The At Large Blog

Column: Bob Dylan tribute both far- and way-out

2012-01-25T12:30:00.002-05:00

Listening to “Chimes of Freedom,” the new 76-song Bob Dylan tribute to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International (motto: “Keeping You Out of Jail Since 1962”), is almost a stream-of-consciousness experience. There are so many styles — rock, punk, folk, country, reggae, cabaret and even classical are all represented — you sometimes feel like you’ve accidentally stumbled into the most way-out coffeehouse in some alternate-universe Greenwich Village, sitting on a beanbag chair between Sinead O’Connor and the Kronos Quartet.

Two overarching impressions become clear fairly quickly: One, it really is impossible to ruin a Bob Dylan song (although he’s mangled a few himself over the years), and two, none of these manages the tricky task of surpassing the original. Beyond that, it’s probably best to just pull up a beanbag and let the impressions flow:

Johnny Cash’s newly recorded duet of “One Too Many Mornings” with the Avett Brothers shows that he’s the best-sounding dead guy still releasing records. (Sorry, Elvis.)

How does Tom Morello get his guitar to make those noises? I think it may actually be a space alien he has trained as a pet.

I want to have Diana Krall and Elvis Costello over to dinner. I get the sense she’d hang politely on my every word, and he’d complain about the fish.

Yes, it’s impossible to ruin a Bob Dylan song. But Ke$ha comes close with “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” … I think she may have had stomach cramps. Or something else I don’t want to know about.

Seventy-six songs and no “Positively 4th Street”? They’ve got a lotta nerve.

All this time I wondered what “Love Sick” was missing, and now that I’ve heard Mariachi El Bronx’s version, finally I know: Maracas!

Mark Knopfler has sounded like he’s been waking up from a nap since 1995. That’s better than Sting, who’s apparently still asleep, and Jackson Browne, who’s in a medically induced coma. And judging from “Corinna, Corrina,” I fear Pete Townshend may have already shuffled off this mortal coil. RIP, Pete.

Wow, this is a really nice country version of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” Wait, it’s Miley Cyrus? Excuse me while my head explodes.

It’s official: Everyone in the world has now covered “Make You Feel My Love.” But Adele’s may be the best. (Sorry, Billy Joel. And Garth Brooks. And Joan Osborne. And …)

A punk Dylan tribute needs to happen, judging by these versions of “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Rise Against, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Flogging Molly and “Song to Woody” by Silverstein, all of which make me want to break something. I mean that in a good way.

Isn’t “I Shall Be Released” sort of the unofficial Amnesty theme song? So why is Maroon 5 singing it like it’s in the background of an Applebee’s commercial?

Michael Franti can’t believe he gets paid for this.

Eskimos must have hundreds of words for “boring,” because every one of them fits Kris Kristofferson’s version of “Quinn the Eskimo.”

Paul Rodgers and Nils Lofgren turn a Dylan song you’ve probably never heard, “Abandoned Love,” into an instant classic. That’s how it’s done, whippersnappers and sleepy old dudes!

Mick Hucknall and Jim James of My Morning Jacket need to have a Bob-off to see who does the best Dylan impersonation. Jimmy Fallon can be the judge. (He’s not on here, but he should be.)

Natasha Bedingfield can ring my bells anytime! Wait, that came out wrong.

Finally, even if the Dylan-cover soundtrack to “I’m Not There” is generally better, at $18 for the MP3 version of “Chimes of Freedom” you’re paying 23 cents per song — the majority of which are keepers — and supporting a good cause. Bob would want you to buy it.

And if you don’t, don’t blame me when you go to jail.

For a full track list and more information, visit amnestyusa.org. Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Study - Nickelodeon Writers High 22 Hours Per Day

2012-01-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - A new study out of the Pew Research Center has found that writers for the cable network Nickelodeon, featuring children's programs such as Big Time Rush and iCarly, are high on various, primarily illegal substances an average of 22 hours of every day.

"It's fascinating - one might expect that they were high during work hours, looking at their output," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel, who conducted the study. "But apparently their states of inebriation stretch far beyond the end of business hours.

"It seems they need to remain impaired to withstand the ... wait, let me check my notes ... 'depressing, almost soul-crushing nature' of the work," he said. "Interestingly, almost all of them used that exact phrase."

According to the study, the substances the writers used to sustain their almost perpetual state of drug-fueled intoxication seem to vary depending on the show they work on. For instance, the writers for SpongeBob SquarePants, who generally reported the highest level of job satisfaction among the Nickelodeon writers, use marijuana almost exclusively.

Writers for iCarly, on the other hand, use "tremendous" amounts of cocaine to get through their workdays, while writers for the new Fred Show, featuring frenetic YouTube sensation Fred Figglehorn, spend most of the day huffing Dust-Off, a computer cleaning spray.

"It hasn't been officially reported, but for at least three Fred writers, the habit has apparently proved fatal," said Spitznagel. "General consensus among the surviving writers was that the victims were better off."

The constant drug use has had its negative effects on the various productions, particularly when it's spread to the performers, the study found. For instance, police were called to the set of iCarly when Jennette McCurdy, who plays Sam on the show, tore off a stagehand's arm and beat him with it in a cocaine-fueled rage.

"Then there are all those times she did that completely sober," said her co-star Jerry Trainor, who admitted to being "deathly afraid" of her.

The constant drug use at Nickelodeon stands in stark contrast to practices at rival network the Disney Channel, where the writing staffs are reportedly motivated by routine beatings.

"And starvation," added one Wizards Of Waverly Place writer who declined to be named.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: John Edwards Suffering From Serious Karma Condition

2012-01-17T22:36:00.000-05:00

GREENSBORO, N.C. (CAP) - A federal judge disclosed Friday that former presidential candidate John Edwards has a life-threatening karma condition, a court source confirmed to CAP News.

Edwards' criminal corruption trial has been delayed until at least March 26, according to the court source. Judge Catherine Eagles said she has been in contact with Edwards' karmalogist, who recommended a postponement, saying Edwards might not survive the massive bout of karma he finds himself facing.

Edwards is accused of violating federal election law by using nearly $1 million in illegal campaign donations to conceal an extramarital affair with his videographer, Rielle Hunter. Edwards admitted to making a sex tape and fathering a daughter with Hunter while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer.

"Given his background, it is not surprising that he is susceptible to bad karma," noted the karmalogist, Dr. Aagneya Deshpande, who added that he's somewhat surprised that Edwards hasn't already been crushed by some large falling object, like a boulder.

"Something very, very, very, very bad is coming at John Edwards like a runaway freight train," said Dr. Deshpande. "I'm just saying."

One legal expert, Professor Tom Patrick of the Ave Maria School of Law, said he doubted that Edwards' karma condition would influence a jury verdict.

"Edwards' serious problems with karma may prompt the public, including potential jurors, to view him in a more sympathetic light," said Patrick. "But probably not. I mean, how can you not hate the guy?"

"I'm just saying," added Patrick.

It's true that even if Edwards' survives his karma issues, attorneys are expected to have difficulty finding a jury not predisposed to hating his guts.

"To this day, whenever his name gets mentioned, my wife punches me," said Mark Fresnel, 45, of San Antonio, Texas. Fresnel is one of several men who took part in a Pew Research Center study that showed many women were taking Edwards' behavior out on their husbands. "If I got on that jury I'd vote for the death penalty."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Saturday: Guards Beat Up Candidates Trying To Kiss Beyonce's Baby

2012-01-14T11:07:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - While en route from New Hampshire to South Carolina, several GOP presidential candidates stopped in New York and were "beaten senseless" by personal security personnel after attempting to kiss Beyonce and Jay-Z's newborn baby, Blue Ivy Carter.

"It was just supposed to be a photo op," said a clearly shaken Bob Franklin, campaign supervisor for Rick Santorum, who remained in intensive care at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where the incident took place. "He wasn't within 10 feet of that baby before those guys were all over him like a sinful homosexual man on his illegitimate same-sex partner."

"Actually, those were the senator's words ... He said it just before he passed out from loss of blood," noted Franklin.

The superstar couple has come under fire for using their personal security team to restrict the movement of visitors and even other patients at the hospital during their stay there. The guards reportedly harassed hospital personnel, visiting fathers and at least two new mothers, plus Kanye West, who was there to declare Blue Ivy "one of the best babies of all time."

"We didn't recognize him at first," explained Richard "Runk" Runkwoksi, the head of the security detail, who noted on West's latest album cover, he was pixilated.

West was eventually admitted entrance, but both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, like Santorum, sustained injuries when approaching the baby with outstretched lips, according to sources close to the hospital.

Gingrich hadn't even gotten off the elevator when the security force, made up of former Navy SEALs and several Hells Angels, began beating him with broom handles.

"I tried to ask them, Do you know who I am?, but they kept calling me Pillsbury Dough Boy and poking me in the tummy with their broom handles," Gingrich told authorities afterwards.

According to a police report, Gingrich also claimed the guards took a diamond wristwatch he had bought at Tiffany's on the way to the hospital. "That watch was for my girlfriend!" Gingrich told police, then adding that by "girlfriend" he meant "wife."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: You call that an excuse?

2012-01-12T23:05:00.002-05:00

Research shows that 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions are broken by Valentine’s Day, possibly more if one of your resolutions was not to forget Valentine’s Day. And when we break them, we invariably fall back on the same tired, old excuses as to why we couldn’t follow through. Which can only mean one thing: We as a society need to buckle down and, working together, come up with better excuses.

With that in mind, I’ve taken 10 of the most popular resolutions and formulated new, improved justifications to use with our friends and neighbors after we inevitably fail miserably sometime between now and Feb. 14, if not sooner. Use these and you may not become thinner, healthier and wealthier, but you also might not feel quite as bad about it.

1) Lose weight. Previous excuse: My schedule just didn’t allow for healthy food choices. What previous excuse meant: I was hungry. New, improved excuse: With people starving in Africa, who am I to stop eating Ring Dings?

2) Quit smoking.Previous excuse: I wanted to, but I’m addicted and I can’t help myself. What previous excuse meant: Without cigarettes how am I supposed to get through my days surrounded by all these morons? New, improved excuse: They discovered nicotine is good for you — seriously, I’ll send you the link.

3) Learn something new. Previous excuse: I just didn’t have the time or money to take classes. What previous excuse meant: “Dancing With The Stars” was on. New, improved excuse: It turns out I already know everything.

4) Get out of debt. Previous excuse: I tried, but everything’s so expensive it’s impossible to keep up in this economy. What previous excuse meant: I needed a TV that would take up an entire wall. New, improved excuse: It’s the 1 percent’s fault!

5) Spend more time with family. Previous excuse: It’s impossible to have much family time when work places such demands on me. What previous excuse meant: Leave me alone, I’m watching the giant TV I charged at Best Buy last week. New, improved excuse: My family is dead to me! It’s a long story.

6) Travel to new places. Previous excuse: I had too many obligations at home. What previous excuse meant: Who needs travel when you’ve got a giant TV? New, improved excuse: Taking off my shoes at the airport means letting the terrorists win.

7) Be less stressed. Previous excuse: I’m a very important person with a lot of demands on me, so it’s tough to de-stress. What previous excuse meant: I’m not actually that stressed, I’m just pretending to be so everyone will think I’m important. New, improved excuse: You’d be stressed too if you knew what I knew about the gaps in our national security. But I’ve already said too much.

8) Volunteer. Previous excuse: I can’t seem to find the right volunteer opportunity to fit my background and schedule. What previous excuse meant: Poor people make me uncomfortable. New, improved excuse: I couldn’t pass the background check. It’s a long story.

9) Get a better job. Previous excuse: There are just no good jobs out there in this economy. What previous excuse meant: If I had to ask any of my previous supervisors for a recommendation they would just laugh until tears poured down their cheeks. New, improved excuse: It’s the 1 percent’s fault!

10) Drink less. Previous excuse: I’m a very important person with a lot of demands on me, so I need a drink now and again to unwind. What previous excuse meant: “I love you, man!! BLEAGHGHGHGH!” New, improved excuse: They discovered alcohol is good for you — seriously, I’ll send you the BLEAGHGHGHGH!

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Van Halen Reunion Leads To Run On Assless Chaps

2012-01-10T22:57:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - The reunion of iconic '70s and '80s rock band Van Halen - who will release a new album and launch a massive U.S. tour this year - has led to a tremendous spike in assless chaps sales, according to representatives in the assless chaps industry.

"Sales of assless chaps are already up more than 300 percent in the first quarter [of 2012]," confirmed Sal Bloomingfield of the United States Assless Chaps Association (USACA). "Frankly it's been more of a specialty item the last few decades, so we couldn't be happier."

Assless chaps experienced a renaissance of sorts in the early 1980s when they became popularized by Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth, who wore them during concerts, in music videos, on interviews and, by many accounts, while relaxing around the house.

"Let's face it -- they're just comfortable," said Bloomingfield. "They breathe."

The chaps became a hot item, surpassing Lego Technic and the Care Bears to become the top-selling Christmas gift of 1984. But soon after Roth left the band their popularity plummeted, and many of the assless chaps sold during that period wound up tucked away in people's closets, unworn.

"I remember going to a church mixer in the spring of '85 and looking up to realize I was the only guy wearing assless chaps," recalled Bob Fernstrom, 45, of Great Neck, N.Y. "That was an eye opener," added Fernstrom, who noted he was threatened with arrest on indecent exposure charges unless he went home and changed into parachute pants.

The Van Halen reunion seems to have rekindled interest, however. Jon Zincway, a writer for the Live Daily music website, said he pulled his old assless chaps out of his bottom drawer as soon as it was announced that Roth would return to the band.

"Now this is what Van Halen is all about," said Zincway, who noted that after replacing Roth as lead singer, neither Sammy Hagar nor Gary Cherone ever exposed their butt cheeks on stage.

Zincway said he plans to wear his chaps to work every day throughout the tour, but added, "I just wish they had a pocket" since he needs somewhere to hold his iPhone so he can Tweet the setlist of every concert.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: When 2011 predictions go bad

2012-01-04T22:54:00.000-05:00

I know many of you have probably given up on my annual predictions, considering how every time I revisit them a year later it turns out I was pretty much completely wrong. But keep in mind that my record puts me in some fine company, including most weather forecasters, a fair number of political pundits and whoever thought another reboot of “Charlie’s Angels” was a good idea.

With that in mind, here’s a look back on my annual predictions from a year ago. I’ll skip the one about “Charlie’s Angels.”

1) “From Egypt to Tunisia to Libya to Wall Street, everyone will be pretty satisfied with how things are being handled. Nothing to see here!” It didn’t work out that way, but who would have thought people would actually get off their couches? Especially here in America, where “NCIS” was on.

2) “Buoyed by President Obama’s faltering poll numbers, the GOP will field a stellar lineup of potential 2012 presidential candidates, each one more brilliant and impressive than the next.” This didn’t quite pan out, but in my defense, I did predict that at least one of the candidates would be extremely fond of pizza. Granted, I was actually thinking of Chris Christie.

3) “I have a feeling this will be a big year for Penn State!” Let’s move on.

4) “It took three years, but the economy will finally rebound to its full strength, resulting in a dramatic increase in well-paying jobs for middle-class workers.” OK, maybe that didn’t quite happen, but at least I was right about all the executives getting larger bonuses.

5) “This will be the year that Kim Kardashian finds true, lasting love, just like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Arnold Schwarzennegger and Maria Shriver and Katy Perry and Russell Brand.” I may have seemed off on this one, but I should point out that many of the above listed people did find love, just not with each other.

6) “New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys will join forces and shock the world by finding and killing Osama bin Laden.” Very close on this one — the two bands did tour together, but it was actually SEAL Team 6 that got bin Laden. In defense of NKOTBSB, though, they did sell out two nights at Mohegan Sun, and have a kickin’ acronym.

7) “I have a feeling this will be a big year for the Red Sox!” Well, they did have a better year than Penn State.

8) “Repulsed by the very idea of ‘The Smurfs,’ movie audiences will instead flock to hits like ‘Mars Needs Moms,’ ‘Arthur’ and ‘Green Lantern.’” Damn those little blue buggers! Although as one of the eight people who actually saw “Mars Needs Moms,” I can say pretty unequivocally that Mars definitely did not need moms.

9) “A mundane weather year will bolster the assertion that climate change may not actually exist.” Well, it’s possible that all those floods, tornadoes, unseasonable blizzards, earthquakes, heat waves and tsunamis could have just been a coincidence. Or heavenly retribution for our unrepentant sinning. One of those two things.

10) “I have a feeling this will be a big year for rising political star Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY!” I guess the veracity of this prediction revolves around your definition of “big.” Although frankly I’d rather not think about it.

11) “Yes, I’ve predicted every year since 1996 that this would be the year that Charlie Sheen gets his act together, and he keeps letting me down, in much the same way he’s let down his various wives and the hookers he’s trapped in hotel bathrooms. But that’s all in the past — this will be the year that Charlie shows us he’s both a serious actor and a fine humanitarian.” Let’s move on.

12) “Faced with alarming deficits and other issues in need of addressing, Congress will finally learn to work together in a bipartisan fashion to solve the nation’s HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” Nope, I couldn’t keep a straight face about it then either.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Katy Perry, Russell Brand Vow To Remain Frivolous

2012-01-03T22:47:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - Despite filing for divorce last week, pop superstar Katy Perry and her hubby of 14 months, actor/comedian Russell Brand, have vowed that they will remain just as silly and moronic as ever.

"Sadly, Katy and I are ending our marriage," wrote Brand in a statement. "I'll always adore her and I know we'll remain the same headline-grabbing narcissists separately that we were together."

Perry declined to comment specifically on the split, instead releasing another picture of herself in a blue wig with giant, cherry-topped cupcakes affixed to her breasts, and kissing a girl, reportedly liking it.

The couple has already received advice from another recent celebrity bride, Kim Kardashian, whose marriage to NBA star Kris Humphries lasted 72 days before ending when she found out he was gay, or collected her paycheck from their TV special, or began to recover from concussions received during a 2009 celebrity boxing episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

"Katy and Russell need to get right back to doing what they've always done, namely drawing attention to themselves by whatever means possible," said Kardashian, who this week received $600,000 to be vapid at a New Year's Eve event in Las Vegas. "I know that's what helped get me through after my marriage ended with that tall man."

After she broke it off with Humphries in October, Kardashian pledged to remain as pointlessly exhibitionistic as ever, citing her recent full-frontal nude photo layout for The Economist. "I know that's what that guy I married would want," she said.

As for Humphries, he asked, "What happened? Who am I? Why am I here?" and then cried.

Several other couples that suffered high-profile breakups in 2011 also promised to remain frivolous after dissolving their vows. Among them are Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, who split in November after Kutcher allegedly had affairs with San Diego party girl Sarah Leal and co-stars Natalie Portman, Katherine Heigl, Margarita Levieva and Jon Cryer.

"Demi and I will remain forever ridiculous," said Kutcher, who plans to continue to flirt with girls in camera commercials and attempt to bring on the apocalypse. As for Moore, after six years of marriage to the much-younger Kutcher, she plans to resume aging.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

IN AND OUT 2011: All The Rest!

2011-12-31T06:37:00.001-05:00

Letting your iPhone (a.k.a. “Siri,” with whom you’re already, let’s face it, a little bit in love) do your thinking for you is in, and doing actual thinking is out. In a related story, inching ever closer to the inevitable robot revolution is in.

President Obama is, amazingly, in, despite caving in to the GOP left and right. But thanks to him, Osama bin Laden is out, so maybe it’s a wash.

The Tea Party is over. Please go back to your militias and wait for the impending government invasion.

Electric cars are still out, because despite the fact that they may save the world, they’re wussy. What we need is an electric car the size of a tank, preferably with machine guns mounted on the sides. Electric-powered machine guns, that is.

Thanks to the Green Bay Packers, cheese is in. And thanks to Tim Tebow, praying is in, and groping women, texting images of your private area and running dog-fighting rings are out. Take that, Satan!

Denying global warming is out, now that it’s too late. Fiddling while the world warms up is in.
Zombies continue to be in, and why wouldn’t they be? But vampires are suffering from overkill (sorry) and werewolves are just plain out. Yes, even “Teen Wolf.” OK, especially “Teen Wolf.”

Oprah is out of sight, but not out of mind. At least not at our house, thanks to our wall-sized Oprah shrine.

And finally, probably owing to the state of the economy, scaled-back versions of in-and-out lists are in. And you know what that means: We’re outta here!

Follow Peter Chianca on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

IN AND OUT 2011: Sports

2011-12-30T08:35:00.000-05:00

In: Collapsing

Just when you thought the baseball season was destined for another ho-hum conclusion, the Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves suddenly and unexpectedly began engaging in a death struggle to see who could suffer the most complete and embarrassing September breakdown. It was close, but Boston pulled it out! Pulling it out is in.

As a result the Sox are out, especially Terry Francona, Theo Epstein and Jonathan Papelbon, who are all now out of town. Boston fans probably shouldn’t have been surprised, though, given the Patriots’ collapse against the Jets in last season’s playoffs and the Celtics’ collapse against Miami in the semifinals. Let’s face it, they all folded like cheap umbrellas. Cheap umbrellas are in.

The exception of course was the Boston Bruins, who managed to ward off the Canucks to take the Stanley Cup. Warding off Canucks is in, and if you don’t believe us, just try spending some time in Canada. This just goes to show you that even though they’re the lowest paid and the most unkempt of professional athletes, if you just give them a shot, hockey players will beat you within an inch of your life.

Out: Working

Actually showing up seems to be becoming a problem in professional athletics, with exhibit “A” being the almost-aborted NBA season. Of course, the players were “locked out” by the owners, who were very upset that the players were making all that money for doing the playing when they felt they should be making more money for doing the owning. We’re paraphrasing but we think that was basically it. Owning is out.

Of course the NFL also had a lockout, but luckily that one occurred during the preseason, when most of the players on the field tend to be strangers who’ve wandered in from the parking lot. (The preseason is out.) Fortunately they were able to resolve that, and now the players are out there playing, with the exception of the Patriots’ defense.

Baseball players have no trouble showing up for work, because, let’s face it, who’s working? Pass the chicken wings!

TOMORROW: All the rest!

IN AND OUT 2011: Entertainment

2011-12-29T08:32:00.000-05:00

In: Everything Old (ideas, that is)

Of the top 10 movies of 2011, eight were sequels and two were based on superheroes who were invented in 1962 and 1941, respectively. And the big family movie of the holiday season featured ancient Muppets (who, granted, never really went away, thank God). Apparently, original ideas are out.

But nostalgia is in! This may be because in a tough economy and with so much unrest in the world, we look back to the things that gave us comfort in our youth — you know, things like the first four “Fast and the Furious” movies. It’s the next best thing to curling up with a blowup doll shaped like Vin Diesel. Blowup dolls are in.

Even the new ideas are old, with TV shows like “Mad Men,” “Pan Am” and “Boardwalk Empire” taking us back to a simpler time, when men were men, and women were stewardesses, and a guy who looked like Steve Buscemi could attract flappers. And in music, top artists include Lady Gaga, who musicologists believe may have stepped out of a time-traveling Delorean straight from 1984, and Adele, who sounds like she just opened for Ella Fitzgerald in Berlin in 1960. (Ella Fitzgerald is still in.)

