Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Gary Busey! 

Full-time crazy person and part-time actor Gary Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas in 1944, the son of a homemaker and a construction designer who claimed they were descendants of Martian colonists who had settled on Earth in the 1830s (OK, not really. But admit it, you thought it was possible). 

While on football scholarship to perennial powerhouse Pittsburgh State in Pittsburgh, Kansas, Busey became interested in acting, eventually transferring to perennial acting powerhouse Oklahoma State (motto: You Really Must Be Desperate). 

After finding work on television (including being the last person ever killed on Gunsmoke -- episode 300,000), Busey's big break came when, despite looking nothing like him, he landed the part of Buddy Holly in (you guessed it) The Buddy Holly Story (1978). 

Pictured: not Gary Busey

The movie garnered Busey an Academy Award nomination, and was followed by drug abuse (including famously snorting coke off his dog) and a string of fairly uninterrupted shit. The next movie he was in that anybody's heard of was 1987's Lethal Weapon, where, cast hilariously not against type, Busey played a crazy drug person who lights his wrist on fire for fun. 

Shortly after this performance, Busey was nearly killed after crashing his motorcycle. Failing to listen to what his mother had told him a thousand times, Busey wasn't wearing a helmet and smacked his skull on a curb. The resulting hole was about the size of a half dollar, but instead of letting the little demons and creatures crawling around in there out, the injury only made things worse, leading to brain damage and a complete loss of impulse control (a particularly bad condition to have when you're, you know, Gary Busey).  

Shocking, isn't it? He actually made me feel bad for Ryan Seacrest. I didn't think that was possible. 

Anyhow, Busey has somehow continued his pathetic career on the strength of his immense oddness. These days, he'll act in almost anything, from a part as a Jewish-American doctor who harvests organs to sell to rich patients in the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves Iraq, to supplying the voice to the titular character of  The Gingerdead Man, a hilariously bad 2005 horror movie where a psychopathic killer's blood is somehow dumped into a gingerbread mix, rendering the resulting gingerbread man (you guessed it) a psychopathic killer. 

The final battle is one of the most awesomely bad things ever. 

So Happy Birthday, Gary. I, for one, hope to never meet you. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Peter Lorre!

There has never been anyone in the movies quite like Peter Lorre. Born Lazlo Lowenstein in modern day Slovakia in 1904, the 5'5" Lorre carved out a singular niche as a creepy nervous villain -- the kind of guy you expect to find in a room full of scattered body parts. 

In 1933, in only his second movie, Lorre delivered a terrific performance in Fritz Lang's legendary M. Though I must say that in general I find M boring, Lorre is undeniably great in it, playing a creepy childlike child molester and murderer. In the last scene, where he's captured and confronted by the town, Lorre comes completely unhinged, terrified to the point he almost ceases to be human. 

Lorre fled the Nazis and moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s, eventually landing supporting roles in some of the best movies ever made (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca) and some of the worst (Muscle Beach Party). Lorre was quickly teamed with 300-pound Sydney Greenstreet, a man so huge and evil looking his appearance was the original inspiration for the look of Jabba the Hutt (early on, Jabba wore a fez, the same way Greenstreet does in Casablanca). Appearing together in nine movies, Lorre and Greenstreet proved one of the great Bad Guy/Henchman combinations in movie history -- a kind of Laurel and Hardy, only sinister. 

Though he was at one point labeled by Charlie Chaplin the "greatest living actor" (presumably, while he was still alive), Lorre was typecast as a villain (co-starring in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a benign scientist, Lorre said that the octopus who attacks the ship had gotten the part usually reserved for him). Combined with health problems that eventually descended into an addiction to morphine and weight gain, this typecasting led to career decline after WWII. 

Lorre kept his sense of humor, however. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and report on anyone suspicious he had met since arriving in the United States, Lorre simply wrote down everyone he had ever met -- hundreds of names . Lorre also attended the funeral of former co-star Bela Lugosi in 1956. Upon seeing Lugosi was to be buried in his Dracula costume, Lorre turned to fellow attendee Boris Karloff and said, "do you think we should stab him in the heart, just in case?"  

