Monday, April 22, 2002 Edition: #2280
Too few of the bucks stop here.
WILDEST WEEKLY TABLOID HEADLINES:
• “Super-Bus Powered By Human Gas!”
• “18% of People Named Rachael Are Psychotic!”
• “Congressional Plot to Ban Toilet Paper!
• “Loch Ness Monster Sold!”
Source: “Weekly World News”
OTHER BS TABLOID TRASH:
• In what can be a surprise to no one, “E! Online reports that actor Robert Blake and his bodyguard Earle Caldwell are expected to be arraigned on murder charges for killing Blake’s wife TODAY. (CNN is doing it’s best to make this into another OJ case – but failing.)
• If his music career gets any flatter, rocker Lenny Kravitz could always get into the real estate biz. UK’s “Sun” tabloid reports he’s listed the NYC flat he bought for $12 million just 2 years ago at double that price — $24 million. “I did some renovations and the market in New York is picking up again,” Lenny says. (Without removing his mask.)
• According to “Star”, Halle Berry’s husband Eric Benet cheated on her with an old girlfriend just days before his superstar wife won her Oscar and the tab has the pics to prove it — the couple sneaking out his secret love-nest apartment. (Say g’bye to the gravy train, bro!)
• “Enquirer” claims it has confirmed that Mariah Carey’s music mogul ex-husband Tommy Mottola tried to sabotage her “Glitter” album and boost the career of rival singer Jennifer Lopez. Ja Rule has reportedly admitted that he was called in by J-Lo’s people after they heard a recording he did with Mariah. Ja Rule’s resulting work with J-Lo was apparently rush-released to beat out the previous collaborations released later on Carey’s flop “Glitter”. (Ah, not to dis anybody, but who ever even heard of Ja before he had these hotties in front of him?)
• Ozzy Osbourne tells “Mirror” he has only one lament about the success of his family’s fly-on-the-wall MTV reality show “The Osbournes”. “My one regret with the show is that we used our real house,” he says. “I mean, the Munsters didn’t use their real house.” (And comparatively, they were a NORMAL family.)
• “Buzz” reports 43-year-old Maria Cristina Ruiz has filed a $100-million palimony suit against Marlon Brando, claiming he fathered her 3 children during a 14-year relationship. Ruiz once worked as Brando’s maid and lived in his home after they became romantically involved in 1988. (Anyone who’d have a romantic fling with Brando doesn’t need money, they need glasses!)
• Word is Harrison Ford is fattening up his pencil-thin girlfriend Calista Flockhart because he thinks she’s sexier that way. “Sun” reports now that “Ally McBeal” is canceled, it seems the skinny star has no qualms about switching from salads to Italian, Thai and Indian meals, and has already put on 7 pounds! (Doubling her weight.)
• According to “National Enquirer”, Julia Roberts has been wearing a T-shirt in public that’s
emblazoned with the words ‘A Low Vera’ (a play on words of ‘aloe vera’). The tab claims it’s an all-out attack on Danny Moder’s estranged wife Vera — the woman whose husband she stole! (It’s called ‘Sleeping With the Enemy’s Husband’.)
• “Celebrity Boxing” champ and former figure skater Tonya Harding was cited for drunken driving early SATURDAY after she crashed her pickup into a ditch, reports “E! Online”. (Police say the only injury seems to be a large ‘L’ on her forehead.)
• And according to “Buzz”, just 6 years ago “Scorpion King” star The Rock was so poor that he was sleeping on a pee-stained mattress. (Hey, are YOU gonna tell him he has a bladder problem?)
BIG BUCK BLUE JAYS BLOATED?
Both Raul Mondesi ($11 million) and Carlos Delgado ($19.4 million) of the Toronto Blue Jays have made “Forbes” magazine’s new list of the 10 ‘Most Overpaid Baseball Players’, based on performance and salary comparisons with other stars.
