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Tattle: 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' bails Cage out

SOMEONE MAY have to change his name to Nicolas Caged. The "National Treasure" star, himself a national treasure, was arrested Saturday in New Orleans' French Quarter after he got drunk Friday night and argued in the street with his wife over whether a house they were in front of was theirs.

SOMEONE MAY have to change his name to Nicolas Caged.

The "National Treasure" star, himself a national treasure, was arrested Saturday in New Orleans' French Quarter after he got drunk Friday night and argued in the street with his wife over whether a house they were in front of was theirs.

Granted, when you don't know your own house, that's pretty drunk, but once in Tattle's building a tipsy tenant couldn't get his apartment key to work and started banging on the door. It was only after police were called that he figured out that he'd gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor.

Police also were called to La Cage a Fool.

When Mrs. Nic said that they were at the wrong house, Mr. Nic grabbed her arm, according to a police news release.

Hoping to be gone in sixty seconds, Cage started hitting vehicles and tried to get into a taxi, police said. An officer saw that Cage was drunk and told him to get out of the cab. Cage then started yelling, a scene common in so many of his films.

Cage was booked on charges of domestic-abuse battery, disturbing the peace, public drunkenness and making "The Sorceror's Apprentice." He was released on $11,000 bond Saturday and was bailed out by Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman.

Cage has been a frequent visitor to New Orleans, where he has owned property and shot movies. In 2009, he sued his former business manager for $20 million, claiming that the man's advice led him to financial ruin.

He has since had to sell numerous assets due to money woes.

We'll assume that he sold his own homes and not homes belonging to others.

Newspapers get it right

 It's a marvelous night for a womb dance . . .

Two British tabs have published evidence they say proves that singer Van Morrison fathered a child out of wedlock with one of his U.S. tour promoters.

Morrison flatly denied a relationship with the Texas mother, GiGi Lee, when his website published an announcement on Dec. 29, 2009, of the birth of "little Van."

Big Van, 65, instructed his Irish publicist to say he didn't even know the purported mother, identified incorrectly as "his wife GiGi." Then he won a court injunction barring the papers that had identified her from publishing any of their evidence.

That injunction was overturned last week. The two Sunday newspapers, The Mail on Sunday and News of the World, published front-page exposes detailing Morrison's connections to Lee and the baby boy.

Tattbits

 * Hundreds of protesters marched through central London Saturday to call for a public inquiry into the death of British reggae star Smiley Culture.

Culture (a/k/a David Emmanuel), died of a single stab wound through the heart while police officers were executing a search warrant at his home.

His family has been told that he stabbed himself while making a cup of tea, despite the presence of officers in his home. They say that the police explanation of his death is "bizarre."

Ya think? We've heard of people scalding themselves while making tea, but stabbing themselves?

Culture was 48 when he died March 15. He shot to fame in the 1980s with hits such as "Cockney Translation" and "Police Officer."

* George Michael is giving the gift of song to Prince William and Kate Middleton - and anyone else who wants to download it.

The former "Father Figure" is making his cover of Stevie Wonder's "You and I" available to download for free but he has "Faith" that fans will make a donation to the Royal Wedding Charity Fund. Michael debuted the song Friday on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."

Michael said that he spent about two days in the studio crafting the cover and that Wonder provided clearance to distribute the track for free.

"The idea came to me last week, about a week ago, that I should express my happiness at the marriage publicly," Michael told Morgan.

Michael was a friend of William's mother, the late Princess Diana, but he said that he wasn't expecting to attend the April 29 wedding. He tweeted that the couple should be "surrounded by people they love, not dodgy ex-con pop stars."

* Joseph Gordon-Levitt will follow up "Inception" with another sci-fi picture that brings him to Asia - the China-set action-thriller "Looper."

Promoting the movie in the eastern Chinese financial center of Shanghai yesterday, Gordon-Levitt, 30, said, "I feel now, doing 'Looper,' is the result of what happened with 'Inception.' It is something I have been working for my whole life."

Directed by Rian Johnson ("The Brothers Bloom"), "Looper" also co-stars Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and Chinese actress Xu Qing.

Xu said yesterday that "[i]t is like nothing I have seen before. It has action. It has romance. It also deals with philosophy. I really like it."

Gordon-Levitt previously worked with Johnson on the indie fave "Brick."

* German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, American soprano Patricia Racette, New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and Italian conductor Riccardo Muti were recognized in New York yesterday for their international musical achievements at the Opera News Awards.

The awards were created in 2005 by Opera News, the world's most popular opera magazine.

Previous winner and top mezzo-soprano Susan Graham jokingly calls Opera News "our Bible, our porn," thus confusing both believers in the Bible and fans of porn.

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

Email gensleh@phillynews.com