Plagued by gall bladder difficulties and in generally bad health, Lorre died in 1964 of a stroke. Personally, I'll always remember him in Casablaca as the amoral Ugarte. 

Very Important News: 

"So, it turns out Michael Jackson didn't die of a heart attack. They say now it was food poisoning. Yeah, apparently they found 12-year-old nuts in his mouth." 

I'll admit that when told this by someone in a serious tone of voice, it took me several seconds to realize it was a joke. 

The identity of that person? 

You guessed it: Frank Stallone. 

A Salute (sort-of)

Here's an obvious question: you're walking along a beach and you see a sandcastle. Is your urge a) to preserve it, or b) to step on it? 

"Hi, mommy! Aren't you glad you gave up your career to raise me?"

Haha! Of course I'm kidding! The answer is "B". We all have the urge to step on it. By which I mean: if you're sort of shaking your head now and don't know what I'm talking about, then there's something seriously wrong with you. Check yourself into a hospital, pending a brain transplant (though you'd probably find yourself behind the kid in the above picture on the list). 

Rhetorically, the urge isn't that different. It's a lot easier to make fun of something than it is to show enthusiasm for it, especially in today's "too cool for school" culture. I count myself as guilty of this as anyone. A quick read of this blog proves that conclusively. 

So with that in mind, I present to you probably the mother of all movie montages, directed by Chuck Workman for TCM in 1995. It's a great montage, and features some great scenes from some great movies. 

And, well, because I can't help myself: here's one of the many "worst movie of all time" montages prevalent on YouTube. 

Job Hunting, California Style: Part 2

Like Conan's old "In the Year 2000" sketch, this blog's disconnect from reality is a gradually growing amusement to me. After all, I still live in Chicago, not LA. 

"But Joe, while you're awesome -- incredibly awesome -- how can you run a blog called Hollywood Humiliation without living or dealing in any way with people who live in Hollywood?!" 

And well, you're right. Especially that part about me being awesome. 

In my defense, however, it's not for lack of trying. In the last few weeks, I've applied for work in LA to do everything from SAT tutoring to writing medical technical manuals. And as you can imagine, this means I spend a good deal of my time on sites like craigslist. 

Which makes it too bad I haven't had any interesting laundromat experiences.... because then I'd be on Easy Street.

Key quote: "Did you catch someone trying on your clothes or stealing your detergent?" 

Have I truly led so sheltered a life that the possibility of this happening strikes me as absolutely ridiculous? I mean, in what universe would someone start pulling clothes that didn't belong to them out of a dryer and, instead of saying "whoops, not mine," start trying them on instead?  

"Yeah, this looks nice." 

"But Tom, that doesn't belong to you. None of the clothes in that dryer belong to you." 

"Your point being?" 

Seriously, is there a producer out there in Hollywood who thinks people are willing to sit through even a half-hour of this kind of coma-inducing shit? 

Uh, did I really ask that?

Speaking of which, how about this catchy listing: "Is your Boyfriend/Girlfriend flirtatious? -- NOW CASTING"

Key quote: "Do you wonder how far he or she might take if put in the situation to be unfaithful?"

I hate to be the guy who reads into the intelligence of others by their grammar skills, but seriously: the missing "it" after "take" in that sentence is a pretty important one. Look at it again. You can substitute anything from "a passionate love affair with a vivacious furry" to "a Little League baseball bat in the ass" for that missing "it."  

Of course, if you're out there and you read an ad like this and think, "hey, that sounds like George. Or, you know, Georgina, whatever the case might be," then you're probably in a what's known in the psychiatric community as a Doomed to All Goddamn Hell relationship. Your life is almost certainly filled with the incredible sadness of knowing your significant other not only cheats on you constantly, but is about to become world famous for doing so. 

Awesome. 

In a class by themselves, of course, are craigslist ads dealing with what we'll delicately call the "adult film industry" (meaning porn). 

Beyond all of the ickiness, of course, the porn industry is actually kind of refreshingly honest about itself (as evidenced by ads like this and this). 

Key quote: "(If being) an adult film star is something you've always dreamed about, this could be your chance." 

