Paparazzi

What's that old sports saying about the quarterback getting the girl? Over the weekend, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was soaking up rays and kicking back in Mexico with Jessica Simpson, an event captured in a series of still images by the paparazzi (who these days might be armed with nothing more than a cell phone).

Pop star Britney Spears was wheeled out of her Los Angeles home on a gurney late Thursday and involuntarily hospitalized after a three-hour child-custody standoff with police and bodyguards for her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. Even as the ambulance drove away, paparazzi who follow the singer everywhere ran behind the vehicle, holding up their cameras to shoot the troubled singer through the vehicle's rear windows. Authorities were called to Spears' home in the 12000 block of Summit Circle about 8 p.m. Thursday after Federline's bodyguards went to her house to pick up Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, who were scheduled to return to their father's custody, authorities said.

Nicole Kidman scored last week with her testimony before an Australian court, telling of her terror at being chased by lensmen in Sydney. Because Ms. Kidman is a star of some rectitude, wildly popular as a person of ethics and taste, her testimony carried some weight. Then George Clooney, her American heavyweight opposite, talked to Entertainment Weekly about Hollywood paparazzi nearly causing accidents in his neighborhood. He said wisely, "They're not trying to catch me doing something stupid; they're trying to create me doing something stupid."

I HONOR `real journalism,' which doesn't get clouded by false stories whether they're about me or anybody else," said Angelina Jolie at the Courage in Journalism Awards in Beverly Hills. So, you see, occasionally something does happen on the West Coast that isn't about Britney, Nicole, Lindsay or Paris. A saucy film Meryl Streep as Julia Childs? Nora Ephron is adapting the Julie Powell book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. The saucy Ms. Ephron will also direct and - hooray - the movie will be made in New York City in March.

I WASN'T really into being followed around everywhere by six guys in six SUVs with two-way radios. ... I don't want to feed the fishies. I also didn't want to be one of those people who are sour about it. So I decided I'd just leave."

Parking enforcers go high-tech Officials with Baltimore's Department of Transportation have begun equipping parking enforcers with hand-held computers to issue parking tickets. They also have vans equipped with license-plate-reading cameras that identify stolen cars, scores of multi-space E-Z park meters that have replaced old-fashioned meters and two tiny, electric-motor cars that allow parking agents greater freedom in navigating downtown streets. pg 1a Michael Sarbanes to run Michael Sarbanes, executive director of one of Baltimore's leading neighborhood and regional advocacy groups, will announce today that he is running for City Council president - a move that will likely draw significant attention to the city's second-most prominent political race this year.

The photograph showed apparently soused starlet Lindsay Lohan passed out in a car, mouth agape, oblivious to popping flashbulbs. That image, with everything it says about Hollywood excess and youthful indiscretion, ran on the front pages of yesterday's New York Post and its rival Daily News, accompanied by headlines that yelled "Smashed" and "Party Pooped." For X17, the paparazzi photo agency that owns the picture, it was a good day in L.A. "We are overwhelmed," X17's founder and president, Frank Rohmer, said yesterday from his Beverly Hills, Calif.

I like American TV reality programming - the worse the better. I love seeing people humiliated, made fun of, brought down," said Hugh Grant. That was just about the time he was throwing baked beans at a paparazzo. Let's consider our British cousins for a moment. Queen Elizabeth II is now making her royal progress in the United States. Her grandsons are geared up for their big July blowout concert to salute the 10th anniversary of their mother's untimely death. And their father, Prince Charles, and his newish wife, Camilla, have decided they won't horn in on the Diana magic.

The first movie Mel Gibson put his name and his face on after The Passion of the Christ is a petulant, violent and sophomoric hissy fit about those nasty photographers who torment the rich and famous. Talk about your false prophets. Paparazzi, which Gibson produced and further endorsed by making a cameo - and not nailing anybody's hand to anything this time - is just vile. Every ugly story ever attached to the vultures who make their living taking candid shots of celebrities is repeated.

A paparazzo as hero? Perhaps anti-hero would be the best way to describe Jake "Monster" McGowran. Chronically unshaven, unashamedly opportunistic and unapologetically uncouth, McGowran is the in-your-face protagonist of I, Paparazzi, a graphic novel written by Pat McGreal and illustrated by two Baltimoreans, photographer Stephen John Phillips and graphic artist Steven Parke. "Pat, I know, got really interested with paparazzi with the Lady Di thing, which basically made them out to look so terrible," Phillips says from his Towson home.