A crafty Florida nightclub owner and three Shakespearean strippers are facing 60 days in the slammer after hitting the boards with an all-nude performance of "Macbeth."

The double, double, toil and trouble started when the quirky quartet attempted to outsmart local anti-nudity laws requiring pasties and G-strings to be worn in clubs but not in legit theaters by staging the opening witch scene from the Scottish play sans costumes at racy Club Juana on Orlando's outskirts. But the threadless thespians did not amuse the police with their bawdy Bardisms, and -- as proof that fair is foul and foul is fair -- they were arrested in short order.

Meanwhile, excitement-seeking theatergoers who ranked a nudie-petutie lap dance may well have been heard muttering, "Out, out, damn spot" as they exited the club.

If the witches and their club-owning warlock do end up serving time, it won't be for lack of effort on the part of a group of 20 gutsy guys across the Atlantic. Representing an organization called the Right to be Naked, the frisky fellows staged a demonstration buck-naked outside Buckingham Palace. Five of them were promptly arrested by British police, and one -- who scrappily scrambled up a statue of morally erect Queen Victoria (nude meets prude!) -- is still being held.

A palace spokeswoman told the media she didn't know if Queen Elizabeth was in residence at the time of the shameless show, but said that, even if she was, "There are just working rooms on the front bit of the palace so I would doubt that anyone saw anything even if they were there."

Oh, well. Maybe Queen E can get an eyeful and a delightful evening of theater at Club Juana next time she takes the royal grandkids to Disney World.

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Didn't Harry Chapin once set this to music?

"[Fulfillment.] That's the key word for me these days. What really is fulfillment, what do you really need? I bought a jet recently. I'm in L.A., I have this beautiful jet. I ask my son, 'You want to go with me, go fishing in Costa Rica?' He tells me, 'I can't, dad.' So then what is fulfillment? It had nothing to do with the jet."

-- Film director Francis Ford Coppola on why next time he'll buy a yacht instead

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The case of the really crappy cream puff

Amy Reiter Amy Reiter's column appears daily on the People site, Monday through Friday. + Biography + Archives Got a hot tip? Tell Amy!

Before proceeding with this next appetizing item, I must invoke a line from "Macbeth" (naked or clothed): "When all's done, you look but on a stool."

That was precisely the problem, it seems, at a Bucharest bakery. Last week, 67 unfortunate Romanians were hospitalized after devouring delectable cream buns and chocolate eclairs from the Opera bakery in the northeast town of Iasi. Inspectors who then visited the cake shop, the city's largest, were shocked to discover a box of human feces in the refrigerator. The owners, if convicted of violating public health laws, could be sentenced to as much as eight years in prison. There, they can revel in all the human feces they like.

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Well, maybe not quite as much, Joe ...

"The goatees and shorts are going to get laughed at soon, just as much as the big hair and the ripped jeans did."

-- Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott, on how today's pop-music fashions will one day seem as silly as his hair-metal band's rockin' '80s look

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No, Pat, that look was because he did recognize you

It's really gotta smart when even one of your own rivals for the Republican presidential nomination doesn't recognize you. Reuters reports that when Pat "Cake Nazi" Buchanan was driving through the empty city streets of Des Moines, Iowa, early Tuesday morning and chanced upon Lamar Alexander (clad in trademark flannel?) jogging along, wacky Pat stuck his head out the window and shouted, "Aren't you overdoing it, Lamar?"

"But," said Buchanan, "He didn't recognize me and just gave me a blank look."

Next page | How about "Love, cherish and ignore"?