Amanda Bynes in custody for mental health evaluation

Max Ehrenfreund

Police reportedly took actress Amanda Bynes into custody earlier this week for an evaluation of her mental health following a bizarre incident in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where she grew up:

Deputies determined that Bynes met the criteria for a mental health hold and took her into custody, where she can be held for 72 hours of observation, Aguilar said. Passer-by Andrew Liverpool told KABC he found Bynes."It's dark, it's 8:45 and I just see her laying down, stomach up and her pant legs on fire, a trail of, you know, fire and gas, and I pull over," he said.No charges were filed and responding fire officials did not administer any medical care, Aguilar said.Richard Hutton and David Feldman, who are listed as Bynes' attorneys in industry databases, refused to comment.The former Nickelodeon actress has had several run-ins with the law. In December, she resolved a misdemeanor hit-and-run case after entering into a civil settlement with other drivers.She was charged last fall with driving on a suspended license after it was temporarily taken away from her following two hit-and-run cases.She also pleaded not guilty to drunken driving in a separate case.Earlier this month Bynes appeared in a New York court on allegations that she chucked a marijuana bong out the window of her 36th-floor Manhattan apartment.Associated Press

The Reliable Source is losing patience with Bynes's odd behavior:

Amanda Bynes, sigh. You know our thinking about her, right? Her pre-meltdown fame - via a Nickelodeon series and supporting roles in "Hairspray" and "Easy A" - was never great enough to merit the intense news coverage she now receives, post-anything-resembling-a-career, every time she tweets something hateful or wears a weird wig out in public. Like, it's hard enough being a child star, let alone a mentally-troubled former child star, and at this point, she is an ex-famous person. Sound fair? So we only write about Bynes when she has an actual interaction with the legal system - and, well, here we go again. The Reliable Source

TMZ reports that Bynes was seen in a liquor store, apparently with the idea of rinsing spilled gasoline off of her dog:

The surveillance video -- taken inside the liquor store -- begins minutes after Bynes allegedly used a canister of gasoline to fuel a fire outside a random elderly woman's home in Thousand Oaks, CA around 8:38 PM on Monday night. At 8:39 PM Bynes can be seen bursting into the liquor store and darting straight for a restricted "employees only" area -- while holding the dog in her outstretched arms.The cashier -- sensing something was wrong -- rushed out from behind the register and chased after Bynes to see what she was doing.TMZ spoke to the owner of the store who tells us the cashier detected a strong odor of gasoline and observed Bynes attempting to rinse off the dog in a sink in the back area.We're told as soon as the cashier confronted Bynes, she "freaked out" and left the store without further incident.TMZ

Earlier this month, Alexandra Petri wrote about society's expectations of female beauty and the danger they pose to women:

The idea that women have to be beautiful in order for men to find out that they are interesting is ridiculous. But that's what's being sold in movies, in all those ads with moisturizer, in all those montage sequences. You were interesting all along, but until you do something to your nose, no one will notice. In a perverse way, that's also what's happening to the Twitter Shambles that is Amanda Bynes. No one was paying attention to her, and so she assumed, if her Twitter is anything to go on, that it was because she was not beautiful enough. So she's been taunting other people as ugly (the president and first lady and Drake, among others) and announcing her surgeries with a feverish glee. If you're beautiful enough, then we have to pay attention, right? Instead of filling our pages, we are sitting around feverishly scribbling on the cover. A new nose! Then they'll listen! . . . That is one of the things I love most about the Internet - it's not big on covers. You get to brush up against the interiors of all kinds of people before you have the slightest inkling of what they look like. You meet people words first, inside out. You don't know that at parties they're standing alone in the corner with no one to talk to, because their faces look like wedding cakes left out in the rain. Only later, when they say something you disagree with, do you Google Image search, and then there is, at best, a picture or two, no bigger than your thumbnail.Of course, when you're a woman, a picture or two may be enough.Alexandra Petri

Watch some of Bynes's earlier court appearances below.