- In spite of his predilection for making the occasional stink bomb of a movie, George Clooney still might be the one guy every other guy would kill to have as a friend. According to fellow actor Tate Donovan (who you may remember as Jimmy Cooper on The O.C.), not only does Clooney have a steady supply of hot chicks around, rock a pot-bellied pig as a pet and remain the ultimate bachelor, Guinness has also hooked him up with a lifetime supply of their beer. Donovan was recently quoted as saying that while he no longer plays basketball with Clooney because of ankle problems, he does find time to hang out at Clooney’s crib and partake from the draft spigot Clooney has that’s fueled by the lifetime supply of booze from Guinness. Just a note for my man G. Clooney, if you ever need someone to fill Donovan’s spot on the court and maybe hang at your place for a few brews afterward, you know where to find me. As a bonus, I also happen to like potbellied pigs, think they make great pets and don’t mind hanging out around them. Give me a call, George, I’m here to help…..
- If only I could afford to have the same kind of problems that Charles Barkley has. Whereas it would be the crisis of my life if I owed even $100,000 to anyone and was in danger of prosecution because of the debt, the Chuck-ster has a debt four times that amount and to hear him talk about it, it’s no biggie. Barkley acknowledged he owes a $400,000 gambling debt to a Las Vegas Strip casino and promised Thursday to repay it after a prosecutor said the retired NBA star faced criminal charges. “My mistake,” Barkley said in an interview at a pro-am golf tournament in Hoover, Ala. “I'm not broke, and I'm going to take care of it.” By taking care of it, I’m guessing he means scratch a check and be done with it, which has to be nice. Make a call to your accountant from the links, have him draw up the check and send it over to the casino. Clark County District Attorney David Roger was the one calling Barkley out, saying that prosecutors would file a criminal complaint if he did not pay the debt cited by the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Barkley will be afforded the chance to settle his debt before the criminal charges are brought, but whether he’s had a chance to settle the debt before now is disputed. The casino alleged in a civil complaint filed Wednesday in a Nevada state court that Barkley failed to repay four $100,000 casino markers received last Oct. 18 and 19. “To date, and despite repeated demands, Barkley has refused to repay the $400,000,” the complaint said. So the casino is claiming that he has been asked to pay back what he owes, a fact Barkley seems to dispute. Settle your debts, Charles, because if the casino contacted you even once and you didn’t settle up, then you can’t blame them for going public with this and threatenng criminal charges.
- Great news coming down for Smallville fans on the heels of Thursday night’s epic season finale. Multiple sources have confirmed to TVGuide.com that after weeks of tense negotiations, Allison Mack has inked a deal to return next season as a series regular. The specifics of the new contract haven’t been made public, but the key part of the deal for Smallville fans is that, according to TVGuide.com, it calls for Mack to appear in all episodes produced next season. Mack’s reps were using the imminent departure of Smallville vet Michael Rosenbaum as leverage in the negotiations, plus there’s the fact that another of the series’ leading ladies, Kristin Kreuk, will be only appearing in a handful of episodes next year. Had the show lost Mack, everyone single regular that started the series outside of Tom Welling (Clark Kent) would have either been killed off or left the show of their own volition, something that would have made for a pretty bad foundation for the show’s eighth season. So it’s great that Mack re-signed and will be on board next season, which you would have to guess is likely to be the show’s last, given the way cast members are jumping ship and the fact that the story is getting closer and closer to the point where Clark Kent starts embracing the whole Superman look. For now, I’ll chose to concentrate on the good news of Mack returning and try to block out memories of this season’s underwhelming finale.
- Everyone has their own freaky fetishes of varying degrees of weirdness, but this might be the weirdest and scariest one I’ve ever heard of. Getting physical and forceful in the bedroom is one thing, but quite another to take it to the level that a couple of sick freaks in Winnipeg, Manitoba took things to back in February 2007. A 25-year-old Winnipeg woman accidentally plunged a knife into her boyfriend's chest during a drunken bout of rough sex received and as a result, she received a three-year conditional discharge this past week. “It was an accident that had disastrous results,” said the woman's lawyer, John McAmmond. Either that or it was two demented, crazy people who got fueled up on alcohol and showed their inner freak to the nth degree. To put it another way, if a court order has to be issued to prevent you from communicating with your significant other, that doesn’t say anything good about you or your relationship. That order was lifted this week, leaving the happy (and demented) couple to exit the courtroom together, smiling. Why smiling after their last encounter left the man in such bad shape that he was rushed to hospital in critical condition with suffering a stab wound to the left ventricle of his heart? Because now these two weirdos can once again engage in what this guy calls “body modification.” The couple, who have known one another since grade school but had only become romantically involved four weeks prior to the accident, got their freak on by carving each other up. Their near-fatal session of tender lovemaking/mutilation came when the man asked his girl to carve a heart on his chest to go with other carvings on his back and abdomen. The woman was complying when the man asked her to press harder, McAmmond said. Good idea, moron. Ask a drunk girl to push a knife into your chest during sex, great thinking. “Hospital staff thought he was going to die, he was very close to death,” said Crown attorney Larry Allan, adding the man has fully recovered. “He said they engaged in dangerous play, and due to her intoxication, was not precise with the knife and punctured his heart.” Whoops. The shocker here isn't that this near-death experience took place, but rather that it didn’t happen sooner. The man told police the stabbing was an accident and that the two routinely cut and scratched each other with knives and he showed police several wounds, including a heart-shaped scar on his back featuring the woman's initials. Again, far be it from me to tell people what to do with their own freaky fetishes, but what do you say we keep them to activities that don’t result in people nearly dying because of punctured hearts and the other involved party being charged with aggravated assault before pleading guilty to simple assault. She also pleaded guilty to one count of breaching a court order she have no contact with her boyfriend. I’m sure these two will be in love for a long time…..either that or they’ll kill each other within a couple of years and do mankind the service of removing themselves from the gene pool.
