January 31, 2006
Not that you give a shit, but here's the press release:
"Bolstered by a tough defensive effort that limited NFL MVP Shaun Alexander to just 70 yards rushing and sacked Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck four times, the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth overall Super Bowl championship in a game simulated by EA SPORTS, downing the Seahawks 24-19 in a preview of what might happen in Super Bowl XL.
The game, which was simulated using the best-selling video game Madden NFL 06 for the Microsoft Xbox 360, played out in a way not unfamiliar to Pittsburgh fans – the Steelers moved out to an early lead using the pass and taking advantage of a timely turnover, and then turned to their relentless rushing attack to hold off the surging Hawks and secure the title.
Playing in his hometown of Detroit, Steelers RB Jerome Bettis garnered Super Bowl MVP honors by scoring two touchdowns in the game to go with his 41 yards rushing, getting his team on the board first with a one-yard plunge late in the first quarter to cap a ten-play, 74-yard drive. The teams exchanged field goals in the second quarter, and Pittsburgh upped its lead after recovering an Alexander fumble on the Seattle 24-yard-line. Three plays later, Steeler RB Willie Parker took the ball off right tackle for a seven-yard scamper which made the score 17-3 – a daunting margin that very few Pittsburgh opponents have been able to overcome.
Seattle got another field goal to cut their deficit to 11 points midway through the third quarter, but Alexander was finding no running room and the Steeler defense was bringing constant pressure against Seahawks QB Matt Hasselbeck. Still, the Seahawks managed to close to 17-13 after Alexander finished a seven-play, 66-yard drive early in the fourth quarter with a short dive off the left side. Pittsburgh responded, however, by pounding the ball on a clock-chewing drive, taking more than six minutes off the clock by going 73 yards in 13 plays – 11 of them runs – to move up 24-13 after Bettis again scored on a one-yard run.
With little time left, Seattle moved the ball down the field quickly and got six more points as Hasselbeck connected with Darrell Jackson on a 19-yard scoring pass, but their two-point conversion failed, and the ensuing onside kick was recovered by the Steelers, who ran out the clock to celebrate their win.
Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger finished an efficient 19 of 28 passing for 173 yards, while Parker picked up 52 on the ground. The Steeler defense was paced by linebacker Joey Porter, who finished with seven tackles and two sacks, while Troy Polamalu added seven tackles. Hasselbeck ended the day completing 21 of 29 passes for 220 yards while Jackson had 91 receiving yards. Lofa Tatupu had eight tackles and Grant Wistrom finished with two sacks for the Seahawks."
January 31, 2006
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It took 25 years, but Major Bren Derlin is finally getting his due. Hasbro has just released an action figure of Derlin, who was played by John Ratzenberger, Cliff Clavin of Cheers fame. Don't remember Major Derlin? He's the Alliance Field Office who must make the tough decision to close the giant doors on the Ice Planet Hoth, leaving Luke and Han out there in the cold. Why SC knows this fact is not the point here. The point is now you can take your Ted Danson figure from Three Men and a Baby, Your Woody Harrelson figure from Natural Born Killers and your Rhea Perlman figure from Canadian Bacon, and your Kelsey Grammer figure from Down Periscope, build the set of Cheers from some Balsa wood, and reenact the episode where Frasier does a bunch of coke and is accused of having sex with the babysitter. 
January 30, 2006
Yes, the King, though oddly alluring, has already found a comfy home in your nightmare fantasy file next to that scary clown from Poltergeist and this guy you found surfing on the web one day. But Burger King now has 92 more things to fuck with your head. 92 Whopperettes will dance around in a 1930s-style 
musical commercial/video to be played during the Super Bowl -- BK's first big game ad in 11 years. The Onion Ring Rebels think the 60-second clip will be so popular that -- lucky you -- you'll be able to download it to your IPod after the game, and it will play in movie theaters soon after. (As demented as early clips look, it still won't be as scary as Darius Rucker singing about the Tender Chicken Ranch, which completely ruined the credibility of Hootie and the Blowfish's comeback bid). Meanwhile, for the second-straight year GoDaddy.com submitted a commercial that got rejected by the network. And again they went to the press to cry foul. Guess they figured out that they could either pay 3 million for an ad or submit a 30-second clip so over the top that it would get rejected and get plenty of play in the news. Apparently the ad featured a 30-second clip of Ann Coulter fisting Fred Savage. Have it your way.
January 30, 2006
Aileen Wuornos has nothing on Juana Barraza. The 48-year-old Mexican woman who wrestled under the name "The Silent Lady" has been accused of killing 11 elderly women in Mexico City. After her arrest last week (which police say occurred as 
she was leaving an 82-year-old woman's house after strangling her with a stethoscope), police found a statue of Santa Muerte and the head of a snake in a jar inside her apartment. Before her arrest, police were tossing around all sorts of theories about the masculine figure in a dress seen near the crime scenes, including that the killer was a transvestite. (Weird fact: Three of the victims had the same painting in their house -- "Boy in Red Waistcoast" by Jean-Baptiste Greuze.) There are 22 other murders that the police are looking into. If the numbers add up, it could make Barraza one of the most prolific female serial killers in history. And nothing says Oscar like an ugly woman who likes to kill people. Will J Lo pull a Charlize, gain 50 pounds, put on ugly make-up, and erase the bitter memory of Gigli? And what does Wendy Richter and Cyndi Lauper think about all this? Or Fabulous Moolah? Really, the lady wrestlers north of the border have so much more class. Turns out, Juana was still working in the rasslin' game -- as a popcorn vendor at Mexico City Shows.
stranger things have happened...
January 28, 2006
So "The Prez" --Dr.Walter Kimbrough--finally
blogged on Coulter's appearance at Philander Smith College. Here's an excerpt:
"She CLEARLY said she was joking, but her comment about the justice has
been a national news clip. When someone in the media doesn’t like you,
you get it. I guess she’ll now be able to relate more to my man Rev.
Al, because they have treated him this way for years."
It took a suggestion of poisoning a Supreme Court Justice to finally get Ann Coulter to relate to Al Sharpton. We smell sitcom.
January 27, 2006
"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," said Ann Coulter when discussing abortion at 
Philander Smith College on Thursday. "That's just a joke, for you in the media." And Slop Culture is eating up that poison with a spoon. This story is being passed around the Internet like nude pics of Lindsay Lohan or stories of Fred Savage going to a gay bar. But the best part of this "outrage!" concerning America's anorexic Eva Braun is that she was speaking at the "Bless the Mic: A Hip-Hop President's Lecture." From the Philander Smith college website: "These lectures also serve as an opportunity to hopefully expose the institution to a segment of the community that may have never interacted with the institution." No shit.
The "president" in question is 38-year-old 
Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough, who on his blog signs off as "The Prez." He has yet to blog on Coulter's appearance, but if this story has any pale, boney legs, you'll be hearing from him shortly.
January 27, 2006
On the episode of the Simpsons where the comet was about to crash into the earth, anchorman Kent Brockman ended his newscast with a scroll outing every gay celebrity (slow the scroll down and the list actually includes only members of the Simpsons staff). America's fixation on which movie stars are gay is even more potent than our fixation on which movie stars are short. So it was no surprise that when USA Today published a story with the title "It's a Gay Gay World for Fred Savage," that it became one of the most viewed stories on Yahoo! this morning. 
And it was also no surprise that when people clicked on the headline, hoping to see a juicy photo of a grown-up Kevin Arnold getting fisted by grown up Paul Pfieffer, they were pissed when the story simply said 
that Arnold visits gay bar The Abbey in LA with his wife, and NOT JUST to research his role as a gay man on Crumbs. He actually likes the place! Scroll to the bottom of the story and you'll see it only earned 2.5 out of five stars in the satisfaction dept. from the public, who were clearly looking for some hot Wonder Years action. (For contrast, "Man Pleads Guilty to Raping 85-Year-Old Neighbor" from thehawaiichannel.com earned a 4.7 rating.)
January 26, 2006
The man who landed Kate Moss on the cover of Daily Mirror prepping a line of powder pulled off a supercool feat today. Pete Doherty, former Libertines frontman, current singer for Babyshambles, and Great Britain's new version of 
Syd Barrett was arrested today at about 3pm. Police picked him up trolling around Whitechapel and charged him with Class A drug possession. Not that big a deal, right? Except for the fact that he had been arrested about 10 hours earlier, when police pulled him over in the E2 section of London and charged him with DUI. The only guy who can touch Doherty is Brooklyn rapper Fabolous, who was arrested twice within a 24 hour period, for gun possession and driving with a suspended license, back in 2003. The Doherty news comes a few hours after it was discovered that Kate Moss will be telling all in a book for Richard Branson's Virgin. Pick up this "Pete Doherty is Innocent" poster to support your hero. 
January 25, 2006
The cover of the new Rolling Stone features Kanye West in a Jesus pose. A bit like the pic of Howard Stern which was originally slated for the cover in '97 but ran on the inside of the magazine. Here's the image, along with this disturbing painting of Stern as Christ by Elizabeth Fox. Freaky.
January 25, 2006
"The man you just killed was just released from prison. He got caught at a company warehouse full of hot items. He could've fuckin' walked. All he had to do was say my dad's name, but he didn't; he kept his fucking mouth shut. 
And did his fuckin' time, and he did it like a man. He did four years for us. So, Mr. Orange, you're tellin' me this very good friend of mine, who did four years for my father, who in four years never made a deal, no matter what they dangled in front of him, you're telling me that now, that now this man is free, and we're making good on our commitment to him, he's just gonna decide, out of the fucking blue, to rip us off? Why don't you tell me what really happened?"
"Okay, first things fuckin' last." Chris Penn never won an Oscar like his brother. He never fucked Madonna like his brother (at least we doubt it). But he was in some of the best movies of the '80s. Footloose. All the Right Moves, At Close Range, Rumble Fish. Yes, he was always playing back-up to guys like Kevin Bacon, Tom Cruise, his brother Sean, and Matt Dillon. But do yourself a favor tonight: Get a six pack of Molson, go to Blockbuster, and rent The Wild Life, Penn's only chance at movie stardom and the one flick in the Cameron Crowe cannon which most often gets shoved under the rug. It won't blow your mind, but it will make you smile.
A thinly-veiled sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Wild Life is what happens when all the kids get apartments and jobs. Eric Stoltz, Lea Thompson, Ilan Michael Smith (the other kid in Weird Science) -- it offered a treasure-trove of mid-'80s bit actors (even Randy Quaid as the down-and-out Vietnam vet). But it was Chris Penn's big shot at stardom as a more grown-up version of his brother's Jeff Spiccoli. They even gave him his own catch-phrase, "It's casual," which he employs throughout. Bananarama did the title track. How could it fail?
It failed, Chris Penn never became a star. He got bloated and became a solid character actor, earning parts in Rush Hour, Short Cuts, and True Romance. But the hipster kids and Gen Xers will remember him forever as Nice Guy Eddie, the chunky gangster with the chunky cell phone.
"We got places all over the place." Here's to Nice Guy going to one of those better places.
January 25, 2006
Two words: Disney iPod. 
After telling Michael Eisner to go to hell just a few years ago, Steve Jobs is now the majority shareholder in Walt Disney Company, now that Eisner's replacement, Bob Iger, gave the Mac man the keys to the kingdom in the form of a $7.4 billion deal. Is it worth it? Sure, but only because Disney's homegrown studio wouldn't know a good story if it swam up and bit them on their public-domain-cribbing asses (save Lilo & Stitch, of course). But Pixar's glorious streak of hits may end with Cars, the last movie of the 
Pixar/Disney partnership of yesteryear, a pathetic, desperate attempt to jump on the NASCAR bandwagon which was pushed back to summer 2006. $7.4 billion is an awful lot of money to watch a cartoon Taurus with Owen Wilson's nasal voice drive around in a circle 200 times.
The big prize in this whole deal, however, is Jobs himself, who will drag the company into the future by creating a more interactive mouse house. Disney 
video games should actually start to become as good as the theme park rides and movies they are supposed to represent. And if they're smart, a Disney-branded video ipod loaded with video clips of Disney and Pixar movies will be gold.
AddMe.com, Search Engine Marketing
January 25, 2006
Hero Builders, the company that brought you the Talking Osama action figure (soundchip: "I suck, please 
stop bombing me.") and the Talking Uday action figure (left; soundchip: "Oh, someone must help me, I'm still alive but I'm badly burned. Can someone call my father!"), has brought out a few new action figures into its 12-inch stable. The Ayman Al-Zaqahri comes with a fly "Number Two" 
T-shirt, while the Saddam on Trial figure sports a trendy suit with open-collar.
Now, who the hell would pay $29.95 for an Al-Zaqahri action figure? Plenty. But here's how to get the most bang for your buck: Go to Toys R Us, buy the Barbie kitchen, take the included pineapple, and practice your interrogation techniques. Either that or order up the Howard Dean figure to scream in his ear. It's all good.
