With a backlash brewing against the incessant media coverage of Charlie Sheen's breakdown, Sheen has made an uncannily savvy move: He's announced he's going to Haiti on a humanitarian mission with his buddy Sean Penn, who has practically been living there since the earthquake struck more than a year ago:
March truly marks the beginning of the spring movie season, with the first slate of big-budget movies leading the way to massive summer. But that's all next week (Battle: Los Angeles!). This week we're still in smaller winter movie territory, with Matt Damon's magical hats, Topher Grace's '80s throwback, and Mary-Kate Olsen's beastly revenge.
Filter-free nutter Mike Huckabee, presidential politics' best unknowing imitation of Charlie Sheen, has concluded his hilarious week of incoherent babbling about Barack Obama's Kenyan childhood, scary Mau Maus, Tony Blair's loaned Winston Churchill bust, Rotary Club vs. madrassa membership statistics, and Natalie Portman's vagina with a snippy press release about that last one.
Egyptians, still flush with victory in their street protests, were thrilled by an announcement even more exciting than the news that Mubarak was stepping down: According to Egypt's new tourism minister, Egypt had invited Oprah to broadcast a show from Cairo's Tahrir square and had accepted, "without hesitation."
Celebrated actor and humble spirit Charlie Sheen already owns a large spread in Beverly Hills, but hey, what's one more mansion? So he's now in escrow on a $7.5 million pad in the same neighborhood. He's purchasing the home from Black Swan producer Mike Medavoy, but I'd imagine the psychological terror that Sheen brings to the place won't be quite as elegant as that of Natalie Portman's ballerina angst. No, it'll likely just be the regular old porn star coke freakouts and elevators full of tiger blood. Photos of Sheen's new home are above.
Did you know we are now on the brink of a "Post-PC" future? The boring old desktops and laptops are on the decline, say the tech gods, to be replaced with iPads and smartphones and an infinite number of slick little devices. This is going to suck.
The story of a Northwestern University professor's Hot Live Fucksaw demonstration for ten dozen rapt college students has captivated the nation and, indeed, the world. After Northwestern prez Morton Schapiro vowed to keep investigating until he got all the way to the bottom of this fucksaw business, it was time for those directly involved in the handling and care of the fucksaw in question to speak out on what really happened in there. From the owner of the fucksaw:
Even though head designer John Galliano was fired for an anti-Semitic tirade earlier this week, Dior still had to show its fall/winter collection at Paris Fashion Week today. CEO Sidney Toledano addressed the crowd before the presentation, saying, "What has happened over the last week has been a terrible and wrenching ordeal for us all. It has been deeply painful to see the Dior name associated with the disgraceful statements attributed to its designer. However brilliant he may be."
Indian Congress leader Kanwar Singh Tanwar recently celebrated the marriage of his son (not the same son who was arrested for fleeing the scene of a deadly accident last summer) by inviting some 18,000 guests to a £14 million (roughly $22.7 million) celebration in Delhi. He's come under fire from members in his political party who have urged officials to live a little less ostentatiously while so many of their countrymen (and, y'know, constituents) struggle to survive. For his troubles, the groom's parents-in-law gave him a new helicopter.
Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint have introduced a bill to cut that program that they always want to cut: subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, overlord of PBS and NPR. We already know why Republicans want to cut NPR funding so badly, because the liberal snob station fired a reporter last fall over his patriotic belief that Muslims are terrifying. And PBS! They're downright socialist, and Jim Lehrer is a Muslim spy.
Watching this ad for a "Chinese boob clamp" that is actually just a corset (Although maybe corsets should be called woman clamps?) I find myself entranced by the recurring image of breasts mushing together, then falling back apart. Faces lighting up with joy, then hanging with shame. Is this what it's like to be a straight man?
HBO recently released a new trailer for its upcoming fantasy series Game of Thrones and today announced that they're airing a fifteen minute clip of the first episode on April 3rd. So the full PR roll-out has officially kicked into high gear, and while clips and photos indicate that it's certainly grand and gorgeous looking, can it ultimately work as a series?
Pity the overworked police officers of Madison, Wisconsin, who must be completely exhausted after monitoring around-the-clock protests for weeks while getting different orders every three seconds — clear the Capitol, reopen the Capitol, take senators into custody if they ever step foot in the state they represent, clear the Capitol, and so on — depending on Gov. Scott Walker's mood. So maybe it was this constant state of confusion that led some officers to tackle a Democratic lawmaker as he was trying to reach his Capitol office last night.
Psychologists at Boston University paired paintings by famous abstract expressionists with paintings by a child, monkey, chimpanzee, gorilla, and elephant. They presented the images side by side and asked students to judge which painting was of higher quality. One-third of the time, the art students chose the work of children and animals. At least they did better than a coin toss would!
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has has determined that the legendary Eastern Panther (also known as the eastern cougar, puma, catamount and mountain lion) is extinct, and likely has been since the 1930s. There have been numerous reported sightings throughout the years, but the FWS says they were other species, "including South American cats that had either escaped from captivity or were released to the wilderness as well as wild cougars from Western states that had migrated east."
Good news from today's Wall Street Journal: "The lowest-priced single-family home on the market in Aspen is listed for $559,000. It's located in a trailer park." The median single-family dwelling in Aspen costs $4.6 million. That's a higher price than the median single-family home in any other city in the nation.
