1. David Zucker, formerly of the ZAZ team that gave filmgoers AIRPLANE, POLICE SQUAD and TOP SECRET in years gone by (in today's pop culture, anything released before 1983 is usually considered irrelevant), has, like Ron Silver, become a born-again right-winger. Therefore, Zucker has finished a comedy called AN AMERICAN CAROL to share his hard-right beliefs with a presumably-large audience. Actors include Kelsey Grammer as General George S. Patton (I'm not making this up), Jon Voight (another ex-progressive) as George Washington and Kevin (brother of Chris) Farley as "Michael Malone"--easy guess as to which documentary filmmaker/provocateur is being parodied.
Jeffrey Ressner of the website POLITICO gives the full details: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11959.html
2. There's a lot of easy snark over Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton's dumb and sort-of-homophobic remark about Lindsay Lohan "going gay" re Bratton's opposition to ex-LA Police Protective Leaguer and now-Councilman Dennis Zine wanting laws to curb disruptive paparazzi feeding frenzies on celebrities. But underneath the surface is a sort of psychodrama of warring LAPD cultures: Zine is one of those ex-hardline cops who probably would've liked to have been Chief himself and, since Bratton is an ex-New Yorker, Zine is throwing one of those "keep outsiders from controlling the LAPD" conniption fits which last occurred bigtime when the short-termed Willie Williams occupied the Chief's chair.
3. Update (8/2/08):
Here's an inadvertent visual commentary on celebrity aging. Witness a 50ish Kevin Bacon trying to remain relatively youthful and looking like Dana Carvey and an 83-year-old Tony Curtis (sans wig) looking like late-career Jackie Coogan around the time of Coogan's playing Uncle Fester on THE ADDAMS FAMILY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dIppZrDcM from an episode of THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW on BBC America.
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