NET: http://www.forbes.com/2002/04/19/0419baseball.html
WILDLIFE TO GO:
TODAY an unusual restaurant called ‘Edible’ is set to open in London ENG, believed to be the first in the world serving only weird and wacky wildlife dishes. 26-year-old restaurateur Todd Dalton says his interest in unusual animals began when he grew up in Louisiana and kept a small zoo with lemurs, monkeys, wild cats and bats. After training as a chef in the US, he traveled in the Far East where he developed a taste for exotic food. And the specialties of the house in his new restaurant certainly qualify — rattlesnake spring rolls, beer-battered insects, yak dumplings, Kentucky-fried bullfrog, antelope steak, piranha-and-chips, red-ant mashed potatoes, and — yum — snake wine, which comes with a coiled serpent in every bottle.
WHY CAFETERIAS STINK:
“Parenting” magazine says the average elementary school student generates 18 kg (40 lbs) of garbage per year from school lunches. (But that’s not even close to the amount found in the average locker.)
THE COLOR OF LOVE:
Want to really excite your hot date without saying a word? It’s all in the color you wear. According to color psychology experts at UCLA, red is definitely hot and sexy, but to get your special someone’s heart pounding put on something greenish-yellow. (That’s because they’ll be running off to find a bucket.)
SUPER-SIZED COMPUTING:
Japan’s new ‘NEC Earth Simulator’ supercomputer is now the world’s fastest computer, processing data 5 times faster than its closest competitor. It works at a speed of 35,600 gigaflops compared to its closest rival, IBM’s ASCI White, which runs at a speed of 7,226 gigaflops. A gigaflop equals one billion mathematical operations per second. The NEC Earth Simulator is as large as 4 tennis courts and creates a ‘virtual planet Earth’ to predict climate patterns. This single machine is more powerful than the 20 fastest computers in America, and all of the US Department of Energy and US Department of Defence computers put together. (And is likely programmed by a 12-year-old GameBoy addict.)
THE WEAKER SEX:
According to a new study in “The Lancet” medical journal, couples are more likely to have a girl than a boy if either of the parents smoked heavily while they were trying to conceive. Why? One reason may be that male sperm and embryos are more fragile than their female counterparts. (We’ve heard of smoking afterward, but who the heck smokes WHILE trying to conceive?)
THE REAL ‘SCORPION KING’:
“NY Times” reports that a recent archeological find might be the oldest form of writing yet discovered. The discovery is a 5,250-year-old tableau of a victorious ruler that may be the so-called ‘King Scorpion’, who is said to have played a role in unifying ancient Egypt. If the findings prove correct, it’s the world’s oldest known historical document, pushing back known history another 100 to 150 years, to 3250 BC.
GETTING SQUEEZED:
Those trendy tight-fitting shorts known as ‘warm pants’, favored by cyclists and sports enthusiasts could be harmful. A British medical journal reports they can cause harmful blood clots if worn regularly. (They’ve also been known to raise men’s voices 3 octaves.)
THE BULL SHEET 04.22.2K2
TODAY’S CELEBIRTHDAYS . . .
1937 [65] Jack Nicholson, Neptune NJ, movie actor (Oscars-“As Good As It Gets”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Terms of Endearment”) NEXT MOVIE: “About Schmidt”, a drama about a man in his 60’s trying to run his daughter’s life who eventually realizes he wasted his own.
1959 [43] Ryan Stiles, Seattle WA, 6′-6” TV actor (Lewis Kiniski-“The Drew Carey Show”, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”)/Toronto Second City comedy troupe alumnus
BS REASONS TO PARTY . . .
[NF] St George’s Day holiday
TODAY is the 32nd annual “Earth Day”, the largest environmental event worldwide, when some 500 million people in 164 countries participate in events that address environmental issues.
BS WAYS TO OBSERVE ‘EARTH DAY’:
• Sleep all day so you don’t use any electricity.
• Unload your Blue Box so you’ll have something to recycle tomorrow.
• Recycle your mouthwash.
