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Lessons from famous couples' meltdowns

Ellis Henican

July 6, 2008

There are lessons in all these famous-couple meltdowns. It's just that none of the celebrity melters seems the slightest bit interested in learning anything.

So the rest of us might as well benefit from their mutual self-immolations.

Mr. and Mrs. Guy Ritchie, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cook, Mr. and Mrs. Alex Rodriguez: They sound so secure and loving - don't they? - introduced like that. Oh, what trouble they could have saved themselves with five minutes of couples therapy. Oh, what simple lessons they could have learned.

Lessons like: Keep the dirty laundry private.

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Lessons like: Sometimes it really is cheaper just to pay.

Lessons like: If you hang with sleazy people, you'll end up doing sleazy things.

Lessons like: When the adults start acting stupid, it's the kids who usually will pay.

Suddenly, the Lohans are looking like the boring family around here.

Christie and Peter aren't just breaking up. They're completely breaking down. Madonna's looking like the least-spiritual spiritualist to ever wear a prayer shawl. Her soon-to-be-ex Guy just looks like an afterthought. And A-Rod and C-Rod and the left-behind baby-Rods - they're all caught in a kind of craziness no bling-ring can ever repair.

Across this whole tumultuous landscape, only Lenny Kravitz is recovering well.

After jetting off to Paris with Cynthia Rodriguez, the rocker put out a statement right away, firmly denying that he and the impetuous baseball wife were anything more than friends.

It may be true. It may not be.

But give Kravitz credit for one lesson learned: At least he wasn't making anything worse.

7-ELEVEN SMASH-UP: Like generations of fathers before him, Craig Griffith was teaching his son to drive. But the East Islip dad is probably the one who could use some driver's ed. Police say he let his 10-year-old take the wheel in a convenience store parking lot, watched as the kid collided with an occupied car - then slid back into the driver's seat, high-tailing it before the cops arrived. Then again, maybe it was all just part of an intergenerational lesson plan: "Son, this is what they call 'leaving the scene of an accident.'"

DRINK TO THAT: With Hamptons Vodka actually made in Minnesota and Peconika a distant memory now, will LIV's local flavor be a winning formula for small-batch premium-vodka success? Rich Stabile and Dan Pollicino have bet $2 million on it. Working in a converted horse barn in Baiting Hollow, they've been patiently distilling with 100 percent North Fork potatoes, finally sending out their first cases of LIV (rhymes with "hive"). The early word? Silky texture. Buttery feel. Cheers!

ASKED AND UNANSWERED: How many LIE drivers secretly appreciate the high gas prices? State sensors just counted a 4.8 percent traffic drop at the Nassau-Suffolk border. Can the HOV lanes claim that? ... What's Dean Skelos hearing on his "upstate listening tour"? How pleased the folks are that the governor, attorney general, Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader are all downstaters now? ... Is the Confederate flag flying half-staff for Jesse Helms? ... Shouldn't Republicans be cheering - not jeering - Barack Obama's rightward rush? ... Which of Steve & Barry's 270 stores might have to close? Chinos shoppers in Hicksville, Westbury, Massapequa and Medford are still waiting for word from Steve Shore of Merrick or Barry Prevor of Syosset ... The 2-year-old in Central Islip, the tragic nanny drama in Syosset, the eighth-grade grad off Long Beach - isn't it finally time to take a systematic look at all the drownings on Long Island? Does death in the water have to be an every-summer fact of life? ... So Christie, do you still think it was a good idea not to settle out of court? So Peter, do you still think it was a good idea not to settle out of court? ... Is it a total coincidence that Maverick Records boss Guy Oseary manages the careers of Madonna, Lenny Kravitz and Alex Rodriguez. File this one under "quite a cozy publicity stunt" ... I'm usually a live-and-let live kind of guy: So why does the pregnant-man-gives-birth story keep giving me the creeps? ... Is Florida Gov. Charlie Crist remarrying to boost his VP chances with John McCain? That's what some competing camps are grumbling ... With NF3, the flat-screen TV gas, now being fingered as a global-warming cause, are you ready to give up the 50-inch plasma? Didn't think so ... Was Joey Chestnut's Coney Island victory over Takeru Kobayashi a significant triumph in U.S.-Japanese competitiveness? Or just a hungry Californian who can really put those Nathan's dogs away? ... Has "Kabbalah'd" now become a verb? Madonna-obsessed celeb-site TMZ thinks so: "Madge Kabbalah'd A-Rod into Submission." That must really hurt.

INDEPENDENCE WEEKEND

1 Christie from Peter

2 Madonna from Guy

3 Alex from Cynthia

4 Cynthia from the kids

5 Family-values talk from family-values reality

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Related topic galleries: Alex Rodriguez, Government, Long Island, Executive Branch, Jesse Helms, North Fork, Guy Ritchie

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