the sins of the mother passed on to the son

A very sad story: Tyler Lamber, the 25-year-old son of "Different Strokes" star Dana Plato, committed suicide. He had reportedly been "experimenting" with drugs and alcohol. Plato committed suicide on May 8, 1999.

Take note: Never "experiment" with drugs and alcohol.

Ricky Martin "officially" came out

Add this to the things we already knew file. I believe that the present is always the best time to be honest about yourself, but this seems like a ploy to me. Ricky Martin is no longer a part of our lives as he once had been. Well, twice that I remember - once as a member of the group Menudo, which I remember from my Saturday mornings, and then as a solo artist who sang about how a woman bangs. And now he has a found a way to enter our lives a third time: as a "fortunate homosexual man."

Do you pledge to be a servant to President Obama?

Yeah. uhm.... I don't think this would have been made if McCain was president right now.

I think we all should head out to Hollywood right now, bang on the doors of Cameron Diaz and the Moore-Kutchers, and tell them how then can come over and help out our communities. They can start by picking up the trash by the road. Do you think they'd do that?

And since I mentioned Cameron and Ashton: were you two representing America when you did that hideous What Happens in Vegas movie? Or was that made just because we were still all living during the oppressively horrible Bush years, and we're now in the Obama Era so everything will be better?

the cult of celebrity

Stop and think: what magazines do you pick up when you're shopping at the grocery store? Do you grab a People or an Us Weekly? Perhaps an OK or a Hello!? Do you subscribe to these types of magazines, sifting through them as soon as they arrive in the mail?

Maybe you're only a casual reader, looking for a diversion while pushing your shopping cart through the check-out counter. Perhaps you peruse them when you're resting from working out at the gym. Maybe you watch Entertainment Tonight or Extra! now and then. Or perhaps, there's something more going on...

The American historian and educator Daniel Boorstin once wrote, “Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.”

We have just experienced an historic presidential campaign of unprecedented proportions, our economy is in peril, our military struggles to fight two wars, and our health care system is facing impending collapse. With all of these pressing issues weighing on the hearts and minds of America’s families, what seems to be on the covers of every magazine and tabloid these days? Celebrity nonsense. Does anyone really care which teen-aged pop star will give birth next? Do we need to know every happening inside the birthday party of a power-couple’s toddler? Is the diet that worked for the soap opera star really going to work for anyone else?

As long as there have been people who pulled away from the proverbial pack, there have been people to follow them and idolize them. However, scientists have only recently defined the psychological phenomenon of “celebrity worship” as a type of parasocial relationship that can have unhealthy and addictive elements.

Read the rest.

a former "American Idol" contestant commits suicide

See? It's bizarre stuff like this that make me glad I'm not a "celebrity." I can't imagine what Paula Abdul thinks about that. The woman, Paula Goodspeed, had been stalking her for seventeen years. Seventeen years!

Here's the video of her audition for American Idol:



I'm sure most of those who watched the show found her amusing, like so many of the others who auditioned but clearly lacked any vocal abilities. The audition was over two years ago, so it would be difficult to say that her rejection on the show directly affected her decision to suicide. She probably thought about it, though. Some of the suicidal people that I have talked to have kept track of what they view as failures in their lives. Perhaps Paula Goodspeed did that as well, but it's something that we'll never know.

Don't Vote!

Seriously. You should make all your decisions based upon what Forrest Whitaker, Jennifer Aniston, and Jonah Hill tell you. I mean, you're reading about them in OK and US Weekly anyways, right?

"Can I have your autograph?" "Get away from me!"

Go here to find out the best and worst of celebrities when it comes to signing autographs. Captain Jack Sparrow is the best with a pen, and Ricky Bobby is the worst.

I've always thought of obtaining autographs from celebrities as a weird practice. What do you do with the autograph when you obtain one? Do you frame it on the wall someplace? Do you put it in a book? My wife has a baseball autographed by the great Stan Musial. It's in the house somewhere...

Have you ever seen a celebrity on the street? I don't mean at a sports event or a concert hall or a movie premiere, where you're supposed to see them. I mean in some totally random place. I've only seen two that I can remember.

I sang in the choir, called the Concert Chorale, all four years in college. Every February we would go on tour for a few days. My sophomore year we sang in several churches around Washington, D.C. We had a few hours free time to travel about the city - by foot, of course - on a Saturday, so several of us spent the time wandering around the Mall. As I was walking around the Vietnam Vets Memorial, I spotted Peter Graves. I daringly approached him and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but are you who I think you are?" He whispered, "I suppose so," and walked on. One of his companions gave me an extremely dirty look, but I didn't care. I talked to Captain Oveur. Unfortunately, he didn't ask if I enjoyed gladiator movies.

On our first year wedding anniversary, The Wife and I spent a few days in Chicago. We enjoyed an extremely late dinner at the Four Seasons hotel. As we were leaving through the main doors, we saw a man bending over his luggage on the sidewalk. He looked up, and I instantly recognized him to be Judd Nelson. He must have read the recognition on my face, because he immediately looked down at his luggage again. He had nothing to fear, however, as The Wife and I walked past him without a word.