My favorite part of this is that "could" near the end. This could be your chance. It frankly begs the question: do they actually turn females away from the porn industry?  I mean honestly, I don't claim to be an expert, but in the wide, wide world of, um, adult films, there seems to be a niche for pretty much every kind of looking woman. Be it fat, hairy, old, midget, or amputee, there's someone out there willing to jones on it (and yes, I could provide links for all them, but I won't). I mean, unless you look like this (male) or this (female), or have an incredible case of flesh-eating bacteria, I don't see how any woman who turns up saying, "yes, I would like to take my clothes off for money" would be turned away.  

The second ad is for what amounts to an adult party planner. Put another way, they're looking for the kind of person who can arrange to have sweaty, naked people show up at their house and shoot extremely dangerous chemicals into their bodies (and also drugs). 

According to the ad, your salary is dependent on the number of people/farm animals you're able to bring. Amazingly, it doesn't specify what kind of people have to show up, which frankly strikes me as an opportunity to cheat. 

Pictured: what nobody had in mind

So as I wade neck deep into the world of Los Angeles employment, this is what's out there. Until I actually move out there and get involved with the ruthless Blood Pigs who make up the Hollywood literary agent cabal, you -- my dear readers -- just have to live with something other than anecdotal evidence. 

Sorry. 

Until then, the eponymous Humiliation of this blog's title will have to be reserved for the more basic fact of my inability to find gainful employment in the ol' City O' Angels. 

Oh well. It'll happen soon. And if not, I'll always have this to fall back on. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Errol Flynn! 

Known to most of the world as a non-jackass version of Robin Hood, Flynn gets mention on this blog not for his professional life (which was hilariously mediocre), but rather for being one of the most ridiculous men to ever live. 

Allow me to explain....

Born in 1909 in Australia, Flynn was the son of Theodore and Lily Flynn, a lecturer and (according to Wikipedia) a person not related to mutineers, respectively. 

Confused by this, the young Flynn quickly made a name for himself, getting kicked out of one school for fighting, and another for fighting and having sex (presumably not at the same time, though you never know).   

Whatever it was, by age 20 Flynn was already cooler than any of us could ever hope to be, and he eventually moved to New Guinea, where he tried his hand in the tobacco and copper mining businesses. However, since neither of these industries required his skills -- to be demonstrated later -- in extreme laziness and/or ability to seduce very young women, he failed. 

By the early 1930s, Flynn had moved to England, where not being able to find a respectable job, he began acting. Appearing first in pieces of shit, he eventually landed a starring role in Captain Blood (1935), a movie about a doctor who's falsely accused of being a pirate, and then, after thinking about it for a while, decides he doesn't mind being a pirate after all. Along the way, he stabs Basil Rathbone to death. 

The movie was an international smash hit (though having seen it, I can't imagine why), and Flynn quickly decided to take advantage of his newfound stardom by drinking and screwing young girls a lot. 

Shockingly, this behavior eventually caught up to Flynn when two (2!) underage girls accused Flynn of statutory rape in 1942. By then the hugely famous star of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Flynn found himself supported by groups like the American Boy's Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF), whose members began each meeting by imagining what Flynn's life was like and then fervently masturbating to it. 

In a trial that would have made the O.J. circus look like getting a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, Flynn -- represented by superstar attorney Jerry Giesler -- was acquitted on all charges by the mostly-female jury, who were famously reduced to giddy laughter by his dashing, molester testimony. His ability to get away scot free (by claiming in part that the underage girls weren't "raped" because, after all, they totally wanted to do him) proved the origin of the phrase "In like Flynn" (from the Latin meaning "rapes teenagers and gets away with it"). 

Flynn, for his part, spent most of the trial flirting with an 18-year-old named Nora Eddington, who worked at a snack bar in the courthouse (he eventually married her, proving my long held theory: Nora Eddington was dumber than a tree stump). 

A famous alcoholic and hedonist, Flynn quickly ruined his looks and his health. Irritated with being given boring "swashbuckler" roles but unwilling to do anything strenuous about it, he eventually descended into relative professional obscurity. Banned from drinking on set on his later, crappier movies, he started injecting oranges with vodka and eating them between takes. 

Confronted about his ridiculous lifestyle, Flynn let everyone know exactly what his plan was: 

"I intend to the live the first half of my life. I don't care about the rest."  