Musicians who are actually old are also in, judging from the excitement over pending tours by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and even the reunited Beach Boys, who will be performing the entire tour in white tank-top undershirts, too-short swim trunks and black socks with sandals. Sandals are in.

The most original idea of the year, meanwhile, comes in the form of “The Artist,” the Oscar-buzzy black-and-white silent movie set in the 1920s. We can only hope that means silent films are in, because that would greatly improve the next Adam Sandler movie. Adam Sandler is out.

Out: Everything Old (media, that is)

Ironically, even though no one’s had an original idea in years, we’re determined to consume all these old concepts on media that looks like it was beamed here from the planet Zarcon.
That means watching movies in movie theaters is out, watching TV on those boxy old sets that could trap you for days if one fell on top of you is out, and reading things on paper is especially out. If you’re reading this on paper right now, we can only hope it’s as you lay it down on the bottom of your cat box, you silly old coot.

Those seeking not to be out have gone in to their local electronics retailer and purchased an iPad, a Kindle and a 3-D hi-def TV with the relative thickness of a Saltine. DVDs are out, and so are CDs, so the in crowd is streaming its movies and music from “The Cloud,” which is likely to become the name of a Steven King novel you read on your Kindle within the next year. The Cloud is in. (It’s just Netflix that’s out.)

There is one exception to this trend, that being vinyl records, which are in among audiophiles, hipsters and stoners alike. Sometimes all three of those are the same person. You know who you are.

TOMORROW: Ins and Outs in Sports

IN AND OUT 2011: News and Politics

2011-12-28T08:27:00.000-05:00

Ah, the new year — what better time to take stock of what’s really important? You know, things like what’s in and what’s out in news, politics, entertainment, sports and life in general. But don’t worry, we’ll do all the heavy lifting. Heavy lifting is out.

In: Uprisings

In case you were wondering, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore, whatever “it” is. As to who “we” are, it’s basically everybody. Not taking it anymore is in.

Around these parts, occupying was in, whether it was Wall Street, Boston or Wal-Mart on Black Friday. In each case, the result involved pepper spray. Pepper spray is in.

The Occupy movement may not have had a clear agenda, but it did get across at least one important message: the 99 percent are in, and the 1 percent are out. Unless you’re talking about living in mansions, owning yachts and eating fois gras, in which case, it’s the 1 percent who are in, and the 99 percent who are outside, looking in. You know who you are.

Of course, in other places around the world, occupying got a little more hardcore. We’re talking about places like Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, where protests were less about drum circles and portable libraries set up like little literary M*A*S*H units, and more about armed dissidents setting things on fire. In other countries, arming dissidents is in. They eat pepper spray for breakfast in these places. We’re pretty sure we mean that literally.

Standing up for our rights is also in, whether it be same-sex marriage, saying “Merry Christmas” or having a Facebook feed that doesn’t look like the MSNBC news ticker threw up. Granted, not all these carry the same moral weight, but it’s the idea that counts. Moral relativism is in.

Out: Accountability

Taking responsibility isn’t exactly a huge pastime right now. For instance, the Occupiers don’t want to pay their student loans or replace the sod that came up when they pitched their REI tents. And rich people don’t want to pay higher taxes, and by “higher” they of course mean “any.” And Kim Kardashian doesn’t want to stay married. Being married to a Kardashian is out.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of politics, which resembles Khazad-Dum in Middle Earth, except with more Orcs. For instance, you have people like Rep. Anthony Weiner, who thought it was perfectly fine to send close-up pictures of his underwear to strange women and then lie about it. This wouldn’t have been acceptable even if the underwear still had been in its original packaging, although that certainly would have been better.

Then there are the GOP presidential candidates, such as Herman Cain, who dropped out of the race after he was accused of sexual harassment or illicit affairs by … wait, let us check our notes … EVERYBODY. He admitted no wrongdoing, and said instead that he would be going on to “Plan B.” Plan Bs are in.

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, refuses to accept accountability for his previous, more moderate stances, saying that the media have taken his entire life out of context. (Context is out.) To his credit, Newt Gingrich has taken full responsibility for every one of his 230 affairs. Wait, that’s actually the number of people Rick Perry has executed. It’s so hard to keep up. Keeping up is out.

Others who’ve failed to take responsibility for their questionable actions include Casey Anthony, Charlie Sheen, Rupert Murdoch and Alec Baldwin. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his part, did in fact take credit for the love child he fathered with his maid, but only after the boy started talking in an Austrian accent. Austrian accents are out.

TOMORROW: Ins and Outs in Entertainment.

AT LARGE Fake News Saturday: Ordinance Renames Manger Scenes 'Holiday Barns'

2011-12-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (CAP) - A new ordinance passed this week by the Cambridge City Council officially designates that any manger scene placed in public view be referred to as a "holiday barn."

"To see a creche or a manger scene right out in public might offend someone who's not Christian," said City Council President Richard Vanderhaven. "But if you think of it as sort of a holiday petting zoo, it's fun for everybody."

Vanderhaven points out that in order to be fair to all religions, under the ordinance mangers will join the former Christmas tree, now a "holiday tree," and other objects, like a dreidel (now a "holiday top") a menorah (now a "holiday candleholder") and a Kwanzaa kinara (also a "holiday candleholder").

"Referring to them as holiday candleholders doesn't favor a particular religion," pointed out Vanderhaven. "Anybody, no matter what his or her religion, can appreciate a candle holder that you happen to put out during the holiday season. Technically, you could roast chestnuts over it. You know, one at a time."

Asked how people might tell the difference between a menorah and a kinara if they're both now referred to the same way, he answered, "The kinara's the one being lit by a black guy.

"Wait, sorry, African American," he added quickly.

The phenomenon is far from limited to Cambridge, though. In nearby Saugus, an annual trip by Santa Claus to area schools was almost cancelled when the superintendent determined that the visit could violate state law. It was only reinstated when Santa agreed to be referred to as an "overweight holiday visitor" and wear street clothes instead of his traditional red suit.

"It's unfortunate, but we simply can't allow these things in school the way we used to," said Superintendent of Schools Dick Langhorn. "What if Santa came in here with little canisters of holy water trying to baptize the Jewish kids? We could get sued."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: 2011, the year that wasn't

2011-12-23T06:16:00.001-05:00

APRIL: Obama budget plan would save ‘One Life To Live’

WASHINGTON (CAP) – President Barack Obama continued to reveal details of his deficit-reduction plan this week, including a controversial provision that would raise taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in order to save the recently cancelled ABC soap opera “One Life to Live.”

“‘One Life to Live’ is, uh, part of the cornerstone, the bedrock of American culture,” said Obama in a press conference Monday. “How many of us spent lonely afternoons following the adventures of, you know, Bo and Clint Buchanan, and Viki, who suffered from dissociative identity disorder and became Niki, the sexually promiscuous party girl, and Karen and Larry Wolek, who, uh, had control chips implanted in their brains by the evil Dr. Ivan Kipling.”

But potential Republican presidential contender Sarah Palin, star of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” called Obama’s “One Life to Live” plan “redonkulous,” saying, “Who wants to watch a big, dysfunctional family of crazies with dumb names say stupid things and go all over the place having babies and stupid stuff like that?”

Obama did say he was willing to compromise, noting that his plan includes no funding to save the also-cancelled “All My Children.”

“That show is just silly,” Obama said.

JUNE: Previously unknown hockey team discovered in Boston

BOSTON (CAP) – Thousands of Massachusetts residents are reeling at the discovery of a professional hockey team that has apparently been operating unnoticed in their midst for decades.

The team, known as the “Boston Bruins,” apparently in reference to a type of bear, began to appear on Boston residents’ radar screens late last month after suddenly turning up in the Stanley Cup Finals.

“And they’re pretty good, too,” noted a clearly surprised David O’Reilly, a financial advisor from Cambridge. “I watched a few minutes of their game the other night, and that Patricia Bergeron, she was excellent.”

Jon Zincway of Dedham was decked out in a Bruins jersey, baseball cap, temporary face tattoo and foam finger while waiting in line to buy tickets for the Stanley Cup Finals. “If I’d known they were an actual hockey team I would have bought all this stuff much sooner,” he said. “As long as they, you know, won all the time.”

JULY: Whitey Bulger demands return of Metamucil

BOSTON (CAP) – Feared legendary mobster James “Whitey” Bulger seemed to have lost none of his swagger or arrogance in his first court appearance after 16 years in hiding, brazenly asking the judge to “return my Depends and my Metamucil, gosh darn-nabbit!”

He then glared icily at the prosecutor in what could have been a soulless look of pure evil, or gas.

FBI agents captured the 81-year-old Bulger in Santa Monica, Calif., after following him home from the Bay Cities Deli, where the mobster had allegedly eaten some lime Jell-O.

“He was driving very suspiciously,” said FBI Special Agent Josh Harwood, who noted that he was going about 10 miles per hour below the speed limit, cut off two other drivers and then shook his fist at them like it was their fault.

“And his blinker was on the entire time,” noted Harwood.

FBI lured Bulger out of his apartment by sending two young boys onto the front lawn of his apartment complex, ostensibly to retrieve a baseball that had rolled there.

“Get offa my lawn, you darn kids!” witnesses quoted Bulger as yelling at the boys. “Or I’ll give ya something to complain about, gosh-a darn it!”

“That’s when we slapped the cuffs on him,” explained Harwood.

OCTOBER: Family calls 911 from inside Space Mountain ride

ORLANDO (CAP) – A Massachusetts family caused a splash in Disney World this week when they called 911 from inside the Space Mountain ride, apparently fearing they would never make it out.

“I don’t see anybody. I’m really scared. It’s really dark,” the mother told the Orlando 911 dispatcher, yelling over the sounds of the famous indoor roller coaster. “I don’t know what made us do this. It was daytime when we came in,” she added.

The dispatcher patiently tried to explain that if she just remained calm the ride would end by itself, but the woman insisted that they send help.

“I can’t even see where we’re going … I think we may be in space!” she yelled.

The dispatcher then asked to speak to her husband, who said he was concerned because everybody on the ride was screaming.

“I see lights over there, but we can’t get there, we’re smack right in the middle of the ride,” the husband told the dispatcher, although it was later determined that they were only seconds from the end of the ride, and the attendants asking patrons to wait until the car came to a complete stop before exiting should have been clearly visible.

DECEMBER: Focus group finds Mitt Romney hiding under desk

CENTREVILLE, VA (CAP) – A dozen Republicans who participated in a focus group in suburban Virginia, most of whom said they found Mitt Romney “aloof,” also found the GOP presidential candidate hiding under a desk in the corner of the room.

Romney at first denied that he’d been under the desk, according to the group.

“Well, your assessment of my recent whereabouts is just not accurate,” Romney reportedly said. “So, one, we’re going to have to be better informed about whether or not I’ve been under desks, or not under desks. Which I haven’t been.”

After being badgered by the focus group for several minutes, Romney changed his stance, saying that he had in fact been under the desk.

“I have never claimed not to be under the desk, and I’m not sure where you’re getting that from,” Romney told the focus group.

Told he’d just denied being under the desk minutes before, Romney said that after studying the issue and in the face of new information, his stance on desk-hiding had “matured.”

“That’s what you have to do in the private sector, adjust to the situation as it changes,” said Romney, noting that he’d spent over 25 years as an executive at Bain Capital, spending much of that time hiding under desks.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites, and an ocassional contributor to CAP News. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Amazon Offers Discounts For Torching Retail Stores

2011-12-20T23:08:00.001-05:00

SEATTLE (CAP) - Brick-and-mortar retailers and some legislators are up in arms over Price Burn, Amazon's new mobile "app" that will provide a discount for shoppers who go into a local retailer, use the app to compare the store's prices with Amazon.com's prices for the same merchandise, and then burn the store to the ground.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) called the promotion "anti-competitive" and "an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities."

"Plus, I'm pretty sure it's a felony," she added.

"It's wrong to try something in the store and then buy it online," added Leslie Tweedle, who owns a bookshop with her husband in Chicago. "And burning down the store ... that's very hard for a small retailer to deal with."

Tweedle said her husband had to confiscate matches, gasoline and at least one blowtorch from cell phone-wielding customers during Amazon's promotion earlier this month. One patron did manage to burn several copies of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, but "let's face it, that's not a huge loss," said Tweedle.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos defended the app, noting that in the end it helps the consumer find the lowest prices, which is important in a tough economy. Also, he noted that it doesn't explicitly encourage shoppers to burn down retail stores, but rather just notes the types of kindling and accelerants that would be most effective given the kind of store the shopper is in.

For instance, if the shopper is in a bookstore, the readout reads "kerosene," but in a card and gift shop it recommends "mineral turpentine."

"It's really for entertainment purposes only," said Bezos. "Besides, many of those places have more than adequate insurance, probably."

Some legislators were in favor of the app as well. "Amazon is just doing what it needs to do to succeed, which is the beauty of the free market," noted Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who received a $4,000 contribution from Amazon in 2010. "Not a lot of $4,000 contributions coming from locally owned independent bookstores," he added. "I'm just saying."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: The only GOP candidates guide you’ll ever need

2011-12-15T19:25:00.000-05:00

Can you believe it’s almost here already? No, not Christmas — the GOP primary season! And if you’re one of those people who hasn’t been paying very close attention, it’s entirely likely you’ll soon find yourself in front of your ballot with no idea which candidate to vote for, and wondering what happened to Herman Cain. (Which, coincidentally, is exactly what Herman Cain is wondering.)

But don’t worry — the following guide should tell you everything an uninformed GOP voter needs to know. And if you are informed, please don’t read it, because I hate getting angry letters.

Mitt Romney

Bio: Romney is a self-made millionaire, starting out with only the shirt on his back and a father who was CEO of American Motors and governor of Michigan. He feels that if he is elected president, he would be president, which would be awesome. He’s been known to heat his New Hampshire lakeside estate by burning $100 bills.

Pros: Odds are if he got elected president, he wouldn’t actually do anything he says he’s going to do, which changes every day anyway.

Cons: May actually be a hologram.

Newt Gingrich

Bio: As a congressman in the 1990s, Gingrich is often credited with engineering a Republican majority in Congress for the first time in 20 years, so you can blame him. He has been a devoted family man with all three of his families. He is known as a straight shooter who says what he thinks and would rip out your still-beating heart if given the opportunity. Those ethics charges were a big misunderstanding.

Pros: Probably too old to have any more affairs, so there’s that.

Cons: Worst president name ever.

Rick Perry

Bio: As governor of Texas, Perry has overseen the execution of more than 230 prison inmates, some of them in his own driveway. He thinks there’s something wrong in America when gays can serve openly in the military, but if you go to church on Christmas, President Obama will bludgeon you with a crowbar. (Paraphrasing.) Perry has several far-reaching plans to change the scope of government, some of which he can even remember off the top of his head.

Pros: Would actually make George W. Bush look pretty good in retrospect.

Cons: How much time have you got?

Michele Bachmann

Bio: Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, have taken dozens of foster children into their Minnesota home, where they work hard to “pray away” any potentially embarrassing personal traits. Since declaring her run for the presidency, Rep. Bachmann has immersed herself in the important issues facing the country, such as where the Revolutionary War was fought, and what it was. Fun fact: When in the same room with Michelle Bachmann, no matter where you go, her eyes seem to follow you.

Pros: It’s about time the United States had a woman president.

Cons: Just not this woman.

Rick Santorum

Bio: Santorum is a former senator from Pennsylvania known for his fiscally and socially conservative views, and for being a secretly gay man. He’ll soon be discovered in a compromising situation with another man, possibly in an airport bathroom. A lecture tour with former Sen. Larry Craig and Rev. Ted Haggard will likely follow. You heard it here first.

Pros: It’s about time the United States had a gay president.

Cons: One who’s a little less self-loathing would be nice.

Ron Paul

Bio: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is a well-spoken physician and organized campaigner who polls well across the nation, has a lot of common-sense ideas for putting the United States on the right track and a large, extremely devoted following of dedicated constituents and campaign workers. So naturally nobody takes him seriously.

Pros: No more wars!

Cons: He’s a weirdo.

John Huntsman

Bio: Former Utah Gov. Huntsman has … I’m sorry, who were we talking about?

Pros: He’s smart, funny, has vast experience with international diplomacy, has a solid business background and probably stands the best chance of beating Barack Obama next November.

Cons: I’m sorry, who were we talking about?

Hmm … Reading these over, it seems possible that it may still be difficult for people to pick a candidate. But even if the choices don’t seem ideal, remember: There’s always hope.

After all, Herman Cain may run again in 2016.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. He wishes there was going to be a Democratic primary, so he could make fun of them too. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Nicole Scherzinger Sobs Her Way To Success

2011-12-14T19:19:00.001-05:00

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - You've seen her on TV's The X Factor, where she's cried and hugged her way into the hearts of millions of viewers. But who is the real Nicole Scherzinger? And how did she become the beloved reality show judge who can't make a decision that we know so well?

"Nicole is completely genuine," insists fellow judge and X Factor producer Simon Cowell. "By that I mean, she's the same dithering emotional wreck in her everyday life that she is on the show. I mean, really."

Cowell cites an incident in Starbucks prior to a recent taping. "She couldn't decide between a Shaken Iced Green Tea Lemonade and a Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino Light," Cowell recalled.

"I can't make this decision," Cowell recalled a teary Scherzinger saying, before she made her way behind the counter to hug the barista.

"I had to tell her, please, Nicole, there are people waiting for their bloody coffee," says Cowell. "Since then I just send my servant to get my espresso."

The scene was of course reminiscent of the recent X Factor episode where an emotional Scherzinger used her vote to create a deadlock between performers Marcus Canty and Rachel Crow, eventually resulting in viewers voting Crow - an emotionally unstable 13-year-old special needs child - off the show.

Scherzinger said at the time, between jags of crying and rending her sheer, clingy garments, that she couldn't make the decision because she'd "been up there and I know how it feels." Scherzinger scholars say she was probably referring to an incident that happened to her in 1992, when she was 14.

"It was down to Nicole and one other girl for the top prize in the Louisville Singing In Garters Competition," recalled Karl Munson, then-president of the Louisville, Ky. Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the contest. "When they announced the other girl's name, Nicole broke down uncontrollably.

"She was curled up in a ball on the stage, and you could see the tears pooling up on the top of her bustier," said Munson. "It was very awkward."

But many believe that experience fueled her determination and helped her eventually land a spot as lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls, where she got to sing in garters in front of all of America. Famous for its dynamic live shows, the group was known for ending concerts with a sobbing, lingerie-clad Scherzinger hugging every single member of the audience.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

This week's New Yorker caption contest entry

2011-12-12T16:26:00.001-05:00

I thought "Funny, he doesn't look very jolly" seemed a little too obvious.

Enter at NewYorker.com.

AT LARGE Fake News Friday: Rick Perry Vows To Continue Alienating People Until Elected

2011-12-09T22:53:00.001-05:00

AUSTIN (CAP) - Following his universally reviled campaign ad entitled "Strong," presidential contender Rick Perry vowed to continue alienating huge swaths of the populace until he is chosen as the GOP nominee.

"And after that, I will continue to horrify and disgust people until I'm elected president," said Perry, reviewing the ad at his campaign headquarters this week. "That's how I roll."

In the ad, Perry says "there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." The ad has almost 1 million "dislikes" on YouTube, has inspired Internet parodies in which Perry slaughters puppies and bunnies, and has resulted in a spate of injuries throughout the country when people's jaws literally struck their desks while watching the ad on their computers.

"He seems to be taking the strategy of being a complete a-hole," said Yale University political science professor Grayson Vaughn, who noted that the approach has not been particularly successful with presidential candidates in the past. "Just ask John Kerry."

Still, Perry seems undeterred, releasing partial transcripts of the next several ads in his "something wrong in this country" series. These include statements such as:

- "There's something wrong in this country when blacks can marry white people but you can't beat one up without getting arrested."

- "There's something wrong in this country when someone who doesn't even speak English can waltz in here and take our jobs, but we can't eat their children."

- "There's something wrong in this country when you have get off a woman just because she says no, but if you go to church on Easter, President Obama will bludgeon you to death."

Perry said he also plans to release ads attacking Jews, the handicapped and one more group he couldn't think of at the moment.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: The people versus my dogs

2011-12-08T06:22:00.001-05:00

To: “Penny,” “Sally,” “Lilly” and “Corona”

From: Ronald Effinger, Attorney at Law

Dear Mesdames Penny, Sally et al:

Please be advised that I, Ronald Effinger, Esq., acting as licensed attorney for Peter Chianca (heretofore referred to “your owner”), am hereby presenting you with an official request to CEASE AND DESIST your constant and deliberate efforts to make him look stupid, which has caused him significant pain and suffering.

As substantiation of our claim of suffering we put forward the following evidence.

1) On Nov. 28 of 2011, shortly after your owner let you out into the enclosed area at the front of your property, Penny scratched on the door, presumably to request re-entrance into the home. Upon your owner’s opening the door, Penny stared at him quizzically and refused to enter, instead returning to the yard to retrieve a muddy bone and continue barking at her own echo.

This is a pattern of harassment that has continued on a daily basis for at least the last three (3) years and has left your owner subject to the ridicule of neighbors, who have been known to observe the scene and shake their heads, as if to indicate that your owner has lost control of his own pathetic life.

2) Despite the fact that your owner has provided you, free of charge, with full run of his household — including use of numerous couches, beds and ottomans and unfettered access to the area beneath the dining room table — several of you have insisted on bolting through open doors without the slightest provocation.

This has resulted in your owner having to seek you out on foot, at times traipsing through the yards of disapproving neighbors (see No. 1, above), and at other times driving slowly down the street in his wife’s Saturn Astra, shaking a box of Milk Bones out the window like a “demented maraca player” (to use his term).

3) During your nightly excursions with your owner into the backyard, you have refused to cooperate in an orderly fashion unless he provides you with a “cookie” (Milk Bone, Pup-Peroni, etc.). Over time this has resulted in a proliferation of said treats in your owner’s pockets (of coats, jackets, sweatshirts, ponchos, etc.), making him smell vaguely of beef, chicken and lamb. This has caused him embarrassment in several personal and business settings.

They have also caused him to smell of bacon, which we are willing to overlook, because he doesn’t really mind that.

4) Several times during walks in public parks and woodlands, your owner has given in to your entreaties to be allowed “off-leash” (delivered by you in the form of big, sad eyes and insistent pulling). But on more than one occasion you have failed to live up to your end of the agreement, which requires you not to bolt toward advancing walkers and greet them with jumps, licks to the face and sniffs of their personal regions.

To the contrary, you have engaged in this behavior frequently, most often with walkers of greater apparent size and strength than your owner, some of them armed.

Between that, and your tendency to take advantage of the times your owner has forgotten to bring along a plastic bag by “doing your business” in the most public possible areas (sidewalks, centers of soccer fields, on veterans’ memorials, etc.), walking with you has often become a traumatic experience.

