O.J. Simpson is breaking new ground on a recent pop culture phenomena, the serial celebrity defendant.

Certainly other celebs have a knack for getting into hot water repeatedly, usually for drug and alcohol use, driving issues and other inappropriate behavior. But Simpson is in a class by himself for major league felony charges. And before anyone writes to remind us, we'll say it first. Simpson hasn't been convicted in a criminal court of anything.

But if you haven't been following, after a 3 1/2-day preliminary hearing (a legal proceeding that often takes less than 30 minutes), a Las Vegas justice of the peace ordered Simpson to stand trial on a laundry list of charges, including a couple of big-timers of kidnapping and armed robbery, for that fiasco in a casino hotel room two months ago when Simpson & Co. attempted to, ahem, retrieve some of the former football star's sports and personal memorabilia from collectors.

There was yelling and swearing and maybe some guns and some of Simpson's group have already flipped and are testifying for the prosecution. It's a group that, in generations past, might be referred to kindly as Damon Runyon characters -- but, in real life, appear to lack the street-wise charm of Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson.

And in one more example of real life exceeding anything you could possibly make up, one of those items Simpson is now facing hard time for trying to recover is the suit he wore the day he was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Photo credit: AP/Justin Sullivan, Pool