If you're not already at the airport trying to smash your way to the front of a ticket line, you're probably not visiting relatives this Thanksgiving. You need an excuse besides "they are annoying." The AP has a bunch!
Jesus. Will you people please, please STFU about Mad Men, the third season of which premieres tonight? [Ed. NO!] Fine. For people who'll be opting out of watching this evening, here're your five talking points/excuses when discussing at work tomorrow.
When Jeremy Piven dropped out of Speed-the-Plow today and cited a "high mercury count" as the reason, we wondered whether that excuse could possibly be topped. As it turns out, it could!
Now that a rehabbed Colin Farrell is sober and on the mend (and has put on some pounds since his "homeless dude outside Trader Joe's" days), it's time for him to pull a Britney and wonder aloud, "What the hell was I thinking?" Naturally, any investigation of his substance-aided antics would inevitably turn to the sex tape he made with Playmate Nicole Narain, and during a recent BBC appearance, Farrell attempted to explain away the indiscretion the best way he knew how.What made the actor shout "I FUCKING LIVE ON PORN!" and "Aw, the battery's dead...so is my fucking cock" while copulating in a depressing Valley one-bedroom? The answer, it may not surprise you to hear, was that he was totally high and turned on by the taboo of the camera. Still, Farrell claims that he has learned one valuable lesson: it's fine to make a sex tape, just don't leave it behind when you straggle out to the Albertson's on Ventura at 5am for a Hot Pocket and some lube.
In today's Times man o' science Richard A. Friedman, 51, explodes the myth of the mid-life crisis. Turns out all men are pigs! Just kidding. Kind of. (Some men are rats, too.) But, notes Friedman, "[y]ou have to admit that 'I'm having a midlife crisis' sounds a lot better than 'I'm a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown." It's true. It does. He goes on to cite a study that most middle-aged men are happy. So who's to blame for the enduring myth of the Midlife Crisis? Kids, of course!
Penguin is actually suing to get its advance back from biographer David Brinkley, which publishers almost never do. Ballsy! Brinkley was meant to deliver his manuscript about the life of crappy-writer idol Jack Kerouac way back in 2001, and he says he missed his deadline because he was being painstaking: "I'd rather take my time because the material is so great." Uh huh. Dog, homework. [NYS]
We've long felt that the only thing standing between extravagantly talented actress and criminally mislabeled "party girl" Lindsay Lohan and a record-setting string of Oscar wins is the ongoing and coordinated efforts of the tabloid media to destroy her once-unimpeachable artistic credibility; for example, had the press not developed an untoward fixation with the sudden shrinkage and then re-bazooming of her her breasts, her subtle work in Herbie: Fully Loaded almost certainly would have received the awards attention it deserved. Lohan confirms our theory about the media's frustrating interference with her professional development:
