You might be familiar with source number one: it's Mark Ebner, the Hollywood, Interruped writer who helped us report on the original item. Ebner notes:

"Kari Ann said that, unlike Nici, she'd only take 40% of what a girl brought in," recalls Ebner, adding that Peniche admitted having turned tricks herself. (Another source says Peniche once joked, "I've gone from labor to management.")

The NLRB would be proud. Source number two is onetime Roger Clemens fling, Peniche's Celebrity Rehab roommate, and general hot mess: Ms. Mindy McCready.

"Did she say she'd been a madam?" says McCready. "She sure did."

Now: McCready's been accused of stealing the tape, is a home-wrecker, a supposedly reformed addict, and is basically the female David Allen Coe, so take her word with those things in mind.

Our third contestant on "How Much Of A Hooker Is The McSteamy Threesome's Third Wheel?" is Joey Gonzalez, a bodyguard. Gonzalez asserts that Peniche hired him to trail a hooker who was going in on her territory.

"Kari Ann wanted to hire me to follow a girl who worked for her - who she said was skimming money and stealing clients. I declined. But she bragged about how her girls could make $15,000 a month. She introduced me to one girl who told me she'd just gotten a boob job Kari Ann had paid for."

See, now we have a ballgame. Three's a trend, is it? Even with the inherently sketchy nature of the people involved (an investigative reporter, a trainwreck country singer, a Hollywood bodyguard), really, only one of them has anything to gain by this kind of thing — Ebner — and Ebner's been right plenty of times before. The other two? Maybe McCready can sell a few more records, get her name out there more by putting herself into the narrative of this thing, but is this the best way to sell a country record? (Don't answer that.) As far as the bodyguard goes, maybe Gonzalez is trying to drum up some business for himself, though really, who in Hollywood wants a bodyguard who's ratting out potential clients?

The best, of course, comes from Peniche's own putz manager, who throws this Blue Ribbon, hack statement to the Daily News:

Peniche and her manager, David Weintraub, declined to comment on any of the charges, though Weintraub allowed, "I don't know her whole past."

Really, though? You couldn't have just said nothing? The way things are going, Weintraub isn't going to have much to manage unless he's okay with making trips to the pen, soon. Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart have already lawyered up, to distance themselves from allegations of paying for sex, or the company of Peniche. Might be time for her, to, as well. She might be enjoying her time in the spotlight, but there's really no amount of infamy that's worth going to prison for.

We caused an internet sensation yesterday after posting the video of Peniche romping naked with the Grey's Anatomy star and his former Noxzema girl wife, apparently in some sort of altered state. While Dane and Gayheart aren't talking (though their lawyer is!), Peniche hasn't shied away from the spotlight. TMZ has a video of her denying she had sex with the famous couple — they were just hanging out naked, y'all! — and saying the she was "just having fun with my friends." Oh, it looks like they're having fun, alright!

Also, when the cameraman asks if she's going to sue her former roommate and fellow Celebrity Rehab patient, Mindy McCready, she laughs it off. It's just another night out for Peniche! This impromptu interview contradicts an earlier story on the gossip website, which claims Peniche said that the footage was stolen off her laptop by McCready.

Kari Ann says she got into an argument with McCready over money and believes the singer took her hard drive when she moved out. Kari Ann freaked out about certain personal information about her on the hard drive and filed a stolen property report with the LAPD.

Last month there was a summit between Eric, Rebecca, Kari Ann and Mindy. Their reps hammered out a deal as to who got what on the hard drive. Eric got full rights to the video and everyone assumed that was that ... until the tape surfaced on the Internet yesterday.

So, where does Kari go from here? Her name will be in the press for a couple weeks until the heat from the tape wears off. Assuming that the LAPD doesn't nab her — though they're trying — there are only a few tried-and-true post-sex-tape career options. Rule out legit film or television work right off the bat. She's already done Playboy and a D-List reality show, so it's not like she can give those another go-round. Porn is always an option, but there is no coming back from that. Maybe a tell-all book, but that's only if she's willing to dish on celebrities and talk about her work as a Hollywood madam—but even then there will be no teary repentance on Oprah (maybe Tyra, but not Oprah).

Otherwise, she can get ready for a slow fade into obscurity as "the girl in the sex tape with Eric Dane and Noxema girl."

1. Steven Adler Recounts His Suicide Attempt. We meet the former Guns n' Roses drummer in the living room of a small, sparsely furnished home with smashed-in (by Adler) front windows, moaning that he wants to die. Things then proceed to go downhill from there. Try not to wince as you hear him recount the time he ingested 100 Valiums, a bottle of Jagermeister, and heroin in an attempt at killing himself, but only managed to achieve a stroke and paralysis. Hey—you wanted Celebreality.

2. Amber Smith Unveils A Week's Worth Of Prescription Drugs. We like Amber. We liked her immediately. She still retained her looks, besides doing enough uppers and downers every week to kill a Beluga Whale, and she seems to have a pretty good perspective on where she's come from, and where she needs to go. Still, it's one thing to hear someone tell you they're addicted to prescription meds—quite another for them to open their weekly pill organizer and reveal what looks like one of those one-pound bags of M&Ms spilled into its various compartments. Hang in there, girl.

3. Nikki McKibbin Describes Her Childhood Abuse. We can barely even type the details to this one, except to say we hope you're happy, Simon Cowell. Getting raped repeatedly at age 5 just doesn't really fully sink in until you're dismissed by a British egomaniac as being "excruciatingly hopeless—go leap off a bridge for talentless people" on the country's top-rated TV show.

4. Drunk Rodney King Nearly Gets Crushed To Death By A Car In Slo-Mo. You can't help but feel sympathy for King. The guy isn't a celebrity—he's a vicious beating victim, and there's miles of pain behind those eyes. He works now helping out on his childhood friends' tow truck business, but is incapable of going a day without getting wasted on beer and throwing up out the passenger-side window. The one, long shot of a car slowly lowering itself off a ramp as King basically passes out beneath it was like out of a horror movie.

5. Tawny Kitaen Learns Her Favorite Abused Sleep Aid Killed Heath Ledger. We thought we were going to hate Tawny Kitaen—best known for rolling around on the hood of a car in a Whitesnake video—but she's actually very likable, and seems like she'll be taking on the den mother role. There's dark stuff going on there with the four days she was put in jail for attacking her ex-husband, former Cleveland Indians pitcher Chuck Finley. We need a drink.

In the following video, the actor describes his ongoing struggles with Bolivian marching powder, reaching near Marcia Brady-levels of desperation and interspecies-sexual-favor-trading in order to get his hands on the stimulant. When time comes for check-in, rehab tech Shelly finds an agitated and uncooperative Busey unwilling to part with essentials like mouthwash, mobile phones, and large bags of weed, while minutes later a concerned Dr. Drew listens compassionately as a broken Busey relays the time he snorted blow off his own dog's back. Helluvuh drug.

• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew [VH1]

We started with the recent Tom Cruise controversy. Pinsky told us he has yet to receive any Scary Hollywood Lawyer letters for his comments regarding Cruise being "drawn into a cultish kind of enviroment" due to "neglect in childhood." He did express regret for the choice of terms he used, and apologized if what he said had offended Cruise—but the Jewish-American doctor also expressed outrage at Cruise's lawyer's Bert Field's Nazi comments, questioning if the comparison was racially motivated.

Following that, there's some nice talk previewing what's to come on the second season of Celebrity Rehab, including the return of Jeff Conaway, who, according to the doctor, is "even sicker" than last season. And if you recall what that was like—yikes.

Thanks again to Dr. Drew for being such a great sport. We look forward to sitting down with him again.

• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew [VH1]

Which would all be well and good—there's more than one way to skin a once-famous cat who's lost everything to an expensive coke habit, after all—except that Pinsky has now publicly come out against Cruise. Not just his qualifications as a dependency counselor who has personally—personally!—helped hundreds of people get off drugs, but the man himself, throwing the megastar's very sanity into question in an upcoming Playboy interview. From Page Six:

In next month's Playboy, Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of VH1's "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew," says: "A lot of people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from, and much of it is based on childhood trauma, without a doubt. Take a guy like Tom Cruise. Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood - maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect."

Cruise's lawyer, Bert Fields, told us: "This unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them. He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill. The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels."

Certainly, Pinsky must have realized that by uttering these statements, he would be inviting a danger far greater than just a terse Scary Hollywood Lawyer statement likening him to a Nazi leader. (The very thing, it bears mentioning, his client hunts down in United Artists's upcoming historical-action-epic, Valkyrie!) It's at his own risk that he pay no mind in the coming weeks to any white vans idling outside the Pasadena Recovery Center, for it would take only seconds for the doctor to suddenly find himself staring at the inside of a pillowcase, only to wake up however many hours later shackled to the deck of the USS Asbestos somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico.

• TOM RIPS 'NAZI' DIAGNOSIS [Page Six]

Joining him in rehab are Sean Stewart (Sons of Hollywood), Amber Smith (model/actress), Rodney King, Nikki McKibbon (American Idol), Steven Adler (Guns n Roses) and Tawny Kitaen (Actress).

Gary Busey, who is 13 years sober from his cocaine addiction, will also be joining the cast to take the journey with the others and to share his experiences on the recovery process.

