Lou Rawls Pipes Up About Alleged Water Problem

Seduced au jus . . . A $2,999,990 difference . . . Bubba’d . . . Green machine.

Three-time Grammy winner Lou Rawls has a problem with his pipes. No, not the pipes that bring forth that distinctive throaty baritone. The pipes in his house.

Rawls is suing the city of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power. His Los Angeles Superior Court suit accuses the city and utility of negligently supplying dirty water. He seeks damages in excess of $500,000.

The city and DWP owe Rawls and his wife, C.C., a duty “to supply clean, drinkable, uncontaminated water,” according to the suit. Instead, the water at Rawls’ Los Angeles home is polluted by “sand and other contaminants.” His attorney, Edwin F. McPherson, says the sand is a mystery because Rawls’ house is nowhere near the beach.

Rawls says he had his pipes flushed and fixed, replaced his faucets and other appliances, and filed a claim with the city--all to no avail. He charges that the city and DWP assert that they have the matter under investigation, but the sand problem persists.

A former gospel singer from Chicago’s south side, the 64-year-old Rawls achieved fame in the 1970s with popular numbers such as “Natural Man” and “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.”

“We have not yet been served with the complaint, so we have no comment,” said Assistant City Atty. Edward A. Schlotman.

OOOO LA LA! Talk about putting the blue in Le Cordon Bleu: A Malibu woman is suing the famed Paris cooking school for $10 million, charging that the head chef got her tipsy and seduced her.

Twice.

Patricia Snow Denman’s Los Angeles federal court suit accuses the school of negligence, saying it knew or should have known that Patrick Terrien, its chef des chefs, and other cooking instructors were notorious for soaking female students liberally in alcohol and having le sex with them.

In Paris, all is fair in the game of l’amour. But here, one hires a lawyer and calls it sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, sexual battery and negligent supervision.

Denman charges in the suit that her “common law” husband, wealthy businessman Richard Denman, sent her to Paris for a soupcon of “personal development.”

Court papers say at least 37 current or former students have been seduced au jus by Cordon Bleu chefs. A representative for the Parisian institution could not be reached.

OVER THE RAINBOW: The late actress Judy Garland’s honorary juvenile Oscar is for sale on the Internet for $3 million. The people who gave it to her in 1940--The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--charge in a lawsuit that they have dibs to buy Garland’s golden boy for $10.

That’s a $2,999,990 discount.

It’s not that the Academy is cheap. It insists it must keep Oscar off the auction block to protect the golden boy’s honor and integrity.

“The Academy has never intended the ‘Oscar’ to be treated as an article of trade,” sniffs the Academy in its Los Angeles Superior Court suit against Garland’s former husband, Sid Luft, and South Bay memorabilia collector Nate Sanders. The suit seeks an injunction.

According to court papers, Garland reported the original Oscar missing in 1958. When she received the duplicate, she signed an agreement giving the Academy “right of first refusal”--in other words, a future option to buy back the statuette--for $10.

In 1993, Luft tried to auction the replacement Oscar at Christie’s, but the Academy sued to stop the sale. A year later, the Academy won back the replacement Oscar.

Now the original has turned up, and Luft wants to sell it. He might have a case: A close reading of the Academy’s lawsuit reveals that the buy-back clause went into effect in 1950--a decade after Garland was awarded the original.

LOOK MA, NO HANDS: A contestant on a game show called “Battle Dome” has sued Sony Pictures Entertainment, charging that he was injured when a gladiator named Bubba cheated during an aerial kickboxing match.

Richard Menchio’s Los Angeles Superior Court suit says he was booked to do battle with Bubba on the show in August.

Menchio says that he and Bubba were told they could hold onto an aerial apparatus only with their hands. But, the suit charges, Bubba cheated by hooking his leg over the thing “in order to gain an unfair advantage” and kicked Menchio “with such great force as to cause serious injury.”

Bubba and an outfit called Canterbury Productions also were named as defendants in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.

Bubba could not be reached.

NOT AMUSED: Jeffrey A. Spector was walking around downtown Los Angeles one day last winter when he wound up in the middle of a Tom Green stunt for MTV.

Spector didn’t want to be on MTV. Now he’s suing.

According to the Los Angeles Superior Court suit, Spector was entering the Pershing Square subway station at 4th and Hill streets about 5 p.m. when Green came careening toward him in a wheelchair.

“Defendant Green, who at all relevant times did not require the use of a wheelchair, was proceeding at an unsafe speed and crashed down the steps of the Metro Red Line station,” the invasion of privacy suit states.

“Plaintiff was momentarily stunned but quickly realized the incident was some type of stunt or hoax.”

It was, indeed, a bit for the “Tom Green Show” called “Lucille, Loose Wheel,” the suit says.

Spector refused to sign a release form and thought that was the end of it, according to the suit.

But he appeared in the bit, which ran on MTV at least eight times, according to the suit. Spector is seeking unspecified damages from Green, producer C.K. Gillen and MTV, charging that the incident caused him to be “scorned and abandoned by friends and family [and] exposed to contempt and ridicule.”

Hey, folks, it’s only comedy.