Prank

Reese Witherspoon is a brunet! The Academy Award-winning actress has gone to the dark side and dyed her signature legally blond tresses brown. Witherspoon was spotted in Nashville over the weekend with the new 'do pulled back in a messy bun and sported her signature wispy bangs. She was photographed with husband Jim Toth, toting around their 6-month old son, Tennessee, according to E! News. The actress most notably went for a darker shade as part of her award-winning role in 2005's "Walk the Line," in which she played Johnny Cash love interest June Carter.

After running on the treadmill, Golden State Warriors rookie Kent Bazemore returned to his car Wednesday to find an unwelcome surprise. His white sedan was filled -- practically to the roof -- with popcorn. Bazemore was surprisingly calm about the incident. He smiled, opened the driver's side door and watched a large amount of popcorn fall onto the parking lot floor. This prank has been done many times before, but not all of its victims were as unaffected as Bazemore.

Bad news for Audi, Lexus, Google, and other companies keen on developing driverless cars: you've been beaten to the punch. A video making the rounds on YouTube shows a driverless car pulling into the drive-through of various fast food restaurants, causing plenty of alarm and confusion among the people working the window. The catch: there's actually a hidden driver. The man behind the video prank is 24-year-old magician Rahat Hossain. Hossain, who lives in Virgina Beach, Va., has a YouTube channel called Magic of Rahat.

Peyton Manning is serious about putting in work during the off-season. In fact, he's already got new teammate and former Patriots receiver Wes Welker running pass routes at Duke with teammates Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker, according to NFL.com . As a 12-time Pro Bowl quarterback and Super Bowl XLI MVP, Manning knows a thing or two about getting ready for the regular season. But what you can't tell from his illustrious career achievements is that he's also got jokes. Everything appeared to be good between the Denver players; Manning even told ESPN that the work ethic of his teammates was motivating.

Miley Cyrus' Studio City home was the subject of a massive police raid Wednesday, allegedly prompted by a prank call. The singer and actress wasn't home at the time of the raid, which occurred after a 911 call came in at 6:50 p.m. reporting a kidnapping in progress with shots fired and one person hit. Officers responded and entered the home in the 11000 block of Amanda Drive with guns drawn, but quickly determined the call was a hoax. In the prank known as swatting, perpetrators place fake distress calls aimed at luring police SWAT teams to raid an unwitting victim's home.

Ashton Kutcher is the latest famous name to be associated with a "swatting" - a malicious prank in which a seemingly serious distress call to police turns out to be a false alarm with a spoofed phone number, aimed at luring a SWAT team to swarm a particular location. Police hurried to Kutcher's Lake Hollywood home late Wednesday morning after a woman called police - more on that "call" later - and claimed to be hiding in a closet because there was an armed man inside the home, L.A. Now reported.

SACRAMENTO -- When news hit Monday that the California Supreme Court had created political turmoil by throwing out the state's new voting maps, the phone lines and email in-boxes of Sacramento operatives quickly whirred to life. It was indicative of the hair-trigger speed with which politics moves these days. So quickly, in fact, that the panicked politicos who immediately reached for their smartphones didn't realize they were the victims of an April Fool's Day joke. Longtime lobbyist and political observer Scott Lay included the fictional piece in his popular email newsletter, the Nooner.

Re "Judge Voids Jury Verdict in Halloween-Prank Shooting" Feb. 24: Here are two definitions. A prank is something done to provoke laughter or amusement. A theft is an act of stealing. The first is playful and harmless; the second, a crime. These were not two little boys out having fun. They were both young men out intentionally hurting others for their own amusement. ROBERT SPENCER Westminster I have felt the fear of being at the mercy of teenagers who hunt in packs and think of themselves above the law. I have no tolerance for any kind of vandalism and would like to see the punishment for graffiti or petty theft handled as I understand it is in Indonesia or Singapore, with public flogging or public humiliation.

"Cake Boss"Buddy Valastro might want to stick a rolling pin his mouth - at least when it comes to making transgender jokes. TLC has pulled Monday's episode of the popular reality show set in a New Jersey bakery after Carmen Carrera - a transgender woman who has appeared on"RuPaul's Drag Race" and other shows - vehemently objected to how she was portrayed. Carrera said the producers lured her on to the show under false pretenses, making her believe she'd be a role model for transgendered persons when in fact she was used as part of a homophobic prank.