After his totally unexpected divorce from Nora Addington, Flynn began dating 15-year-old Beverly Aadland, telling her he totally loved her and planned to marry her, though he almost certainly knew -- approaching age 50 and suffering from an enlarged heart -- that he was about to drop dead. 

Which of course he did, of a heart attack, less than four months after his 50th birthday. After the autopsy, the medical examiner said Flynn had the body of a 75-year-old man (which makes his relationship with Beverly Aadland that much creepier). 

Flynn's autobiography, originally titled In Like Me, but eventually released with the title My Wicked, Wicked Ways, was published posthumously. It's theme was captured in Flynn's last words: 

"I've had a hell of a lot of fun and enjoyed every minute of it." 

Apparently Flynn's friends agreed. They buried him with six bottles of whiskey. And a 16-year-old girl. 

You know, for good luck. 

The Worst Movies... Ever

So as I look back on the last month or so of this blog, I see some good things and some bad things. Some funny things and -- let's face it -- some extremely funny things. 

But besides my recurring "Celebrity Birthdays" thingy, what you can't say about this a-here blog is that's it's in any way about Hollywood. 

And well, there's a reason for that: I still live in Chicago. It's hard to write a joke about stepping over a sleeping crackhead in West Hollywood to get to the front door of the apartment you share with an out-of-work bikini waxer if that's not your actual life. 

So as a substitute for that horrible possible future, I've decided to start writing a series of features about what are -- to me, your Humble Narrator -- the worst movies ever. 

My exceptionally creative title for this, picked after a grueling deliberation lasting two seconds?

"The Worst Movies... Ever." 

Worst Movie #1: Hollow Man (2000). 

As Roger Ebert (whose birthday, coincidentally, is today) would say, I "hate hate hate hate hate" this movie. Why? Because it's a piece of shit shit shit shit shit. 

For those of you don't know, Hollow Man is the story of brilliant, arrogant but stupidly named scientist Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) who after years of work has finally discovered a procedure that can make a person invisible. Instead of reporting his success to the government, who hired him and funded his project (complete with a cool underground bunker in the middle of a city), he does what any scientist who wants to further the plot along does: he tests it out on himself. 

And, well, it works. He's invisible. But when they try to return him to visibility after three days, they can't. 

Oops! 

This totally predictable outcome does not make Sebastian mad at himself for causing his shitty situation. Nope, it turns him -- for no reason at all -- into a raging psychopath and murderer. First up, he rapes his neighbor. Seriously. Then he kills a dog. 

Then, instead of just escaping the lab and going into the city (where his chances of being found -- as an invisible guy -- would be pretty slim) he just decides he'd rather kill his entire team -- a group of people, mind you, that are his best friends at the beginning of the movie. 

So this he does, killing everyone except for two people -- Matt (Josh Brolin) and Linda (Elizabeth Shue) -- who he locks in a freezer. To no one's surprise, they escape, using an electromagnet modified (I shit you not) from a defibrilator. 

Then, and I quote from the Wikipedia plot summary: "she (Linda) makes a fire to warm Matt then gathers the parts needed for a flamethrower." 

Don't laugh at this. Flamethrower parts are actually standard issue in medical laboratories. After all, who knows when you'll be forced, between tissue analyses, to root out a bunker of dug-in Japanese soldiers.  

Now if you're thinking: well, he's invisible. Maybe he does all of this because no one will know it's him. No, I'm sorry. Everyone in the movie knows instantly it's Sebastian. Why? Because he talks (and talks and talks) the entire movie, venting a streaming of megomaniacal bullshit from his mouth like a volcano. 

Sample dialogue: 

Sebastian: "How many times do I have to tell you, Frank? You're not God. I am." 

Yes. Despite being a brilliant scientist, Sebastian apparently never learned the first rule of sneaking up on someone: shut the fuck up. 

So yes. Hollow Man is the cinematic equivalent of getting your scrotum caught in a toaster. If I'm destined to go to hell, Hollow Man will be the only movie on, every day, all day long, for eternity. 

And I'm not the only one. Hollow Man was so badly reviewed that, in an effort to find a reviewer who would actually say something nice about the movie, Sony was forced to make someone up. 

