Christie Brinkley had a challenging day in court yesterday. First, the shrink the court brought in as an expert witness told the model to watch "her choice in male figures with whom to get involved," adding that she was "blinkered by her disgust with" her ex, often at the expense of the children. Cook's lawyer, Norman Sheresky, used that as an opening to bring up an episode, wherein he claimed that Brinkley went all Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest and, in front of the kids, blacked out Cook's face on their wedding photos. We thought we had made that up, but as it turns out, it was not not true.

Brinkley turned it around really nicely, though. She said she went psycho in private, with no kids around to scar, and that furthermore, she had a perfectly good reason for defacing Cook's picture in the manner of a B-movie serial killer.

"I felt like he was an invisible man," she explained. "Just his outfit remained, standing next to me, like an empty wedding outfit with no person with it."

"And that's how I felt— the person that I knew and loved, I didn't know where he went."

Moving. Imagine if people actually thought like that when they were defacing pictures. Before the jury could reflect on that, though, Sheresky broke the spell: "Did you ever say to Jack, 'Ask your dad to tell you about his whores?'"

That, Brinkley denied.

Reports from today's trial, which has recessed until three, should be rolling in soon. We hear there's chatter about a settlement, that Brinkley is pissed about all the headlines calling her nuts, and that Cook is nervous about the two private investigators Brinkley has on deck to testify next.

Shrink: Peter Cook Is Self-Absorbed Egoist [NYDN]