Major Bashinsky
Missing Houston exec Douglas Schantz was found floating in the Mississippi River yesterday, apparently bringing the mystery of his disappearance late last week to an end. Mountain Brook, Alabama Attorney Major Bashinsky, however, is still among the missing, and today The Birmingham News is reporting an odd wrinkle in the case, the kind of detail that could surely put Bashinsky’s disappearance on a fast-track to be ripped from the headlines by Law & Order script doctors.
Since many may not have thought of D’Angelo for a while, you might need to be reminded that he was pretty much one of the biggest R&B stars ten years ago. After 2000’s Voodoo, he’s gone a bit Sly Stone/Brian Wilson (he got fat and weird and reclusive), and only makes the news after being arrested for something. And that’s exactly what’s happening again! This time, he’s gotten himself in trouble by soliciting sex from an undercover cop. For $40. $40! Really, this economy. We’re clearly all in trouble now.
He has, as people do, pleaded not guilty and hopes that everyone will “allow the American justice system to resolve the matter before jumping to any conclusions.”
Avatar: How It Should Have Ended
Questions as to the true provenance of James Cameron’s super-duper mega-behemoth all-time smash hit giant blue Ferngully Smurf movie Avatar have been rampant since word of the movie first leaked. Gawker Media sci-fi blog io9 has documented most of those questions, including this fairly recent claim by a Chinese author that Cameron plagiarized his novel. Now Canadian restaurateur Emil Malak is suing Cameron, Twentieth Century Fox, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners, Future Service Inc. and Lightstorm Entertainment in British Columbian court, claiming Avatar amounts to copyright infringement on his 2002 screenplay, Terra Incognita. The Hollywood Reporter points to Malak’s comparison between his script and Avatar here. According to Malak, his script shares similar plots, characters and plot devices. Unfortunately for Mr. Malak, things don’t look good for his cause, so far – as THR noted, the Chinese Avatar lawsuit (see above) has already been dismissed. Not only that, James Cameron was working on Avatar before Emil Malak’s screenplay was written. So, good luck with that. [CNS - PDF]
Because what’s a Wednesday without predictions of doom? UPI reports that Accuweather.com meteorologist Joe Bastardi is predicting a pretty nasty hurricane season: up to 18 tropical cyclones (storms and hurricanes) between June and November. Bastardi also believes as many as 15 storms will hit throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Bastardi believes this year “has the chance to be an extreme season.” So. Yay, Apocalypse. [UPI.com]
Trailer for Corey Haim’s most recent film project, American Sunset
The Los Angeles ABC affiliate has reported via Twitter that actor Corey Haim is dead. LAPD has confirmed the death and termed it accidental.
Corey Haim/Wikipedia
Corey Haim has been such a deeply embedded part of pop culture since the 1980s that it feels almost foolish to explain who he was. But to a generation of moviegoers, he and fellow actor Corey Feldman were “The Coreys” so called not just because they shared a first name but also because they seemed so well-matched. Haim and Feldman made it to big-time stardom in Joel Schumacher’s teen vampire flick The Lost Boys in 1987. While Haim had already starred in Lucas, which was critically well-received, Lost Boys cemented his status as a teen superstar and pin-up for an entire generation of acid-wash wearing, frizzy-banged teen girls. It seemed for a time that Corey Haim’s star was falling, though, as the 90s saw him making a series of forgettable, often direct-to-video flicks with titles like Snowboard Academy and Busted, which he again made with Corey Feldman. But the 21st Century saw the dawn of reality television and with that a resurgence in popularity for both Coreys. In 2006 The Two Coreys premiered on A&E, showcasing both Haim and Feldman as themselves – actors nearing middle age and still making it work as best as they could. With good-humored jabs at themselves as stop-motion characters on Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken, both Coreys also proved adept at self-parody and self-promotion. To some degree, they saw renewed careers in the early part of this century and a resurgence in public attention and affection.
Corey Haim fought a lifelong battle against addiction and went to rehab more than once. Early reports indicate his death may have been an accidental drug overdose. [UPDATE: LAPD confirmed that Haim died from a probable overdose.]
There is a strange sadness in hearing one of the Coreys has passed. Both for his relative youth and for the feeling that his passing marks the end of era.
This is a link to Corey Haim’s website: CoreyHaim.us. His most recent project was a movie titled American Sunset.
With its ‘parallel dimension’ format, Season 6 of Lost has supplemented its island adventure by giving us a look into the characters lives had Oceanic 815 never gone down. There have been variables, to be sure (Jack has a child, Locke is married), but for the most part the players of this new timeline are much as they were when we originally met them.
