POKER-FACE PAGE Crowe (Photo: Getty Images)
Russell Crowe, the ropable actor who was once charged with second-degree assault after hurling a telephone at the face of a hotel concierge and has been involved in more physical altercations than can be recounted here, is taking on the scourge he thinks is single-handedly destroying his Australian homeland: slot machines.

It seems more than one-fifth of the world's "pokies," as they are referred to on Prison Island, are found in Australian bars and pubs, constituting an $8.8 billion industry that mostly panders to poor people who shouldn't be gambling in the first place (you know, unlike the gambling opportunities in other nations, which are aimed solely at rich folks who can afford to drop a few grand on the pony races). Humanitarian-minded Crowe doesn't approve, and is now using his considerable political muscle to further his vision of having a nation full of bars in which drunken rugby fans can liquor away the shame of being descended from convicts without being tempted to flush their life savings down the video-poker hole. He's even created a Facebook group to this end, "A club with no pokies is a place we would like to see." Join him today!