Talkin' baseball. Did you see the latest ruling by baseball's statistical geniuses? Randy Johnson struck out 20 in 9 innings the other night, a record he has been chasing all of his life. But it won't go in the record books. Seems the record is only valid if your team is ahead or behind after nine innings. If your team is tied, the record is invalid, since it is then technically an extra inning game, not a regulation game. Is that great or what?. Of course he struck out 20 in nine innings, exactly the same as Clemens and Kerry, but it doesn't count. Nyah, nyah. 

I try to go through every new release every week that may have nudity. I skip G and PG movies unless there is some reason why I want to watch the movie. With the rest of the films, I rely on the ratings, the reasons for the ratings, and the advance info sites like cndb and screen-it. "Unrated" movies are the biggest crapshoot. They may have no nudity at all, or they may be filled with lustful encounters.

I don't have any pics tonight because this week I watched two unrated films that had no nudity at all, and both turned out to be basically two-character stage plays. Wadda world. Wadda world.

"Boesman and Lena"  is a 1970 stage play about two people of mixed race displaced by the South African apartheid policy. On stage, they spent the entire play on a single set representing a muddy riverbank. 

On film, it's a real riverbank.

Whew, I had to catch my breath from all the excitement generated by the realism.

Godot does eventually show up, but he can't speak English, and dies during the night.

This play is dated. The director was a sickly 82 years old and died right after they wrapped filming. The whole concept was much too artificial to begin with. Danny Glover and Angela Bassett act it out with big voices, big gestures, and big accents, exactly as if they were at Stratford, declaiming to the cheap seats. It is sincere and well-meaning, but just more pavement for the hell-bound Road of Good Intentions. It is EXACTLY like watching a film of a stage play, except the mud is real. I wanted to like it, but couldn't. My review gives some more details of the director's interesting life and his long relationship with this play.

"The Interview"  is actually a very taut little Australian movie about a cop interrogating a suspect. But what is he really suspected of? Is he an innocent guy being brutalized by a Kafkaesque state, or is there more to it than that? Is the cop also being investigated? Who is really manipulating whom? Clever, and eminently watchable for a film that basically involves two men looking at each other over a desk.

This one is NOT like watching a two-character stage play. In fact, the director is very inventive in his use of camera angles and set-ups to maintain the tone he wants in each twist of the plot.

More monochrome naked fashion models for you today. The first two are by Paolo Roversi, the Godfather of supermodel nudity: Nathalia (errr, don't know her surname...) and Zora Juranova; followed by an obviously hungry Jenny Shimizu (and friend) photographed by Ellen von Unwerth; and finally the lovely Sophie Anderton by David Bailey.

Meg Register

Nicolette Scorsese

The XFL gets pinned.
After only 14 weeks, Vince McMahon's XFL can't power out and stays down for the 3 count. Loses by WWF and NBC are expected to be about $35 million each.

Celeb News

From Ananova.com...

Fatal Attraction star is new Mrs Robinson
US actress Anne Archer, who played Michael Douglas's wife in Fatal Attraction, will be the next star to bare all in the West End production the Graduate.

Archer, 53, is the oldest of the four stars to take the part and will take over from Amanda Donohoe in the hit play as Mrs Robinson.

Jerry Hall and Kathleen Turner have also starred as a boozy middle-aged woman who seduces a university graduate half her age, Benjamin Braddock.

The actress flew to the UK to see the play with her 24-year-old son and was impressed by the show, which was one of the hottest tickets in London when it opened in March last year with Turner in the role.

It has taken more than £7 million at the box office since then.

Archer will start rehearsing for the role at the Gielgud Theatre on May 21, before making her debut appearance on June 11. She will be in the play until September 29.

She told US entertainment newspaper Daily Variety: "It's a character who is so deliciously amoral. I'm an actress. And I'm old enough to play it."

In Fatal Attraction, she was the wife wronged by her cheating husband, played by Douglas, who is then stalked by an obsessed Glenn Close.

Archer will come to London after starring in The Vagina Monologues in Beverly Hills.

1. One hand on wheel, one hand on horn: Chicago.
2. One hand on wheel, one finger out window: New York.
3. One hand on wheel, one finger out window, cutting across all lanes of traffic: New Jersey.
4. One hand on wheel, one hand on newspaper, foot solidly on accelerator: Boston.
5. One hand on wheel, one hand on nonfat double decaf cappuccino, cradling cell phone, brick on accelerator, with gun in lap: Los Angeles.
6. Both hands on wheel, eyes shut, both feet on brake, quivering in terror: Ohio, but driving in California.
7. Both hands in air, gesturing, both feet on accelerator, head turned to talk to someone in back seat: Italy.
8. One hand on latte, one knee on wheel, cradling cell phone, foot on brake, mind on radio game: Seattle.
9. One hand on wheel, one hand on hunting rifle, alternating between both feet being on the accelerator and both feet on brake, throwing McDonald's bag out the window: Texas.
10. Four-wheel drive pick-up truck, shotgun mounted in rear window, beer cans on floor, squirrel tails attached to antenna: West Virginia.
11. Two hands gripping wheel, blue hair barely visible above the steering wheel, driving in the left lane at 35 on the Interstate with the left blinker on: Florida.
12. One hand on wheel of '72 VW bus, one hand on bong, Oregon.