Despite your otherwise unconditional devotion, your constant companionship and your irreplaceable contributions to the family unit, if you do not cease and desist in your efforts to undermine my client’s self-esteem and personal standing, we will have no choice but to seek compensatory damages.

Also, you’d better get in the darn car if you want one of these Milk Bones.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Focus Group Finds Mitt Romney Hiding Under Desk

2011-12-07T06:15:00.001-05:00

CENTREVILLE, Va. (CAP) - A dozen Republicans who participated in a focus group Thursday night in suburban Virginia, most of whom said they found Mitt Romney "aloof" and "unapproachable," also found the GOP presidential candidate hiding under a desk in the corner of the roo

"My pen rolled under there, and when I bent down to get it, there he was, plain as day," said Sue Gramm, a 61-year-old retailer from Ashburn, Va. "He was all crouched up in his suit, holding his knees so he'd fit."

It took several focus group members about 20 minutes to get Romney to come out from under the desk, at one point trying to coax him out with truffles and foie gras, to no avail, according to Michael McConahey, a 54-year-old consultant from Herndon, Va.

"At first he just ignored us, as if we might just go away," said McConahey. "Finally he made like he'd just found a contact lens and tried to excuse himself from the room."

Confronted by the focus group, Romney then denied that he'd been under the desk.

"Well, your assessment of my recent whereabouts is just not accurate," Romney reportedly said. "So, one, we're going to have to be better informed about whether or not I've been under desks, or not under desks. Which I haven't been."

"So we told him that we'd seen him under the desk with our own eyes," said Leann Dunne, a 43-year-old homemaker from Vienna, Va.

"There's no question that people are going to take snippets and take things out of context and try and show that I've been under desks, or created the foundation for Obamacare, or changed my stance on climate change, abortion, immigration, sex, Harry Potter and my magic underwear," Romney allegedly responded. "I say phooey on them."

After being badgered by the focus group for several minutes, Romney changed his stance, saying that he had in fact been under the desk.

"I have never claimed not to be under the desk, and I'm not sure where you're getting that from," Romney told the focus group.

Told he's just denied being under the desk minutes before, Romney told the group that after studying the issue and in the face of new information, his stance on desk-hiding had "matured."

"That's what you have to do in the private sector, adjust to the situation as it changes," said Romney, noting that he'd spent over 25 years as an executive at Bain Capital, spending much of that time hiding under desks.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

This week's New Yorker caption contest entry

2011-12-06T16:50:00.002-05:00

Enter at NewYorker.com.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Facebook Fined For Violating Privacy Of Stupid People

2011-12-05T07:38:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The Federal Trade Commission has levied steep fines against Facebook, alleging that the social media powerhouse has unfairly violated the privacy rights of millions of stupid people.

"Facebook knowingly took advantage of the fact that a large percentage of its users are idiots," read the commission's report.

The report continued, "Facebook's privacy settings virtually guarantee that when a moron uploads a picture that no thinking human being should be sharing, or makes a comment that someone of even rudimentary intelligence would know was dumb or embarrassing, that person is bound to suffer ill effects."

Not surprisingly, the decision was met with approval from imbeciles all over the world.

"It's about time," said Josh Elkind, 21, a Tufts University senior who uploaded pictures of himself in bed with a girl in his dorm room while his roommate was sleeping, and posted a status update about the "hot boobs" on the actresses in the '80 sex comedies he was watching on Netflix.

"My girlfriend was so pissed! Facebook should have told me that she might see those," said Elkind, whose girlfriend, "Donna," is Elkind's friend on Facebook, where the couple actually shares more than 150 mutual friends.

"He's such a stupid idiot," said Donna, adding, "It wouldn't have been so bad if I was the one in the pictures."

Marc Fenderson, 17, who was fired from his job at the Hardees in Effingham, Ill., when he posted on Facebook that he had put his own bodily fluids into the fry vat, also cheered the decision.

"Facebook never told me that if I posted that my boss would read it, and my mom, and my priest, and everyone at my school," said Fenderson, commenting that he was lucky that at least potential future employers wouldn't see it.

Told that any potential employer would most likely be able to find the post in a matter of seconds, he balled his hands into fists and screamed to the heavens, "FACEBOOK!"

For his part, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed contrite in the wake of the controversy.

"Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency over who can see your information," he wrote in a blog post. "That said, I'm the first to admit that we've made mistakes. For instance, we never realized that people would be stupid enough to upload photos, videos and statements that could damage their relationships, reputations and careers.

"Our bad," he added.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: 30 reasons to be thankful, sort of

2011-11-24T11:03:00.002-05:00

Some years back I kicked off an annual Thanksgiving-week tradition of listing reasons why people should be thankful. I figured that by 2011 compiling the list would be extremely easy, given that we’d all be millionaires traveling by jetpack.

Unfortunately it’s only gotten harder, but that’s not to say there isn’t room for hope. (And change, but mostly the hope part.) For instance, you should be thankful for the fact that:

1. Seal Team 6 has no reason to know where you live.

2. No one has “occupied” your driveway. Yet.

3. You’ve never had to work at the National Restaurant Association. Or if you have, at least you probably got a settlement.

4. Michele Obama hasn’t snuck up behind your kid and confiscated his Twinkies. Yet.

5. You don’t live on a fault line, or next to a nuclear power plant, or on a fault line next to a nuclear power plant.

6. Rick Perry isn’t in charge of remembering your locker combination, or your email passwords, or your kids’ names.

7. Your September collapse wasn’t broadcast on live television.

8. Your marriage lasted more than 72 days, probably.

9. Rupert Murdoch has no reason to know your voice mail number.

10. You didn’t have Eddie Murphy scheduled to host anything for you (kids’ birthday party, PTA spelling bee, bar mitzvah, etc.).

11. You’ve never been Tweeted by Anthony Weiner. Unless you have, in which case … Ew, gross.

12. Your power’s back on and you’re not trapped under a branch.

13. Michele Bachmann isn’t trying to pray away any of your personal traits. At least not to your face.

14. Your approval rating among your constituents is way above 9 percent, and that’s including your in-laws.

15. The last time you went to a Broadway show, Spider-Man didn’t fall on your head.

16. You don’t need approval from Congress to raise your debt ceiling. (Actually, that may not be such a good thing.)

17. Nancy Grace has no reason to know you exist.

18. You didn’t try to raise your prices 60 percent and figure nobody would notice.

19. Even if you’re not in a profession that features women in tiny shorts dancing around you while you do it, at least your job probably didn’t get canceled this year.

20. Nobody spotted you on the pier in Santa Monica.

21. The GOP isn’t twisting itself into a pretzel to find someone, anyone to nominate instead of you. (See numbers 3, 6 and 13, and Newt Gingrich.)

22. You’re not a Colts season ticket holder.

23. Even if you did get fired this year, at least you didn’t travel around the country doing a one-man show about it.

24. You’re not the guy left in charge of Apple.

25. No one is out to depose you. Or if they are, they’re probably not armed.

26. Donald Trump has absolutely no interest in your birth certificate.

27. Your wedding didn’t wind up being all about Pippa.

28. You got out of that corn maze without any help from local authorities.

29. Even in drag and a fat suit, you would still be more appealing than Adam Sandler in “Jack & Jill.”

30. At this very moment you may be unemployed, in foreclosure, being pepper-sprayed, floating on a rapidly melting ice flow and/or standing on a dais between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul — but no matter what, things are bound to get better in 2012!

Although you better stay on Nancy Grace’s good side, just in case.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

Column: Where was Fozzie when I needed him?

2011-11-21T06:32:00.000-05:00

We make them all the time — those little parenting choices that don’t seem like a big deal, but wind up having serious, long-term implications. I’m thinking of things like letting them crawl into our beds (“just this once”), or allowing them to find out about Twinkies, or suggesting they might want to try ice hockey.

I made one of those choices back in 2005, when I suggested the family watch the new Muppets TV movie, “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz.” I’ll admit my motives were selfish; the Muppets were probably the single greatest influence on my sense of humor (which, if you know me, explains a lot), and I wanted my own kids to experience the joys of wisecracking frogs and bears in their natural habitat (a Studebaker). Plus, I’ve been told I look like Fozzie (which also explains a lot).

Unfortunately, “The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz” was not what you’d call a good movie, or even a good Muppet movie. But something about Kermit, Fozzie and company struck a chord with my son Tim, then 4. After that night, for Tim, it was all-Muppets, all-the-time.

And that’s where our troubles began.

It wasn’t too hard to dig up the other movies, which had long since been available on DVD. But as any parent of a 4-year-old knows, no entertainment experience is complete unless it can be complemented by accessories, namely toys, games, stuffed animals and T-shirts. And this is where having a child obsessed with a 25-year-old phenomenon gets a little tricky.

Unlike, say, the mid-’80s, by the 2000s toy store shelves were totally bereft of Fozzies and Gonzos. Muppet merchandise was so rare that when Timmy spotted a giant Kermit hanging from a booth at the 2005 Topsfield Fair, he reacted like Ponce de León stumbling on the Fountain of Youth. This would explain why a phalanx of his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins felt compelled to plunk down the gross national product of Bolivia until we finally won it — the only other option would have been to leave Timmy behind with Kermit to pursue a career as a barker.

Naturally, we soon found ourselves resorting to eBay, which resulted in a small but growing collection of stuffed Muppets that smelled vaguely of the ’70s. One particularly intense Sunday afternoon saw us in a bidding war for a vintage Rowlf doll: “I WILL PAY ANY PRICE!” my mother-in-law declared, in that voice a grandmother uses when she feels her grandchild might be deprived of something that somebody else’s grandchild has, or might someday have.

It may have gotten ugly at times (and if you think that’s ugly, you should see the dancing girls), but our efforts were worth it to see Tim perform full-on productions with his Muppet collection, which he carried with him from place to place in a little plastic suitcase. This was convenient until the entire lot managed to get lost (Have you tried Hare Krishna?), or at least left behind, on a beach in Rockport. All I know is, when you become a parent nobody tells you that someday you’ll be driving to a beachside motel after work to retrieve a suitcase full of Muppets.

Of course, eventually Timmy discovered the Red Sox, and his coveted Muppets became less a part of our everyday lives; poor Rowlf wound up getting dragged outside by one of our (real-life) dogs, where we found him later that winter unceremoniously encased in snow like some ancient Bigfoot. But both Tim and my daughter Jackie still perked up when a Muppet turned up on a commercial or a new YouTube video, and we all reacted with excitement — and some disbelief — when we heard a new Muppet movie was finally in the works.

“The Muppets” opens Nov. 23, and as a result you now can’t throw a boomerang fish without hitting Muppet merchandise. Better late than never — early reports say it’s a throwback to the Jim Henson era, when the driving force behind the Muppets was equal amounts heart and twisted wit, rather than corporate synergy or whatever the driving force was behind that awful “Wizard of Oz.” I have my fingers crossed; we’ll find out when we hit the theater on opening night.

I bet I’ll be the only guy there with a Hefty bag full of Muppets in his basement, and whose kids feel like they’re reuniting with old friends.

And who looks like Fozzie.

For more Muppets, see my Gatehouse Media story rating the Muppet movies from first to worst.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Feds Seek To Prosecute Sandler For 'Jack & Jill'

2011-11-15T06:51:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The U.S. Attorney's Office announced this week that it is seeking indictments against Adam Sandler, along with fellow producers Todd Garner and Jack Giarraputo, over their new film Jack & Jill, calling it "a crime against humanity."

In the movie, Sandler plays both Jack Sadelstein and his frumpy sister Jill Sadelstein, who throughout the film is subjected to a litany of derogatory remarks about her looks, her weight and her general lack of intelligence. It currently has a 3 out of 100 rating at RottenTomatoes.com, making it officially one of the worst movies ever made, including snuff films.

"Even Good Luck Chuck got a 5," noted Jeff Giley of Rotten Tomatoes.

But according to prosecutors, the film's offenses go far beyond just being unentertaining.

"Our prosecutors will argue that Sandler and his fellow producers have committed at least several actionable offenses," according to Richard Millburn of the U.S. Attorney's Office. "Attorney General [Eric] Holder has given us full authority to seek indictments on charges of fraud, extortion and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and that's just to start off."

The fraud charges stem from Sandler's attempt to pass the movie off as an "object of legitimate entertainment," rather than "a steaming pile of cow dung," said Millburn, who noted that only the first of those two phrases is a legal term.

The extortion charges are in response to the targeting of advertisements at young children who in turn badger their parents to see the movie, and the delinquency allegation refers to the tendency of the film to turn otherwise well-behaved youngsters into children "who act ... well, like Adam Sandler," said Millburn.

"My [7-year-old] grandson went to see this movie," added Attorney General Holder, who is considering personally prosecuting the case. "You know what he said when he got home? Hey Grandpa, Grandma's fat and ugly - high five! Then he farted."

There have also been at least three reports of people dying while watching the film, presumably from boredom, but Millburn said there isn't enough evidence to support a murder charge.

"Although we've been trying to pin one on [Sandler] since someone choked on nachos while watching Little Nicky," Millburn admitted.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: Power outages and zombies don’t mix

2011-11-10T17:05:00.002-05:00

The power outages following the freak October snowstorm have revealed a few very important lessons: One, we need to protect our power lines from hazards such as tree limbs, stiff breezes and particularly heavy butterflies. But more importantly, we are woefully unprepared to go underground following the impending inevitable zombie, robot and/or alien invasion(s). I’m just saying.

I’m speaking of course of the people who are complaining about being without power for a measly five or six days, just because they don’t have heat or light and all their food went bad, including their insulin. These people need to buck up! (And yes, I realize this is coming from someone who suffered severe panic after losing cable for a couple days, but that was different, because it happened to me.)

I’m not just saying this because it’s become clear that our power companies now consider actually delivering the power to be optional, like a side of French fries, or yield signs. I’m saying it because the first thing that’s going to happen when the zombies, robots or aliens attack is that the lights will go out, and we’ll be left to fend for ourselves with just our wits, along with sharpened shovels, enormous gas fireballs or deadly Earth viruses, whichever is most appropriate for the occasion.

I know you may be thinking that I’m overreacting. “What are the chances of us actually being attacked by zombies, robots or space aliens?” you may ask. And while it may sound far-fetched, the chances are … wait, let me check my notes … 100 percent.

After all, just take a look at the latest development by scientists apparently eager to welcome our new robot overlords. At Seoul National University in South Korea, they’ve developed a Venus flytrap robot that traps bugs and converts their little bug bodies into electricity. This will clearly lead to a robot that will be impervious to our main defense against sentient killer man-machines, which is unplugging.

Personally, I question why any scientist would develop technology that would make it more attractive for robots to eventually want to eat us. Nature already has bears for that.

As for the aliens, researchers at Harvard and Princeton are so antsy about attracting aliens here to invade our cornfields and national parks that they’ve suggested we start scanning the universe for the artificial light given off by their cities, since apparently modern telescopes can tell the difference between light from a distant star and, say, an alien disco ball. Of course, this would require the aliens not to be living in underground cities inhabited by mutated creatures with psychic powers like in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” which, let’s face it, seems unlikely.

And the zombies? I will admit that there’s very little in the way of concrete scientific evidence that the dead will rise and prey on the living with an insatiable appetite for brains. But is there concrete scientific evidence that they won’t? There is? OK, forget about the zombies.

Still, next time the power goes out — which, given recent history, should be in about 20 minutes, or whenever a squirrel wanders into an electrical substation, whichever comes first — I think people should take the opportunity to embrace the rugged, survivalist, anti-robot side of their personality, just in case. Hunker down, board the windows, start luring in small rodents for food, and hope that if the choice comes down to converting us to electricity or displaying us in zoos, the robots and aliens (or robot-aliens) opt for the latter.

After all, those might at least have cable.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

No emergency! Nothing to see here! Unless there is

2011-11-09T08:41:00.002-05:00

Please do not panic when the Emergency Alert System kicks in at 2 p.m. this afternoon. It's just a test to show how the government has everything completely under control. Well, most things. From the release:

On Nov. 9 the public will hear a message indicating, “This is a test.” The audio message will be the same for all EAS participants, however, due to the limitations in the EAS, the video text message scroll may not be the same or indicate that, “this is a test.”

So it's true that if you have the volume down, or are hearing impaired, there may be no evidence that it's a test, and you will assume that the missiles are on their way. But wait, there's more:

In addition, the background image that appears on video screens during an alert may indicate that “This is a test,” but in some instances there might not be an image at all. The test is expected to last three minutes.

So just to reiterate: There may be a scroll, or not, and if it does it may say that it's a test, or not, and the image may also say that it's a test, or not, or maybe there won't be an image. Also, we can presume that in some cases it will last three minutes, and in others it will go on for all eternity.

But don't worry, the government has a plan:

FEMA and the FCC are reaching out to organizations representing people with hearing disabilities to better prepare that community for this national test.

So if you know any deaf people, please tell them to remain in bed. Also, let's hope this doesn't somehow end in a conversation like this:

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Mass. Electric Finishes Restoring Power From 2008 Ice Storm

2011-11-08T08:44:00.000-05:00

NORTHBOROUGH, Mass. (CAP) - Representatives from National Grid/Massachusetts Electric announced this week that workers have finally finished restoring power to those left in the dark by the vicious ice storm of December, 2008.

"It took crews working 'round the clock, except for nights and weekends, for almost three years, but we finally got it done," said Marcy Reed, president of National Grid Massachusetts. "We couldn't be prouder of the men we had dedicated to this difficult job - both of them."

"Although it will probably be closer to 2014 by the time we get to that last one," said Reed.

Still, "we're taking these outages very, very seriously," Reed added, noting that they were the subject of a seminar at a week-long junket National Grid executives attended recently at the Tierra Del Sol Resort and Country Club in Aruba.

"We devised some very useful strategies there," said Reed, declining to name any of them specifically.

Reed said power outages resulting from the 2010 nor'easter should be resolved any month now, and asked residents without power to be patient. "We're working as fast as we possibly can, kind of," she noted.

Bob and Sheila Fernmeyer of Athol, Mass., who had been without power since Dec. 11, 2008, said they were "thrilled" to finally get the lights turned on this week.

"I can't say it's been easy," said Bob Fernmeyer, who noted that the couple took to burning household objects around February of 2009, and that there's very little left in the way of usable furniture and room fixtures. Also, they'd learned to subsist almost exclusively on foods that could be stored at room temperature, like potatoes and Spam.

"Plus we have no idea what's on TV anymore," added Sheila Fernmeyer. "Is My Own Worst Enemy still on? That Christian Slater is dreamy."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

My entry into this week's New Yorker caption contest

2011-11-07T11:22:00.003-05:00

Top that, Ebert.

AT LARGE FAKE NEWS TUESDAY: Scientists Discover Snow Turns Drivers Into Idiots

2011-11-01T08:47:00.001-04:00

CAMBRIDGE (CAP) - Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a brain disorder that causes drivers to forget the most basic rules of driving the minute snow starts to fall.

Dubbed Seasonal Driving Disorder (SDD), researcher Roderick Crawford describes it as a neurological syndrome in which the presence of snow literally causes synapses in the brain to cease firing. In turn, people suffering from the disorder lose the ability to recall even the simplest driving procedures, such as how to maintain a consistent speed, or what the brakes do.

"We've all seen it out on the highways during a snowstorm," remarked Crawford. "Suddenly people are speeding up and slowing down indiscriminately, failing to brake properly, spraying out gallons of wiper fluid for no apparent reason, etc.

"For years most assumed these drivers were just stupid, or perhaps intoxicated," he explained. "But now we know that these people have a serious brain disorder."

And its effects are far from isolated, Crawford added. "We have reason to believe SDD affects millions of people in the United States alone," Crawford said. "If you don't believe me, just drive up Route 128 in Boston during a flurry."

There was evidence of the disorder just this past weekend, when unprecedented early snowfall hit the Northeast. This caused some especially severe SDD reactions, given that our brains are conditioned not to expect snow until December, Crawford explained.

"Our experience was that drivers throughout the region simply refused to acknowledge that it was snowing," confirmed Karl Amero of the Massachusetts State Police. "A good number of them clearly sped up and started texting more."

One driver, Fred Hammerstein from Holden, Mass., was hospitalized with frostbite after being discovered packed in snow in his Fiat 500 convertible. "I do not close the top before Nov. 1, dammit," he told EMTs before slipping into a coma.

"It's a classic case," said Crawford when told of Hammerstein's symptoms. "It's amazing we don't see more snowstorm convertible comas."

SDD may even affect drivers outside the car, said Crawford, pointing toward the large number of people using small children to save their parking spaces as possible sufferers. "And the preponderance of snow in Alaska could go a long way toward explaining the Palin family," he added.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Wall St. Protesters Mistake Old Homeless Man For Pete Seeger

2011-10-26T21:30:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - Occupy Wall Street protesters followed an elderly homeless man more than 20 blocks Friday night, apparently thinking he was folk music legend Pete Seeger.

The man, later identified as Fred Goreham, 72, was apparently panhandling near the Symphony Space at Broadway and 95th Street, where Seeger has been performing with Arlo Guthrie and others. Someone spotted Goreham and yelled "Look, it's Pete Seeger!" A crowd formed around him immediately.

"We were like, this is so cool, he's like a legend!" recalled P.J. Franks, 22, of Queens, who was marching next to the man he thought was Seeger. "Although it seemed odd that he didn't seem to know the words to any of the songs we were singing."

According to several people who were there, the crowd started up spontaneous versions of Down By The Riverside and We Shall Not Be Moved, but "Seeger" kept singing the lyrics to Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.

"He also kept asking if anyone had any muscatel," recalled protester Amy Weinberg, 24, of Oyster Bay. "We just thought he must have been parched."

The crowd of about 600, including several who joined in from the Occupy Locker Room NBA labor protest, apparently followed Goreham from 95th Street all the way down to Columbus Circle, eventually touching on a song "Seeger" seemed to know, This Land is Your Land.

"But after he sang This land is your land, this land is my land, he just keep going, This land is her land, this land is his land, this land is whose land ... and pointing at random people in the crowd," said Franks, who had handed the old man his guitar. "He strummed it a few times, but then he began sort of humping it. It was very awkward."

[Read the rest at CAP New s.]

Column: You too can be a nuclear scientist!

2011-10-25T10:50:00.004-04:00

As my devoted audience — primarily my mother and a guy named Fred who added me to the mailing list for his conspiracy theory e-newsletter — may have noticed, I recently took about a five-month sabbatical from writing this column. I’d like to say I spent the time writing a novel, but unfortunately, certain circumstances prevented it. Damn you, Angry Birds!

Regrettably, though, it seems my break had an unanticipated side effect, namely that, from what I can tell, there was no local columnist available to comment on the Swedish man who was arrested last August after trying to split atoms in his kitchen. Fortunately his efforts didn’t result in a worldwide nuclear catastrophe, meaning I can still weigh in today on the concept of home atom splitting. So here goes: Don’t do it.