So why does Hollow Man rank as one of the worst movies... ever, rather than just as a piece of silly bullshit? 

Well, because the idea of becoming invisible is actually really cool. Any random halfwit could come up with a better movie from that basic idea than the crap I've described above. But no. Instead of exploring the psychological and metaphysical implications (and also interesting stuff), the filmmakers decided to make a really shitty formerly-normal-guy-becomes-a-serial-killer-for-no-reason movie (with, you know, invisibility thrown in there for kicks). 

And for that, well... let me just say that certain persons (for instance, and I'm just picking randomly here, Hollow Man director Paul Verhooven) should be forced to stand on a stage and have rotten fruit thrown at them. 

Weird Tales from Tuman's Tavern

As some of you know, on most Sundays I frequent a bar in the Ukranian Village called Tuman's Tavern (nobody calls it Tuman's Restaurant). I go there, well, because they have cheap beer and internet access, and because Sunday afternoons are a nice time to go to bars and do something relaxing, like working on the script that will either make or break you in Hollywood. 

The only downside to Tuman's is that it's pretty short on electrical outlets. By which I mean: in the entire place, there are two of them, and one of them is in the back by the kitchen and bathrooms. Thankfully, this means that not many people bring their laptops to the bar, but yesterday this couple did, and they ended up sitting next to me. 

For the purposes of this story, we'll call them "Mike" and "Trixie." Why "Mike" and "Trixie"? Well, because the guy's name was Mike, and the girl, whose name I didn't get, is in her professional life a stripper, escort/prostitute and real estate mogul, so if her name isn't Trixie, it should be.

(I'll pause here for a moment to answer the obvious question: How did I figure out Trixie was an escort/prostitute? Well, I can't point to any one statement to the effect of "Hi, I'm Trixie, I'm an escort/prostitute." But various side conversations she had with Mike in the three excruciating hours I was sitting next to them made it more than clear. Between talks of clients, and whispered words like "topless," "appointment" and "I don't want to do this forever," I was able to read between the fairly unsubtle lines. Besides, Trixie owns four buildings in Chicago. Even a conservative estimate puts the relative combined value of those buildings at $1 million. You don't get that kind of money just being a stripper. And in case you're wondering, she looked almost exactly like this.) 

Mike and Trixie had brought along a laptop because Trixie was thinking about buying a pink Chevy Tahoe on Ebay. No, seriously, that's why. But Trixie was sort of worried, because the seller wouldn't answer any of her questions beyond the amount of the reserve. 

"I don't get it," she whined. "What if there are problems with it? I don't want it to have any problems. Why won't they answer meeee?" 

Eventually, Trixie turned to me. Up close, she was sort of startling looking, sporting a paint-on tan, platinum hair, fake breasts and trashy clothes. She explained that she was in "contruction," (later revealed to be real estate, and another clue to her whoredom) and had at one point owned a Range Rover she'd painted pink and had "totally tricked out. It cost me soooo much money!" 

Anyhow, since then, she'd totaled it. I didn't ask how. And now, since she was a "broke bitch," she needed a new truck. She explained about the Tahoe, showed me the ad, and asked me what I thought. 

After a while I said, "You shouldn't buy it. It seems pretty clear to me you know you shouldn't. They won't answer your questions. If they wanted to sell it, or they could answer your questions, they'd answer you. Almost everything that can happen here is bad." 

I learned later she had asked almost everyone she knew about the Tahoe, and everyone had told her not to buy it. But then again, you don't get to be a stripper and an escort/prostitute without doing a few things other people tell you not to do.

Suddenly, Trixie got a phone call. To her disappointment, it wasn't the seller. One of the people she hires to work on her buildings had called. They told her that there was a roof leak in a building where they were working on the electrical, and that work would have to stop until someone fixed the leak.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Electrical and water, you know. But look, that kind of freaks me out, because I don't have insurance on any of my buildings and I don't want it catching fire." 

Suddenly Trixie got up to go to a quieter place in the bar, leaving me with Mike, her frat guy boyfriend douchebag who acted like he gobbled horse tranquilizers by the bucketful. Mike would later tell me he was in the foreclosure business, proudly recounting a tale of outwitting someone and being able to repossess their house, leaving them homeless. 

