The Broke and the Beautiful: Save the Twinkie! Edition

This week on The Broke and the Beautiful, Wendy Williams does her part to keep Twinkies alive, and boy-band mogul Lou Pearlman’s trustee must be feeling larger than life. Also this week, Jefferson, County, Ala., scores a run against J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. on its dealings with Houston Astros owner Jim Crane.

Hostess Brands Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection for a second time last week, saddening Twinkie lovers everywhere, including TV talk-show host Wendy Williams. According to the Washington Post, Williams has launched a new campaign she’s dubbed “Save the Twinkie,” calling it the “greatest national icon” and a “golden symbol of the American dream.” If her campaign works, we’ll definitely know how she’s doin’.

Boy-band-mogul-turned-Ponzi-scheme-operator Lou Pearlman’s trustee is back, all right. According to the Orlando Sentinel, $12 million worth of claims from U.S. trustee Soneet Kapila have survived a legal battle that could have halted his efforts to recover money for Pearlman’s victims. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Karen S. Jenneman said Kapila’s lawsuits should stay put against the vendors that allegedly took fraudulent payment from Pearlman. Pearlman, the creator of such bands as the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, pleaded guilty to running a $300 million Ponzi scheme in 2007 and in 2008 was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The Yellowstone Club has brought sexy back to its ultra-exclusive resort in Big Sky, Mont. As Bankruptcy Beat reported, celebrities like actor/singer/entrepreneur Justin Timberlake, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and actor Leonard DiCaprio have vacationed there in recent months. It’s a far cry from a few years ago, when the club was in the bankruptcy spotlight and its owners were muddling through a bitter divorce.

The owner of a historic building that used to be part of Pabst Brewing Co. has been tackling problems from a foreclosure lawsuit. So to stop it, PC Pabst Holdings LLC drowned its sorrows in bankruptcy Monday, Bankruptcy Beat reported. The business entity, which has ties to retired Green Bay Packer Mark Chmura, owns a 28,000-square-foot building in downtown Milwaukee that used to be a Pabst research lab.

Alabama’s struggling Jefferson County has gone through a lot since it filed for Chapter 9 protection in November, but this week, it scored some great news from the bankruptcy court. As Bankruptcy Beat noted, the county won permission to investigate J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s settlement deal with Houston Astros owner Jim Crane, who purchased $35 million in Jefferson County sewer bonds before the economy crashed in 2008. The bonds, it was later revealed, came from corrupt dealings that put some county officials in jail and left J.P. Morgan to pay an Astro-nomic SEC fine. The investigation could bolster Jefferson County in its own suit against the investment bank.

Crane wasn’t the only Major League baseball owner in play this week. According to WSJ, a judge struck down a request from Bernard Madoff trustee Irving Picard to appeal an earlier ruling that he could only seek up to $386 million in clawback money from the owners of the New York Mets. Picard had sued Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz for $1 billion because, Picard argued, Wilpon and Katz ignored red flags that pointed to Madoff’s fraud. The two have denied those allegations.