According to the Associated Press, Richard Handl, 31, spent months setting up a nuclear reactor in his home, and “only later did he realize it might not be legal.” This is very similar to the defense used by the guy who created Napster, except that a shared song file never carried with it the threat of mass annihilation, with the possible exception of “Heartbeat” by Don Johnson.

So what would make an otherwise normal, average, 31-year-old Swedish man bring radium, americium and uranium in his kitchen and use it to provoke a nuclear reaction? Apparently, he told the AP, he was only doing it “as a hobby,” and I can see how, much like fishing or macramé, it would be very satisfying for that split second before you’re incinerated.

But it’s worth noting that Handl didn’t just conduct illegal nuclear experiments: He also blogged about it, presumably hewing to the common truism, “If a man builds a nuclear reactor in his kitchen and nobody is there to blog about it, does it stiKABOOOOMMMM!!!!!” (Personally, I’d like to take this opportunity to note that blogging is perhaps the lowest form of personal expression, and that you can access mine at chianca-at-large.blogspot.com.)

Beyond the blogging, though, I have my own theory as to why someone might attempt to tackle do-it-yourself nuclear science: It’s part of living in a society where people have been conditioned to believe they can do pretty much anything without the need of professional intervention. Publisher, recording artist, developer of video games where drug dealers beat up strippers — all of these used to require years of specialized training. Now, there’s an app for that. (And by “app” I of course am using the modern shorthand for what used to be more commonly known as … wait, let me check my notes … “appaloosa.”)

Coming at it as I do from my perspective in the newspaper industry, part of me finds it to be a comforting development: Why should I be the only one getting put out of business by amateurs working from their kitchens? Let the nuclear physicists share some of the pain — by the end of the decade, I’d like to see every American making nuclear reactions in his bathtub, or barring that, gin. Which I do not believe is illegal, as long as you blog about it.

But on the other hand, I think in the end we’d be better off convincing these usurpers — the self-publishers, the would-be physicists, the wealthy fake astronauts, the people filming themselves in hotel rooms with night-vision cameras (you know who you are) — that all of these activities are better left to professionals with the training and expertise to do the job correctly.

I’m talking to you, Fred. Now please take me off your mailing list.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Family Calls 911 From Inside Space Mountain Ride

2011-10-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

ORLANDO (CAP) - A Massachusetts family caused a splash in Disney World this week when they called 911 from inside the Space Mountain ride, apparently fearing they would never make it out.

"I don't see anybody. I'm really scared. It's really dark," the mother told the Orlando 911 dispatcher, yelling over the sounds of the famous indoor roller coaster. "I don't know what made us do this. It was daytime when we came in," she added.

The dispatcher patiently tried to explain that if she just remained calm, the ride would end by itself and they'd be able to walk out under their own power, but the woman insisted that they send help.

"I can't even see where we're going ... I think we may be in space!" she yelled. "What if we run into a satellite or something?"

The dispatcher then asked to speak to her husband, who said he was concerned because everybody on the ride was screaming.

"I see lights over there, but we can't get there, we're smack right in the middle of the ride," the husband told the dispatcher, although it was later determined that they were only seconds from the end of the ride, and the attendants asking patrons to wait until the car came to a complete stop before exiting should have been clearly visible.

Disney World spokesman Joe Hackney said that people do panic on the theme park's rides occasionally, but none had ever called 911 before.

"Screaming, jumping off in the middle, vomiting, having a slight allergic reaction to the Disney swine flu vaccine - those happen all the time," said Hackney. "But we discourage guests from calling the police, because we have an experienced security force here that would be more than happy to interrogate them about any issues they may be having.

"I'd just like to note that this was an isolated incident and for the vast majority of patrons, a trip to Disney World is a fun and magical experience," Hackney added. But when asked by a CAP News reporter about the alleged Fast Pass Riot of 2007, Hackney declined to comment, and Disney security forces dragged the reporter through a trap door into one of the park's secret underground tunnels.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Column: Taking lumps at Tufts with Scott Brown

2011-10-11T22:52:00.001-04:00

“Bottom line is, you know, I didn’t go to Harvard … I went to the school of hard knocks.”

— Sen. Scott Brown, Tufts University Class of 1981

As a fellow Tufts alum, I can vouch for Sen. Brown’s assertion that Tufts was, in fact, “the school of hard knocks.” In fact, I believe the wrought iron gate at the bottom of the Memorial Steps bore the words “Tufts University, a.k.a. The School of Hard Knocks,” with the phrase “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” underneath that, in smaller letters.

I recall walking up those very same steps on more than one occasion, battered by wind and rain, or at least drizzle, and thinking, “This is a living hell! Damn those Harvard students, being carried to and from campus in solid-gold sedan chairs!” But it built character, and I usually just caught the free student shuttle anyway.

I remember when I arrived for student orientation in 1986, the university president, Dr. Jean Mayer, told us, “You are about to enter the toughest four years of your life. You’ll have to fight for every scrap, and the world will knock you down at every turn, and you’ll learn lessons the hard way, by being beaten within an inch of your life.” Actually I’m not sure what he said, because he had a fairly thick French accent and I was daydreaming about the buffet that followed the event, but I’m sure it was something like that.

It wasn’t long before I started receiving the hard knocks that Scott Brown would no doubt have warned me about if he hadn’t clawed and scraped his way out of Tufts and never looked back. For instance, I found that if you didn’t get to the dining hall early, sometimes they would run out of soft-serve ice cream. And once, when I forgot to bring an assignment to class, the professor gave me a pretty icy glare before telling me I could give it to her tomorrow.

We were a hardscrabble bunch, we students there at the Tufts University School of Hard Knocks and its affiliated graduate schools, such as the Tufts Veterinary School of Hard Knocks and the Fletcher School of Hard Knocks and Diplomacy. (The vet school was actually on the Grafton campus, which I can only assume had even harder knocks, some of them involving tramplings.) We were a lot like the characters in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” except instead of drowning in a muddy gutter we were spending four years on a lush university campus. But inside, where it counts: gutter drowning.

I can only imagine how hard the knocks were when Brown attended Tufts a few years earlier. Did the dining halls not even have soft-serve ice cream? Did even fewer students have their own parent-provided cars for easy travel to local attractions? Were there even more 8 a.m. classes, seriously inhibiting your ability to stay up until 2 a.m. the night before, holding contests with the guys in your hall to see who could eat the most “suicide spicy” buffalo wings? I’m sure only the strong survived.

Luckily for Scott Brown, he had grown up on the rough-and-tumble streets of Wakefield, Mass., where people lived in constant fear that at any moment, Wakefield native Israel Horovitz might have jumped out of a cul-de-sac and put them in one of his plays. Brown’s childhood there no doubt prepared him for his years getting knocked down and getting up again at Tufts, followed by his stint at Boston College Law School of Hard Knocks, where he no doubt learned that hard knocks can be just cause for a serious personal injury suit.

But clearly Scott lifted himself up by his bootstraps, because he’s now a United States senator. And even if he didn’t mention Tufts by name when referring to the school of hard knocks he attended, it’s nice to know that despite all his success, his alma mater is still so close to his heart.

Even if he has aides to get him his ice cream now.

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

Column: Revealing some trade secrets

2011-10-05T22:50:00.001-04:00

I should start off by saying I am not what you’d call a hoarder. Come in to my home and you’re unlikely to find the rooms and hallways piled up with old newspapers, products purchased from the Home Shopping Network and desiccated animal skeletons. Except for the old newspapers.

What I do have is an overabundance of entertainment items that somehow made their way onto my shelves despite their clear lack of artistic merit. There are the CDs I got just because the BMG Music Club was offering them for 1 cent (back when you used to have to pay for music), and the DVDs we bought for my kids when they were toddlers, because they pointed to them in the supermarket and we wanted to keep the shopping experience moving along smoothly, without having to involve security.

I know I could sell them on eBay (the CDs and DVDs, not the kids), but I don’t think I’m ready to become a full-fledged online retailer. I picture myself in my garage surrounded by boxes and packing tape, sifting through email orders and trying to squeeze in trips to the post office, where the clerks greet me with cries of “Hey, it’s eBay Guy!” I was hoping to save that for my retirement.

That’s why I was so intrigued when I heard about something called swap.com, which allows you to trade your stuff to other people in exchange for their stuff. This was more like it: It seemed somehow purer than just selling these things, and I figured it would prepare me for the inevitable period somewhere down the road (Tuesday?) when the world economy is based exclusively on barter, and banks are used primarily to house grain.

So I signed up, but immediately hit some unexpected bumps. For one thing, people seemed generally reluctant to trade me the cool stuff I wanted in exchange for the crap I had been considering throwing away. I was highly offended — who wouldn’t want to trade their copy of “40: A Doonesbury Retrospective” (list price: $100) for my copy of “Andre,” the 1994 movie about the seal who wears sunglasses? Or the “Karate Kid II” DVD I won in a PTA raffle? Or the Jonas Brothers CD we bought for our daughter during that tiny sliver of the pop culture time continuum when they were cool?

What’s even worse, several of the items I listed are being sought by absolutely no one in exchange for anything — for instance, not even a single shut-in was interested in my copy of “Rickles’ Letters” by Don Rickles. It was one thing when nobody wanted anything at our yard sale, since the audience for that stuff was limited to people in the general vicinity. But when you find out that the entire world finds your stuff even more useless than you do, it makes you start wondering where you went wrong in life.

Before long, you give up completely on your “want” list and start trolling the “What can I get?” list for anything that might remotely validate your self-worth. Only in my case that just made it worse, since it appeared that the only thing anyone was willing to trade me for my stuff was old Jennifer Weiner novels. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Soon I settled in, though, and I’ve now done several successful swaps, acquiring such things as the “Watchmen” graphic novel, a Gram Parsons CD and a DVD of “The Maltese Falcon.” None of them were on my “want” list, but I feel like I’m expanding my horizons, while at the same time getting rid of things like my DVD copy of “You’ve Got Mail.” (Which I suspect was carried into my home by romantic comedy elves and is not indicative of any sort of crush I might have once had on Meg Ryan. Or Tom Hanks.)

And the good news is, apparently swap.com will soon be expanding so that you can trade ANYTHING, not just entertainment items. When it comes to getting rid of your old stuff, that’s a game changer. I can only imagine the possibilities.

What do you think I can get for a pile of newspapers?

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Lion King Re-Release To Traumatize New Generation

2011-09-28T18:51:00.000-04:00

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - Disney Studios has re-released its classic 1994 animated film The Lion King, offering a whole new generation of children the opportunity to be traumatized when the young protagonist witnesses his father's brutal murder and is tricked into believing he was responsible for the death.

"Watching the scene where Mufasa falls from a cliff and is trampled to death as Simba watches helplessly was probably the single most wrenching emotional moment for millions of small children growing up in the 1990s," noted Edwin Catmull, president of Disney Animation Studios. "That's what Disney is all about."

Catmull noted that since the new version is in "Disney Digital 3-D," the experience will be even more poignant for today's youngsters, who will feel like Mufasa "is falling to his death right on top of them."

"And the scene where a crying Simba nuzzles his father's dead body before being sent into exile for the remainder of his ruined childhood by his sociopathic uncle, well, seeing it in 3-D will make kids feel like it's actually happening to them," Catmull said.

"I know I can't wait to take my kids," said Craig Milken, 27, of Berkeley, Calif., a father of two young boys who calls seeing The Lion King at age 9 a "defining experience" of his childhood.

"Also probably the reason for the subsequent 12 years of therapy, but whatever," he added.

The Lion King represents just the first in a series of 3-D re-releases of Disney classics, according to Catmull, who says the studio will be concentrating on films containing the timeless scenes "nearest and dearest" to children's hearts.

"I'm thinking of the scene where Dumbo cries uncontrollably while curled up in his imprisoned mother's trunk, or the one where Bambi's mother is shot to death," said Catmull. "Or the part in Pinocchio where Stromboli locks him in a birdcage and tells him he's going to chop him to pieces with an axe, or where all the bad boys get turned into donkeys ... yeah, basically all of Pinocchio."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Look, up in the sky! It's a [BOOM!]

2011-09-22T07:01:00.000-04:00

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, there's a crisp fall feel to the air, and everything seems at peace in the world. And then you hear that a six-ton space satellite will be hurtling to earth any day now. Figures.

Before we all panic (as we are wont to do), there are a few things to keep in mind: Yes, scientists say that the potential strike zone "covers most of Earth." But "most" is not "all." So there's that.

As for your own chances of being waylaid by a hunk of space debris, here's what the experts have to say:

The satellite will break into pieces, and NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere on Earth will get hurt at 1 in 3,200. But any one person's odds of being struck have been estimated at 1 in 21 trillion.

Which are pretty good odds, unless you happen to be that one guy. And given that some of those pieces could be a good 300 pounds, according to estimates, it may be worth heading underground, just in case, lest you risk going out on a stroll and being turned into a pancake by the space metal equivalent of these guys.

Meanwhile, a small part of me hopes the thing lands here on the North Shore of Mass., just for bragging rights. Just as long as it doesn't hit anything historic.

COLUMN: Schools vs. the mosquitoes

2011-09-21T09:06:00.001-04:00

The following is (not really) a message from your superintendent of schools:

Hello parents! We hope you and your children are adapting well to another new school year. As you know, as a district we are dedicated to your children’s education, health and welfare, not necessarily in that order.

With that in mind, we have elected to cancel outdoor activities until further notice in the wake of the discovery of West Nile virus in a mosquito within town limits. According to the Department of Public Health, it was just a single mosquito, and since it was found in a car with New Jersey license plates it was likely driven here from out of state, possibly last year.

Still, we prefer not to take any chances and will be doing our best to keep your children from exposure to air, particularly outdoor air. To that end, we have canceled or postponed the following activities:

After-school sports practices and games;
Outdoor recess;
Standing or milling about open windows or doorways;
Busing.

Rather than have children wait at or walk home from a bus stop, and ride in a bus in which mosquitoes can travel into the vehicle with the exhaust fumes, we ask that you plan to drop students off and pick them up inside the school. They can accompany you to and from the parking lot via the large airtight sterile tubes set up by our custodial staff, very similar to the ones used by the government agents in the film “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Public Health has notified us that, in an effort to ensure public health following the discovery of the mosquito, it will be spraying the entire town with deadly chemicals this Tuesday. Officials have asked that while they spray, from approximately 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., residents remain sealed tightly in their homes, running their oven fans at “maximum.”

Until spraying commences, please make sure your children do not leave the house unless they are wearing long sleeves, long pants, long socks, ski hats and, ideally, plastic baggies around their hands secured by elastic bands. It is not recommended that you put baggies over your children’s heads unless you poke holes in them first, which kind of defeats the purpose. A better idea is probably to spray your child in the face with DEET.

Also, please remember to dispose of any sources of standing water around your home where mosquitoes might breed, like those old trash can covers and hubcaps that have been on your driveway since the late ’90s. You know who you are.

I acknowledge that we’ve heard complaints from several parents who have pointed out that they spent practically their entire childhoods outdoors, never used bug spray, and, despite coming home every night covered with literally dozens of mosquito bites, they never got ill. However, I would point out that times have changed, in that mosquito-borne illnesses are much more common, as are liability attorneys.

We hope that these minor inconveniences are short-lived and that the Department of Public Health will soon sound the “all clear,” allowing us to resume outdoor activities as usual. On the other hand, if they find any mosquitoes with Eastern equine encephalitis within a 50-mile radius, I should warn you we’ll be sending you copies of your children’s textbooks so you can home-school them in your boarded-up basement while we wait for the first heavy frost. See you next year!

Sincerely,
Your Superintendent

Peter Chianca is editor in chief for GateHouse Media New England’s north-of-Boston newspapers and websites. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Red Sox Plagued By Injuries, Voodoo Curse

2011-09-19T18:44:00.001-04:00

BOSTON (CAP) - As the Red Sox September slide continues, it's hard not to lay at least some of the blame for the team's troubles on a debilitating spate of injuries and the ancient curse placed upon them by an elderly voodoo priestess.

"It's a hard thing to plan for," admitted manager Terry Francona, citing Kevin Youklis' bouts with bursitis, David Ortiz's back spasms and the curse incanted over a duck's liver and the blood of three dead chickens.

Some, like Boston Globe columnist Peter Abraham, have questioned whether the team's injuries could be the result of poor conditioning practices, while noting that the curse likely wouldn't be an issue if certain players were more careful about their behavior around people steeped in the dark arts of voodoo sorcery.

"I can tell you this from being around the team: There are certain guys who bust their asses every day, and there are certain guys who don't," wrote Abraham in his blog on Boston.com. "And there are certain guys who don't think it through before they piss off priestesses."

Abraham was oblique in his references, but it's widely assumed he's referring to veteran players like Youklis and Ortiz, who aren't known for engaging in rigorous conditioning routines, and pitcher Jonathan Papelbon, who tried to make a Haitian voodoo priestess Irish step dance with him to Shipping Up To Boston while on an off-season team excursion to Ortiz's childhood home in the Dominican Republic.

Ortiz, for his part, says that he does in fact engage in daily workouts with Red Sox strength and conditioning coach David Page, that he's in as good a shape as he's ever been, and that the curse is likely hoodoo in origin, rather than voodoo.

"A lot of people make that mistake," he noted, adding that he expected to remain in the lineup as long as his regular strength training keeps his back in good shape, and no one is poking needles into a crude doll fashioned in his likeness.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Netflix To Replace Starz With '80s Teen Sex Comedies

2011-09-07T15:41:00.001-04:00

LOS GATOS, Calif. (CAP) - Industry insiders are predicting tough times ahead for Netflix, with news of the video service losing hundreds of Starz movie and TV titles just as it increased prices this month. But Netflix executives are saying subscribers needn't worry, given the company's continual acquisition of a "treasure trove" of teenage sex comedies from the 1980s.

"Just this week we started streaming Joysticks, Zapped! and Private Lessons," noted Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings. "And there's plenty more where that came from," he added, mentioning Private School and Private Resort as two other films Netflix hopes to offer in the next year.

"Negotiations are ongoing," Hastings assures. "We hope to have all the Privates before we're done."

Hastings has been doing his best to put a good face on his company's breakdown in talks with Starz, which offered streaming of such popular hits as Disney's Tangled and the series Spartacus: Blood And Sand.

"I doubt viewers will even notice the difference," Hastings said, noting that a subscriber who searches for Tangled will get useful suggestions of similar movies to watch instantly, such as Hot Dog ... The Movie or Losin' It. And those searching for Spartacus will get similarly useful suggestions, such as Hot Dog ... The Movie or Losin' It.

"Ski School, The Last American Virgin, Hot Moves, My Tutor, they're all there," he added.

"Well, not My Tutor, but we are this close," he said, holding his thumb and forefinger very close together.

Subscribers have been up in arms since Netflix announced what amounts to a 60 percent price hike for streaming and DVD rentals, and the latest development only has them more fired up.

"WTF, Netflix? First you raise your prices, and now you're not even going to have the Starz movies?" commented VideoVixen44 on the Netflix Blog. "Now where am I going to watch The Money Pit and First Kid starring Sinbad?"

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Study - Half Of U.S. Adults Will Be Obtuse By 2030

2011-08-30T15:31:00.001-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The number of obtuse people in the United States will increase from 99 million in 2008 to 164 million by 2030, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

"Possibly more, depending on the relative acceleration of certain societal factors," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel of the Pew Center, citing the number of reality television shows on the air, the preponderance of comments sections on news websites, and whether a Tea Party candidate is elected president.

"It was not that long ago that it was relatively uncommon to come across an obtuse person," noted Spitznagel, particularly outside of certain high-obtuseness hotspots like hockey arenas, and the South. "These days it's not unusual for entire families, and in some cases entire social groups, to be obtuse. Often morbidly obtuse."

The study pointed to several possible causes of obtuseness in Americans, including a decline in education funding, and Rush Limbaugh. But far and away the primary factor is the rise of the Internet, said Spitznagel.

"The definition of obtuse is 'lacking quickness of perception or intellect,' and the Internet caters specifically to people with those qualities," said Spitznagel, noting the recent finding that more than 80 percent of the Internet is pictures of cats.

"Fifty or even 20 years ago it was much more common for people to expand their intellectual horizons, just to keep from getting bored," Spitznagel explained. "Nowadays those same people can just spend their time playing Farmville or uploading pictures of their kids to one of Google's several dozen social networking sites.

"Plus, if there's a topic you don't understand or that is nuanced enough to require multi-level thinking, you can just go into the comments section and call it retarded, along with the dozens of other obtuse people doing the same thing," noted Spitznagel.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Thursday: Barbarian-Americans Protest New 'Conan' Movie

2011-08-25T15:47:00.002-04:00

FON DU LAC, Wisc. (CAP) - The Wisconsin-based Brotherhood of Cimmerian Americans (BCA) released a statement this week denouncing the new Conan The Barbarian movie, claiming that the term "barbarian" is offensive to descendants of Cimmerians, Gaels, Picts, Vanir, Vikings and other warring peoples of the 8th and 7th centuries BC.

"Like gypsy or retarded, the word barbarian is outdated, offensive and needs to be eradicated from the popular lexicon," said BCA President Bram Hedstrom. "It's been decades since our peoples have been known for pillaging cities and lopping people's heads off."

The new film, starring Jason Momoa of HBO's Game Of Thrones, would seem to fly in the face of that assertion, featuring no fewer than 200 separate beheadings, possibly a new record. "We'll know when next year's Guinness Book comes out," said producer Fredrik Malmberg.

Even Tyler Bates' score for the film reflects its bloody nature, with movements entitled Beheading (2:49), Another Beheading (1:54), Beheading Again (2:36), You Can Call Him Conan ... But Don't Call Him Late For The Beheading (3:35) and Beheading (Reprise) (2:28), along with more traditional pieces like Obligatory Sex Scene (:55) and A Battle Of Wits (:08).

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in the original Conan The Barbarian in 1982, expressed concerns about the film, saying it lacked his version's sense of humor. "Also, the boy who played young Conan in my film?" noted Schwarzenegger. "I fathered him."

Schwarzenegger is also said to have fathered children by the film's assistant hair stylist, director of craft services and the secretary to producer Raffaella De Laurentiis. "It was a very welcoming crew," said Schwarzenegger, who has since left show business and his family to concentrate on his affairs.

The film has also irked some viewers who showed up thinking it was the Conan O'Brien documentary, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, which was released earlier this year. "I was wicked disappointed," said Sarah Killen, the woman O'Brien chose at random to follow on Twitter last year. "I knew my Conan wouldn't have nearly this many beheadings in his movie."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Did the earth move for you?

2011-08-23T17:28:00.002-04:00

It wasn't a shaking so much as a buzzing, like someone on the floor below me was using a very large power saw. But I definitely felt this afternoon's 5.9-magnitude earthquake here in Danvers, Mass., even though its epicenter was way down in Virginia. Which may make us North Shore of Boston residents the furthest spot north to feel its effects. I'll make that claim unless I hear otherwise -- you can't really trust anything those people say up in New Hampshire anyway.

Combine that with the earthquake that hit Colorado last night, and there's only one logical conclusion we can make: The end of the world is nigh.

OK, maybe that's a little extreme. But just in case, I'll be stocking up on water and canned goods before Irene hits. Better get to the supermarket early to beat the looters.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Christie 'Least Scary,' 'Fattest' GOP Contender

2011-08-16T17:21:00.002-04:00

TRENTON (CAP) - New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been named the "least scary" potential GOP presidential contender in a USA Today/Gallup poll, with most other Republican hopefuls finishing at "genuinely frightening" or above.

Pressure on Christie to enter the race has escalated since last week's GOP debate, where every candidate on the stage induced feelings of "panic," "alarm" and/or "sheer terror" among a majority of viewers, according to the poll.

Fueling the fear factor, apparently, is President Barack Obama's dwindling approval ratings. Polling shows that if the election were held today, every one of the above-mentioned possible GOP candidates would defeat him handily, as would several dead people - including both Gerald Ford and Jesse Helms - and some inanimate objects, like rocks and chairs.

"With every point that he goes down, the likelihood that one of those crazies gets into office goes up," noted poll respondent Larry Critchendon of Newark, N.J., a longtime conservative voter who nonetheless said the entire slate of GOP contenders "makes my blood run cold, like the end of The Blair Witch Project."

"At least Christie seems like he wouldn't bring about the downfall of civilization, probably," said Critchendon. "At least not right away."

The poll also found that Christie was by far the largest of all the GOP contenders. "Well ... He's a fat dude," noted Critchendon.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Christie 'Least Scary,' 'Fattest' GOP Contender

2011-08-02T17:37:00.001-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - On the heels of a tentative agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling, 236 congressmen and 41 senators have signed a pledge to accomplish absolutely nothing during their remaining time in office.

Lawmakers who signed the "No New Progress" pledge, the brainchild of Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform, promise to "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to make progress of any kind."

"We need to hold our legislators accountable for their actions," said Norquist this week. "It's not good enough to say on the campaign trail that you're not going to get anything done once you get into office - legislators need to be willing to put pen to paper and promise to do everything in their power to bring progress to a grinding halt."

There has been some debate over whether signers of the pledge are obligated simply not to contribute to progress, or if they need to be actively impeding progress through their votes and actions.

"I'd go with No. 2," said Norquist.

A prime example is the recent debt ceiling battle. With the 11th hour quickly approaching, lack of congressional approval of the deal between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner could result in the nation defaulting on its debt, which in turn would result in hundreds of thousands of job losses, deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, sky-high interest rates and a so-called "double-dip" recession.

"Now that's what I call progress!" said Norquist. "Er ... by which I mean, no progress."

Although only Republicans have signed the agreement as of yet, not all have rallied behind it. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), declined to sign the pledge and referred to its backers as "Tea Party Hobbits" on the Senate floor.

"They were once men. Great kings of men," McCain continued. "Then Sauron the deceiver gave to them nine rings of power. Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the Nazgul, Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Ring, drawn to the power of the One. They will never stop hunting you."

Then there were three or four minutes of awkward silence, before one of McCain's aides led him back to his office to lie down.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Sony Announces Reboot Of Spider-Man Reboot

2011-07-26T13:00:00.001-04:00

SAN DIEGO (CAP) - Producers from Sony stunned the Comic-Con audience this week when they announced another "reboot" of the Spider-Man franchise, whose first reboot isn't even slated to appear in theaters until next summer.

"It's clearly time for a reinvention of this venerable character," said Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Amy Pascal, making a surprise appearance at the popular convention. "Frankly, audiences have clearly tired of the incarnation of Spider-Man that will make its debut next July."

Pascal was referring to The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield as the web-slinger, which will be released July 3, 2012. The trailer debuted at Comic-Con last week.

"At the beginning of the trailer I was like, yes! This is the greatest version of Spider-Man ever!" said Josh Carlisle, 21, who had traveled to San Diego from Freehold, N.J. for the event. "But by the end of it I was like, eh, I'm ready for something different."

Pascal said she expected the reboot of the reboot, tentatively titled Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, to be ready in time for a summer 2014 release. She told the crowd she expected many of the classic elements to remain, including a red-and-blue costume with a spider on it. But she said other elements would be different; for instance Peter Parker will likely be black or Hispanic, and possibly gay, with "Flash" Thompson mentioned as a likely love interest.

"Also, Spider-Man's webbing will come out of his rear end, like an actual spider," said Pascal. "That's if we can do that and still get a PG-13 rating."

This announcement led to a three-hour panel discussion among fans as to whether the butt webbing should be organic, or the result of web-shooters that Peter Parker invents and sticks up his butt.

"Dude, you absolutely can't have organic butt webbing and still be true to the spirit of the comic books!" said Carlisle, prompting a group of fans in hastily scrawled NO ORGANIC BUTT WEBBING t-shirts to rattle their Mountain Dew cans in approval.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

The Conan the Barbarian original score is making me nervous

2011-07-25T16:29:00.006-04:00

I get a lot of publicity emails about upcoming movies and CDs, but I have to admit that something seems a little off in the one for the "Conan the Barbarian Motion Picture Score." It could have something to do with the titles of the various pieces. Take a look at the press release:

***

Conan The Barbarian Original Motion Picture Score features music by recording artist, composer, and music producer Tyler Bates. Bates is known for his surprising juxtapositions of music styles and flair for delicate, atmospheric touches, as well as stressing emotional vibrancy. All of these should come in handy in a movie like "Conan The Barbarian."

Original Motion Picture Score track-listing is as follows:

1.Prologue (2:09)

2.You Can Call Him Conan ... But Don't Call Him Late for the Beheading (3:35)

3. Beheading (2:49)

4. Flogging (3:15)

5.Old Fashioned Cimmerian Draw and Quartering (3:19)

6.Another Beheading (1:54)

7.Me and My Broadsword (3:08)

8.Horse Chase (2:37)

9.Donkey Chase (3:36)

10.Other Activities You Can Do With Donkeys (1:44)

11.Monastery Battle: Do You Feel Lucky, Monk? (1:10)

12.Catapult! (3:03)

13.Boiling Oil (2:51)

14.Beheading Again (2:36)

15.Obligatory Sex Scene (:55)

16.Buddy Can You Spare a Loin Cloth? (4:50)

17.A Battle of Wits (:8)

18.I've Grown Accustomed to Your Breastplate (2:42)

19.Zym's Demise (1:56)

20.Zod's Demise (2:41)

21.Shemp's Demise (2:37)

22.A Bunch of Other Demises (11:21)

23.Happily Ever After (2:08)

24. Beheading (2:28)

When I hear 'Springsteen,' I think, 'polymer roofing tile.'

2011-07-24T22:26:00.004-04:00

I can’t be positive, but in looking at this press release that name-drops "Born in the U.S.A.," I think it may be even worse than what Reagan did with it:

“Born in the U.S.A.” Roofing Colors

KANSAS CITY, KAN. – Several hundred miles north of Asbury Park, N. J., where Bruce Springsteen originally sang his heart out about being “Born in the U.S.A.” lies a region known as “Slate Valley.” The 24-mile long, six-mile wide area stretching northward from Granville, N. Y. and Rupert, Vt. to Fair Haven, Vt. is the true home to “Born in the U.S.A.” slate roofing colors.

The chemical and mineral composition of the veins of slate in this area produce a rare variety of colors — green, gray, gray black, purple, mottled green and purple, and red. This small region is the only place in the world where these natural slate colors are found.

“Move westward on the map to Kansas City and you’ll find this rainbow of slate colors can also be found in what I like to call the ‘Colored Polymer Slate Capital’ of the world,” says national color expert Kate Smith, president of Sensational Color. “DaVinci Roofscapes, which manufactures all its products in the U.S.A., has perfectly duplicated these rich colors in their polymer slate roofing tiles.”

And in case you were wondering, this is what they look like:

Just picture Bruce Springsteen’s butt in front of that and suddenly it all makes sense.

(More about Springsteen at my other blog, Blogness on the Edge of Town.)

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Murdoch Scandal Proves Existence Of Newspapers

2011-07-20T22:22:00.001-04:00

LONDON (CAP) - The phone-hacking scandal that brought down media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World

newspaper has shocked millions who had no idea that newspapers were still being published.

"So you're telling me they're still printing the bloody things? On paper?" asked Sarah Murphy, 27, of Tottenham. "That's just crackers."

News Of The World staffers apparently used the information garnered from illegal cell phone hacking for "stories" that they subsequently published on newsprint via large, expensive "printing presses."

The resulting newspapers were then carried - often via truck or similar gas-powered delivery vehicle - to people's homes and retail outlets. This practice is still going on in some places today, despite the common belief that all news is delivered over the Internet, primarily via Google.

"I'm just gobsmacked," said Harry Murch, 32, of Borehamwood, upon being told of the News Of The World scandal. "I thought Google had figured out a bloody algorithm to generate news at least five years ago."

The situation is reminiscent of what happened with the once-venerable Boston Globe, which ceased publication in 2010 and "almost nobody noticed," said Boston-area media critic David O'Kennedy.

"There are probably thousands of people who assume the Boston Globe is still being published today," said O'Kennedy. "You hear stories of the occasional elderly person shuffling up to the shuttered building to try to place a classified listing - it's very sad."

Apparently in America, many readers thought the only newspaper left was USA Today, which rebounded from declining circulation in 2007 when it announced that it would only publish photos of attractive people. And by 2009, studies showed that most teenagers could not identify a newspaper when presented with one, with some of them finding the unfamiliar combination of paper and ink "extremely disturbing."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: NASA Prepares To Shoot Nancy Grace Into Space

2011-07-13T23:09:00.001-04:00

ATLANTA (CAP) - Headline News talk show host Nancy Grace said she is "honored and humbled" to have been chosen to be shot into space as part of NASA's first follow-up to the soon-to-be-defunct shuttle program.

"I am not a preacher, and I am definitely not a rabbi," Grace told CNN's Piers Morgan yesterday. "But as I accept this honor, I would say that the devil is doing the opposite of dancing tonight, whatever that would be. Maybe just sitting quietly in hell, not drinking champagne. Something like that."

Grace has been in the public spotlight recently with her coverage of so-called "tot mom" Casey Anthony, who was acquitted of murder charges last week despite Grace's assertion that she was "the most guilty person ever to exist in the long, sordid history of guilt."

"Even more guilty than that lady I talked into committing suicide that time," she added.

She also referred to the jury in the case as being "full of kooky kook-heads" and spent a full 20 minutes of her most recent show throwing darts at 8-by-10 glossy headshots of the jury members.

"Hey, I got Juror No. 3 right in the eyeball!" exclaimed Grace after one particularly accurate toss. Then she looked directly into the camera, raised an eyebrow and said, "Does that give you any ... ideas?" followed by a laugh that one cameraman, who asked not to be identified, described as "the most bone-chilling sound I've ever heard."

"And I used to work in a slaughterhouse," he added.

According to NASA spokesman Marvin Federer, a panel made up of astronauts, scientists, administrators and elected officials was unanimous in its choice of Grace to be the premier participant in its new Shuttle+ project.

"The project involves sealing someone in a seven-foot-long capsule, placing them in a state of suspended animation and shooting them into space for seven to 10 years," said Federer. "Nancy was the first name that came up."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Study - Transformers 3 Same Movie As Transformers 2

2011-07-06T23:04:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON D.C. (CAP) - A new study conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that the new Transformers movie, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is actually the same movie as 2009's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, and more than 80 percent identical to 2007's original Transformers.

"Some of the scenes are in a different order, and the soundtrack has been altered slightly," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel of the Pew Center. "But for all intents and purposes they're the same movie - you could watch the first half of the second one and the second half of the third one and not notice more than a marginal difference."

In fact, the study shows that for most of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the only difference is the digital insertion of Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley into several scenes that had previously featured Megan Fox.

"Although even in those cases, our researchers determined that Huntington-Whiteley was more than 80 percent identical to Fox," Spitznagel noted.

As for star Shia LaBeouf, the study determined that all three movies combined (total running times: 9 1/2 hours) required no more than 25 minutes of footage of LaBeouf, possibly 15 minutes if it turns out his facial expressions were changed digitally in post-production.

"Not that they changed that much," noted Spitzagel.

To perform the study, Spitznagel's team of researchers dissected all three movies frame by frame, which resulted in at least three of them being admitted to Georgetown University Hospital suffering from mental exhaustion and hearing loss.

"Subsequent examination showed they had actually lost 8-10 IQ points," said Spitznagel, who noted many of the researchers begged to be put back on the study counting pictures of cats on the Internet.

The study comes on the heels of the rumors posted at both TMZ and PerezHilton.com that the recent Pirates Of The Caribbean sequel, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, was actually cobbled together from outtakes from the first three movies and footage of the animatronic Johnny Depp from the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney World.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Whitey Bulger Demands His Depends, Metamucil Back

2011-06-29T23:23:00.000-04:00

BOSTON (CAP) - Feared legendary mobster James "Whitey" Bulger seemed to have lost none of his swagger or arrogance in his first court appearance after 16 years in hiding, brazenly asking the judge to "return my Depends and my Metamucil, gosh darn-nabbit!"

"Do you want me to wet myself right here on the bench, for cryin' out loud?" he added, then coughing up and apparently swallowing a large wad of phlegm. "And you better darn well get me my Metamucil. You don't wanna see me when I'm not regular."

FBI agents captured the 81-year-old Bulger in Santa Monica, Calif., after following him home from the Bay Cities Deli, where the mobster had allegedly eaten a corned beef sandwich, lean, on marble rye with a pickle spear and a club soda, followed by some lime jello.

"He was driving very suspiciously," said FBI Special Agent Josh Harwood, who noted that he was going about 10 miles per hour below the speed limit, cut off two other drivers and then shook his fist at them like it was their fault, and took an extremely roundabout way to get to his home, apparently trying to avoid having to make left turns.

"And his blinker was on the entire time," noted Harwood.

FBI lured Bulger out of his apartment by sending two young boys onto the front lawn of his apartment complex, ostensibly to retrieve a baseball that had rolled there.

"Get offa my lawn, you darn kids!" witnesses quoted Bulger as yelling at the boys. "Or I'll give ya something to complain about, gosh-a darn it!"

"That's when we slapped the cuffs on him," explained Harwood.

Bulger did not resist, according to authorities, although he did convince agents "make a pit stop" at a Wilshire Boulevard 7-Eleven on the way to FBI headquarters, where he spent approximately 45 minutes in the rest room generating various bodily noises as agents stood awkwardly outside the door, checking their watches.

"And we couldn't go in there for about two hours afterwards," said store owner Praveen Nawwaf, waving his hand in front of his nose as if to indicate a strong odor. "It was very unpleasant," he noted, adding however that it's something he's gotten used to with the up-tick in senior citizens coming in to buy cat food since social security ran out.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Tara Reid Looks to Resurrect Career With 'Human Centipede 2'

2011-06-22T07:44:00.001-04:00

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - Its plot is being kept strictly under wraps, but word leaked this week that party girl actress Tara Reid is looking forward to a career-boosting comeback with her role in Human Centipede 2.

"It's been a while since I've really stretched in a role," admitted Reid, who struck box office gold with American Pie and Urban Legend but lately has found herself in straight-to-DVD fare like 7-10 Split, Unnatural Causes and The Girl With The Raging Taboo.

"They told me that last one was based on a famous book series, but it turns out they meant the title just sort of sounded like one," she said, adding that she can't quite remember who "they" were.

Reid hopes to salvage her career in the sequel to last year's surprise cult favorite Human Centipede, about a mad scientist who sews his victims together to create a grotesque creature with a single digestive track. "I didn't see the first one, but I heard it made a really deep statement about people who turn other people into human centipedes," said Reid.

Reid declined to explain her role in Human Centipede 2, other than to say her character's name ("The Middle One") offers a clue. "I'm just starting to get feeling back in my mouth," she added.

Some have wondered why Human Centipede needed a sequel, given that it was almost universally derided as disgusting, amoral and not especially successful at the box office. But the film's producers say a sequel was a must.

"This was a story that demanded to be continued," explained Martin Shafer, president of Martin Shafer's Straight-to-DVD Movie Production Co., who recently stepped down as CEO of Castle Rock Entertainment when his Shawshank Redemption buddy comedy failed to materialize.

"There were so many unanswered questions from the first movie," Shafer continued. "Like, what do they do after they become a human centipede? And, after they become a human centipede, what is it that they do, as a centipede who's human?"

Asked point blank if he saw the original movie, Shafer paused for several seconds and then admitted that he didn't. "But I watched the trailer many times after I greenlit the sequel," he said.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: First Lady Vows To Humiliate One Fat Kid Per Week

2011-06-14T09:27:00.001-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - First Lady Michelle Obama has fired the latest salvo in her battle against obesity, launching an "Obesity Poster Child" program that will call out one overweight child per week in a national ad campaign.

"It's easy to tell people to eat right, exercise and get outside instead of sitting in front of a TV or computer screen," wrote Obama in a press release on the new program. "But what will really drive the point home is an image of an actual overweight child whose life is bound to be hampered by poor health and social isolation, especially after his or her picture runs in every magazine and newspaper in America.

"Also on billboards," she added.

The pictures, to be snapped surreptitiously by prominent obesity photographer Lucas Earls, will feature children between the ages of approximately 7 and 13 who clearly meet the national standards for obesity.

"If they happen to be holding a corn dog at the time, all the better," said Earls, who plans to scour the entire country for subjects, but mostly Alabama.

Anticipating criticism about using photos of children, Sally Caruthers, spokeswoman for the First Lady's "Let's Move" program, noted that the organization would be obtaining written consent from the parents of each subject. Also, the photos will be taken from angles that accentuate the children's prodigious girth, not their facial features, she said.

"It's very likely that only their family and friends will be able to identify them," noted Caruthers.

The first subject, Olivia Funderburk, is an 8-year-old from Jacksons' Gap, Ala., approximately 3-foot-11-inches tall and 112 pounds. In ads set to debut nationally tomorrow, she's pictured at the Tallapoosa County Flea Market with a giant piece of fried dough hanging out of her mouth.

Under her image is the message, "Don't let your child end up like Olivia. At least not if you want grandchildren someday."

"I came up with that last part myself," noted Earls.

Asked by CAP News why they agreed to allow their daughter's image to be used in the program, Olivia's mother, Jessica Funderbunk, 27, noted, "Because she'll be on TV, duh!"

The Funderbunks have apparently already lined up several local endorsement deals based on Olivia's newfound fame, including from the flea market where she was photographed, a car dealership and a fried dough manufacturer.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Previously Unknown Hockey Team Discovered In Boston

2011-06-07T22:56:00.002-04:00

BOSTON (CAP) - Thousands of Massachusetts residents are reeling this week at the discovery of a professional hockey team that has apparently been operating unnoticed in their midst for decades.

"I can't believe I never knew about this before," said Patti Johansen of Woburn, Mass., who, like most Boston-area residents, thought the state had only three professional sports teams, the Patriots, Red Sox and Celtics. "Although for a while there in the '90s, I forgot about the Celtics too."

The team, known as the "Boston Bruins," apparently in reference to a type of bear, began to appear on Boston residents' radar screens late last month after suddenly turning up in the Stanley Cup Finals.

"And they're pretty good, too," noted a clearly surprised David O'Kennedy, a Boston media critic. "I watched a few minutes of their game the other night, and that Patricia Bergeron, she was excellent."

A CAP News investigation found that the team, contrary to the popular local belief that it must have been formed sometime during the last two to three months, has actually been toiling in obscurity since 1924, and for much of that time has even had its games broadcast on local television.

"Every so often I'd flip by them on the TV, but I never stopped because I'm not a fan of skating," said Richard Vanderhaven of Cambridgeport.

Oddly enough, many of the residents who until days ago didn't know of the Bruins' existence have thrown themselves wholeheartedly behind their efforts, purchasing thousands of dollars worth of jerseys, hats, T-shirts, jewelry, tote bags, calendars and glowsticks (with lanyard).

"I'd go into Olympia [Sports, a New England sporting goods chain] and there would be this little corner with shirts with B's on them and stuff," said Jon Zincway of Dedham, decked out in a Bruins jersey, baseball cap, temporary face tattoo and foam finger while waiting in line at the TD Banknorth Garden to buy tickets for the Stanley Cup Finals last week. "If I'd known they were for an actual hockey team I would have bought all this stuff much sooner, as long as they, you know, won all the time."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Scientists Discover 'Superbad' Cholesterol

2011-06-01T22:55:00.002-04:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - Researchers at NYU Medical Center have discovered a new, stickier and more deadly form of bad cholesterol they're calling "superbad" cholesterol, according to findings acquired by CAP News.

The study found that unlike normal bad cholesterol, known as LDL, which gradually attaches itself to arterial walls and clogs the arteries, superbad cholesterol immediately fills up entire arteries "like you stuck a caulking gun down there," wrote the study's coordinator, Dr. Bentley Worthington, in a preface to the findings.

According to the report, America's changing dietary habits likely led to the development of this ultra-bad cholesterol.

"Much like stronger bacteria have formed in response to anti-bacterial sprays and lotions, cholesterol too has adapted as we consume more and more saturated and trans fats," wrote Worthington. "You can only eat so many KFC Double Down sandwiches before your body finds a way to fight back.

"And I'm not just talking about all the pooping," he added, in what was apparently a rough draft of the study.

The study was leaked to CAP News by a researcher who asked not to be identified, claiming that the findings were being suppressed by "powerful forces" determined not to see them come to light before the Memorial Day weekend.

"They had a lot of hamburgers and hot dogs they needed to push, and were afraid these findings would stymie sales," claimed the researcher, who quoted a Kraft company executive as telling the hospital's board, "It's all psychological. You yell cardiomyopathy, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell superbad cholesterol, we've got a panic on our hands on Memorial Day weekend!"

Kraft spokesman Michael Hirschberg denies the allegations, saying that Kraft always has the good health of its customers in mind. He pointed to the company's new "Eat Sensibly" advertisements, featuring their spokesman, competitive hot dog eater Joey Chestnut.

A study of the findings reveals why they might raise concern among some food manufacturers. In addition to clogging the arteries at an alarming rate - "one Cinnabon can be enough to do it," it found - pieces of the superbad cholesterol can flake off the artery wall and travel directly to the heart, where they cause the aorta to expand and eventually explode in a tremendous chest-extruding fireball.

The study mentions one test case, Karl Stubens of Estill Springs, Tenn., who weighed more than 350 pounds and admitted to eating at Arby's more than four times a week. Stubens told researchers his high cholesterol could be blamed on "family history." Then his chest blew up.

"It was like that scene in Alien, except instead of a little creature popping out, it was an Angus Three Cheese & Bacon hoagie," the study read.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Thursday: Report: Social Security Will Run Out In 20 Minutes

2011-05-26T07:47:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - Trustees of the nation's Social Security trust fund announced today that, contrary to previous estimations that the fund would run dry in 2037, it's now expected to be depleted in about 20 minutes, give or take a few minutes.

"The economic outlook remains more uncertain than usual, but we've gone over the numbers several times, and we're pretty sure it will be gone in about 20 minutes," said Richard Anderson, the fund's chief actuary, at a press conference this morning.

Several unanticipated factors contributed to the accelerated depletion of the fund, according to Anderson, including an unprecedented number of retired people living into their 90s and beyond. "Where are the death panels when you need them?" asked Anderson.

"Um ... Just a little Social Security humor there," he added when the comment was greeted with stony silence.

The numbers were confirmed almost immediately by a study conducted at the Pew Research Center. "We now realize it would have probably been a good idea to look into this sooner," said Pew Center spokesman Dr. Francis Spitznagel, noting that their researchers had been otherwise occupied with their study of superheroine breast size.

The announcement has led to concern and in some cases panic among elderly Social Security recipients. There have been reports of runs on cat food at convenience stores around the U.S., with lines of senior citizens in some cases stretching several times around the inside of the establishments.

"Luckily they have the Keno to keep them occupied," noted Radhee Nawwaf, owner of the Cumberland Farms on Route 46 in Moonachie, N.J.

As for Medicare's trust fund, originally thought to be solvent through approximately 2029, "that ran out a week ago Tuesday," according to Anderson.

"People will probably realize it when their Lisinopril prescriptions start to run out," Anderson noted.

Senior advocates expressed shock and dismay at the development, noting that millions of senior citizens rely on Medicare for their basic health care needs. "When we see a spike in back-alley colonoscopies, don't say we didn't warn you," said Brian Fincher of the senior citizen watchdog group Citizens for Retired Associates and Professionals.

"Er ... and when I say 'see a spike in back-alley colonoscopies,' I'm not speaking literally, hopefully," Fincher added.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

It's the end of the world as we know it ... And you heard it here first!

2011-05-18T13:31:00.004-04:00

You may recall back in November when, in a column about the impending end of the world, I wondered why I seemed to be the only news outlet covering it. Specifically:

I’m referring of course to a press release I received recently from the “Hourglass Watchman” of the eBible Fellowship with the heading “A Message to the Media of the World,” which apparently includes me. Not one to bury the lead, the Watchman gets right to the point:

“May 21, 2011 — Judgment Day. God will begin to destroy the World and this Universe with a worldwide earthquake. October 21, 2011 — The End of the World. The World and the entire Cosmos will be totally destroyed by fire.”

Considering most of the press releases I get include either the phrases “craft fair” or “ham and bean supper,” this would obviously be considered Big News. But oddly enough, I’ve yet to see reportage on this by any of the rest of the Media of the World, which must still be busy tracking the Black Friday tramplings.

Well, as it turns out I was just ahead of the media curve, which seems to have caught up to me now, less than a week before the beginning of the end, when there's very little people can do about it, short of possibly making post-Rapture arrangements for their pets.

Although it's probably worth noting that as of this morning there were only 254 Rapture-related news stories on Google News, as compared to 4,053 stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child.

If that's not a sign that the end is nigh, I don't know what is.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Bob Dylan Explains Something, No One Quite Sure What

2011-05-17T17:06:00.002-04:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - In a rare statement to his fans on his website, Bob Dylan this week explained something, possibly the recent controversy over his concerts in China, although no one seems to know exactly.

"Well my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this," Dylan wrote on bobdylan.com. "He did say, son, he said, China's mighty big, but I'll tell you what's bigger - God, your mammy and pappy, and maybe even your dog, depending on the breed."

The statement is accompanied by a black-and-white photo of Dylan with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers, his wicker trilby hat angled jauntily at the back of his head.

Dylanologists have been poring over the statement to discern its meaning. Most are in agreement that it has something to do with his recent China concerts, which were notoriously slammed by columnist Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. "Although it's possible he may just be talking about his dog," said Fred Tarshbuck, professor of Dylan Studies at Berkley.

Dowd's column takes Dylan to task for going to China where, she wrote, he "sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left." However, there's no evidence that the Chinese government censored Dylan, and several media pundits have reported that Dowd has never actually heard a Dylan song. She's also been rumored to have written the column on her Blackberry in a cab just minutes before her deadline.

Asked whether she did any actual reporting for the column, Dowd responded, "Do you know who I am? I'm Maureen Dowd, goddammit - I'm a columnist for the goddamn New York Times!" Columnists for the New York Times are prohibited from doing any actual reporting, according to a representative from the Newspaper Guild.

Dowd also defended her musical pedigree, claiming to have once had coffee with Celine Dion.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Study: More Than 80% Of Internet Is Pictures Of Cats

2011-05-03T16:49:00.003-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - A sizable majority of the Internet is taken up by pictures of cats, according to a new study out of the Pew Research Center.

"Cats have always taken up at least half the Internet, but they've really pulled away in this study," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel of the Pew Center, who noted that when the center conducted a similar survey in 2009, pictures of cats led videos of people injuring themselves by only a relatively small 18 percent margin.

"Now nobody's within 30 points of the cats," he said.

1) Kittens;
2) Fat cats;
3) Cats canoodling with other animals (dogs, mice, babies, other cats, ferrets, etc.);
4) Cats wearing clothes (mostly hats);
5) Cats wielding lightsabers;
6) That cat with the lime peel on its head;
7) Catwoman (NSFW).

"The bandwith required for the kittens and fat cats alone is greater than that taken up by Amazon, Google and the Pentagon combined," said Spitznagel, who noted that it took researchers more than a year to compile the information. "Although we were able to carry over much of the Catwoman data from our study of superheroine breast size," he noted.

Pew researchers were hard pressed to explain the feline photo surge, but Stanford University economist Wendall Wuffie says the state of the economy could be the cause, in much the same way the economic collapse of fall 2008 led to a run on cardboard turkeys.

"During tough times, people turn to stress relievers that make them feel more relaxed despite an uncertain future," said Wuffie. "And what makes people feel more relaxed than a picture of a soft, fluffy, happy kitty?

"Aside from all the porn, I mean," he added.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: No way to treat a Lady Gaga

2011-04-29T16:33:00.002-04:00

There comes a time in every columnist’s life where he must take a stand, one way or another, on Lady Gaga. If Walter Winchell were alive today, I’m reasonably sure he would agree with me.

The only problem is, believe it or not, I’m torn on the Gaga issue. On the one hand it would be very easy to dismiss a woman who goes out in public wearing bubbles and metal breastplates and meat (not at the same time, probably) as an artist for whom “the music” isn’t a top priority. On the other, I heard her single “Born This Way” once and it attached itself full-on to my brain, possibly entering through my nasal cavity like the creature in “Alien.”

With those things in mind, I’ve decided to do what every good journalist should; namely, make a list of pros and cons and, after considering them carefully, come down on the side I consider to be most offensive to Republicans.

So here we go:

Pro: Lady Gaga is a better singer than Madonna. I’m talking about sheer vocal ability, not things like phrasing and breath control, which are hard to think about when you’re covered with meat. As you’ve probably heard, some say “Born This Way” is a rip-off of Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” and in fact, this week a PR woman offered me the chance to analyze both songs note by note with an instructor from SAE Institute of Audio Engineering. I declined, opting instead to coax a cat into clawing out my eardrums.

Con: Lady Gaga is NOT a better singer than Edith Piaf. This may be true, but I would have liked to see Edith Piaf croon “La Vie En Rose” in a clear plastic dress with black electrical tape across her bosoms. Probably more than I care to admit.

Pro: Lady Gaga has professed herself to be “a huge Bruce Springsteen fan.” She even got Springsteen saxophonist Clarence Clemons to play on her new album, which for me is a bizarre collision of worlds — sort of like when Bob Dylan did that Victoria’s Secret commercial, although thankfully not in a clear plastic dress.

Con: Lady Gaga got into a public feud with “Weird Al” Yankovic. They’ve since worked things out, and Gaga is allowing Yankovic to go forward with his parody of “Born This Way.” Which is good, because I’d have to take Al’s side in that dispute — he remains the most famous person I’ve ever interviewed, primarily because Pee-Wee Herman won’t take my calls.

Pro: Lady Gaga is not afraid to promote personal expression by wearing bubbles and metal breastplates and meat. This is in stark contrast to more conventional performers, such as Rod Stewart, who has spent the last 30 years wearing the same Rod Stewart costume.

Con: Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video inspired thousands of fans to start wearing enlarged “circle” contact lenses, creating an entire generation of teenage girls who look like Bratz dolls. This would seem to indicate that it’s only a matter of time before her “Little Monsters” are also regularly engaging in hair sculpting, eye stretching and thigh elongation.

Given that, along with the fact that I have a daughter whose teen years are bearing down on both of us like a hormonal freight train, I think in the final analysis I have to deny Lady Gaga my full support — at least until she tarts it down a bit. Call me old fashioned, but even if I had her talents, you wouldn’t see me dancing around wearing nothing but lace body suits and police tape.

On the other hand, I’m reasonably sure you wouldn’t want to.

Peter Chianca is editor-in-chief for GateHouse Media New England's North Unit. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Thursday: Obama Budget Plan Would Save 'One Life To Live'

2011-04-21T08:15:00.002-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - President Barack Obama continued to reveal details of his deficit-reduction plan this week, including a controversial provision that would raise taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in order to save the recently cancelled ABC soap opera One Life To Live.

"One Life To Live is, uh, part of the cornerstone, the bedrock of American culture," said Obama in a press conference Monday. "How many of us spent lonely afternoons following the adventures of, you know, Bo and Clint Buchanan, and Viki, who suffered from dissociative identity disorder and became Niki, the sexually promiscuous party girl, and Karen and Larry Wolek, who, uh, had control chips implanted in their brains by the evil Dr. Ivan Kipling."

Obama recalled rearranging the rabbit-ears antenna on his small, black-and-white TV set as a youth in order to pick up the soap opera. "It was often very tough to get the signal there in Kenya," he said. "By which I mean, of course, Honolulu."

The budget provision, which would filter funds gleaned from the tax hike directly to ABC-TV in much the same way PBS and National Public Radio receive government funding, has not surprisingly drawn fire from the GOP.

"This type of thing is exactly the reason the country is in the fiscal trouble it's in," said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose own budget plan would drastically slash Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public education, environmental protection, social services and snow plowing, as well as eliminate road repairs on thoroughfares that go by senior centers and homeless shelters.

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl - who drew fire recently when he said that "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does" is abortions, when the number is actually 3 percent - also spoke out against Obama's plan.

"Actually, what I had meant to say is the well over 90 percent of what One Life To Live characters do is get abortions," said Kyl. A CAP News study of episodes of the soap opera since its debut in 1968 shows that in this case, Kyl's figure is actually a little low.

And potential Republican presidential contender Sarah Palin, star of Sarah Palin's Alaska, called Obama's One Life To Live plan "redonkulous," saying, "Who wants to watch a big, dysfunctional family of crazies with dumb names say stupid things and go all over the place having babies and silly stuff like that?"

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: In New England, spring’s the thing

2011-04-17T20:10:00.000-04:00

It was Mark Twain who said, “It’s spring fever.... You don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” And given the fact that he has a bestselling book out even though he’s been dead for 100 years, I guess you have to give the guy some credit for not being an idiot.

For me, it usually takes at least until mid-February before I start peering wistfully through the frost on my living room window, imagining lush green grass instead of layers of snow. Never mind that under that snow is grass a leathery shade of brown and leaves that I never got around to raking up last fall. It’s the idea of green grass that gets me nostalgic for spring, not to mention the fact that my nose has probably frozen to the windowpane.

But this year, that feeling was already prevalent by the end of January, when all the snowstorms had made the average trip down my driveway like a run through the Death Star trench. Every time I visited the mall I got nervous that one of the giant piles of snow that had been plowed into a corner of the parking lot would fall over onto my car, and they’d find me in it after the spring thaw, sucking on old Happy Meal wrappers.

But spring fever isn’t just about putting the winter behind you. It’s about convincing yourself that once spring arrives you’re actually going to go out and do spring-like things, like taking a state park flower tour in order to sniff in the nectar of the budding season. Then spring actually comes and you suddenly recall your deathly fear of bees, and the fact that baseball is on TV.

But we at least occasionally do make good on our plans to get outdoors and embrace the onset of spring, and by “we” I mean those of us who have been trapped in the house with kids for three months. That’s what motivated my wife and me, for instance, to trek the family out to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary one March Sunday several years back: to show our kids that if they think all their old video games are boring, just wait until they’ve watched an entire bucket of sap drip out of a sugar maple.

Spring fever also has a share of romance to it — my wife and I had our first date in springtime walking around Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, which would have been much less dreamy if we’d been in snow up to our thighs. But springtime is just generally more conducive to love, if only because when you try to hug during the winter in all those layers, you tend to bounce off each other like the fake sumo wrestlers at Lowell Spinners games.

But here in New England, maybe the fact that spring arrives at all is enough to justify a hearty bout of spring fever. It could be that Twain’s elusive thing we want is just evidence that we pulled through another winter, proving our resilience in the face of adversity and spurring our annual rebirth.

And I’d run right outside and enjoy it if baseball wasn’t on.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. This column appeared originally in North Shore Life magazine; for more, visit northshore.lifemagsonline.com. Follow Peter Chianca on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

AT LARGE Fake News Thursday: Bruno Tonioli Gaining On Trump For GOP Nom

2011-04-14T20:06:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - A USA Today/Gallup poll this week found real estate mogul and Apprentice star Donald Trump to be the reality TV personality most likely to get the GOP nomination for president. But Dancing With The Stars judge Bruno Tonioli is coming up fast, according to the results.

The poll of 5,000 likely voters found 17 percent favoring Trump, with 14 percent voting for Tonioli, which is within the margin of error. Rounding out the list were:

Lauren Conrad of The Hills (11 percent)
Flava Flav of Flavor Of Love (8 percent)
Snooki of Jersey Shore and Corbin Bernsen of Celebrity Mole Yucatan (tie, 6 percent each)
Steven Seagal of Steven Seagal Lawman (5 percent)

More than 100 other reality stars made up the other 33 percent of those named as presidential contenders, including Tila Tequila, Danny Bonaduce, Gene Simmons, the woman who dressed like a pirate on season 3 of Wife Swap, and Sarah Palin.

Tonioli, for his part, said he was "just amazingly astounded" at finishing so closely behind Trump, particularly given he hasn't gone any farther than establishing an exploratory committee and printing some buttons with the slogan "Bruno: You Know You Want Him!"

"Being president would be hot, it would be sexy - it would be Mr. Hips Goes to Washington!" said Toniolo, shaking his midsection in what might possibly have been a Salsa or a Pasa Doble.

He also criticized President Obama, saying, "He looks like giant Slim Jim sliding down a fire pole!" and gesticulating wildly.

Trump, for his part, says he's not fazed by the results, and immediately demanded that Toniolo produce his birth certificate. "You can't tell me that this guy was born in America," Trump told Meredith Vieira on the Today show. "He's harder to understand than Ivana was."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: 30 more signs you’re living with dogs

2011-04-11T17:47:00.002-04:00

There’s nothing that gives a writer more of a sense of satisfaction and self-worth than drawing a reaction from his readers. So you can imagine how I usually feel after my column runs, when I’m sitting fruitlessly in front of my e-mail screen like a deluded Charlie Brown parked at his mailbox waiting for Valentines.

But not this time. Yes, I’ve written in the past about such hot-button topics as the end of the world, marital smell issues and humanity’s inevitable subjugation by killer robots, to nary a peep of feedback. But my February column on “Signs You May Be Living With Dogs” has drawn a steady (furry) flurry of e-mail responses, which can only lead me to one of the following conclusions: Even more people have dogs than I thought, or dogs have finally learned how to use the Internet.

You can see the full array of responses at The Longest Tail blog (blogs.wickedlocal.com/longesttail), and I recommend that you do, if only to reassure yourself that despite the fact there is probably a dog sleeping next to you in bed right now, perhaps one whose picture you put on your Christmas cards and whom you dress in little doggie sweaters, there is someone out there who is way, way more wacky a dog owner than you. OK, a lot of someones.

Meanwhile, here are a few of my favorite responses so far. Keep those e-mails coming! If your dogs haven’t chewed through your computer cord, that is.

You may be living with dogs if:

1) You have “baby safety” gates in doorways and across stairways, but you don’t have a baby.

2) You begin conversations with others by saying, “Sit, stay, speak.”

3) You catch yourself saying, “sit,” “stay” and “down” to your kids.

4) When the snow melts, your lawn is declared a Superfund site

5) When you move the furniture you find someone living under there.

6) Your coffee does not taste right without a few hairs.

7) The kitchen floor stays clean … for an hour.

8) There’s nose art on all the windows.

9) There’s lots of snoring in your bed and it isn’t your fiancé.

10) You often wear a fur coat and yet have never purchased one.

11) It sounds like Harpo Marx is in your living room.

12) Your household toys need to be squeakeotomized.

13) You have a huge collection of tennis balls, but there are no rackets to be found anywhere.

14) You actually bought an item called “Doggles.”

15) You add a paw to all of the cards you send to family and friends.

16) “Going to the spa” does not pertain to yourself or any two-legged member of your family.

17) Fur on your clothes doesn’t count as a reason to wash them.

18) The furniture that brings you the fondest memories are the pieces with teeth marks.

19) You always have to buy an extra ice cream cone (or hamburger, hold the pickle) for the hairy kid in the back seat.

20) The bank teller sends out biscuits instead of money.

21) You are always greeted warmly at the front door by someone who missed you terribly, is ridiculously excited that you are home and is COMPLETELY starving. (“Seriously, feed me now or I might pass out right here.”)

22) You carry towels in your trunk for impromptu river swims.

23) Stuffed animals living in your house have extremely short life expectancies.

24) The cats have to jump up on the counter to eat their dinner and you don’t apologize to company.

25) At Christmastime, there are stockings for “Santa Paws” to fill.

26) You know the names of all the dogs in the neighborhood, but not the owners’ names.

27) You step in indoor puddles, and the moisture is not from leaking pipes.

28) Leashes and collars are considered “fashion accessories.”

30) You always feel like you are the greatest, most wonderful person in the entire world.

And you’ll keep feeling that way, as long as the bank teller keeps sending out those biscuits.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. This year he’ll be taking an occasional detour from his “At Large” column to write about life with pets — you can follow his animal-related musings at twitter.com/longest_tail.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Obama Names George W. Bush Top Advisor On Libya

2011-03-30T06:35:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - Faced with mounting criticism over his decision to commit American troops to the international military action against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, President Barack Obama has tapped former President George W. Bush to serve as his primary advisor on the conflict.

"We are assigning U.S. forces to a dangerous mission in a Muslim nation that poses no real threat to us, but whose instability could mire us in an expensive, pointless conflict for years to come," said Obama. "I though, who knows more about that than President Bush?"

Bush, reached by CAP News at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, admitted he was surprised when he first got the call.

"But that's mainly because when Laura said Obama was on the phone, I got him mixed up with Osama again," said Bush, chuckling. "When I first retired, [Bin Laden] used to call and taunt me sometimes ... Still want me dead or alive, you dumb infidel? - that kind of thing. But it turned out to be [former White House press secretary] Scotty McClellan trying to gaslight me."

But Bush said he was more than happy to heed the current president's call, saying he's already offered Obama some advice on the situation in Libya.

"For one thing, I would have declared Mission Accomplished days ago," said Bush. "Then I would have gone on vacation for a few weeks, you know, just to keep everybody distracticated."

Bush also advised Obama to start wearing a flight suit whenever possible. "A nice green one with the belts and straps and all the doohickeys," said Bush. "America loves doohickeys."

He then added, "I still wear mine around the ranch sometimes and give the cattle little inspirational decitations. We have seen the end of major grazing operations! That kind of thing."

Bush's appointment as an Obama advisor has prompted criticism from some quarters, however, including from another former president, Bill Clinton.

"People don't seem to remember that President Bush grossly mishandled the Iraq war, and is on record as having completely forgotten about it for a period of several months during his presidency," noted Clinton. "And he's been a huge disappointment to his father, my best friend."

[See the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Dropkick Murphys Singer Has Live Badger Removed From Throat

2011-03-22T22:46:00.003-04:00

BOSTON (CAP) - Following his collapse at a Dropkick Murphys concert at the House of Blues recently, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital treating singer Ken Casey removed a full-grown badger from a cavity that had formed in the rear of his throat.

"It was a ferret badger, which is the smallest of the badger species," said Dr. Hans Krasnal of Mass General. "But you still wouldn't want one in there if you could help it."

Krasnal says that badger infestations were actually quite common in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the animals were a major staple in the diets of Native Americans and colonists.

"It's much more rare today, but certainly not unheard of," Dr. Krasnal added, guessing that Casey may have picked up his badger while traveling abroad in Ireland in the mid-'90s, possibly during a particularly intense bender.

"You usually have to be pretty tanked for the little bugger to get in there without you noticing," said Dr. Krasnal.

Voice experts say the badger probably goes a long way toward explaining Casey's vocals on Dropkick Murphys songs like "I'm Shipping Up To Boston." Critic James Tate of absolutepunk.com described Casey's vocal style, in a review of 2005's The Warrior's Code, as "sounding as if he's got a live badger down there."

"I meant it as a compliment at the time," said Tate this week when contacted at Boston magazine, where he is now a home and garden columnist. "Who knew I was being so literal?"

Doctors have said that Casey is expected to make a full recovery, although his voice will likely never be the same. Casey's vocal coach, Mel Kulick of the Berklee College of Music, says some initial voice therapy sessions indicate Casey now sounds like a cross between Josh Groban and Barry Manilow.

"And a little bit of Enya ... I definitely hear Enya in there," said Kulick.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: To bee or not to (spelling) bee

2011-03-17T06:40:00.000-04:00

I have now been through three elementary school spelling bees, two with my daughter and one with my son, and each time I’ve wondered how this age-old tradition has managed to survive the movement to eradicate all vestiges of competition from American childhood. Clearly somebody’s been paid off.

Think about it: We don’t let kids count goals or runs scored, and routinely award them with trophies simply for showing up (or, if they don’t show up, we bring the trophies to their house later to show them there are no hard feelings). And yet the spelling bee continues, wherein we march 9-year-olds in front of an auditorium full of people and attempt to make them look stupid. It’s refreshing.

Actually, I’m kind of torn over the whole spelling bee concept. I’ve never been one of these parents who think that “everybody’s a winner,” which is a concept I think can be detrimental once a child grows up and discovers that life is all about being stomped on by the actual winners, who got that way because they inherited money, or are from China. On the other hand, spelling bees seem particularly cruel, especially on the parents, who spend the entire event sweating profusely and silently reliving their own childhood humiliations. (Er, not me. Other people.)

It turns out that for most parents, there is nothing good about a spelling bee. Besides being a nervous wreck, there’s all that time spent praying that someone else’s poor schmoe of a kid will be the first one to get eliminated, so you can put off the dashing of your own son or daughter’s childhood innocence for at least one more day. Eventually this leads to an unseemly feeling of glee when one of your child’s competitors gets stuck with encyclopedia or cupboard or delicatessen.

In fact, I’m not proud of it, but I think most parents would agree that it’s hard to get through a spelling bee without thinking of that famous quote by Gandhi: “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears.” Wait, that was actually Genghis Khan. But you get the idea.

As for the kids themselves, they run the gamut when it comes to reactions. You have the ones who have smiles on their faces the whole time, who are clearly delusional, and the ones who look like they’ve just gone through a question-and-answer session with Dick Cheney, who understand the gravity of their predicament. Then there are those who flub a word they were sure they knew, and their faces drop when they hear the bell, like poor Travis when he finds out Old Yeller has rabies.

On the plus side, pretty much all the participants who get through one of these things alive seem to feel pretty good about themselves afterwards, even if they get a word wrong eventually. True, both of my kids have been blessed with some mercifully easy words — my son got “kid” the other night, and had to ask the moderator if that’s what she actually said, in case she was trying to slip in some obscure homophone that sounds like “kid” but is actually spelled with an arcane series of unexpected h’s.

They’ve also gotten some tough ones, but my son said even though he had the jitters at the start, “It got easier every time I got up there.” By the end — he finished seventh — he was a model of poise, looking completely at home in front of a cafetorium full of people, and that alone was worth the effort no matter how far he got.

As for the parents … We’ll be home recovering if you want to stop by to deliver our trophies.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Spelling Bees To Start Allowing Misspelled Words

2011-03-15T07:07:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The Scripps Howard Spelling Bee, in response to complaints about pressure on young participants, has announced it will start allowing students to misspell words in the competition beginning next year.

"We've had many complaints from parents and psychologists who say being ejected from a spelling bee can be a traumatic experience for a child," said Bee Chairwoman Sally Fredericks, noting that the organization received a petition with more than 50,000 signatures from the American Parents United Against Competition (APUAC).

"It does horrible things to children's self-esteem when they spell a word wrong," noted APUAC spokesperson Mitzy Bennington. "If they're allowed to spell words incorrectly without getting ejected from the competition, they get the experience of participating without all those bad feelings that come along with not winning.

"It's important that we leave these children with the impression that they're smart and important and special, even if they're not," noted Bennington.

Under the new rules, participants will each be given a word to spell. The moderator will not indicate whether they spelled it correctly or incorrectly, saying instead, for example, "Great job, Johnny! You're the best!" Then the participant will return to his or her seat.

After five rounds of play using those guidelines, the event will be declared completed and each participant will be awarded a trophy exactly the same size and weight of all the other participants' trophies.

"This way every student goes home feeling like they participated in something special, even if they're not sure exactly what," said Bennington.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Up, up ... and away??

2011-03-09T07:15:00.003-05:00

And this, my friends, is why science was invented: To bring the "Up" house to life.

Now, if only science could find a way to make us all fat and screen-obsessed, like in "Wall-E." Oh wait, we're already all set on that.

More details on the "Up" house at digitaltrends.com.

COLUMN: Charlie fired? This resume has a certain Sheen

2011-03-08T07:57:00.002-05:00

A resume and cover letter we received from a recently unemployed job seeker had a strangely familiar ring to it. See the letter, and our response, for yourself:

Hello Mr. Chianca:

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m writing because I am recently unemployed and am interested in seeking a job at your fine organization. I trust you’re aware of some of my previous experience as a film actor, sitcom star and Vatican assassin warlock, not necessarily in that order.

Unfortunately I cannot provide references from my most recent employer, Chaim Levine, because I violently hate him and he’s a stupid, stupid little man and a punk. However, I can assure you that I’ve spent the last decade effortlessly and magically converting his tin cans into gold, and I’m confident I can do the same thing for your tin cans.

As far as what else I can add to your organization, I’m an F-18 and I will destroy you in the air and I will deploy my ordnance to the ground. I mean that in a literal sense, in much the same way that I mean it when I say I partake in strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee. I can also type 70 words per minute.

My other skills and experience include the following:

Magic and poetry at my fingertips most of the time, and this includes naps;
Brain fires in a way that is perhaps not from this terrestrial realm;
Fire-breathing fists;
Tiger blood;
Converting tin cans into gold (mentioned previously);
Winning, duh.

If I do come to work for your organization, there are a few requirements I’d request you provide in order to maximize the effectiveness of my performance. Chief among these is two (2) personal assistants (female, in their early 20s) who will share my office space, paid sufficiently so that they will leave when I’m done with them. I’m not big on small talk.

The assistants should be prepared to spend time locked in the rest room should I need privacy while forcibly redecorating the office. Also, I’ll need a briefcase in which to carry my personal effects and business paraphernalia (at least five kilos worth).

You may have heard of some indiscretions attributed to me in my previous positions. I admit, like everyone else, I have had some issues in my personal and professional relationships. However, unlike everyone else, I have Adonis DNA. Everyone else can lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly kids and look at their loser lives. Boom! Winning.

In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate that I have much to add to your organization (poetry, fists, blood, gold, etc.), and if you offer me a position, I can assure you that I will wrap both arms around it, and love it violently, and defend it violently through violent hatred. Again, literally.

I look forward to hearing from you. If you need to get in touch with me, I’ll be in the Bahamas with a bikini model, an adult film star and my ex-wife.

Sincerely,
“Carlos Estevez”
(Real name available upon request)

Dear Carlos:

I regret to inform you that we do not have any openings at this time. However, if we have need in the future for someone with your particular skills, such as typing, strafing and/or redecorating, we will definitely be in touch. However, I must warn you that our company does require mandatory drug testing to see if you are on Charlie Sheen.

Sincerely,
Chaim Chianca

COLUMN: Glad that Bob Seger is still the same

2011-03-05T07:00:00.001-05:00

Back in the early ’90s I met a guy whom you might refer to as an inveterate hipster. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses, had an excellent leather jacket and declared that Bob Seger represented everything — everything! — that was wrong with popular music.

As I recall, he didn’t elaborate — inveterate hipsters are big declarers but not especially prolific elaborators — but I can assume he was of the opinion that, by releasing a series of derivative piano- and saxophone-laden “rock” albums about rocking and being nostalgic about rocking, not necessarily in that order, Seger was single-handedly barring the way for other artists who might otherwise be prone to introducing something vaguely original into the musical zeitgeist. (Hipsters love saying “zeitgeist.”)

My initial response, as a Seger fan, was to be offended. Frankly, I found the guy’s music mostly irresistible; his live mash-up of Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” and “Little Queenie” was like a duck-walk on steroids, and forever established Seger in my mind as a dedicated bearer of the rock ’n’ roll torch — one of “Chuck’s children,” as Seger himself referred to Berry’s disciples in “Rock and Roll Never Forgets.”

It probably didn’t hurt that I picked up my affection for Seger from my father, who played Seger’s “Stranger In Town” LP early and often during the late ’70s. My dad had a proclivity for keeping up with popular music; Seger, The Eagles and Rod Stewart were all favorites, despite his advanced age — 35, give or take — and it separated him from most of my friends’ parents, whose stations always seemed tuned to The Music Of Your Life, whatever (and whosever life) that was.

(An aside: I remember with some pride the time my friend Mark heard the opening chords of Journey’s “Escape” album and bounded up our stairs to find my father studiously reading the lyrics on the record sleeve; Mark was both delighted and flummoxed to find an adult who had somehow managed to avoid fogey-hood — it was like coming across a four-leaf clover, or a unicorn.)

Despite all that history, though, I’ll admit that eventually, not long after the hipster encounter —maybe because of it? — I found myself losing faith in Seger’s rock bona fides. Looking back, I had to admit that as the ’80s wound down, each of Seger’s albums had started to sound vaguely — OK, exactly — like the album before, just a little less so. (Quick, tell me the difference between “The Fire Inside” and “Like a Rock.” See?) In 1995 he released “It’s A Mystery,” which went gold despite the fact that nobody remembers it, and then he went on an 11-year sabbatical, and I can’t say I missed him that much.

At least I didn’t think I did, until 2006, when he released “Face the Promise,” and I was surprised to find myself inexplicably thrilled. I thought I had long relegated Seger to the pile of artists whom I had moved on from some time after college, right next to Billy Joel, Phil Collins and squarely on top of Huey Lewis. But I got the new album anyway, and though his rasp was a little croakier, it was as appealing as ever — and lo and behold, at age 60, his once-premature nostalgia finally made perfect sense.

It was also enough to make me revisit his old catalog, and wouldn’t you know it, it held up. Sure, “The Horizontal Bop” is just silly (if not downright juvenile), and we’re best to forget “Shakedown,” his biggest pop hit and only one without the Silver Bullet Band, whom we can only assume he dismissed because he was embarrassed about singing what should have been a Glenn Frey song. But “Sunspot Baby” still has that same bluesy drive; the live “Katmandu” retains its appealing frenzy; and the hits — “Night Moves,” “Against the Wind,” “Hollywood Nights” — evoke, well, yes, nostalgia, but also affection for an era when radio-friendly music at least tried to rock and roll.

The reason I bring all this up, of course, is that Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band recently announced another national tour, and he’ll be bringing his creaky 65-year-old self to Boston’s TD Garden in April. Wherever that hipster is today, he might say that the fact Seger still sells out arenas, where aging fans can wear their too-tight concert T-shirts and shake their fists to his bland rock retreads, represents everything that’s wrong with popular music today.

Tickets go on sale Saturday. Maybe my dad would like to go with me.

Read my musings on rock music at blogs.wickedlocal.com/springsteen.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: CBS May Replace Charlie Sheen With Mel Gibson

2011-03-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - CBS has announced that rather than cancel its hit comedy Two And A Half Men, producers have begun holding auditions to replace embattled star Charlie Sheen. But critics are questioning whether the actors they're considering, including troubled film star Mel Gibson, might actually make the situation worse.

CBS is looking to replace Sheen after he slammed show creator Chuck Lorre in several interviews last week. Although the show has survived Sheen's past benders, rants, drug arrests and alleged abuse of women including his wives, apparently calling the show's creator a "punk" was a step too far, leading Lorre and CBS to shut down production.

"I can live with a star who gets caught with a suitcase full of cocaine or smacks women or locks a porn star in a hotel toilet while he wrecks the room, but not one who hurts my feelings," said Lorre, tearing up.

Rather than put cast and crew out of work, however, Lorre and CBS have begun auditioning people to take Sheen's place. But a list of actors who've performed screen tests, leaked yesterday to TMZ.com, suggests that the producers may not have learned their lesson.

"I can't help but wonder if Mel Gibson is really going to be an improvement over Sheen," said Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales. "At least Sheen is only borderline anti-Semitic."

Gibson's screen test, posted in part by TMZ, would seem to justify Shales' concerns. At one point, Gibson, portraying Charlie and Alan's "Uncle Mel from Australia," is seen reading lines with Jon Cryer as Alan. A partial transcript appears below:

CRYER: Uncle Mel, I'm speechless.
GIBSON: Are you a Jew? The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.
CRYER: Uh ... The line is "silent admiration is all I ask."
GIBSON: I'll put you in a f--ing rose garden, you c--. Because I'm capable of it.
CRYER: Um ... Can he maybe read with Holland Taylor instead?

Other potential cast additions include Lindsay Lohan, who auditioned for the role of Charlie and Alan's slutty cousin Belinda; and shock jock Howard Stern as their new wacky neighbor, Howard Stern.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: 35 signs you're living with dogs

2011-02-22T05:35:00.003-05:00

As I’ve mentioned before in this space, my wife, my two kids and I share our household with four dogs. How this happened is a story for another day, once I figure it out myself — it was all kind of a blur, like a roller-coaster ride, or college.

Regardless, somehow here we all are, and it’s a predicament that’s gotten me thinking about all the things we dog co-habitators find completely normal that other people — people who don’t have to vacuum three times a day, and whose doorbells don’t trigger a high alert consistent with a DEFCON 3 potential nuclear disaster — might see as at least slightly unusual.

With that in mind, I enlisted my kids — Jackie, 11, and Timmy, 9 — to help me compile a handy list of signs that may indicate you fall into that first group, the one in which at least one member of your household is fur-covered and more than casually interested in butt-sniffing. If even some of these are true, you may be beyond help.

You may be living with dogs if:

1) You’re walking around with dog food in your coat pocket.

2) You’re walking around with plastic bags in your other coat pocket.

3) Your car smells like it just rolled in something gross.

4) Your car is full of fur.

5) Your kids are full of fur.

6) Your furniture has that chewed-in sort of look.

7) There’s a heavy object on top of the lid to your kitchen trashcan.

8) You own a device designed for propelling tennis balls great distances.

9) You know what a “Snausage” is.

10) You know where the butcher shop keeps the spare bones.

11) You own at least one product that spells bones “bonz.”

12) There are bones (and/or bonz) under the couch.

13) When you go for a walk in the woods, you’re always on the lookout for a really good stick.

14) The cat food’s gone and the cat didn’t eat.

15) You can’t sleep because someone’s licking your feet.

16) You can’t sleep because someone is lying on top of the covers like a sack of sand.

17) A bark is your alarm clock.

18) You keep a towel next to your front door.

19) You’re sitting on the living room floor because there’s no more room on the couch.

20) Your living-room floor is covered with stuffed animals that are missing limbs, eyes and heads.

21) Your living-room floor is covered with pee pads.

22) Your living-room floor is covered with what living-room floors get covered with if you forget to put down the pee pads.

23) The cookies are missing.

24) After the snow melts on your front lawn, you find socks.

25) There are paw prints on your kids’ homework.

26) Kong is no longer just the name of a giant monkey.

27) Someone has to guard the turkey.

28) You’re walking when it’s raining.

29) You’re walking when it’s freezing.

30) You’re walking when it’s boiling.

31) You’re walking, period.

32) You have a bright orange jacket with matching scarves, and you’re not a hunter or Gisele Bundchen.

33) Your every shoe is a chew toy.

34) You’ve ever filled a bathtub with tomato juice.

35) Your best friends love you more than life itself, and smell like they just rolled in something gross.

Of course, there are a lot more than just these 35. For our next installment, we’ll be featuring your suggestions of signs that you may be living with dogs. E-mail them to info@chianca-at-large.com, and remember: Unwanted hair and smells is a small price to pay for all that love, right?

Now if you need me, I’ll be in the living room. I’ll be the one sitting on the floor.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Church Of Scientology Defends 'Internship' Program

2011-02-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES (CAP) - Responding to a report in The New Yorker that it is under investigation for human trafficking and using forced free labor, the Church of Scientology fired back this week, saying the ordering of church members to do grueling work in exchange for little or no money is nothing more than an extremely active internship program.

"Some of the world's most successful organizations and businesses have similar internship programs," explained Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of Scientology International. "Umm ... IBM, for example."

When pointed out that IBM interns get paid about $20 an hour and gain valuable business experience, while Scientology members get paid about $50 a week to perform chores such as scrubbing Scientology superstar Tom Cruise's boat, Davis responded, "Who says boat scrubbing isn't valuable? Somebody's got to make Tom's boat shine like the glowing Sol of Teegeeack, so to speak.

"Besides, as [Church of Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard used to say, a little hard work is good for the thetan, no matter what planet it came from," added Davis. "Umm ... I'm kind of paraphrasing but that's basically what he said."

A CAP News study of other religions backs up Davis' claim that the practice is not completely unusual. For instance, altar boys do not get paid by the Catholic Church, although they are sometimes asked to do menial tasks, such as come to the rectory in their bathing suits to wash the priest's car.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Snow-where to run to, doggie

2011-02-11T07:55:00.000-05:00

I am my household’s designated evening dog walker. That means while everyone else in the world is watching “Modern Family,” I’m leading four dogs into the wilds of our backyard so they can do out there all the things we’d prefer they didn’t do in here.

We have enough property that this is usually a pleasant adventure, such as when we get close to the woods and I’m sure I can hear the rustling of something (rabid coyote, serial killer, rogue NASA robot) coming to kill me. You’d think I’d have nothing to worry about, being surrounded by four dogs, but I’m reasonably sure that as soon as something ominous appeared, Lilly, Corona and Sally would run (not for help, just run), and Penny would just try to lick it into submission, which would probably only work on the robot.

Regardless, it hasn’t been an issue lately, since my entire yard is now like the surface of the moon: cold, foreboding and looking vaguely like three solid feet of cheese. Sure, the driveway is plowed, and there are a few carefully snow-blown paths that look like little Death Star trenches, if Death Star trenches were frequented by giant space dogs leaving little Jabba the Hutts in their wake. But it’s no substitute for a full yard, or, if nobody’s looking, a neighbor’s yard. Hypothetically.

It’s bad enough without even considering the getup I have to put on to bring them out. I give the dogs credit for their patience every night, staring sympathetically as I pull on my rubber boots, quilted flannel shirt, ski jacket, gloves, scarf and hat or, if it’s cold enough, two hats. If someone came up the driveway and saw us I’m sure they’d mistake me for the padded guy in a K-9 demonstration.

Still, I’d argue that my wife, Theresa, the household’s designated daytime dog walker, has it worse — at all her favorite dog-friendly spots, she’s lucky to find a plowed-out parking space, much less a walking area where you don’t immediately sink in up to your waist or jowls, depending on your species. I’ve been there with her, so I know it’s true: You find yourself standing there in the middle of a field panting, the dogs bounding, dolphin-like, through the drifts as you pray an illegal snowmobiler will come by and pack the snow down, or run you over.

We do have a fenced-in area in front of the house with some shoveled-out space, but this weekend Sally, our 4-month-old golden, finally figured out that with so much snow up against the gate, all she had to do was hop over and she was home free. Of course it didn’t take long for her to start sinking into the nearest snow bank up to her furry little ears — I pictured rescue workers having to burrow down there and send her back up in a Chilean miner tube.

Luckily, I was able to climb into the snow after her and get her back easily enough. Meanwhile, our wandering dog Penny stared incredulously, clearly flummoxed at how Sally had managed to get on the other side of the gate, something Penny had been attempting to do for years by sheer force of will. Of course she had just seen her jump it, but we’ve realized Penny has the attention span of Dory in “Finding Nemo.” This also explains all the times she scratches at the front door, then looks at me with utter surprise when I open it to let her in. (“Evening dog walker guy! What are you doing here?”)

So we’re left trying to find a way to give the dogs outdoor supervision despite the challenges: Just as the show must go on, the dogs must go out. Fortunately, even if it doesn’t seem like it now, spring will be here before we know it, and we’ll have the whole yard to explore again.

At which time I’m sure I will sink immediately into mud up to my waist. It should be much easier for Penny to lick me from that angle.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Kim Kardashian Upset Over Naked Photos In The Economist

2011-02-09T07:47:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - On the latest episode of her E! television series Kourtney & Kim Take New York, model and socialite Kim Kardashian tells her sister Kourtney that she's very upset with her nude pictures that appeared in the Feb. 4 edition of The Economist.

"Oh my God, I'm more naked than I was in W," says a teary Kardashian on the episode. "And I didn't think that was possible."

The photos show a naked Kardashian carrying a briefcase in one hand and a set of actuarial tables in the other, with absolutely nothing in between. "I'm so mad right now," she says on the show. "The guy at the Economist promised [my private areas] would be covered by art! Whatever that is."

"I'll admit we had originally planned to obscure Ms. Kardashian's naughty bits with a clever caricature of Ben Bernanke," said a source close to the magazine's publisher who declined to be named. "But then we decided her tremendous naked breasts might go over better with our readers.

"This is a group of people who got excited when we featured a cover with two camels humping," noted the source.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Sick of snow? It's always summer in Hollywood

2011-02-02T06:32:00.000-05:00

Given that as I write this, the forecast for the week is a steady snow starting on Tuesday and tapering off sometime in 2013, I have decided to spend the remainder of the winter in Aruba. Unfortunately, like James Taylor with Carolina, I can only afford to go there in my mind, where the airfares are cheap and I look much less globular and pasty while sunbathing.

But imagining I’m warm and that my lawn doesn’t resemble the surface of the moon only goes so far. I find it’s also helpful to tune into some movies that put me in a more summery mood and remind me that in just a few short months I’ll be back at the beach, where I will be chewed to death by a giant shark.

But even if “Jaws” (1975) has many of the elements that epitomize the summer movie, including sand, surf, skinny-dipping and Robert Shaw being bitten in half, it’s missing one important component of all great summer flicks: Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla costume. Also Annette Funicello, but mostly that first thing.

That’s why the better movie — “better” in the sense of it being much, much worse — is “One Crazy Summer” (1986), which is director Savage Steve Holland’s less well-known companion to 1985’s “Better Off Dead.” It may not have the same off-kilter genius of “Dead,” but it does have the same star in John Cusack, and also the aforementioned Goldthwait scene, which may be his crowning achievement (apologies to “Police Academy” 2-4). Local bonus: It takes place in Nantucket and was filmed on Cape Cod, which tends to be a beautiful area once it thaws out.

Another way to beat the winter blues is to watch summer movies that take place during high school, which remind you that even though you may be freezing now … at least you’re no longer in high school.

Two of the best are George Lucas’ “American Graffiti” (1973) and Richard Linkater’s “Dazed and Confused.” (1993), which both follow summer-night adventures of teenagers, in 1962 and 1976, respectively. “Graffiti” is the more classic of the two, a shambling masterpiece that shows that there was a time when Lucas seemed to have some idea of what real people actually speak like. “Dazed” has its merits as a summer movie, though, including an early appearance by Matthew McConaughey, a summery actor if there ever was one, and lots of 1970s tube socks.

Of course, summer movies don’t have to be goofy — sometimes they just need to be sweaty. I suppose Lawrence Kasdan’s “Body Heat” (1981) would fall into that category, although I’ve never actually watched that one, mainly because I have an aversion to seeing William Hurt (1) in a pencil-thin moustache and (2) perspiring.

I have seen “The Big Easy,” though — that’s the 1987 New Orleans-set crime flick featuring sweaty Dennis Quaid, sweaty Ellen Barkin, sweaty John Goodman and even sweaty Ned Beatty. It also happens to one of the sexiest, funniest police thrillers of the 1980s, thanks to Quaid and Barkin’s easy chemistry; with all due respect to the almost equally snappy relationship between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon.”

My favorite choice for a summer thriller, though, has got to be Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954). Like us during one of this winter’s blizzards, Jimmy Stewart is stuck at home, except he’s there because his leg is broken. Sure, he’s itchy and sweaty, and spying on his neighbors eventually prompts Raymond Burr to break into his apartment and try to throw him out the window. But on the plus side, he gets regular visits from Grace Kelly. It’s a decent trade-off.

I plan to have all of these handy during this week’s latest snow-in — I figure if I pull the shades, crank the heat and get cinematically summer-ized, it will help get me through until the real thing comes around. Which I hope is soon: Aruba in my mind is starting to resemble the beach scene at the end of “Planet of the Apes” (1968).

I just hope I don’t look too pasty in my loincloth.

COLUMN: The dog that got away, again

2011-01-26T07:51:00.002-05:00

Picture it: It’s 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, it’s 16 degrees, and I’m standing in a ski jacket and plaid pajama bottoms on my driveway, which at this wintry moment looks like a footpath that might be used by Bhutanese yak herders. In one hand is a long yellow leash attached, conspicuously, to nothing, and in the other a half-empty box of Milk Bone dog biscuits, which I’m shaking up and down like some kind of pathetic cardboard maraca.

Halfway down the driveway is our 3-year-old yellow Lab, Penny, staring at me like I’ve gone completely out of my mind.

The hardest thing to reconcile, while swearing under my breath and fruitlessly shaking my Milk Bones as Penny tears off in the other direction, is why this dog never passes up the opportunity to bolt. After all, the house she’s trying so desperately to escape contains heat, food and unfettered access to any number of lumpy couches. Is the lingering possibility of finding a dead animal carcass really so compelling? (Apparent answer: Yes.)

I figure this is the type of thing you have to grapple with if you live with not one, not two, not three, but (wait for it) four canine companions, which happens to be exactly the situation I find myself in. And these are not fit-in-your-purse, keep-them-inside-if-there-are-hawks-around kinds of dogs — these are Labs and goldens, the kind who will collapse on your bed like a four-legged sack of cement, fixing your comforter in place like spikes through a circus tent.

For the record, my wife, Theresa, is the true dog lover in the family — she loves dogs in a very real, spiritual way that she considers more than worth any effort she has to put in to care for them. Whereas I tend to love dogs in more of a theoretical sense, in that way where you get choked up at the end of “Homeward Bound,” but you’d rather not be cleaning up after anything that comes out of them, or chasing them through snow drifts in your pajamas.

My family did have a dog when I was a kid — a large and unfortunately aggressive boxer named Rocky, whose tenure as a pet did not end well — but our current crowded household (I’ll tell you about the three cats later) has led me to consider, as I’ve never done before, why we get so attached to our pets. After all, they’re messy, they’re expensive, they do things that make you want to strangle them, and, unlike your kids, they aren’t obligated to take care of you when you get decrepit.

I guess maybe Penny’s personality holds the answer to that question. Her distinguishing trait is to greet everything she meets, be it growling, cowering or yipping, with loving and earnest licks to the face. She’s a diplomat and a peacekeeper, like Jimmy Carter with a 6-inch tongue, but fortunately not nearly as smart — for instance, after chasing her pointlessly through the snow for half an hour on Sunday, I simply opened the door to Theresa’s car and she promptly jumped into the driver’s seat, like a teenager awaiting her first lesson.

I dove in next to her and snapped the leash on, and she lovingly and earnestly licked my face as if I’d just rescued her from the brink of death. Yes, I could have strangled her just minutes before, but all was quickly forgiven — it’s hard to stay mad at someone when you’re relieved they didn’t get themselves run over by a snowplow. And even if Penny’s prone to taking off, I admit it’s flattering when she showers me with licks of love when she comes back.

So much so that I’m almost able to forget about what may have been in her mouth while she was gone.

Note: The above is the first in a series of columns I'll be doing this year on life among pets. Follow them at my new blog, The Longest Tail.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: MTV Shocked At Flap Over Show On Naked Fornicating Teens

2011-01-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - MTV executives say they are surprised that their new show Skins, featuring actual teen actors engaging in steamy sexual activity and drug use, is generating controversy among viewers and advertisers.

"Skins is a show that addresses real-world issues confronting teens in a frank way," said MTV spokesman Joshua Kepnis. "In order to do that concept justice, we had to film amazingly attractive naked teenagers performing simulated sex acts on each other, and we're shocked - shocked! - that our honest treatment of the subject is causing such a ruckus.

"Well, the sex acts are probably simulated," he added. "You'll have to watch and see for yourself on Monday nights at 10 Eastern time. I'm just saying."

The show, which some say may violate federal child pornography statutes, has raised ire for scenes that depict the teen actors, aged 15-19, disrobing and climbing in to bed together, running naked down the street in an aroused state, and having loud, graphic group sex after one teenage boy arrives at a girls' slumber party to deliver a pizza.

"You know, a realistic portrayal of how teens actually live," said Kepnis.

As for the pornography charges, "We are confident that Skins will not only comply with all applicable legal requirements, but also with our responsibilities to our viewers," he said. "This is by no means child pornography, and believe me, I would know."

But MTV's disclaimer was apparently not good enough for Taco Bell, which pulled its ads from the show last week.

"The typical Taco Bell customer does not want to turn on the TV and see young, skinny, attractive naked people," explained Taco Bell spokesmen Greg Francis. "That's the only thing that makes them feel worse about themselves than sitting at home alone eating takeout Gorditas."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Tobacco Execs Annoyed That First Cigarette Causes Cancer

2011-01-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (CAP) - A new study that says the genetic damage that leads to cancer sets in within 30 minutes of your first cigarette has left tobacco company executives miffed, insiders report.

"Well, here we go again," said one vice president at a large American tobacco company, during a joint interview with several colleagues given over speakerphone, under the condition of anonymity. "Now we've got to come up with another damned cartoon character."

"That could take the whole weekend," another executive added, noticeably peeved.

The new report, published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, shows that cancer-causing chemicals form rapidly in the body just 15 to 30 minutes after smoking a single cigarette.

"It's disturbing, to say the least," said Dr. Francis Spitznagel of the Pew Research Center, who worked on the study. "It turns out the idea of just having one cigarette is similar to the concept of just drinking one bottle of Draino, or just huffing one canister of radon.

"Although you'd be surprised at how often both of those things happen," he added.

The study also found that prolonged exposure to so-called "tobacco rays," which cigarettes emit through their packaging, can eventually turn humans into gray-skinned, sallow-cheeked troglodytes. "Which would explain most of the country's convenience store clerks," noted Spitznagel.

Spitznagel said the study stopped short of reporting even more severe findings, but that further research would probably soon yield conclusive proof of the long-rumored "Spielberg Effect," wherein one puff of your first cigarette causes your entire face to melt off, like the Nazi at the end of Raiders Of the Lost Ark.

"That's much more rare, of course," Spitznagel added. "One in 1,000, tops."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Just a little off in 2010

2011-01-12T22:25:00.002-05:00

Every year I hear from people asking why I continue to offer up annual predictions, given that all it does is prove I have a complete lack of insight when it comes to current events, or have not been paying attention, or both. And I always have the same response: Why do you insist on bothering me during “Jersey Shore”?

With that in mind, here’s a look back on my annual predictions from a year ago. As you will see, my streak continues.

1) “This will be the year we stop getting so hung up on alternative energy and admit that you just can’t go wrong with safe, reliable oil. Drill baby drill!” Clearly I was a little off on this one, judging from the number of oil-stained hate letters I’ve gotten from turtles and egrets. But I was correct in my other oil-related prediction, namely that it would remain the home-heating method least likely to make your house explode.

2) “Facing evidence that the American public will never go for it and it would probably just make matters worse anyway, President Obama will abandon his plans to pass healthcare reform.” I’m taking credit for two out of three on this one.

3) “What’s that sound you hear? It’s the economy, roaring back to life!” OK, I might have been overzealous about that “roaring” part. I probably should have said, “creaking slowly and laboriously back to life, like an ancient lawnmower with a bum starter rope.”

4) “Enough with those stupid toys already — ‘Toy Story 3’ will be the biggest flop of the year.” Well, yes, it did wind up being the No. 1 movie of 2010, and the highest grossing animated film of all time. But in my defense, I didn’t really think it would flop in the first place — it was just a defense mechanism, because I knew it would probably make me sob like a little girl. OK, not “probably.”

5) “World Cup excitement will finally win over American audiences to the world’s most popular sport.” And it might have, too, if we weren’t so easily distracted by funnily named plastic horns. (“Listen! It made a silly noise!”)

6) “Charlie Sheen will finally clean up his act and be awarded the Mother Teresa Award by the St. Bernadette Institute of Sacred Art.” For some reason, like CBS and all those women who keep marrying him, I’ve refused to give up on Charlie Sheen. But apparently the St. Bernadette Institute doesn’t give the Mother Teresa Award to people who trap naked porn stars in their hotel bathrooms. It’s in the bylaws somewhere.

7) “People will realize that the Tea Party movement is misguided and nutty, and as a result it will play no significant role in electoral politics in the mid-term elections.” I would like to go on the record that I was just joking about this, and I, for one, welcome our new Tea Party overlords.

8) “This will be the fifth straight year without a hit song by Train.” I thought I was pretty safe with this one. Curse you “Soul Sister” and your irresistible catchiness!

9) “The up-and-coming profession of the year will be mining, particularly in South American countries.” Well, events of the past year probably didn’t do anything to encourage more young people to pursue mining as a career option, other than in the towns where the choices are mining and starving to death (which, granted, is most of them). Still, things worked out pretty well in the end for the Chilean miners — one of them got to go to Graceland.

10) “Lady Gaga will appear in public wearing a dress made entirely out of meat.” I knew Lady Gaga wouldn’t let me down! That’s why next year, I predict she’s going to win the Mother Teresa Award.

Either her or that Snooki character.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Alan Thicke Warns Dead Birds Signify World's End

2011-01-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (CAP) - Growing Pains star Alan Thicke has declared recent incidents involving mysteriously dying birds and fish to be a sign of the end of the world, prompting mass panic and rioting throughout the globe.

The 63-year-old actor appeared on Anderson Cooper's CNN show to rebut assertions by his Growing Pains co-star Kirk Cameron that dead-animal incidents in Arkansas, Louisiana and Sweden did not indicate that doomsday was at hand. Cooper had asked Cameron to discuss the topic on his show because the former teen idol had starred in the Left Behind series about life after The Rapture, and because every scientist and theologian in the world was apparently unavailable.

Cameron had told Cooper that "it's really kind of silly to equate birds falling out of the sky with some kind of end times theory," prompting Cooper to cock his eyebrow insouciantly. But appearing on Cooper's show last night, Thicke disagreed.

"The end is near!" asserted Thicke in that stuttery yet appealing Canadian cadence that audiences loved so dearly back when he was giving homespun advice to fictional children Mike, Ben, Carol and Crissie from 1985-1992.

"I don't care what Kirk says about it not meaning anything - he's just wrong," Thicke added. "Just like he was wrong when he rode a dirt bike that time he went camping with Boner, even though Maggie and I told him not to."

When Cooper - smirking slightly, not unlike whenever he had to preview his show's topic on Larry King Live - reminded Thicke that Growing Pains was a fictional show, Thicke responded, "Anderson, did I ever tell you I wrote the theme songs to both Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts Of Life?"

Thicke also pointed to last year's moving up of the famed atomic scientists' Doomsday Clock, although authorities claimed that was actually for Daylight Savings Time.

Speaking via satellite from Camp David, in a room that looked remarkably like the interior of a high-tech survival "ark" headed for the world's highest mountain range, President Barack Obama appealed for calm, siding with Kirk Cameron in the controversy.

"Just as I told you that NASA scientists had, uh, in no way determined that recent earthquakes indicated the imminent end of life on our planet, I also am not privy to any, you know, top-secret government information indicating that the dead birds and fish, uh, are a sign of a pending apocalypse," said Obama.

"Now if you excuse me, I have a very important meeting with the other heads of state who have been secreted to the survival ark under cover of darkness," Obama continued. "Uh, by which I mean, decided on a whim to visit me here at Camp David."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE: The Year in Fake News

2011-01-05T07:04:00.000-05:00

In case you missed our extensive fake news coverage from 2010, below are some of the top not-real stories of the year. View the rest in our Fake News Archive and at CAP News.

January: Nation’s perverts endorse full-body airport scanners

RENO, Nev. (CAP) — America’s largest organized group of perverts and degenerates released a statement wholeheartedly supporting plans to install full-body scanning equipment in the nation’s airports.

“Any device that can prevent terrorism while at the same time allowing you to see through people’s clothes is A-OK in our book,” said Nigel Friedrichsen, president of the Reno-based National Association of Perverts (NAP). “That’s the definition of win-win. Um … At least our definition.”

The scanners have been highly controversial, with some civil libertarians claiming the devices violate travelers’ privacy by performing a “virtual strip search.”

“Yes, it’s true the scans do expose the full bodies of the travelers who pass through them,” noted Friedrichsen. “Screeners would be able to see, say, under the brassieres of women age 16 to 35. Or into their underpants … their frilly, lacey underpants … Mm … I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”

The effort is clearly gaining ground: Newark Liberty Airport has announced it will install the scanners later this year. “They should be online in a few months,” said Chris Keller, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, noting they would not be instituting the procedure if it weren’t absolutely necessary.

“If you’ve ever been to Newark, you know you wouldn’t want to see under these people’s clothes unless you had to,” he said. “If anything you’d want to put more clothes on them.”

April: Arizona immigration law cracks down on illegal Swedes

PHOENIX (CAP) — A new law that requires police to question people about their immigration status if they suspect they are in the country illegally should help curb the flow of illegal Irish, Polish and Swedish immigrants through U.S. borders, say supporters.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose tough crackdowns have made him a hero in the anti-illegal immigration community, pointed out that the new law would not unfairly target Mexicans, as some of charged.

“The law gives police authority to question anyone they think is here illegally, not just people of Hispanic origin,” he pointed out. “So if someone is very pale and blond, that might be cause to investigate as to whether they’re here illegally from Sweden.

“Or they might be an albino, in which case they might be here illegally from Albania,” he pointed out.

Besides skin shade and hair color, Arpaio said police will be trained to spot other characteristics that may denote whether someone might be in Arizona illegally. For instance:

Funny accent;
Sandals;
Eating croissants and/or strudel.

While the new law has drawn protests around the state and the country, it has some high-profile supporters, such as Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the bill. “Just look around,” said Gov. Brewer, gesturing to the angry crowds gathered in protest around the Arizona Capitol. “There are a lot of very swarthy people there, and I think police need the freedom to question them as to their status.”

When pointed out that the people could just be tanned as a result of living in Arizona, Brewer responded, “Can I see your papers, please?”

June: Umpire who blew perfect game runs over pitcher

DETROIT (CAP) — Disgraced MLB umpire Jim Joyce made his second major faux pas in a week’s time, apparently hitting the gas instead of the brake in his 2002 Chevy Blazer and running over Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga as he left Comerica Park.

“I don’t know how it happened,” said a teary-eyed Joyce afterward. “I had a really good angle on the pedals, and I would have swore it was the brake.”

“I say many times: Nobody’s perfect,” Galarraga said from his bed at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, where he was being treated for multiple contusions. “Everybody makes a mistake. Unfortunately this one leave me out for the rest of the season, but I’m sure he no want to run me over, probably.”

Galarraga and Joyce of course made headlines when Joyce blew a crucial call at first base, robbing Galarraga of a perfect game with just one out to go in the ninth inning. The Detroit community has since rallied around Galarraga, with GM even presenting him with a brand new 2001 convertible.

“Unfortunately Jim [Joyce] backed into it at full speed after he run me over,” noted Galarraga, who said the car is now totaled. “But again, he just make a mistake. Like I make a mistake when I got out of bed that day, apparently.”

“I had a really good angle on [Galarraga’s car] in my rear view mirror, and I would have swore it wasn’t there,” said Joyce, dabbing his eyes and large, fu-manchu style moustache.

Meanwhile, calls to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to reverse the call and award Galarraga his perfect game have yet to abate. Congressman John D. Dingell, D-Michigan, even introduced a Congressional Resolution urging Selig to do so.

“I figure if I can pull that off, maybe all the voters in Detroit will forget they don’t have jobs,” said Dingell.

September: Obama thanks pastor for not burning ‘my beloved Quran’

WASHINGTON (CAP) — In what some are calling a telling slip of the tongue, President Barack Obama Saturday thanked Gainesville, Fla. Minister Terry Jones for “not burning my beloved Quran, the true compilation of the verbal revelations given to the Holy Prophet Muhammad.”

He then paused for a moment and added, “Did I just say that out loud?”

Not surprisingly, Obama backtracked the next day, telling reporters he was just referring to the Quran’s importance to the Muslim religion, and not to his personal feelings about the book. “I certainly don’t ritually wash before I read it,” he noted. “Um, when I read it, that is. Which is never.”

He then pulled a copy of the King James Bible out of his desk drawer, and said, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll swear on a stack of these things — this holy book revered and read daily by us, you know, Christians.”

When reporters noted the Bible was still sealed in its plastic wrapper, Obama abruptly stopped taking questions, knelt on his hands and knees on the small rug in front of his desk to “find a lost contact lens,” muttered what some believe sounded like “Glory to my Lord Allah, the Most High Most Praiseworthy,” and left the room hurriedly.

Obama’s comments come in the wake of the weeks-long controversy over the Rev. Terry Jones’ plans to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 at his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville. Jones scrapped the event at the last minute after a slew of calls asking him not to burn the books, including ones from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former President Jimmy Carter and hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

“Although we’re pretty sure Hilton was just trying to score some coke,” said Cpl. Tscharna Senn of the Gainesville Police Department.

IN AND OUT 2010: Life in the USA

2011-01-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

IN:

The iPad. Actually, these tablet computers are sort of in and out. They’re in because people have scooped them up by the millions, and they might revolutionize the way we interact with the Web. They’re out because I don’t have one, and saying that over and over again is the only I can keep from crying myself to sleep each night.

Smartphones are also in because using a phone just to talk to somebody is what the cavemen did right before bludgeoning the guy in the next cave with a giant stick. Just ask your 11-year-old.

2) Social media. Remember when that caveman bludgeoned that guy? Then he went out and socialized face-to-face with other human beings rather than interfacing with them via a social media platform. Cavemen are out, and so are other human beings.

Facebook is in, though — even movies about Facebook are in. But aren’t you glad you aren’t Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, now that you know that for all his billions, he’s kind of lonely? No, me either.

3) Cheap eats. As the economy slowly trickles back into a reasonable state of healthiness (reasonable states of healthiness are in, as long as the co-pay isn’t too high), people are still cutting back where they can. So even if they’re not doing fast food, because Happy Meals are evil (EEEEEVILLLLL!), people are at least sticking with food that moves at a fairly brisk pace and may come with a baguette.

Except for rich people, who are reportedly spending the entirety of their tax cut on foie gras.

4) Jeans that aren’t actually jeans. Denim has served us well for a good 150 years, so why we have to go messing with it now is beyond me. (The last thing we need is a repeat of the great acid wash debacle of 1983.) But for some reason jeggings are in, even though we’re pretty sure these jean-leggings actually prevent the blood from ever getting to your feet. Expect women to start tipping over any minute now.

More our speed are PajamaJeans, which are … wait, let me check my notes … Pajamas that look exactly like jeans! Meaning that from now on, whenever we wear our pajamas in public, fewer people will know.

5) Reading. Reading is back, baby! As long as you do it on a Kindle or an iPad or in little bursts on your phone while you’re waiting for the bus. Actual paper books are out, except to put under the leg of a crooked table. Try doing that with your Kindle, and you’ll be out $139.

OUT:

1) Laptops and iPods. Now that everybody except me has an iPad, carrying around that tremendous, leg-crushing laptop seems downright quaint. As for that PC on your desk, this is the equivalent of the IBM computer that used to take up an entire room and required a team of engineers just to remove the other team of engineers who got trapped inside it looking for a missing punch card.

As for iPods, the ones that just hold music are completely useless since your phone can do that now. However, the iPod Touch is in because you can touch it. Touching is in. (Not you, Brett Favre.)

2) MySpace. If anyone remembers what this was, please message me on Facebook and let me know.

3) Demonizing pot. Now that marijuana is only sorta, kinda illegal, everyone is embarrassed about all those years spent referring to it as evil (EEEEEVILLLLL!) — not as evil as Happy Meals but still bad. Now, we realize our energies should be devoted elsewhere, like keeping kids from texting while driving, which is very much out. Texting while smoking pot will forever be in, though.

4) Baggy clothes. This is bad news for those of us who haven’t given up Happy Meals. We know who we are. These include the infamously shapeless “mom jeans,” although if that means Mom will be wearing jeggings from now on, we’re skipping Mother’s Day brunch this year.

5) Passing judgment. Yes, times are hard. But that just means it’s especially important we all stick together and avoid name-calling, jumping to conclusions and engaging in divisive activities. You know, such as arbitrarily declaring what’s in and what’s out.

Uh-oh.

IN AND OUT 2010: Sports

2011-01-01T09:55:00.002-05:00

IN:

1) Shaq. Have Boston and a slightly faded superstar ever embraced each other so enthusiastically? (Ben Affleck doesn’t count; he was born here.) Shaq has played for such teams as the Miami Heat, the — gag! — L.A. Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers. But now he’s a Celtic, and it seems this is what Shaq was always supposed to be. Well, besides being a Comcast spokesman with the guy who said “Bueller?”

2) Theo. Last year, it looked like Theo Epstein had gone off the rails, declaring the upcoming season a “bridge year” and signing an odd mélange of players who didn’t exactly have people running to buy the new jerseys. But this year, with Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez wrapped up, he’s back to being the (36-year-old) boy genius. Unless, of course, the Sox don’t win the World Series next season — come on, it’s been four years, we’re getting antsy!

3) No-hitters. Is it us, or have these gotten easier? Maybe all those steroids wearing off have left the batters atrophied or partially blind or brain-addled. (Or all three.) Steroids are out.

Umpires, too, are in, except for the ones who blew calls over and over again in 2010, including the one who denied Armando Galarraga his perfect game. What? That’s all of them? OK, then: They’re ouuuuuuut!

4) Taking your shirt off and painting yourself your team colors. This never gets old.

5) Soccer. In the wake of the World Cup drama, this was the year soccer finally captured the hearts and minds of the American sports-viewing public, taking its place beside football and baseball as one of the most engrossing, captivating … Oh, who am I kidding? Soccer is still out. But vuvuzelas are in!

OUT:

1) LeBron. Shaq is on top of the world, but the other big-name sports move hasn’t worked out quite as well. We’re talking to you, King James. LeBron’s “I’m taking my talents to South Beach” TV special was an unprecedented, self-made public relations disaster. The only thing that could have made it worse is if he ended it by opening Al Capone’s vault.

2) Upstanding All-American quarterbacks. Whether they’re serving probation for dog fighting (Michael Vick), on suspension for alleged sexual assault (Ben Roethlisberger) or texting their junk to anyone and everyone (Brett Favre and presumably almost everybody else in the NFL), quarterbacks are not looking good right now. Except for Tom Brady, of course, who is still a great American role model and Ugg spokesman, not necessarily in that order.

3) Red Sox “new” faces. Ah, Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre, we hardly knew ye. They became welcome fixtures after the Red Sox suffered more injuries than the cast of the Spider-Man musical, but as Theo puts together his newest would-be championship squad, they’ve been sent out of town. Sad but necessary, since being out of the playoffs — or not getting into them in the first place — is definitely out. (The Spider-Man musical: also out.)

4) Randy Moss. If there’s any major sports figure who had a greater “My God, what have I done?” moment than LeBron, it’s poor Randy, who at last blush was playing for … wait, let me check … ah, right, the Tennessee Titans. Maybe he’ll come back to the Patriots some day, if he ever starts catching balls again. Naaaaaaaaah.

5) Golf. That’s right, Tiger Woods didn’t just ruin his marriage, he took an entire sport with him. Men can’t even play the Tiger Woods videogames anymore without getting glares from their wives and girlfriends. Maybe Tiger should try a new endeavor … I’m thinking NFL quarterback.

TOMORROW: In and Out in Lifestyles