Certainly, the cast cuts a wide swath of "celebrity," covering everything from the I.Q.-deficient children of successful recording artists to brutal police-beating victims (who we're concerned might unintentionally set off a second round of LA riots, this time with the city's disenfranchised addicts raging against the Sober Man), with your requisite American Idol contestants, Drummers of the Tribe, and decades-past-their-prime pin-up models thrown in for good measure. The most notable absence: small business owner and aspiring boy-pimp Heidi Fleiss, who was scheduled for intake, but according to the NY Post got cold feet at the last minute.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1]

• WATCH VIDEO

In the evening's tensest moment, Conaway (fresh off four unspecified surgeries, and currently welded to some kind of hi-tech plastic exoskeleton) looked on helplessly as his ruby-lipped enabler was attacked by Nielsen, who had the gall to suggest the woman who smuggled a VitaminWater bottle of purple-tinted vodka into her husband's detox facility might be harboring her own addiction issues. We admit, we had hoped for better things for the couple—Jeff claims he's off the coke and booze, and is just "sticking to what they give me," (translation: "I've given up on trying to swallow all those fucking L-Ron brand vitamin horse-pills, and I'm not off the coke and booze")—but for now, at least, we'll close the chapter on Vikki & Kenickie's improbable love story on a high note, by revisiting a performance of their smashed single, "Krazee."

• Celebrity Rehab

But then how did Elisabeth Hasselbeck's introduction of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (as it turns out challenged, not advanced, by Albert Einstein) figure into the quandary? If Jeff Conaway and Brigitte Nielsen were put in a spaceship and launched at the speed of light on an intergalactic journey, would they come back looking any less like shit? Our mind is spinning. Damn you, Ugly Hasselbecky, and your grasp of quantum celebrity addiction physics!

• The View [ABC]

Like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, but white, completely talentless, and certifiably insane, Vikki & Kenickie transport you to another dimension, where aging T-Birds can be found gettin' buck with their own, personal Cha Cha DiGregorios. We've posted a performance of their signature hit "Krazee" from last year's Fox Reality Channel's The Reality Remix Really Awards (a name as staggeringly stupid as the content and people it celebrates), but we suggest you give some of the lesser-known bangers at their MySpace page a listen, including seminal self-love anthem "Masturbate."

• Vikki & Kenickie [MySpace]
• Reality Awards Show [YouTube]

Then, of course, there's the ongoing issue of what brought a non-drug-abusing, drinking-problem-free Joanie into the program in the first place. Reduced to grasping at addiction straws, Dr. Drew and his staff suggested such other possibilities as steroids ("Nope!"), crystal meth ("Not even once!"), and finally an expensive Starbucks habit ("Yuck—hate coffee!"), before the browbeaten therapists finally threw up their arms in defeat and called the session early.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1]
• Previously: Dr. Drew Leads Emotional Intervention To Figure Out How Non-Addict Joanie Got On 'Celebrity Rehab' [Defamer]

(Indeed, had one of the cameras panned to capture the reaction of a nearby producer watching a monitor, we're sure he would have shrugged and mouthed I dunno, I don't even remember inviting her here to the TV audience.) Despite the unorthodoxy of the situation, the intervention was a success; with the help of her unfailingly supportive peers, it was determined that reality-show recidivist Joanie is addicted to Celebreality itself, a revelation that will allow her to stay at the Center until Dr. Drew can help her kick her debilitating habit by slowly reducing her screentime to nothing.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1.com]
• Previously: On 'Celebrity Rehab,' Dr. Drew Teaches Jeff Conaway's Girlfriend About Why He Claims To Have Severe Menstrual Cramps [Defamer]

On last night's episode, series centerpiece/cautionary tale Jeff Conaway's girlfriend Vicki (who we learned has been cast as Rehab's primary Enabler in the first installment) received a stern talking-to by Dr. Drew for keeping her PMS-alleviating prescription narcotics in the house, as Conaway will "play her like a violin" to get into the stash that is "killing him." The couple's later, sobriety-threatening fight was yet another difficult-to-watch moment from Conaway's storyline, but knowing the extent to which reality programming is scripted, we got through it by telling ourselves that the producers were merely setting us up for the triumphant resolution of the troubled actor's character arc, in which Vicki's love helps her addiction-ravaged partner overcome his demons, and finally emerge from his stay as clean and healthy as onetime co-star Tony Danza on his first day on the set of Taxi.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1.com]
• Previously: Jeff Conaway Sneaks Blow Into 'Celeb Rehab'; Jessica Sierra Pissed She Didn't Think Of The Idea First [Defamer]

(Our best guess as to his blow-secreting method: a false bottom on the bottle of Dom Perignon he memorably arrived with.) Dr. Drew was quick to assemble the other semifamous rehabbers to discuss their feelings about this troubling breach of trust; perhaps most disappointed was American Idol refugee Jessica Sierra, who was crushed to learn how easy it would have been to sneak in some boredom-alleviating drugs if only she'd known in advance how cursory their intake pat-down would be.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1]
• Previously: 'Celebrity Rehab' Not Exactly The Lighthearted Treatment Of Addiction We Were Hoping For [Defamer]

Unless the show's producers are planning the surprise substitution of the genuinely troubled Conaway with breakout Life houseguest Verne Troyer, whose drunken joyrides around the Recovery Center's grounds atop his Mini-Me-Mobile in search of places where he can void his tiny, overtaxed bladder would lighten up the proceedings considerably, we might have to flee back to TiVo'd copies of I Love New York 2 to retain our sanity.

• Celebrity Rehab [VH1]