"Ain't she a cutie?" he said, motioning to his whore girlfriend.  I gave him the "OK" sign. Then the waitress came over, a cute indie girl named "Dane." Dane asked Mike about his drink, his fourth vodka tonic that hour. When she left to get him another one, he turned to me. 

"So what kind of tits you think she has?" 

"Well, I think she has two of them," I said. 

He laughed. "What, like 36As?" He laughed again. Then the bartender came by, a statuesque brunette with a come-hither smile and unfortunate teeth. Mike was wearing sunglasses and laying so far back in his seat he looked ready to fall asleep. 

"For a second I thought you were passed out," she said. "I thought, 'you know, we're going to have to kick this guy out.'" 

Mike shrugged. "I've been kicked out of better parties than this." 

The bartender frowned and went off, and Mike turned to me. 

"So, would you?" he said, referring to the prospect of having sex with the bartender. 

"I don't know," I said, annoyed. 

"She's big." 

"Well, so am I." 

He laughed and held out his fist. Very reluctantly, I bumped it. 

Trixie came back. The auction was close to ending, and Trixie was getting anxious. As you can imagine, she had decided to buy the Tahoe. The bid was at $11,800, and the only email she'd received from the seller was one that told her the reserve was $12,500. No other questions about, you know, whether the car puked oil or even ran had been answered.

"Put in 12.5 and that's it," Mike said. 

"I don't know," she said. "It's only a two wheel drive." 

"Put in 12.5 and that's it." 

"There's only three minutes left and I really have to pee!" she said. She got up. "Okay, I'm going," she said. "But I'm not going to wash my hands!" 

"That's fine," I said. "I don't have to touch them." 

When she came back she bid $12,500. But that didn't beat the current high bidder. So she put in a bid of $13,137. And while that made her the top bidder, it didn't beat the reserve. Why, because the email that said the reserve was $12,500 was a lie. 

Big shock. 

"So," Trixie says eventually. "They're just stupid." 

Overcome with irony, I started laughing out loud. 

"I bet it's not even a real car," Mike said lazily. Trixie grabbed her wine, took a big gulp, and started writing an email to the seller. When she finished, she closed her laptop angrily. 

At this point, I gathered my things to leave. I gave a thought to taking a picture of them with my camera phone, but I decided that more than anything, I just didn't want to be around them anymore. 

So that's it, I left. I walked home, grinning to myself about how fate had smiled on these two vain, moronic, morally bankrupt people by allowing them to find each other. What a strange, strange world indeed. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Basil Rathbone! 

Born in South Africa in 1892, Rathbone's given name was actually the even more hilarious Philip St. John Basil Rathbone. After serving England in World War 1, Rathbone became an actor, eventually becoming one of the great snits of the cinema, playing suave pussies almost exclusively. 

Being incredibly British, Rathbone also had a passion for fencing, which, when combined with his habit of playing bad guys, led to him being stabbed to death at the climax of many, many movies. 

In his long career, Rathbone would be stabbed countless times, including twice by Errol Flynn, despite the fact that Flynn could apparently only barely fence, preferring instead to screw teenagers. 

Attempting to spend a little less time on screen being a douche, Rathbone eventually took on the role of Sherlock Holmes in 1939's The Hound of the Baskervilles. The film was a success, to the point where he made 13 other Holmes films over the next six years. 

Somehow, this led to Rathbone being typecast as Holmes, which he came to resent (editor's note: tough shit). This amazing and completely unpredictable typecasting eventually led to a somewhat dimished career, as shown in this depressing video: 

So Happy Birthday to ya, Basil. Thanks for getting stabbed all those times. We had fun watching it. 

Happy Loving Day!

Pop quiz, hotshot! The word "miscegenation" refers to... 

A) A miscarriage common among crustaceans. 

3) The splicing of human and squid DNA. 

U) A genetic condition whereby humans are born with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. 

%) The mixing of different racial groups. That is -- marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one's racially or ethically defined group (copyright Wikipedia, all rights reserved). 

Now if you're still thinking, I'll give you a hint. It's the one where I quoted Wikipedia. 

Indeed. Miscegenation is originally a Cherokee word meaning "the plot to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, as well any number of, uh... you know" (NSFW). 