• Conserve water. Shower with a friend.
• Reduce air pollution by turning off daytime TV talk shows.
• Chug an ice-cold beer to combat global warming.
• Celebrate with an ozone layer cake.
NET: http://www.earthday.ca
NET: http://www.earthday.net
TODAY is “National Jelly Bean Day”. What’s the absolute best jelly bean flavor — Root beer? Buttered popcorn? Pina colada?
THIS WEEK is “Administrative Professionals Week”, the 50th annual observance of what used to be called “Secretaries Week”. WEDNESDAY is “Administrative Professionals Day”. In Canada, there are a half-million administrative professionals, which includes 402,600 secretaries, 11,900 executive assistants, and 94,000 clerical supervisors. There are over 3.9 million secretaries and administrative assistants working in the USA and 8.9 million people working in various administrative support roles. The reason these people get their own day and the rest of us don’t is due to the efficient efforts of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP).
PHONER: 816-891-6600 x239 (Rick Stroud, IAAP-Kansas City MO)
NET: http://www.iaap-hq.org
THIS WEEK is “National Lingerie Week”, celebrating the ‘glamour, allure and importance of lingerie’. According to a poll by the Intimate Apparel Council, 70% of men buy lingerie for their significant other at least once a year and 75% of men say they like garter belts. (For themselves or their woman?)
TODAY’S FIRSTS . . .
1876 [126] 1st official ‘National League’ baseball game (Boston at Philadelphia)
1915 [87] NY Yankees 1st don ‘pinstripes’
1969 [33] 1st ‘human eye transplant’ (hey, keep an eye out for me, will ya?)
1976 [26] Barbara Walters becomes ‘1st female nightly network news anchor’ (ABC-TV pays her a then-fortune of $1 million/year)
1994 [08] 1st ‘lefty heavyweight boxing champ’ (Michael Moorer, defeating Evander Holyfield)
TODAY’S RECORD . . .
1994 [08] World’s ‘largest lollipop’ weighs in at 3,011 lbs (Olstrup, Denmark)
AND REMEMBER . . .
[Tues] World Lab Animal Day
[Tues] Canada Book Day
[Wed] International Noise Awareness Day
[Thurs] First Day of Summer (Iceland)
[Thurs] Take Our Daughters To Work Day
[Fri] Hug an Australian Day
THIS WEEK IS . . .
Jewish Heritage Week
Wildlife Week
National Karaoke Week
National Volunteer Week
Playground Safety Week
National Science & Technology Week
TV Turn-Off Week
Big Brothers & Big Sisters Appreciation Week
Canada-US Goodwill Week
Keep America Beautiful Week
BULL’S BITS . . .
BS PHONE STARTER:
“Is the idea of ‘Professional Secretaries Day’ actually demeaning? If administrative office assistants were paid well and treated with respect, would there need to have a token day set aside for them?”
BS Q & A:
Q: What is Canada’s most popular participation sport?
A: As of 2001, golf surpassed soccer and hockey as the most popular.
Q: Which are more commonly monogamous — birds or mammals?
A: 90% of all bird species are monogamous, compared to just 3% of mammal species.
Q: Which is the only continent without reptiles or snakes?
A: Antarctica.
BS WATER COOLER QUESTION:
Today’s Question: 31% of wives say that their husbands have no idea that they have one of these.
Answer to Give Out Tomorrow: Their own bank account.
BS TAG LINE:
Bureaucrats cut red tape — lengthwise.
LOOK WHO’S BS-ING NOW!
Welcome aboard to new subscriber Lawrence Swank @ KRLT South.Lake Tahoe CA. Welcome back for another year Dave Wingert @ Seattle-based Jones Radio Network. And welcome to this week’s samplers, including Grigory Simeyko @ Kirovograd, Ukraine, CW Simon @ KXGJ Bay City TX, Cathy Harris @ WBLG Bowling Green KY, Justin Clapp @ WFFG Queensbury NY.
