NAMES IN FLAMES

AS TATTLE generally can't remember the celebrity shenanigans we've written about moments after the column has been filed to the copy desk, we're not sure how putting together a Year in Tattle will work without leaving pieces of our brain matter all over the soon-to-be-replaced Etch-a-Sketch we call a computer. But here goes:

Was celebrity behavior worse in 2010?

Hard as it is to believe, maybe.

* Granted, every year Charlie Sheen does something ridiculous and self-destructive, but in 2010 he really brought his A(-hole) game, divorcing wife Brooke Mueller and taking porn star Capri Anderson to a fancy NYC dinner (where they shmoozed with previous ex-wife Denise Richards). At the posh Manhattan eatery, Charlie got wasted, he and Capri allegedly did the deed (or at least some deed) in the restaurant bathroom, then went back to his Plaza Hotel suite where he went so nutso that Capri (and don't you dare call her a prostitute even though she allegedly charged $12,000 for her company) locked herself in the bathroom and called police, who promptly hauled a partially clothed, babbling Sheen down to the station.

A few days later, he was back at work as the CBS eye again looked the other way.

* It's rare for Sandra Bullock to ever garner a mention in Tattle, but marry a "bad boy" and eventually you get blindsided.

Sure the Oscar was nice, but watching her marriage crumble in public probably dimmed a bit of the excitement. Sandra's husband, Jesse James, you may recall, cheated on Miss Congeniality with Michelle "Bombshell" McGee, whom the Associated Press called "Ms. March in the 'Tattooed Nazi' calendar."

Even Entertainer of the Year Betty White was PO'd.

In the old days America's sweethearts used to lose their husbands to bombshells like Angelina Jolie or Elizabeth Taylor, not a woman with a swastika inked above her crotch.

* Mel Gibson didn't spew out an anti-Semitic rant this year - at least not in public - but he did let loose a poisoned-tongue full of venom on Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his toddler daughter.

You know, the woman he left his longtime wife for.

Oksana also claimed Mel punched her. He says he slapped her.

You say to-MAY-to and we say to-MAH-to.

Now the ex-couple is fighting in court over custody of of the child, with Mel contending he's not a bad guy.

To recap: Woman who charges $12,000 for evening not a prostitute, woman with swastika tattoo not a Nazi and man who hits girlfriend and screams vile epithets at her a regular gentleman.

* Back when Lindsay Lohan was a talented teen, she starred in a so-so movie called "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen." She's in her twenties now (at least based on calendar years) but she's still a drama queen.

In 2010, she was sent to rehab (again), had F--- YOU painted on her nails when she appeared before the judge, chose a biopic about a woman famous for an oral sex technique as her comeback vehicle, lost the film when her rehab stay was extended, got in a fight at rehab with a Betty Ford worker who then got fired for leaking word of the fight to TMZ.com, sort of made up with her father and turned on her mother, reversed course, got her driver's license reinstated and turned down "Dancing with the Stars."

DWTS would have been a good move for the troubled starlet whose movie career has gone to Emma Stone and others, but as we've said repeatedly, Lindsay needs to do a network sitcom. Comedy plays to her strength and those lengthy sitcom workdays tend to keep people out of trouble - unless they're Charlie Sheen.

* For Lindsay Lohan: The Sequel, take a look at the last few months Miley Cyrus had. She was caught drinking, hitting the bong, lap dancing and dressing like a hooker (and not the kind who charges $12,000 per evening). She's been ridiculed in a recurring "Saturday Night Live" skit, her acting "ability" and box office power are already showing signs of peaking and her parents are getting divorced because her mother had an affair with Bret Michaels.

* For Lindsay Lohan: The Prequel, there's Paris Hilton. Paris had been on good behavior for a while, but in July got taken in by police for carrying weed at the World Cup in South Africa. She wasn't charged but in August she got nabbed with cocaine in her purse at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas and was charged. The heiress was fined, sentenced to community service plus a drug program and was banned from the hotel.

The following month she was banned from Japan.

* Ricky Martin came out of the closet to the surprise of millions who had no idea he was in the closet.

* Prince William, 28, and Hugh Hefner, 84, both announced they're getting married and to the surprise of no one, Hef's bride is younger.

* Celebrity splits in 2010 included Courteney Cox and David Arquette, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds, Rachel Weisz and Darren Aronofsky, Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron, Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall, Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman, Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubrey and so on and so on . . .

* Nobody likes to pay taxes, but if you want to avoid prison it's good to occasionally fill out a return - especially if you're a millionaire movie star.

Wesley Snipes didn't get the memo.

* Rip Torn, who, at 79, should know better, got so plastered one evening that he took a loaded gun and broke into a Connecticut bank, believing he lived there.

No one leaves that kind of money in their sock drawer.

* Lastly, in the cesspool of reality TV, more Bachelors behaved in ways which made you understand why they were bachelors, teen moms became magazine cover girls (as opposed to being sent away to live with their aunts), a group of faux-Jerseyans from the "Jersey Shore" battled the Kardashians for world domination and Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt (who faked a sex tape scandal and staged their own divorce and nobody cared) began their long-awaited descent into oblivion.

Maybe 2010 wasn't so bad after all.

May you have a happy, healthy, prosperous and newspaper-buying 2011.

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

E-mail gensleh@phillynews.com.