Friday Grab Bag

This is an innovation for this blog: a series of random thoughts on news items that I may not feel like developing into full-blown pieces.

Big Brother 7: Has it occurred to anyone else that the reason they're bringing back contestants from previous seasons of "Big Brother" is that they couldn't find enough idiots, losers and sociopaths to do another season? I'm a little disappointed, because "Big Brother" is the only reality show I watch, and it's been going downhill since "Big Brother 3." [Full disclosure: I sent in an audition tape for "Big Brother 4" and didn't get a callback.]

Ann Coulter revealed as plagiarist: Is anyone really surprised at this? The company that syndicates her column says it's going to look into the allegations, but does anyone think that she will pay a real price for this? Will she face anything like the opprorium that, for example, Kaavya Viswanathan faced for her plagiarism? From the look of her most recent column, though, Coulter appears to be losing it. It was a total mess -- a rambling, chaotic rant totally devoid of all rationality and logic. In other words, vintage Ann Coulter.

Tom DeLay has to run for Congress in Texas: This one kills me. As the Houston Chronicle puts it (I'm paraphrasing), Tom DeLay has been playing fast and loose with the rules for years, and now it's finally come up and bit him in the ass. Couldn't have happened to a bigger asshole. If the Democrat Nick Lampson takes that seat in November it'll be just what DeLay and the Republicans deserve.

Ken Lay dead of a "heart attack": It's funny how different people react to the same event. When I heard of Ken Lay's death (from a "heart attack") I immediately assumed it was a suicide. The Post immediately assumed that he faked his own death. There has reportedly been an autopsy that proves it was a heart attack. I'll believe it when they put a stake through his heart -- or, better yet, when all the investors and employees of Enron who lost everything they had due to his greed and corruption line up and each jab a stake into his chest, like the passengers in the Calais Coach in Sidney Lumet's film "Murder on the Orient Express."

Hilary Swank's Vanity Fair interview: Am I alone in thinking that it was kind of tacky for Swank (an actress I usually admire) to discuss her husband's substance abuse problem in a magazine interview? After all, it's his problem -- he should be the one to choose to discuss it or not. And dissembling with loved ones about your addiction is part of the disease -- if Swank is that upset with Chad Lowe for hiding his problem from her than she clearly needs to do some homework on the subject of addiction. I would suggest Al-Anon.

Lieberman threatens to run as Independent in Connecticut: Ned Lamont for Congress. That's all I can say. When Ann Coulter endorses you, you're clearly not a Democrat anymore. Lieberman should run against Lamont in the primary and if he loses that primary he should take it like a man and get a real job -- presumably providing the voice of Elmer Fudd in Warner Bros. cartoons.

Movies to see and not see: Based on my infallible meter of how to choose movies to see, I make the following recommendations (keep in mind I have seen none of the films in question):

• Superman Returns: Don't See (Based on a comic book, Sequel)
• Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest: Don't See (Sequel, Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer).
• The Devil Wears Prada: See (Based on a Novel, Stars Meryl Streep).
• A Prairie Home Companion: See (Directed by Robert Altman, Stars Meryl Streep)
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: Don't See (Sequel)
• Click: Don't See (Stars Adam Sandler)

And if you're in New York next weekend, make sure to head down to Houston Street to see Billy Wilder's 1951 classic "Ace in the Hole" at the Film Forum on Friday and Saturday. Like Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," it holds a mirror up to the American media that's decades ahead of its time.

Tom Moran