Thank You, David Hasselhoff

...because this picture makes me laugh EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. that I look at it:

Today's Gossip Roundup

The IMDB's WENN Celebrity News offers a handy daily gossip guide. Let's have a look at today's headlines:

Nick Lachey wanted to see Jessica Simpson having sex with another man. He tells Rolling Stone that he secretly wished he had "found her in bed with a guy" before their marriage ended. Boy, that's kinky, Nick. Maybe that's why she left you, ya freak.

In other news, Katie Holmes has given birth to a healthy, seven-pound baby thetan-carrier named Xenu... I mean "Suri." Sources report that the father is overjoyed. Tom Cruise, too.

Prior to her appearance on Saturday Night Live last week, cast members held another intervention for Lindsay Lohan to, as the story puts it,"chat to the teenager about her party lifestyle and what it's doing to her health." The story continues, "Tina [Fey] told her she was wasting her gift of acting." I hope Tina, a formidable writer, had the good sense to phrase it better than that... Apparently the intervention was a big success, and the show's cast hopes to hold another one for Lindsay in the fall, with a special musical guest intervention for Pete Doherty.

Producer Brian Grazer has split with his wife, Gigi, who, ironically, wrote the script for the 1998 Julia Roberts movie Stepmom. Lets hope things go better for her than they did for the ex-wife in that movie...

Meanwhile, in other news, "[British newspaper] The Sun claimed Teri Hatcher indulged in steamy romps in a camper van parked outside her Los Angeles home, [b]ut the paper wrote in today's edition, 'Although we published in good faith, we now accept that the article was totally incorrect and we apologize to Ms. Hatcher for the embarrassment caused.'" So, there you have it: Teri absolutely doesn't use her VW van for wild sex romps. C'mon, Sun, everyone knows that's what the guest house is for.

Also, King Kong's main squeeze Ann Darrow has shunned the monkey and is instead going to marry the Manchurian Candidate. Now there's a crossover I'd pay to see...

And, finally, how awesome would it be to see Sulu at a gay pride march?

What Your Elected Representatives Really Think of You

Now, I've sent the occasional letter and e-mail to my Representative in Congress, but not once did he write back and call me "an asshole."...

The letter Rep. Jo Ann Emerson sent to one of her constituents read like any other a 20-year-old legislative correspondent might prepare for a member of Congress: Thank you for writing, your concerns are important to me, blah, blah, blah. Then came the kicker: "I think you're an asshole."

For the record, Rep. Emerson claims that she has no idea how the phrase got into the letter. Uh huh. Suuure.

We've Found God!

And it turns out he's a nerd!

You know what that means? Black holes are pimples!

Link Dump-o-Rama: Light-Speed Sex, Puking Walruses, and More!

Occasionally, I come across a "site" on this "world-wide web" that "I" feel like you, the "reader," might enjoy. I vow to write up a witty and insightful screed on why you, "the" reader, should point your mouse-arrow to this link and peruse the "contents" of the page.

Then, as usual, "shit" piles up in front of me, and these links get backlogged, forgotten, ignored, hidden, rediscovered, ignored and forgotten again, and then exhumed with a heaping helping of guilt. So, in the interest of clearing out my karma a bit, I'm presenting to you the first ever Link Dump-o-Rama! (Insert the theme from Benny Hill here.)

First and foremost, I write a weekly (supposedly) column called "Addicted to Bad," and the latest one is up for your reading pleasure. This week, spurred on by the recent revelations that Whitney Houston's new hobby involves a locked bathroom door, a crack-filled cigar, and several "battery-operated boyfriends," as they're known in some circles (namely mediocre sitcoms). The result is, I think, one of my strongest columns in a while:

Frank, showing off some of those skills that made him so legendary in the elite bodyguarding field, gives the crowd a moment to have their fun, and then saves his client with a convenient fire extinguisher. All part of Frank's plan, apparently, because not hours later, Rachel is madly in love and insists that he take her on a date. If this is his standard approach to guarding his clients, it's not hard to see why he had to stop guarding the president.

In a similar vein, here's a short piece from Steve Martin lampooning Bill O'Reilly, entitled "Leap Second Lovers Are Traitors" from late last year. (See? I told you these were old...)

"Look, look, look, look. A leap second is a denial of everything American, of everything good, of everything moral. They're saying we need this second because the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the earth, well this is the no spin zone. So we don't need a leap second. Though I would rather have a leap second than some of these hate-mongers who go around hating even their own ideas! They need to hate their own ideas so much that you have many liberals proposing the leap second, which is an idea that they hate, yet, they propose."

Anyone who's a fan of Steve's pieces for the New Yorker or Pure Drivel, or, indeed, things that are funny, this is for you.