All of which brings us back to Loving Day, celebrated today, which refers not specifically to boom-boom time but rather to the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which banned anti-miscegenation laws in the remaining 16 states where they were still on the books. 

(not pictured: people happy with this) 

So to all you mixed-race couples out there, Happy Loving Day! Try to forget that at 42 years old, the law that allows you to marry, cohabit and fornicate with someone outside your racial or ethically defined group is younger than the Super Bowl. 

Yikes. 

And if this whole issue just seems like an impossible relic of a troubled time; the product of a virulent bigotry in its final stages that was finally, triumphantly stamped out, I'll just refer you to this. 

A few words about the crappy poll

So I've been doing this wee blog a little more than two weeks now, and I think that given the "who gives a shit?" nature of blogging in general that things are going fairly well. If nothing else, it's given me a chance to do something I really enjoy. 

Mocking people. 

But whether I'm making fun of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard's hilarious name or pointing out how much my good buddy Eric likes playing with penises (and not just his own!), it's pretty clear my little Bret Michaels poll was a pile of shit. 

Now when I decided to put up a poll up I did so for the same reason anyone puts a poll on their Web site: to see if anyone is, you know, actually paying attention. Sometimes this rather transparent venture can be disguised by a particularly creative poll. But no. I chose to make fun of an easy target: Bret Michaels, and in an obvious way: venereal disease. 

And why? Well, because my roommates had been watching "Daisy of Love." And, you know, I hate that show. 

Furthering the problem was fact that I wrote out the question this way: 

"Which of the follow is a disease is currently being spread by Bret Michaels?" 

Which of the follow? Are you serious, Joe? Get it together man. And "currently being spread" just makes me think of mayonnaise. And Pamela Anderson. 

Haha! Bada bing! 

Uh, wait. Yes, I remember. The poll was a bad idea. It was obvious, badly written and even poorly formatted (that part, at least, wasn't my fault). Remember the point of this post: no more jokes about that poor bastard and his horrible music and many many many veneral diseases. 

So I'm sorry for the poll. That's why, as of this post, the poll is gone. Whether I will post another one no one can say (which means I probably will). I had considered waiting out the ridiculously long time I had set for the poll -- a month -- but my opinion of the poll has gone from amusment to what-the-fuck. So there it goes. 

For the record, my own favorite answer was "Gonorrhea Nervosa." 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Jurgen Prochnow! 

Look at you, you crazy Kraut! You're intense!

(pictured: Jurgen Prochnow smiling) 

Jurgen is quite possibly the most German man ever. He was born in Berlin. In 1941. Among his hobbies, he lists weight lifting. He has a brother named -- I shit you not -- Dieter (who may or may not like to touch monkeys). He has portrayed Kaiser Willhelm II, as well as characters named Gerhardt Dach, Klaus Woermann, and Mann am Stammtisch.

And, well, he's been in a few famous movies, too. You might remember him from such films as Beverly Hills Cop 2 (villain), Beerfest (villain), and Air Force One (villain). 

Oh, and he was also in Das Boot (literally, "the boot"), though I've never seen that. I'm pretty sure he was the captain, but I'll just assume the plot of the movie involves some kind of wacky scheme using alphabetized, terrorist beer to restore himself to power, only it doesn't work and he gets shot or something. Anyway, it sounds awesome! It's kind of a long movie, though, but the next time I have three or four days to spare, I'll definitely get on it!

So Happy Birthday, Jurgen. I see among your recent credits an episode of the TV show "Nachschicht" where you play a character named Friedrich Otto Winterstein. On behalf on everyone at Hollywood Humiliation let me just say: way to step out of your comfort zone. 

Celebrity Birthay Honorable Mention: 18th Century British politician James Cragg the Elder. This crooked politician made himself a fortune abusing his power and died in disgrace a month after his son -- the conveniently named James Cragg the Younger -- was born. 

A Question I Have About This: So... they're saying he's known as James Cragg the Older now, right? Not then? I mean, he died right after his son was born, so there's no way anyone calls him James Cragg the Elder until there's a James Cragg the Younger. To his friends, James Cragg the Elder was, you know, just Jim or Jimmy. Or even Jimbarino, if they weren't into the whole brevity thing. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Alex Mack! 

