Make Sure Nothing Happens to Frank Drebin While He's Gone (So He Can Have the Pleasure of Killing Him Himself)

RIP, Robert Goulet. I wasn't exactly a fan of yours (I wasn't not a fan, either; I really had no strong opinion either way), but a lot of the casual media coverage regarding your passing Tuesday morning has compelled me to point out that even people like me--who weren't really tuned in to your Broadway or recording career--know that there was more to you than a Will Ferrell impression.

(Not to mention the fact that you performed at the Red Sox home opener this year--major points for that. Baseball fan or no, I hope you were tickled by how their season ended.)

She Definitely Didn't Have To Go

There are many things that could be said about Anthony Merino, the 24-year-old lab technician at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J., who was arrested on Sunday after he was caught having sex with the corpse of a 92-year-old woman inside the institution's morgue...but perhaps no words are more fitting than the lyrics of the song that, at the time of this writing, is currently playing on Merino's own MySpace page [in the likely event that Merino soon alters his page, see screenshot below for proof]--Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music":

It's gettin' late
I'm making my way over to my favorite place
I gotta get my body moving shake the stress away
I wasn't looking for nobody when you looked my way
Possible candidate (yeah)
Who knew
That you'd be up in here lookin' like you do
You're makin' stayin' over here impossible
Baby I must say your aura is incredible
If you don't have to go, don't

Do you know what you started
I just came here to party
But now we're rockin' on the dance floor
Acting naughty
Your hands around my waist
Just let the music play
We're hand in hand
Chest to chest
And now we're face to face

I wanna take you away
Lets escape into the music
DJ let it play
I just can't refuse it
Like the way you do this
Keep on rockin' to it
Please don't stop the
Please don't stop the
Please don't stop the music
[Repeat]

Baby are you ready cause its getting close
Don't you feel the passion ready to explode
What goes on between us no one has to know
This is a private show (oh)

"Oh", indeed...as that was probably the first of two words that came out of Merino's mouth once hospital security guards interrupted his private show.

In this time of personal crisis, perhaps Merino himself can turn to his MySpace page (his handle: "playboygtr")--in particular, his current profile quote, courtesy of Ralph Waldo Emerson [again, see screenshot]--for a guideline to the intense soul-searching he has no doubt already begun:

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

ANSWER KEY: (a) Police; (b) The nude corpse of a 92-year-old woman; (c) Shame.

Thanks to the hard-rocking "Jesse" for the tip.

The Red Sox Can't Stop Firing Grady Little

A long time ago, when the New York Yankees were a competitive baseball team, Grady Little got himself fired as the manager of the Boston Red Sox when, with his team on the cusp of defeating their aforementioned historic archnemeses in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, he opted not to remove his clearly-out-of-gas starting pitcher Pedro Martinez in the eighth inning with the Red Sox leading 5-3. The Yankees went on to tie the game in that very inning and win it in the eleventh, thus bringing the total number of consecutive years that the Red Sox had gone without winning a World Series to 86. While the Yankees went on to lose in the World Series to Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell and the rest of the Florida Marlins, Grady Little was run out of Boston on a rail.

During the four years since, the dynamic between the Red Sox and the Yankees has, to put it mildly, changed. The Red Sox have won two World Series titles while the Yankees haven't even appeared in one championship contest. The Sox' most recent playoff success was due in large part to the effectiveness of their ace, Josh Beckett, and RBI machine Mike Lowell, who was crowned the 2007 World Series MVP. Meanwhile, the Yankees barely even made the 2007 playoffs (as the Wild Card), in the first round of which they were soundly trounced by the Cleveland Indians 3 games to 1. The responsibility for this unequivocal failure was placed squarely on the shoulders of longtime Yankees manager Joe Torre; as a result (and taking into account the fact that, during his tenure, the Yankees hadn't won a World Series title since the previous century), Torre was essentially fired by means of a deliberately insulting contract renewal offer. (Adding insult to injury for Yankee fans, on the very night that the Boston Red Sox closed out their second world championship in 4 years, the Yankees' star player, Alex Rodriguez, opted out of his contract extension, unceremoniously severing his relationship with the organization.) Given the history between the Red Sox and the Yankees, it can reasonably be inferred that Joe Torre didn't lose his job just because the Yankees had failed to live up to expectations for so many years...but also because the Red Sox--during the same years--had so roundly exceeded their own.

Yesterday it was reported that Joe Torre--the man who lost his job in large part as a result of the success of the Boston Red Sox--is going to be hired as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. And who will he be replacing?

Grady Little. The man whose career is destined to be defined by the failure of the Boston Red Sox under his watch...the man who is now out of a job once again as a result of that very team's performance.

Does all of this amount to a fair shake for Grady Little? I cannot objectively answer that question, for I am a Red Sox fan. As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy to see Grady Little punished for leaving Pedro in back in 2003 every day for the rest of his life. Two World Series titles since or no two World Series titles since, it doesn't change the fact that that was a completely dumbass decision.

Au revoir once again, Grady. Apparently, you shall never be forgiven.

Lance Bass Chooses to Embrace Ugly Stereotype of His Own Lifestyle

Remember how, at the height of *NSYNC's popularity, any time you would hear one of their songs on the radio or stumble across one of their videos or find yourself staking out their hotel when their tour came to your town, you'd reflexively bat down any confusing feelings of pleasure and/or jealousy by remarking, "Those dudes are so gay"?

Turns out Lance Bass would have agreed with you.

Doing his part to try and reverse what little progress homosexuals have made in contemporary culture, Bass has told GQ that he once thought the majority of his bandmates were friends of Dorothy.

I understand that you've got a book to sell, Lance...but I question the wisdom in doing so at the expense of playing right into one of the biggest fears of homophobes, i.e.: Every gay person wants everyone around him to be gay so he can have gay sex with them all the time. Additionally, partnering your predictable namecheck of Justin Timberlake (in that he's the only former *NSYNC'er anybody gives a crap about anymore) with the supremely non-famous Chris Kirkpatrick (better known as Spider Head) on your "I kinda thought he was gay" list, while a somewhat clever ruse, ultimately does not distract from the reality that--just as I predicted back in March--when it comes to promoting your own relative celebrity, you know that everybody else knows exactly where your bread is buttered.

On the plus side, though, Spider Head--as evinced by his fervent participation in the above-linked Access Hollywood story--seems pretty excited that someone has actually remembered his name. So at least some joy has come from all of this.

(Obligatory Post Regarding the Red Sox' World Series Victory)

I have nothing to say about the Boston Red Sox' sweep of the Colorado Rockies to win their second World Series title in four years (the previous having followed an 86-year drought, natch) last night that hasn't already been/won't be said more eloquently on countless other locations throughout these here internets. All I can say is that I am very, very happy.

Not 2004 happy, mind you...but very happy nonetheless.

The one and only downside to this occasion? The bandwagon that started forming around 2003 is about to tip over. We real Red Sox fans know who you are, grotesque poseurs who don't know and will never know what it is to suffer a lifetime (in my particular case, a birth-to-late-20s-time) of near-victory, and we hate you more than the fans of any other team do...including Yankee fans. But at least those guys have a future of cheering on A-Rod to look forward to--

Oh, wait. What? They don't?

Well, that's a shame.

(Tee-hee!)

UPDATE: Okay, so now they do...as well as a guaranteed minimum of 10 years before their team wins another World Series. My "(Tee-hee!)" stands.

Metroville's Movie Corner: 30 Days of Night

DAY 1: "Let's all settle in for 30 straight days without sunlight in our remote Alaskan town. What the fuck--vampires? Let's hide."

DAY 7: "Okay, a lot of us got eaten by vampires over the last week. Let's all try to do a little better at hiding."

DAY 18: "I'm not so sure that the fact that progressively fewer of us are being eaten by vampires is a reflection of our improved hiding skills so much as it is of the fact that there are increasingly fewer of us for the vampires to eat. Percentage-wise, it's pretty much a wash."

DAY 30: "All right, just one day of night left! Anybody seen the hero's love interest? What? She's outside, hiding underneath a car with some little girl none of us had seen before who just popped up in time for the climax while the vampires burn the town? Sonuvabitch."

DAY 31: "Well, 5 of us survived...out of 160-plus. Let's call it a moral victory. And hey--we can be thankful that even though the hero turned himself into a vampire to save his love interest, he didn't eat any of us or her for no good goddamn reason other than apparently he was just that heroic."

The end.

Disney Wants to Have No Clothes and Fire Them Too

Donald Duck, as seen in the picture at left, has been running around with no pants on since 1934 and his employer, the Walt Disney Company, has never once taken issue with his behavior. Last month, nude images of another Disney employee, High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, surfaced on the internet [sorry, pervs, that link isn't to the actual pictures--for all anybody knows, she could be 14 years old in those things] for the first time ever...and she's already been shitcanned from her own franchise as a result, as OK! Magazine (a news source you know you can trust because they have an exclamation point in their name) is exclusively reporting that Disney has decided not to invite Hudgens back for HSM 3.

One can only speculate whether this egregious double standard of the Walt Disney Company is a result of sexism, humanism, non-cartoonism, visible-genitaliaism or perhaps all four; regardless, until Disney establishes a consistent policy regarding the acceptable level of nudity for all of its talent, I call upon fans of Vanessa Hudgens, nakedness, and/or well-tanned and spontaneously-synchronized teenagers to boycott all Disney Channel movies that don't involve time travel...because time is of the essence when it comes to the Walt Disney Company making up its mind:

They've got to either pull their pants up or take them off altogether.

UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that a Disney Channel spokeswoman has dismissed OK!'s story as "a false and old rumor". Looks like my work here is done...unless the Orlando Sentinel doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. Which is a possibility, given that they tagged the linked article "Discovery Channel".

UPDATE 2: The denial has been confirmed by a comparatively "reputable" news outlet, that being Access Hollywood. Even though their name doesn't contain any exciting punctuation, I'm inclined to hold "Access" in at least the same regard as OK!.

Even Orlando Bloom's Car Accidents Are Boring

For years, Orlando Bloom has rendered moviegoers comatose with his ineffectual screen presence. Now he's taken his flavorless act to the streets (quite literally), becoming involved in possibly the least-interesting celebrity vehicular mishap ever early Friday morning.

No drugs or alcohol. No speeding. The car he hit was unoccupied and parked.

It's almost as though Bloom were reviving his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the form of bad driving, essentially serving as filler while the world waits for entertaining celebrity car accidents--i.e., Johnny Depp--to resume.

Cardiac Arrest Wit'cha

Bobby Brown had a heart attack Tuesday night. (Don't worry, the one person with a ticket to his vaguely described "scheduled performance" on Saturday, he survived.) According to his attorney, doctors are attributing the incident to "stress and diet".

I don't mean to be cruel, but it's my prerogative to state that every little step of this story leads me to suspect that Bobby Brown's heart attack might have had something to do with his well-documented history of cocaine abuse. Or maybe I'm just humpin' around.

Roni.

Oldest Hanson Brother Even Older Than You Think

According to this report on Isaac Hanson--of the brothers/band Hanson--undergoing surgery for venous thoracic outlet syndrome, he is 26 years old.

According to me, bull crap. 26-year-olds don't develop venous thoracic outlet syndrome. This was Hanson's (Isaac, not the whole band) second surgery necessitated by a blood clot, and he's already got a third procedure to have a rib removed in the interest of opening up a vein on the books.

If Isaac Hanson is anything under 40, you can name more than one Hanson song off the top of your head.