- To paraphrase a line from Keyshawn Johnson, if you have a problem with Manny Ramirez’s act on the baseball field, you have a problem with yourself. The man affectionately known as “ManRam” has made a career of acting like a loveable goofball, a.k.a. “Manny being Manny.” He’s cut off throws from his own center fielder despite being the left fielder and only 40 feet away, he’s disappeared into Fenway Park’s Green Monster to take a leak during a game, he’s played left field wearing sunglasses with a built-in MP3 player and that’s just the start of his antics. Those antics grew to include an all-time great Manny moment Wednesday in Baltimore. With the home-standing Orioles at bat and with runners on first and second base and only one out, Orioles first baseman Kevin Millar crushed a deep drive to left field, seemingly headed over ManRam’s head. Back went ManRam and at the last possible moment, he stretched out his arm and the ball nestled in his glove as he reached the warning track. From there, ManRam continued running toward the fence, leaping up on the wall when he reached it and giving a high five to a Red Sox fan sitting in the front row. Yes, there were only two outs and the play was still live, but dammit, ManRam wanted to say hello to a loyal Sox fan, game situation be damned. Of course, when he finished high-fiving the fan, Manny turned around and fired a strike to the relay man, who turned and threw to first to double off the runner at first base. Final tallies for the play: no runs allowed, two outs, one outfield assist for ManRam, one high-five for that fan and yet another great “Manny being Manny” moment for the rest of us. Anyone ripping him for this play is just a jerk, period. He’s clearly having fun, he’s making the game fun for the fans and oh yeah, he made a great catch and initiated a double play. What more do your want? The so-called baseball purists who think ManRam is disrespecting the game need to just get over themselves. Back away from the arrogance and self-righteousness, “purists.” You need to grow a sense of humor, remove that stick from up your ass and just enjoy that sheer joy that is “Manny being Manny,” because the game would be a lot better off if more players showed the joy and goofiness he exudes on on the field.
- Fox may be preparing to end this season as America’s most popular television network (wonder how many months of promos they’ll squeeze out of that), but looking at the network’s fall lineup, popular isn't a word I would use. Come to think of it, good, interesting, great, watchable or quality aren’t words I would use either. Scanning the average week for the network, I see all of…one show I’ll actually watch. That’s actually worse than CBS, which I had thought would be impossible to beat. But the network’s best show, Prison Break, is slotted for 9 p.m. on Mondays, and when the fall season kicks off it’ll be the only Fox show I’m tuning in for. With 24 still not back on track following countless production delays (including Kiefer Sutherland’s DUI arrest and subsequent jail time) and the writers’ strike, there are literally no other good shows on Fox. Still around is the abortion of a karaoke contest that is American Karaoke, although it won't start up until January. But fear not, fans of crappy TV shows, because there will be plenty of toilet-worthy fare on FOX from September through December. Although I’m pumped about a two-hour season premiere for Prison Break on Aug. 25, nothing else I see from Fox makes me anything other than nauseous. There’s a blatant Lost rip-off from J.J. Abrams, the producer of Lost, called Fringe. It’s about an airplane flight whose passengers meet untimely ends. Hmm, wonder where he got that idea from? The network’s most awful comedy ‘Til Death (if only the series were dead right now) will be on Wednesday nights along with Do Not Disturb, a stinking-pile-of-monkey-crap, half-hour comedy that will air for a few weeks until abysmally low ratings cause its cancellation. On Thursdays, Fox will continue ruining people’s lives with the lie detector-based reality series Moment of Truth, which I like to call “Must Miss” TV. But Fox’s weekend lineup takes the cake of crappiness, with Friday night being filled by two reality shows that would be the worst around if not for American Karaoke. First on Thursday nights will be Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, because who doesn’t want to see the dregs of society answer questions about things they learned in junior high and realize how stupid our fellow Americans are in the process? Not to be outdone in über-terrible TV, Don’t Forget the Lyrics will follow at 9 p.m., giving Fox another year of not one, but two f’ing karaoke shows on its airwaves. That alone should give the FCC sufficient cause to revoke Fox’s broadcasting license. Saturday nights aren’t any worse, but they aren’t any better either. It’s a night of criminals with back-to-back episodes of Cops, followed by America’s Most Wanted. Good thing there’s never a shortage of drunk dudes hitting their women while wearing wife beaters, otherwise Cops would go out of business. But wait, there’s more! Sunday nights Fox resorts to juvenile TV at its best, keeping up its animated Sunday night theme with a quartet of shows that have never been funny, aren’t funny right now and never will be funny. I may be one of the only people in America who hates The Simpsons, but I just figure that’s a clear indication that I’m smarter than most Americans. Add in asinine shows like the redneck-lovin’ piece of garbage King of the Hill, which stopped being funny about two minutes before its first episode aired, and you’d have enough bad TV for one night. But that’s just the first hour for Fox on Sunday nights. In the second hour, Family Guy and American Dad fill out the schedule, showing that lowbrow, low-class, un-intelligent, poorly written and unimaginative cartoons have their place on primetime television. So right now, I’d have to say that on paper, Fox is clearly your leader for the absolute worst fall TV schedule. Even if 24 were in the mix, I still don’t think it would be enough to elevate this shitty schedule out of the basement. Maybe you can’t tell, but I’m really not a fan of what Fox is cookin’ for this fall…..
No comments:
Post a Comment