Gate Crashers

Scott Weiss could barely suppress his panic. Perspiration glued his tuxedo shirt to his back. The forged all-access badge and tiny digital camera hung like weights around his neck as he approached the loading dock entrance. The theater at Hollywood and Highland crawled with local cops, high-priced security guards and federal agents: FBI, sheriff's deputies, LAPD bomb squad specialists and SWAT team snipers, all on high alert.

"There's something in the fashion world called a 'lobby sleaze,' " says Fern Mallis, vice president of IMG Fashion, the company that produces fashion weeks in L.A., New York, Miami and many other cities. "You get them everywhere -- especially in L.A." She's right -- last season, the lushes and the nobodies were out in full force at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, the main venue for the Los Angeles Fashion Week runway shows.

He says he's attended six Super Bowls and 25 World Series games without a ticket, but a tuxedoed man who wrote the book on gate-crashing couldn't freeload on Oscar. The usher's nemesis, Scott Kerman, 31, whose book is called "No ticket? No problem!" and who put out a press release boasting he could crash the Academy Awards, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of sneaking into the Shrine Auditorium, where the ceremony will be held today.