in a cult!"

Jerry Seinfeld's wife is really a bit much to handle. She sent 21 pairs of shoes to Oprah and totally (in our completely non-expert opinion) ripped off some lady's cookbook. The lady's name is Missy Chase Lapine (woah, pornstar much?) and her book was called the "Sneaky Chef." Jerry Seinfeld's wife's name, on the other hand, is Jerry Seinfeld's wife (too lazy to look up). Her book is called "Deceptively Delicious." Now Smoking Gun has the suit which includes some passages supposedly stolen from the book. They're after the jump. BUT before you go, ponder: Even though the words look the same and even the concept of the books are identical, a deeper issue is at stake. Nameley, who really has the right to pronounce universal truths? And once one is uttered, is that truth the property of the speaker or of the universe for which it is true. Kids always hate vegetables. Parents always lie to children to make them do the things they hate. Those who love us lie to us because they love us. Love is a lie. Jessica Seinfeld, Missy knows that. We all know that. Excerpts after the jump.

The other Christian Louboutin has finally dropped in the Jessica Seinfeld affair, as Missy Chase Lapine, the cookbook author whose book The Sneaky Chef bore an extremely uncomfortable resemblance to the one Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld was plugging on Oprah, is suing the couple. Not only does she claim copyright infringement, but also defamation against the Bee Movie star, who, among the observations he made about the complainant on The Late Show with David Letterman, compared Lapine to "wackos who wait in the woodwork to inject a little adrenaline in your life experience," and noted that "many three-named women do become assassins." THR, ESQ. predicts that the trial should be "entertaining," unless of course the couple decides to settle behind closed doors, offering Lapine an undisclosed but substantial settlement paid off entirely in designer footwear.

Jessica Seinfeld, wife of the TV comic and author of "Deceptively Delicious", is accused of plagiarizing another book of healthy recipes for junk-food-addicted kids.

In the outside chance there still exists a pocket of backwoods-dwelling clodhoppers who have yet to learn of Jessica Seinfeld's bestselling cookbook Deceptively Delicious, the wife of Bee Movie mogul Jerry Seinfeld appeared on The View today to further outline her methods of veggie-disguising culinary tricksiness.

"There are three things people think they know about Jessica Seinfeld, the semipublic wife of the popular comedian," writes Allen Salkin, who, though he wrote an entire book about the fake holiday Festivus, boasts no "personal or professional relationship" with the Seinfelds. The three things are: A) she met Jerry at a gym shortly after marrying a different rich dude, B) she was accused of plagiarism, and C) she thanked Oprah for a recent appearance with 21 pairs of designer shoes. In order to dispel these 'myths,' Jessica has now "grudgingly" consented to be interviewed. She starts by slamming "journalists." "I understand that there's nothing more satisfying to a journalist than to take someone like me who appears to have had an easy life and appears to have now hit the jackpot," she tells Salkin. Actually! There's one thing that's more satisfying: Watching someone who's trying desperately to revamp her image totally dig herself a deeper hole.

· Just when we thought there was nothing that could possibly make us smile on this long, depressing day, we flipped back through our copy of Digital Variety, finding Go Fast. For the moment, at least, everything seems right with the world.
· Speaking Truth to Senile Power Dept: You know who isn't especially charmed by Larry King's patented "zero research" interviewing technique? Jerry Seinfeld. Don't you know who he is, Larry? 75 million fucking viewers, Larry!
· EW.com's readers may not realize that the term "of all time" includes the period before Prison Break debuted.
· One clear beneficiary of the writers strike: NaNoWriMo.
· We know we've already been there once this week, but now, more than ever, we think we need a little unicorn magic in our lives.

• Britney Spears hasn't regained shared custody of her sons, but her hair is looking much better. [Us Weekly]
  

Appearing on Late Show last night to promote a small, low-profile animated movie soon to make its way into select art houses across the country, Hubbardian dabbler Jerry Seinfeld used the opportunity to try out a tight, three-minute set of new material based entirely around the everyman premise, "So a billionaire comedian's wife writes an Oprah-approved cookbook about hiding brussel sprouts in your kids' mac and cheese, and some celebrity-stalking lunatic accuses her of plagiarism, just because the book she already wrote on that topic contains 15 identical recipes!"

You know that thing that Jerry Seinfeld does where his voice suddenly gets very loud and high? He may have picked up that trick about invading your earspace when he briefly dabbled in Scientology 30 years ago: "You would just understand that there's this kind of voice, and then there's this kind of voice, and then there's this kind of voice. I wasn't a natural performer at all, so I learned. I was always a pretty good writer in the beginning, but I really had to learn how to perform. Just a little thing like that, understanding that really helped me on stage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit." [Parade]

From the mailbag: "HarperCollins is estimating that Jessica Seinfeld's book [about tricking kids into eating healthy by pureeing their veggies] Deceptively Delicious has sold ~125,000 in its first week on sale. This week's sign of the apocalypse: that a woman with no discernible talent other than dumping her fiance when a richer guy comes along has just had what's arguably the nonfiction debut of the year. There's something like another 250K on order."

TimesTV critic Alessandra Stanley reviews the season premiere of "30 Rock" and finds it lacking. She places some of the blame on guest star Jerry Seinfeld: "[Seinfeld] shows up at Rockefeller Center to complain, and that's when the show goes a little wobbly: Mr. Seinfeld is strangely ill at ease playing himself, making his self-impersonation unpersuasive." How unfortunate! If only Seinfeld had any prior experience portraying a stand-up comedian named Jerry Seinfeld! [NYT]

Yesterday, Radar tried to gin up some controversy around a joke made by Jerry Seinfeld. Rush & Molloy reported that the comedian, promoting his new film Bee Movie, said of bees, "They have no crime, they have no drugs, they have no rape. A little rape, but it's not that bad." Radar sensed an opening and plowed through, calling a few anti-rape activists and asking them to comment. Predictably, they were outraged. But what of those on the other side of the issue? How did they feel? Gawker investigated.

When we read Jerry Seinfeld's pre-Bee Movie screening comments about the insects' "perfect society" ("Other insects are just kind of crawling around. They don't have the sophistication of the bee. They have no crime, they have no drugs, they have no rape. A little rape, but it's not that bad.") in today's Rush & Molloy column this morning, we paused, wondered if the joke might result in the kind of controversy that reliably follows any spontaneous attempt at rape-related humor, then decided that the words would probably pass unprotested, for bee-rape advocacy groups are notoriously disorganized. Unfortunately for Seinfeld, other organizations are more vigiliant. Radar collects a smattering of speedy admonishments:

When we first heard about Jerry Seinfeld's big Bee Movie publicity stunt at Cannes (bee costumes, wires over the beach, mobs of gasping spectators, etc etc), the whole affair seemed incredibly reckless: had a strong gust of wind or a Pixar saboteur interfered with the delicate proceedings, the world easily could have lost its finest, semi-retired observational humorist and Porsche collector. As it turns out, our fears were at least partially unnecessary, as THR notes that a far more expendable member of the Bee Movie team volunteered for zip-line-test-dummy duty to ensure the star's safety: