The feel-good blog item of the day is the story of when the small town of Brandon, Mississippi successfully foiled Westboro Baptist Church's plan to protest a Marine's funeral. (Here is a video of the refreshingly protester-free road as Marine Staff Sgt. Jason Rogers is returned home on April 14.) How'd they do it? They sicced the police on them and beat them up.
America's most polarizing actress has been cast in another project, one that's sure to be issuey. What will people say? Also today: a good actress joins a hopefully good movie, more Hunger Games casting news, and some good and some bad for HBO.
Super computers! Narcissistic kids! Harvard scandals! Floating ants! Big lasers! Lying Superman! Magic batteries! Anti-helium! And sexxxy peacock pimping secrets! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—bitingly!
There is some lightly sourced babble at Reuters today about "desire at the highest ranks of the Republican Party" for House Budget Committee chair Rep. Paul Ryan to launch a presidential bid. This is partially confirmed by more lightly sourced babble on Twitter. There's a slim chance of this ever happening — Paul Ryan, for one, has no interest — but with Obama's poll numbers slinking further into the crapper, Republican elites are still looking for new candidates with scalable support. If they decide he's their guy, they'll force him to do it.
The only reason most people bother purchasing Internet service is to read actor Chuck Norris' insane right wing political columns, which are syndicated on an array of terrible liar websites like World Net Daily and Townhall.com. But now you can just print out what's already been written and cancel that service, because he's probably already published everything that would appear in future columns.
Praise be the gods, our long national nightmare of peace and quiet is over. After firing Gilbert Gottfried from his job voicing Aflac's screaming spokes-duck, the insurance company has completed its national search for a less offensive replacement. The winner is a sales manager from Hugo, Minnesota (population: 13,000) named Daniel McKeague. Congratulations, Daniel. We can't wait to scramble for the mute button every time your bone-chilling squawk comes on TV.
Tonight NBC rolls out the first episode of its much-hyped, overly-complicated singing competition The Voice. This is a mistake on so many levels, mostly because America has depleted its talent pool to the point of exhaustion. With our countless number of reality talent competitions, there is no one good enough to be on these shows anymore.
Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has stepped up his pressure on Apple CEO Steve Jobs, announcing on Monday that he will hold hearings on the recent revelation that Apple iPhones and iPads are secretly tracking and storing their users' locations.
In a Today Show segment on vanity sizing, More editor Lesley Jane Seymour described the lengths fashion editors must go to protect the fragile egos of celebrities: "When we go to shoots it's all about the ego. If a celebrity says she's a size 8 and we know she's not we cut the sizes out because we know she won't put it on if it says it's a 10."
The brilliant thespians over at Playbill.com have devised a series of videos where two actors read transcripts from Jersey Shore as if they were written by Oscar Wilde. It's rather amazing how elevated the show is when it's in this context with Wilde's signature style. Just try to tell us whether Snooki or Wilde who said, "I don't eat lobster or anything, because it's alive when you kill it."
The makers of America's Beer, Budweiser, have released an ad about a soldier coming home from one of the various wars and celebrating with his family and friends in a well-lit sexy barn party stocked with Budweiser beer. That's nice. But the soldier's gay, right? The gays are wondering. The spot's two principals are the soldier and a certain guy back home, who's either his brother or a very best friend or his super gay lover. Not like they're fucking or anything.
Is Megan Fox, pouty-faced president of the Marilyn Monroe Society for Unoriginal Starlets, finally letting go of her idol? The New York Daily News notes that Megan's Marilyn tattoo has been looking lighter, lately. At left, Megan at the premiere of Passion Play in September; at right, at an appearance on April 20.
Remember the hope-filled days of 2008, when the titans of Wall Street came together to pour money into Barack Obama's presidential campaign, because they knew he was going to win? It was truly an inspirational example of the rich setting aside their historic partisan affiliations in order to further their own self-interest.
The most confusing thing about this clip from The 700 Club, wherein Pat Robertson explains that married liberal women have abortions in order to put themselves on "a level playing field" with childless lesbians, is that he seems to think lesbians can't have children. Whatever you do, Pat, do not watch The Kids Are Alright. [via Little Green Footballs]
Here's a trailer for What's Your Number?, a comedy movie starring a woman who has had lots of sex. Pretty scandalous! Will it work? Can anything like this ever work?
