Saturday, November 24, 2007

Bill Nye Almost Bites the Bullet Over Love Lost

The Post and Courier (parent to the Aiken Standard) does not exactly emplify the highest standard in journalism. On any given day, headlines range from "No Room for Zoom" to "Yahoo! It's Malibu." Yet as I picked up the paper at work the other day, the headline recalling a recent restraining order request by Bill Nye the Science Guy shocked me more than the dozen of grammatical errors on the front page. Here's the scoop:



Science Guy seeks restraining order against ex-Spoleto critic
By Brian Hicks (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

He blinded her with science. She poisoned his garden with weed killer.
Or so the court documents say.


Television's Bill Nye the Science Guy filed a temporary restraining order in September against his estranged partner, former Post and Courier Spoleto critic Blair Tindall, after he says she tried to poison the garden where he gets his food.

In court documents filed last week, Tindall claims a "temporary lapse in judgment" caused her to attack Nye's rose garden only — actions brought on by being a "victim of emotional cruelty."

But let's back up.

This is the sad ending of a romance that began in 2005, according to Tindall's declaration filed Nov. 15 in the Los Angeles Superior Court.

Nye contacted Tindall, she says, after he read her book, "Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music," a memoir of her wild and X-rated days in various orchestras. The book caused a minor scandal in classical music circles about the time she did Spoleto reviews for The Post and Courier in 2005.

She left Charleston for Los Angeles that summer and soon met the Science Guy. There was chemistry.

Within months, Nye announced their engagement on the CBS "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson." They got married at a conference a few months later in a ceremony performed by Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life." The Associated Press story ran in 300 papers worldwide, Tindall notes.

They bought a $1 million house together in Studio City, Calif., where they counted actor Ed Begley Jr. among their neighbors. Nye even carried her across the threshold, she says.

But a few months later, after an appearance on CNN where they were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Science Guy, they found out the marriage license was invalid. Nye threw Tindall out of the house she says they picked out together.

Then on Sept. 3, after a bad year, Tindall says she was watching her former neighbor's television show, "Living With Ed," when she saw Begley and his wife talking with Nye in the backyard of her former home. She says Nye claimed he could be happy if only he had a woman to share the home with, then picked a rose for Begley's wife.

It might have sent Tindall over the edge. She dressed in black and took weed killer to make sure Nye "couldn't give another woman the flowers for which I had cared," according to court documents.

Nye spied Tindall from across the street. In his request for a temporary restraining order, he says "she was trying to poison my plants, including some vegetable produce plants" with bottles filled with some sort of solvent.

"Quite unexpected and odd, I admit," Nye notes in his restraining order request.

Tindall says she caught sight of her reflection in a sliding glass door and was horrified by what she had done, so she left, the documents said. Nye says he yelled at her and she took off without her car lights on.

Nye has asked the courts to keep Tindall as far as allowed by law from him. Tindall says, "I am not, nor ever have been, a threat to Mr. Nye."

Tindall says in court documents she has moved on, is no longer angry or upset.

So much for chemistry. (Not my joke! )


1 comment:

Rickles said...

good find, ah when nerds fight its so fun.