• Happy Birthday, Universe. According to the famous biblical calculation, the Universe turns 6,000 today!
• The 'Stros pull up a hair short after a great season. Sox vs Cardinals in series. The Red Sox have gone to the World Series four times since selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees, losing in seven games each time. The first two were against the Cardinals.
  • The Sox lost Teddy Ballgame's only series to the Cardinals in 1946 on Pesky's famous hesitation, which allowed Enos Slaughter to score from first on a liner to the outfield, breaking a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the eighth of game 7.
  • After the Impossible Dream pennant in 1967, the Sox lost to the Cardinals in seven. Yaz and the boys played well in the series, but they ran into a juggernaut - one of baseball's greatest pitchers in his greatest hour. Bob Gibson threw three complete game victories, to win the series almost single-handed.
  • The Sox lost the greatest series of them all to the Big Red Machine in 1975, one game after the famous Fisk homer game. They blew a 3-0 lead in that seventh game, and lost when Joe Morgan's cheap blooper found a hole in the ninth inning of game seven.
  • 1986. Bill Buckner. What else is there to say? I guess I could mention that Buckner's flub was actually in game SIX. The Sox went into the bottom of the tenth in that game with a 5-3 lead, and the first two Mets went down quietly in their half of the tenth before disaster struck. To make it perfect, the Sox also managed to blow a 3-0 lead in game seven.
• Political correctness hits a new low point: school says Halloween is disrespectful to witches. "Use of derogatory stereotypes is prohibited, such as the traditional image of a witch, which is offensive to members of the Wiccan religion."
• A WB sitcom called "Commando Nanny" has been cancelled before the first program. You guys who are experts on TV can help me out on this, but I can only remember two cases of a show which was promoted with ads, then dropped before ever being aired:
  • There was a show called "Snips", featuring comedian David Brenner as a hairdresser. Several episodes were filmed. Rumor was that ABC nuked it because a major character was gay, a major network bugbear in 1976. (How times change!)
  • A 1997 show called "Rewind", starring Chachi, about two marketing executives who often found themselves spacing out to their own personal 1970s flashbacks. WB was never clear why they pulled it, other than that it sucked more than a Slurpee-drinking contest.
• (How would Rush Limbaugh write this headline if it did not involve Rush Limbaugh? Something like this:) Incredibly guilty Limbaugh seeks to weasel out on legal technicality.
  • Rush is still arguing that the prosecutors had no right to impound his medical records, presumably because those records show him to be guilty as sin, but ostensibly to defend the high-falutin' principle of doctor-patient confidentiality! {cough} blowjob {cough} bullshit {cough}
  • I can't remember which politician once remarked about Strom Thurmond's impassioned and hypocritical defense of State's Rights, "if the Federal government were segregationist and Strom lived in Massachusetts, he'd be the foremost opponent of State's Rights." Same deal with Rush. If the case involved Hillary Clinton's medical records, Rush would surely find some weaselly reason to oppose doctor/patient confidentiality, based on national security or the public's right to know, or some other such phoney-baloney logic. That's politics.
• Here's the first look at the trailer for Meet the Fockers, the sequel to Meet the Parents.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, perhaps the most anticipated game in history, has already been pirated
• Diffusing the Flu Vaccine Crisis: President Unveils Patriotic Two Point Sickness Avoidance Plan for America's Disease-Infested Geriatrics (whitehouse.org)
• JoBlo was impressed by The Machinist, the movie that caused Christian Bale to starve himself down to 120 pounds.
• Great Beer commercial: "Girl Opens Beer With Her..."
• Many say Imelda Staunton seems destined for an Oscar nomination for her performance in Vera Drake.
• The new public TV zapper is the hottest product on the planet!
• Four free short videos from Playboy Big Breast Babes!
• Playmate Gallery - the Bernaola Twins, co-playmates from January 2000 - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Tuna delivers a complete overview of the Friday the 13th series.
• The Daily Show interviews the minor party prohibition candidates.
• The Daily Show takes note: the debates are over, and the candidates no longer need to be reasonable.
• Ed Koch stops by the Daily Show to plug his book and explain his preference for George Bush.
• Comedy Central's Lewis Black talks about the certainty of death and taxes.
• The trailer for Breaking Dawn: "A dedicated young medical student is assigned to probe into the mind of Don Wake, a patient at a psychiatric hospital loaded with secrets. She pushes him to reveal the truth about the brutal murder of his mother, but Don instead warns her of danger looming in the outside world, including a mysterious and threatening man named Malachi. Don pleads with her to break him out of the hospital in order to bring the truth to the surface. But the student dismisses his claims as paranoia - until someone begins to follow her every step. Soon Don's delusions become her reality, and she must determine what is real and what is merely the rambling of a madman. Teetering on the edge of sanity, she is faced with one last decision - whether or not to take an extraordinary risk that could bring about a spectacular healing in Don's mind, and her own."
• SENIORS COMPETE IN GEEZER OLYMPICS!
  Events include: The Toothless Chew...Handicapped Parking...Hot Tub Challenge...Speed Drooling, Race For The Early Bird Special and MUCH, MUCH MORE!
• Star Magazine interviews the supremely odd Tom Green
• MovieJuice! writes a funny review of The Grudge.
• See the trailer for the colorized version of the horror cult classic Carnival of Souls. Great trailer - classic 50s kitsch, narrated by a guy with a heavy Northeast accent who sounds like an extra from a Three Stooges short. ("Why, I autta .....") The actual DVD features commentary by MST3000's Mike Nelson.
• "HOW TO: RECREATE BRITNEY'S AMAZING NEW RECORD SLEEVE."
• GALLUP: never before have so many people held such strongly positive views of a president at the same time that so many others have held such strongly negative views.
• Theater Counts this week: Grudge 3200, Christmas 2300, Huckabees 800. (Others ten or less)
• This week's movies: I Heart Huckabees - 61% positive reviews. That score is deceptive. It is a love it or hate it thing, not a big mass audience picture.
  • "The real thing -- an authentic disaster -- but the picture is so odd that it should inspire, in at least a part of the audience, feelings of fervent loyalty."
  • "I'll admit that a lot of people are going to describe it as a waste of time, yet there's a likeability to the quirky characters that held my interest while tickling my funny bone."
  • "Will likely divide audiences between those who find its deliberately abstruse discombobulation amusing & to the point, and those who find it just abstruse & discombobulated."
• This week's movies: The Grudge - 28% positive reviews
• This week's movies: Surviving Christmas - 8% positive reviews.
  • "If Hans Blix is still searching for bombs, he should check out Surviving Christmas, a crass, shrill and laughless disaster of a holiday comedy with a desperately mugging Ben Affleck that should be banned under the Geneva Convention."
• Is Ben Affleck beyond help? More bad reviews for the big guy.
• Abi Titmuss has launched a legal fight to ban a pornographic video showing her romping with a girl pal. The steamy flick has become the UK's top-selling XXX-rated bootleg ever.

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Black Tie Nights -part 2

• Black Tie Nights is a brand new (premiere in June) Cinemax series about a {cough} dating service. Here's another clip of Tiffany Bolton in this series which is sure to find a treasured place alongside M*A*S*H in our collective sentimental memory of the great TV shows. (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped).