A Little of the Old In and Out

In: Cypress Hill. An excerpt from their interview in the April 2004 FHM. Only a rock star can get away with smoking weed past the age of 30 and not look like a silly punk ass:

FHM: You worked with Bob Marley's son Damian on "Smoke it Up" for the new album. What's his bud like?

Muggs: It's the Schwarzenegger of weed. It's scientifically genetically enhanced marijuana to the 10th power. He went toke for toke with us. When it comes to ganga, he's got pedigree, but we've got ghetto lungs. We're used to blunts and shwag weed.

B-Real: We're all mellow dudes.

FHM: Do you like to garden?

Muggs: B-Real created his own marijuana called Kush. That's the one-hitter quitter, homey: hydroponic steroided up.

Do you like to garden. Who came up with these questions?

Out: The Ladykillers gets a bad review from The Hollywood Reporter, which says:

"(Tom) Hanks' mere presence will, of course, deliver a solid opening weekend. And the brothers' faithful fans might find enough things to like to sustain a decent boxoffice performance thereafter, especially among older audiences.

"The premise remains the same. Once more, a professor with dubious credentials rents a room from an unsuspecting old lady. He and his cronies, all claiming to be musicians, use the house as a base of operations to commit a nefarious criminal deed. Once more, however, circumstances and the old lady foil them at every turn.

"Only instead of the English suburbs, the Coens take us deep into the Southern Bible Belt. Professor G.H. Dorr (Hanks) rents a room from a black Baptist churchgoing lady named Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), who will allow neither 'hippity-hop' music nor smoking in her domicile. With the cover of practicing medieval instruments in her basement, Dorr and his gang tunnel from that basement for several blocks to the cash storage office of a riverboat gambling casino.

"The crew Dorr assembles gives new meaning to the expression 'thick as thieves.' Marlon Wayans' Gawain MacSam is the casino 'inside' man, whose temper and foul mouth just naturally invite catastrophe, not to mention slaps by Mrs. Munson."

Hmmm, actually that sounds kind of fun to me. And who ever thought Tom Hanks and Marlon Wayans would ever make a film together. Next thing you're going to tell me fucking Spielberg will helm the next Carrot Top flic.

In: National Review editor Rich Lowry versus radio personality Al Franken in Spinsanity debate. The conservative New Criterion blog discusses it thusly:

"There is some good in this. Franken devotees, who probably have never read National Review, will tune in expecting their man to triumph. What they will find is a middle-aged schoolyard bully. Franken claims to have challenged Lowry to a 'fight in [his] parking garage,' and then slyly questions Lowry's heterosexuality."

Franken claims:

"Rich said on C-SPAN that Democrats had sissified politics; I challenged him to a fight in my parking garage; he demurred like a little girl; I wrote about the incident honestly in my book; he wrote a column that gave his readers a totally misleading characterization of my book, which he later admitted he hadn�t read; I challenged Rich to another fight; he demurred again, but challenged me to a contest of ideas. So here we are."

Can you say mid-life crisis? Can you say slow news day?

Out: That fake bottled "pure mineral" water Dassani is very very out. Jonathan Prynn of the Evening Standard writes:

"Coca-Cola today recalled every bottle of its controversial "pure" mineral water Dasani in a cancer scare.

"It came after the 95p bottles of water were found to be contaminated with illegal levels of bromate, a potentially cancer causing chemical.

"Coca-Cola said all 500,000 bottles of the carbonated water, which is drawn from public water (ed note: tap water) supplies in Sidcup, will be cleared from stores within 24 hours."

The thing that really freaks me out about this? Dasani is the second top selling bottled water brand in the US. How the fuck does a multinational corporation make fucking million, possibly billions, on bottled water. And why isn't any news team really hammering Coke on their smoke and mirrors. Oh, I guess it is because Coke is a major advertiser on just about everything. Sweet.

In: This is really and truly the most offensive and perverse stories I have ever read online, and that is saying something. Please do not read this if you are at work, it is just that twisted. I cannot say any more, except that I will pray to the redeeming lord Jesus on behalf of the teller of this story.

Out: Condoleeza Rice becomes another of the pretty politicians that Rupert Murdoch collects, like Newt Gingrich and Baroness Maggie Thatcher, when she speaks at his little conference. The Guardian writes:

"The four-day event started last night, and Mr Howard is due to speak at 9pm tonight (British time). Ms Rice, President Bush's national security advisor, is to address the conference by video link."

Great.

In: Bushmeat. Just what is bushmeat? And no, it is not some pornographic reference to our Commander-in-Chief. Perish the thought. Bushmeat is the practice of eating primates, mostly by impoverished populations. In addition to leading towards the extinction of whole species of monkeys and apes, the Nature Science update writes, "The practice of hunting and eating bushmeat in Central Africa is infecting people with a new virus."

As a Ugandan-born writer I'd like to register my shock at this practice of noshing on cute monkeys, although I don't quite know what precisely was in that "dirty water hot dog" I ate at lunch in Midtown this afternoon. I could be a hypocrite on this matter.