David Edward Rainey, aka Puck the "snot-rocket"-shooting obnoxious roommate from the San Francisco edition of MTV's real-life soap, is cooling his heels these days as an inmate at the Los Angeles County jail, officials confirm.
Rainey, locked up since last October 8, was busted for bashing his live-in girlfriend's head against a bedroom wall in 1996, the New York Post says. Puck's mother described the incident as a matter of the girlfriend tripping and banging her head into the wall.
Rainey, 30, pleaded no-contest to one count of corporal injury to a "spouse or cohabitant," the paper reports. He is scheduled to be released May 13, authorities said.
"Puck doesn't mind that people know that he is in jail," mom Victoria Kaye says in the Post. "He just doesn't want people to think that he is like O.J. Simpson."
Actually, it was Beavis and/or Butt-head to whom Rainey was most frequently likened during his heady days as the cartoonish Puck.
Rainey played the part of nonconformist brat to pop-culture infamy during the '94 season of The Real World. Except it was no act. His antics (and general lack of hygiene) so enraged his housemates--from cartoonist Judd to AIDS activist Pedro--that he became only the second Real World-er to be booted from a camera-rigged domicile during the show's run. (Los Angeles "cast" member Dave Edwards, now a stand-up comic, was the first, in 1993.)
Puck initially was rewarded for his efforts, scoring a couple of TV bits. Credits include appearances on the long-ago canceled John Larroquette Show and the equally long-ago canceled Jon Stewart Show.
Notably, Puck's ex-housemate Rachel Campos has popped up in the sort of tube gig that has proved so elusive for the erstwhile bike messenger. Campos has begun an on-air tryout for ABC's The View. The chatty morning show is looking for a new twentysomething cohost following the axing of Debbie Matenopoulos. Campos, looking and sounding eerily like a brunette version of Matenopoulos, is best remembered as San Francisco's resident vampy conservative.
One of today's View topics: Puck in jail.