Is scaring the living daylights out of someone hilarious or mean? You decide. Last week, the Brazilian hidden camera show "Programa Silvio Santos" aired clips of people screaming in terror at a ghostly girl in a broken elevator. The video was posted to YouTube, where it already has more than 7 million views and rising. Gawker, and several other news sources, have referred to it as possibly the scariest prank ever. The poor unsuspecting subjects enter an office building and are directed to the elevators by a friendly woman at the front desk.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced Thursday that it would take the unusual step of no longer issuing press releases or immediately confirming instances of celebrity "swatting," saying intense media coverage seems to be fueling more incidents. Cmdr. Andrew Smith, who oversees the LAPD Media Relations Section, said the procedural change was necessary because of concerns about the privacy of the victims as well as the belief that publicizing such incidents was emboldening copycats.

SACRAMENTO -- When news hit Monday that the California Supreme Court had created political turmoil by throwing out the state's new voting maps, the phone lines and email in-boxes of Sacramento operatives quickly whirred to life. It was indicative of the hair-trigger speed with which politics moves these days. So quickly, in fact, that the panicked politicos who immediately reached for their smartphones didn't realize they were the victims of an April Fool's Day joke. Longtime lobbyist and political observer Scott Lay included the fictional piece in his popular email newsletter, the Nooner.

Did Snooki and fiancé Jionni LaValle elope? Nope! The "Jersey Shore" star tweeted a photo of herself in a fluffy wedding dress and enormous tiara hugging her fiancé (prom-style) Monday, which happened to be April Fools' Day. "Jionni and I eloped!!! Here's a pic of the magical day!!" she titled the pic. Her Celebuzz blog blasted email subscribers with the message as well, and commenters went at it , sending in April Fools' props, accusations of Photoshop use, congrats and some messages not appropriate for a family website.

Earlier we showed some of the first April Fools' Day pranks posted online by tech companies, with Google notably leading the way, but more companies have joined in on the humorous holiday with pranks of their own. From Netflix's super-specific movie and TV show suggestion categories to Microsoft's April Fools' Day jab at Google, tech companies have been relentless with their pranks Monday. You can check out the first dose of pranks in our earlier post or in our photo gallery , and you can find more pranks below.

Valerie Perrine may be the only former Las Vegas showgirl to win the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. Just a few years after she had hung up her glitzy showgirl costume, Perrine was the toast of the town as Lenny Bruce's stripper/showgirl wife Honey Harlow in Bob Fosse's acclaimed 1974 biopic "Lenny," with Dustin Hoffman as the groundbreaking comedian. After eight years working at the Desert Inn and the Lido, which was a topless revue, Perrine was visiting a friend in Los Angeles looking for career opportunities.

While a lot of people say they're growing tired of the Harlem Shake, the meme isn't showing any signs of slowing down just yet. It seems more and more Harlem Shake videos are being uploaded every day and now it appears they are evolving. The funniest videos are showing up with a creative twist at the end: They're Harlem Shake fake-outs, if you will. Here are some of our favorites.  The Just Stop Harlem Shake In this version , popular YouTube video maker Freddie Wong encapsulates how many people are starting to feel about the Harlem Shake.

Same story, different celebrity: Chris Brown's house was the target Monday of an apparent "swatting" incident, in which police responded in force to a distress call that turned out to be fake. In this case, dispatchers were advised around 5 p.m. of a domestic violence situation - we're biting our tongue - in which the caller told police his parents were fighting and he wasn't sure if his mom had been shot, Los Angeles Police Department sources told L.A. Now and TMZ . When police arrived at the address, surprise, no gun, no fight, no nothing.

The Internet has spoken: Pitbull shall perform in Alaska. In a product-promo move, the "International Love" rapper, real name Armando Christian Perez, agreed to visit the Wal-Mart that generated the most Facebook likes. Sounds fun, right? How could social-media democracy possibly go awry? Enter Boston Phoenix writer David Thorpe, a man so put off by celebrity marketing stunts that he rallied Web troops to "Help us help Wal-Mart exile Pitbull to Alaska. " "As of now, the Kodiak Walmart has over 22,000 new 'likes' on Facebook, putting it far ahead of any other Walmart in the nation - far ahead of Kodiak's actual population, in fact," Thorpe wrote.

Metta World Peace is continuing to branch out, creating a hidden camera show called "Metta World Pranks. " According to Deadline Hollywood, the Lakers forward has joined with LMNO Prods., producers of similar fare for CBS ("I Get That a Lot"). Teamed with World Peace's Artest Media Group, LMNO Prods. will develop a show that features professional athletes, their "family members, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends and fans. " "Pranking and practical jokes are part of athletic culture, so it comes naturally to Metta," said Eric Schotz, president and chief executive of LMNO Prods.

Los Angeles police are recalibrating their response to some emergency calls in light of a series of prank "swatting" calls reporting violent incidents at the homes of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber and now Chris Brown. Officers will continue to respond immediately, in large numbers and with force if needed, to reports of crime at the homes of such VIPs, top Los Angeles Police Department officials said. But they are trying to warn officers more quickly in cases where an emergency call appears to have the hallmarks of swatting.