George Clooney Versus Absolutely Fabio-lous

We Shark Guys generally steer clear of tabloids, unless of course, it’s to get the latest GPS coordinates for Angelina’s lost baby or to find out when the biblical rapture is coming to a town near you (get that bulk shopping done now, Kearney, Nebraska).

Yes, there are tens of thousands of blogs out there that already go into the extreme minutiae of celebrity exploits, from the rum-laced oatmeal that starts their mornings to the evening’s highway hot toddies that result in more DUIs per capita for the high-rolling set than anyone else.

That said, as with our respective addictions to restoring functionality to Civil-War-era cannons and firing them off, and needlessly polluting public parks (we won’t say which of us suffers from which addiction), we do occasionally feel the need to indulge in a bit of trashy, celebrity gossip, especially when the stars of the tale are as unlikely a pair as this one. We could no longer resist the temptation to cover male-model extraordinaire Fabio's recent dust up with George Clooney at an Italian restaurant again after the Fab-ster rehashed the entire incident in an interview with Ok Magazine earlier this week.

The incident started when George Clooney suspected that one of Fabio’s dinner companions (a group who had won a “Dinner with Fabio” prize in some sort of housewife fantasy contest—we were unable to determine who sprung for the tab) was taking photographs of Clooney gorging himself on the expensive Italian fare without his permission. Clooney was photographed with middle-finger poised Fabio-ward (see above), so we can assume that Clooney was right in thinking this, though we typically reserve the middle-digit for more worthy recipients like the guy at the highway toll booth, who can’t do crap about it anyway.

Fabio, who has graced hundreds of covers of romance novels and once was so absolutely incredulous at the thought that a margarine spread was not butter that he starred in a nationwide advertising campaign to that effect, came to the table, told Clooney no photos were being taken of him and to take it easy. Clooney paid up and then, according to Fabio, dealt out a parting-shot to his table referring to one of his lady friends as “a fat cow”.

Chivalry is not dead, as long as Fabio is in the house while George Clooney is drinking wine. He came to their defense, later telling OK! “You have to be a low-class, scumbag to start calling a woman a name. If you're a man, you should never. You should be a gentleman. These women were with me and as a man I defend them.” If Fabio’s version of this is correct, he then chased Clooney out of the place, later saying “He was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He's not even half a man."

We consulted some street fight analysts (read: rummies who say they could and would have kicked your ass seven ways from Sunday when they were your age) and, on providing them with the tale of the tape -- with Fabio at 6'3 and in good shape and Clooney at 5'11 and presumably too preoccupied with his career as an A-list Hollywood actor to waste his time on martial arts -- the majority opinion was not in Clooney's favor. As one wag surmised: “That big bastid Fabio would tear his freakin’ head off!”