Speaking of pointless controversy, I know that the furor over "Intelligent Design" has died down somewhat, but here's an interview with a fellow who has an intriguing alternative: Incompetent Design.

No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.

Since we're on the subject of science (sort of), here's an interesting look at what sex would be like at the speed of light:

At the speed of light, relativity also predicts that the penis will attain infinite mass, essentially becoming a black hole. When its owner realises that his penis has turned into a black hole, he will become profoundly depressed and overcome by a feeling of loss.

No kidding. One time, my girlfriend at the time attained infinite mass, and I tried to dump her, but I couldn't escape her gravitational field!

Who just played that rim shot?

Anyway, moving on... and since we're already traveling through outer space, why not join Captain Kirk's DVD club? Maybe he'll send you the films of Madeline Kahn.

KAAAAAAAHN!

Maybe not.

Next, I bring you the frontiers of modern science: Mouse testicles!

At present the most flexible type [of cell] is found in human embryos - and their use is mired in controversy. [However,] A German team describes in the journal Nature how it isolated cells from mice testes that seem equally useful.

The researchers don't say how they got the mouse nuts, but I suspect Star Jones was involved.

Have you ever considered filming yourself having sex, or using the phrase "smell you later"? Well, the cast of NBC's The Office has a word for you: Don't. Just... don't. That's just the start of their fun little collection of goofy "The More You Know" messages, which include ruminations on the hidden dangers of cake and that movie The Fugitive.

Speaking of TV, did you know your local news is lying to you?

KOKH-25 in Oklahoma City, OK, a FOX station owned by Sinclair, aired six of the VNRs ["video news releases" - videotaped PR, essentially] tracked by CMD, making it this report's top repeat offender. Consistently, KOKH-25 failed to provide any disclosure to news audiences. The station also aired five of the six VNRs in their entirety, and kept the publicist's original narration each time. [...] In sum, television newscasts - the most popular news source in the United States - frequently air VNRs without disclosure to viewers, without conducting their own reporting, and even without fact checking the claims made in the VNRs. VNRs are overwhelmingly produced for corporations, as part of larger public relations campaigns to sell products, burnish their image, or promote policies or actions beneficial to the corporation.

This and Katie Couric's ascension to prime-time news anchor is why I've given up on television news and now get all my news from the neighbor's dog, who regularly informs me that the CIA is poisoning our nation's cabbage.

Finally, we have Kevin Murphy, formerly Mystery Science Theater 3000's oh-so-handsome Tom Servo, writing about the bungled launch of the next generation of home video:

Because these spiffy Blu-ray titles were listed in the press release alphabetically, with numbered titles first, 50 First Dates tops the list of Blu-ray titles. That's right, 50 First Dates, that buttery softball of a romance twixt Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, a movie whose best role was played by a vomiting walrus. A very popular film, but really the last thing you'd think of when you contemplate paying a thousand dollars for a new Blu-ray DVD player.

Since I'm on MST3K (not literally, but figuratively), here's a link to former host Mike Nelson's humorous essays on everything from poor hat choices to frightening infomercial hosts.

There. That ought to hold you over for a month or two...

Bad Ninja! Bad!

Matt's query about the worst movie ever got me thinking about what I personally considered to be the worst movie ever. I do, after all, write a column on bad movies, so you'd think I'd have an opinion or two on the subject. As far as mainstream movies go, it's hard to beat the ouevre of Freddie Prinze, Jr., or the output of Joel Schumacher. That said, Twister still manages to get a visceral reaction from me, whenever people mention it, and I hated, hated, hated Meet the Parents with a passion. But for my money, the single worst film I've ever seen remains The Super Ninja, a spectacularly ineptly made martial arts movie that can't even be bothered to try. It's in the category of movies so deliciously awful that you will cry yourself stupid watching it. My favorite touch? The American flags that the crew hung around the sets to communicate that, yes, this film is set in the US. Because, you know, police stations just randomly tack up giant American flags here and there.

The story, however, does not end there. Sadly, I do not own a copy of this movie, so I decided to peruse my favorite retailer's website and see if I could get a DVD on the cheap, and here's the first result that came up. WARNING: Even though this is a mainstream retailer, this box cover is probably not something you'd want your date to find in your DVD racks, much less let your boss see you looking at.

What the hell is that, and what the flipping hell does it have to do with ninjas?

Admittedly, ninjas are completely awesome and undoubtedly get lots of tail, but this is just... bizarre. How the heck did the Japanese get such bizarre porn? Does it have something to do with the wholesale subjugation of their people after WWII? The Germans have some odd porn, too. Maybe that theory holds water...

Anyway, to get back to my main point: I like pie.