PEOPLE

Hutton has leg surgery following cycle injury

Model and actress Lauren Hutton was recuperating Wednesday after more than seven hours of reconstructive leg surgery for injuries. Hutton, a longtime motorcycle rider, was on the road Saturday afternoon with Dennis Hopper, Jeremy Irons and about 50 other celebrity members of the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club riding State Route 167 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, east of Las Vegas, as part of a 100-mile rip across southern Nevada.

According to the National Park Service, which is investigating the accident, Hutton’s motorcycle “left the road on the right-hand side and appeared to travel several hundred feet before stopping,” Park Service spokesman Bert Byers said. The 55-year-old, who was wearing a helmet and protective leathers, suffered multiple fractures in one leg, a broken wrist and several cuts and scrapes.

“She still has a lot of recovery ahead of her,” said Rick Plummer, a spokesman for University Medical Center. “With any surgery it takes a while to see how it went.” Hutton also had head trauma, but no specifics were given. “It’s what you imagine would happen anytime someone flew several hundred feet in a crash,” Plummer said.

The ride was organized to publicize the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s tenant partnership with the State Hermitage Museum of Russia in a museum being constructed near The Venetian Hotel. The museum will open next spring with the exhibit, “The Art of the Motorcycle,” which debuted two years ago in New York and spawned the motorcycle club.

FALL CASUALTY: The Olympics have barely concluded to make room for the fall TV season and already the trigger-happy networks have started at the firing range. NBC announced Tuesday that “Tucker,” a dysfunctional family seen through a kid’s viewpoint, would end after three episodes. It’s not alone: “Daddio” is also D.O.A. Inside.com reported that NBC will be sticking a “Dateline” episode in the Monday 8 p.m. slot instead.

APB ON ODB: MTV.com reports that a bench warrant has been issued for Wu-Tang Clan rapper ODB (real name Russell Tyrone Jones), who slipped out of custody from a drug treatment facility last week. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Michael O’Gara told MTV that drug counselors were escorting ODB from the Impact House facility in Pasadena to the Los Angeles Criminal Courthouse when the rapper “physically ran away” as opposed to spiritually leaving his body?

Ken Holder, bureau chief of narcotics trials for the district attorney’s office in Queens, New York where ODB has an outstanding bench warrant for cocaine possession said that the Impact House can’t hold patients against their will, but the facility does have to tell the court if a patient leaves without an escort.

“He’s probably looking at prison (time),” O’Gara tells MTV. “We’re looking at whether he is suitable for probation, and based upon his actions thus far, in my opinion, he’s not. We don’t have many choices left.”

DON’T MOCK THE MESSENGER: Zen koans aside, if a pretty boy delivers a diatribe against prepackaged pretty boys, does the truth of the message become overwhelmed by irony? The volley against modern pop music has been launched by George Michael, who wrote in last weekend’s Sunday Times that the pop music baton has passed from “people who wrote their own songs, sang them with a variety of untrained voices, drank, took drugs, drowned, marched, looked ridiculous and made amazing, beautiful music,” to marketing types who can’t rise above the “bottom lines.” They “have spent the last 15 years doing their best to relieve artists of their art and have pretty much succeeded. Why work with one really self-opinionated, uncompromising singer-songwriter who never does what they’re told when you can pluck four or five great-looking kids out of school, push them around big time, then take all the credit when they go to No. 1?” He said “real talent” was ignored “in favor of malleable, pretty young things.”

Picking up the lyrical war cry is Bono. The U2 singer declared prefabricated groups “dead, their time is over,” and that on the group’s tour next year, they would be “flying the flag for bands who can really play. People are sick to the teeth of processed and hyped pop bands. They want something real again and that’s where we come in.” We can all reminisce.

Today’s People Column was compiled by Vera H-C Chan from staff and wire reports. Comments? Write to us c/o the Times, P.O. Box 8099, Walnut Creek, CA 94596-8099. Or call 925-943-8262, fax 925-943-8362, or e-mail spin@cctimes.com.