Except, of course, for Benjamin Linus (er, sorry, DOCTOR Benjamin Linus). This week we meet Ben not as the enigmatic leader of the Others who spent his entire adult life on the island, but rather as a middling school teacher trying to maintain some semblance of passion for his job. In this timeline, Ben doesn’t kidnap and raise Alex, he just teaches her European history. And he now tenderly dotes on the same aging father that he once, you know, murdered. As if this parallel dimension stuff wasn’t weird enough already.
Once again we join Christopher Dole and Luke de Smet in their ongoing Mediaelites conversation as they try to figure all of this out. (Sort of.) Read More
Above you can read the indictment filed on March 4 against Colleen R. LaRose, aka “Fatima LaRose,” aka “JihadJane,” in United States District Court. LaRose has been in police custody since late last year, but authorities have only just released the document above, which details the nature of her crimes. It’s fascinating and disturbing stuff and possibly a cautionary tale of how a sad, crazy, lonely person can take steps that end up making them a bona fide enemy of the State with a one-way ticket to federal prison.
Retired Rep. Eric Massa discussing “Son of the Devil’s Spawn,” Rahm Emanuel
Was beleaguered upstate NY Democrate Eric Massa was a victim of the Democrats’ drive towards passing Health Care Reform? Massa certainly wants you to think so. Massa has been quite vocal on that score. Massa has proactively diminished one instance of supposed harassment that put him under ethics investigation and insisted that he was pushed out of Congress because he wasn’t going to support HCR. Now the Washington Post reports that Eric Massa has actually been subject to allegations of a “pattern of [...] physical harassment” going back a year or so. The physical harassment in question? Groping “multiple male staffers working in his office.” From WaPo:
Robert Halderman, the CBS 48 Hours producer who attempted to extort millions of dollars from David Letterman, will plead guilty today. CBS 2 in New York reports that Halderman could go to jail for up to 15 years for his attempts to blackmail the Late Night funnyman after Halderman discovered that his girlfriend was sleeping with Letterman. [wcbstv.com]
According to a research team at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, women who drink moderately are less likely to gain weight compared to non-drinkers.
The report, which was oddly enough led by a female, found that alcoholic beverages not only keep the ladies tipsy but also slim, especially red wine. Although, it was unclear if the wine was boxed or more of a Cakebread and Screaming Eagle level.
The authors would like to note that while increased consumption of alcoholic beverages may enable you to squeeze into those college jeans, it will also lead to drunk texts to your ex-boyfriends, loud screaming, and a late night delivery of a large pizza with extra bacon.
[Photo via Flickr]
UFO sighting in Brooklyn, Jan. 29, 2010 (not connected to post below)
Yes, it’s true. UFO sightings are apparently not confined only to meth and moonshine-mad rednecks cavorting wildly, naked in the dark for Jesus on hilltops somewhere near where they filmed Ned Beatty’s rape scene in Deliverance. No, UFO sightings happen in Brooklyn, too. Williamsburg resident Richard Taveras claims he and his fiancée have seen Them, telling NBC New York the object had “… let’s call it a headlight, so it would spin and if you see in the video it would focus on us.” Taveras told the NBC affiliate that he’s seen mystery lights 4 times over the past couple of months. He also videotaped an egg-shaped object. Taveras insisted that he saw no “markings of an aircraft” or any sign that the strange objects were helicopters. The NBC station went on to an astronomer to poke holes in the story for balance, of course. And it is a little hard to believe that UFOs might plague one of the most populous parts of the United States at all, but it’s possible. Even if you stay away from the brown acid.
[NBC New York. See also: Brooklyn Daily Eagle.]
A class-action lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle against Classmates.com, AKA the social networking site you may have used to keep in touch with high school friends before someone told you Facebook was free. Classmates has always been tiered, with free and paid memberships. Users paid, in part, for a certain amount of privacy. Privacy which may now go the way of Facebook.
The suit seems to have been prompted in part by the following message sent to Classmates users on Jan. 30:
Colleen LaRose, AKA "JihadJane," Arrested for Aiding and Abetting Terrorism
John Patrick Bedell's Gunfight With Pentagon Cops: Crazier than Crazy Teabag Offshoot?
The slick new mediaelites
ASME shut-out for Rolling Stone
Worse, Paste, informally known as “the magazine your mom might subscribe you to if she’d ever heard of it,” has two nominations. So what’s so great about Paste? It exists, which these days is saying something. The magazine’s current cover story boldly dubs Read More »