Mt. Everest may not be the world`s tallest trash heap, but it`s bad enough. Littered from decades of high adventure, the legendary Himalayan peak is overdue for a facelift. Enter mountaineers Bob McConnell and Liz Nichol, who are organizing an Everest Environmental Expedition to start a clean-up next summer. It`s hopefully the beginning of elevated consciousness, said Nichol, of Colorado Springs, Colo., adding that the worst litterbugs aren`t American climbers, but Europeans and Japanese, ”who tend to really not care.”
IACOCCA CALLS FOR CENSORS Still buzzing about excessive violence and ”bedroom bingo” on the boob tube? Lee Iacocca is listening. Moreover, Chrysler`s chief exec has warned television executives to expect an era of corporate cancellations if they don`t screen their shows. Pointedly including himself as a choosy commercial shopper in the future, Iacocca reminded the Hollywood Radio & Television Society that viewers are revolting against trash TV. ”I don`t want to be the censor; I want you to do it,” said Iacocca, whose corporation spends $250 million annually on TV advertising.
N.Y.`S `BATMAN` ARRESTED Once David Greenberg was ”Batman,” the idolized New York cop. Then he joined the Joker in crime. Now Greenberg, 45, is in trouble again. Postal inspectors busted the ex-crime-buster near his home in Belleair, Fla., for allegedly conspiring to defraud an insurance company of $350,000 by inflating video-business burglary losses. As an undercover cop in Brooklyn`s tough Bedford-Stuyvesant area from 1968 to 1972, Greenberg and partner Robert Hantz were dubbed Batman and Robin and lionized in a movie, ”The Super Cops.” He abruptly fell from grace in 1978, when, as a law-`n`-order state legislator, he served 9 months in prison for an SBA loan fraud.
`JUDGE WAPNER STIFFED ME` LaLaLand plumber Louis De George is steamed up over television`s
”People`s Court.” Angry at losing a $1,500 claim against his landlord before Judge Joseph Wapner, De George is suing ”People`s Court” for real.
”They cheated me,” said the plaintiff plumber, contending that he had been promised $1,500, no matter what. ”I never would have appeared on that show and made a fool out of myself . . . for a chintzy $250.” Sighed producer Philip Vandervort: ”. . . this is a litigious society.”
HER FILM ROLL IS PUNITIVE Actress Lisa Bonet`s baby must be ”cute as a picture.” But Mom isn`t happy. Infuriated over an unauthorized photo of infant daughter Zoe in the National Inquirer, Bonet has filed a $5 million suit. Not against the tabloid, but against Osco Drugs` parent company. Bonet, a ”Cosby Show” veteran, says the photo and negative turned up missing from a film roll taken to Osco for developing.
GORBY PLAYS FOR THE BUCKS As the Michael Jordan of a so-so Soviet team, Mikhail Gorbachev sure has a magic touch. Gorbachev`s book royalties from ”Perestroika and New Thinking” total $1.5 million in West Germany alone and possibly exceed $7.5 million worldwide, according to one of his publishers. An unselfish globe-trotter, Gorby has pledged to donate all of his green to such worthies as the Communist Party, Armenian earthquake relief and a Moscow children`s park.