Err... I mean, Larisa Oleynick!

We all remember you, Larisa! You had that show, The Secret World of Alex Mack. 

And then, well, you disappeared! Maybe it was a side effect of getting that "weird chemical" dumped on you. For a while, sure, it must have been fun having all those powers, because after all, getting cool powers like telekinesis is usually what happens when people get weird chemicals dumped on them. 

Well, not really. But who would watch a show called The Horrible World of Chemical Burn Victim Alex Mack, right?

But now I get it. Yes. You probably developed cancer. I mean, let's face it, that "weird chemical" was probably radioactive waste. That's the only thing that could explain you getting those powers, and then cancer. Really, I've seen it in the movies before! But don't feel so bad. It wasn't your fault. The armored van they put that barrel of radioactive waste in was so crappy it's door wasn't built to withstand the shock of running over a curb and a fire hydrant. So, you know, I suppose it's a good thing they decided to drive it down a suburban street. 

But maybe you didn't get cancer. Maybe you just decided to disappear as a way of getting off your crappy show. I suppose that's better than what usually happens to the victims of radioactive waste in Hollywood -- becoming huge and menacing all of mankind. 

So Happy Birthday, Larisa. You'll show up again soon, breathing fire and withstanding the combined efforts of the world's military forces, only to be brought down by a lone scientist no one believes in. I've seen that one before, too. 

A Nice Spot o' Trivia

This singer was originally cast as the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day before severely breaking his leg, forcing the part to be recast with Robert Patrick. 

Lesser known fact: James Cameron, director of the first two Terminator movies, was once spotted in a Tarzana parking lot giving head to a moose. He was then sacked. 

Heather Graham is batshit insane

Why? Well, because she thinks she's a witch, that's why. 

A few selected quotes, for the hard of clicking. 

"I have this group of friends and we get together and we call ourselves The Goddesses and we wish for things and then a lot of amazing things have happened to all of us. It's five girls and one guy.... He's a witch." 

Umm, no. He's part of a group known as The Goddesses and refers to himself as a witch, rather than a warlock. 

He's gay.

"One of my friends, she didn't have a lot of money and she was like, 'I want a better apartment,' and we were doing these spells for her and then her dad just bought her an apartment." 

If this shit really worked, wouldn't you shoot for more than just a better apartment? Wouldn't you just cast a spell for the rights to Star Wars and then retire to, I dunno, your own private island?

"My friends really wanted Obama to be elected so we all did a spell... and then he got elected.... It worked out good." 

Aha! Well, I guess this clears up once and for all why McCain lost. 

He pissed off Dick Cheney. 

Because let's face it, as powerful as Heather and her "Goddesses" (plus one gay guy) might be, there's no way they could have stood up to a Dark Lord like Cheney had he been on McCain's side. 

I mean, let's be real. It's this person: 

 

Versus this one:

(note: unretouched photo)

Who do you think is gonna win? Heather Graham might be pretty and all, but she'd be turned into diced hamburger in a Spirit World contest with a beast like Cheney. 

So there you have it. Let's review: 

Heather Graham: not fit to twinkle Elizabeth Montgomery's nose. 

Dick Cheney: wears a shirt made of flames. And likes it. 

John McCain: claims Heather Graham turned him into a newt, but that it "got better."  

Barack Obama: finally writing long-overdue "thank you" letter to Heather Graham and her coven of whackjobs. 

Guy in Heather's Goddesses group: gay. 

Job Hunting, California Style

Man oh man.

My favorite part? 

"If you have never done this type of work, it is not as difficult as it sound's" (sic). 

Well yes. Thanks for that, because the reason I haven't gotten into this field before now is because it seemed too hard.

Not wanting to let this kind of opportunity go by, I immediately went out and got a makeover. My new look?

I feel pretty. Oh so pretty.

Quote of the Day

Johnny Depp, talking about Pond Cay, his private island in the Carribbean. 

"(Pond Cay) is my decompression. It's my way of trying to return to normalcy."

With all due respect, having your own island in the Carribbean is not normal, dude. You can't find "normalcy" when you go this place: 

And it belongs to you.