At SAG Awards, Kudos for Best Lawyer
S. Epatha Merkerson remembered virtually everyone Sunday night when she accepted her Screen Actors Guild award: her manager, her brother, the writer, her producers . . . and her D.C. divorce attorney!
"I have to say a public thank you to my divorce lawyer, Sandy Ain and Clare Miller !" she shouted out on the live broadcast in Los Angeles.
 S. Epatha Merkerson thanked her divorce attorney, D.C.'s Sandy Ain. |
Watching from home here, Ain was startled but pleased. A perennial on "best divorce lawyers" lists in Washingtonian and Town & Country, he'd never before been thanked at a national awards show. Miller is an associate in his K Street firm, Ain & Bank.
"She's a wonderful human being," Ain said of his "Law & Order" star client, recognized by SAG for her role as a small-town boardinghouse owner in "Lackawanna Blues" on HBO. "She's a total class act, very well-grounded."
But . . . who knew Merkerson was getting divorced? She wed social worker Toussaint Jones in 1994, and they commuted between New York and Prince George's County; he worked in the District, and she did some theater work here. Never heard anything about a split.
"That's one of the reasons people come to me, because I have very tight lips," Ain said. "But for the fact that Epatha mentioned me, I wouldn't be talking to you." Merkerson's manager did not return a call for comment.
In other movie awards news, both jurors and audience members at the Sundance Film Festival gave their top prize to "God Grew Tired of Us," a documentary about three of Sudan's "lost boys" and their relocation in the United States, directed by Christopher Quinn , an Alexandria native.
The documentary was financed in part by actor Dermot Mulroney, a childhood pal of Quinn's from T.C. Williams High School.
Rapper's Manager Awaits Verdict
The case of "Jimmie the Henchman " -- aka James Rosemond , manager for rap star The Game, accused of slugging former WKYS DJ Richard Dunkerson at the station last year -- went to a Prince George's County jury last night.
Though the defense earlier hinted that the rapper himself might fly in to take the stand, it wrapped after testimony from just three not-famous witnesses. Yesterday's courtroom highlight was the appearance for the prosecution of WKYS production director Luis Hernande z -- notable for the major shiner on his own face, from a weekend dust-up (unrelated to the case at hand) at a D.C. nightclub.
'Anchor' Colbert Gets to Pull Some Chains
You're not really one of us, buddy! You're the after-dinner act.
The White House Correspondents' Association announced that faux blowhard pundit Stephen Colbert , star of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," will entertain real Washington egomaniacs at the annual dinner in April. "His whole persona is skewering the self-important," said association President Mark Smith of AP Radio. "What isn't perfect about having him skewer 3,000 of America's most self-obsessed people?"
We tried to ask Colbert yesterday what he has planned for President Bush and other VIPs, but the imitation bombastic and self-centered anchor was waaay too busy to talk, according to his publicist.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Now here's a campaign promise. On top of lowering taxes and raising pensions, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told Italian voters that he won't have sex until the April election.
The pledge was reported Sunday in Il Giornale, a conservative Milan daily owned by Berlusconi's brother. The billionaire prime minister, 69, made the no-sex vow at a rally in Sardinia after he was blessed by a popular television preacher for protecting family values. "I will try to meet your expectations, and I promise from now on, 2 1/2 months of absolute sexual abstinence, until April 9," said Berlusconi, a ladies' man who has had a facelift and hair transplant.
Yesterday's Corriere della Sera newspaper snarked, "Berlusconi has introduced a new game into his one-man reality show, the Berlusconi Chastity Countdown." We always thought that sex with your spouse was the very definition of family-friendly, so go figure. Did Berlusconi's wife of 16 years, 48-year-old actress/babe Veronica Lario , get a headache before or after the announcement?
HEY, ISN'T THAT . . . ?
Vice President Cheney , Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former secretary of state George Shultz at Cafe Milano on Friday. The VIP Secretary Pool gathered with some of their spouses and journalist Charles Krauthammer for the private party in the restaurant's front room, and they created the predictable hubbub of security vans and gawkers on Prospect Street before breaking up about 10 p.m.
