(Published December 7, 2009)Is Nelson Mandela losing his mental capacities — and is it being kept quiet? Bill Keller’s feature on the movie Invictus (with Morgan Freeman as Mandela) drops this odd nugget in passing:
And now for a little touch of Scrooge. Here are five celebrity Christmas songs I wish would just go away.Merry Christmas (War is Over) by John LennonIt starts out strong enough (“And so this is Christmas…”) but has there ever been a dopier lyric than “Let’s make it a good one / Without any fear”? God bless John Lennon and all, but this is not his strongest effort. Toss in the piercing kiddie backup voices, and this gets my vote for the most irritating holiday song ever.
The latest rumors have Tiger Woods taking the sleeping pill Ambien, either the night of his accident or at select other times.
Jennifer Aniston was served with legal papers hidden in a bouquet last night.The evening ended on a sour note when Aniston left the Sunset Towers Hotel and was served with legal papers hidden in a basket of flowers, telling her she was to be a witness in a sexual harassment suit involving her agent, Todd Shemarya.I’ve always been a little confounded by the strange dance that is process serving.
Robert Degan, writer of the song “The Hokey Pokey,” has put his whole self in at age 104.
That old, beat-up typewriter belonging to Cormac McCarthy, the author of The Road and No Country for Old Men, ended up selling at auction for $254,500 — way, way, way more than anyone predicted.The New York Times has the story here. The article is worth reading — there’s a great quote from the book dealer who handled the auction.
If “you” are Sports Illustrated, that is. Still, he deserves it! SI has a nice gentlemanly interview with Jeter, too. SI: Curt Schilling said that he remembers the way you …..
The First Church of Tiger Woods is no more. Well, it’s still there, but it’s been changed to The Damnation of Tiger Woods by it’s founder, “Pastor” John Ziegler. That’s one endorsement that greatest-golfer Tiger Woods has lost since his “transgressions” with (who knows how many) women who don’t happen to be Elin Nordegren, his wife.
Singer Rihanna’s four album titles so far:Music of the Sun (2005)A Girl Like Me (2006)Good Girl Gone Bad (2007)Rated R (2009)She seems to be getting gloomier as she goes. Rated R includes her new hit single “Russian Roulette.”Look, she’s great, but forgive us if we yawn just a teensy bit at the well-worn path to professional “edginess.” But OK: we had her all wrong. Rihanna is a dangerous bad girl. Oh, dear.
An annual tradition: The President lights the national Christmas tree, and reporters bring on the nyuks.I count at least eight wisecracks in that LA Times post (“allegedly green”… “BlackBerry loving”… “aging Vice President”… “Watson, come here”… “unable to resist”… “Warning”… “obese, seasonally employed”… “wasting precious electrical energy”). Not bad for eight short paragraphs.