Macho Man is dead.

Who’s next? Hulk Hogan? The Ultimate Warrior? Jake The Snake Roberts? In fact, how the hell did Jake with all his drugging and boozing outlive Randy Savage anyway?

As more of these forgotten heroes enter their 50s and even 60s (yikes!), I guess they’re going to start dropping like flies. All the ‘roids and pills and liquor and drugs. Hard to believe some more of them haven’t met the same fate as good ol’ Randy.

I have to admit I felt a bit empty when I read about Savage’s death in a car crash, after a suspected heart attack. But why the melancholy? It’s been almost 20 years since I watched or even cared about wrestling. I can’t remember the last time my brother pile-drived me into the cement in our semi-finished basement. No idea where my old hard-as-nails plastic action figures are. My ancient Wrestlemania VHS tapes were sold long ago in a garage sale.

That being said, I got a boyish thrill when Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler did so well a few years ago. And I was bummed when Mickey Rourke lost out to his buddy Sean Penn at the Oscars. I even found myself defending the realness of wrestling to my wife the other day. “Yeah, it’s fake, but you have to invent your character and hone your skills. You can’t just be some muscle-bound monkey off the street and be champ the next week.”

What was I saying? Who cares! It’s bloody wrestling. My wife is right. It is fake. Wrestlers are actors. Their antics rival those on the daytime soaps for absurdity. They’re just a bunch of goons in banana-hammocks, pounding each other into oblivion.

But Macho Man was always my favourite. I can still hear my dad mimicking his trademark “oooh yeah!” and “Dig it!” and me and my brother crying for more. Those were great times. Some of the best times we had.

Oh. So I guess that’s why his death hit me so hard.

Sorry for calling you a goon, Randy. Rest in peace.

This is me trying not to write about Charlie Sheen and failing. Not writing about Charlie Sheen is more difficult than deciding whether to laugh at or pity him, which is weirdly hard.

Because on the one hand, the man is a barrel of allegedly sober monkeys. He’s funnier now than he ever was on Two and a Half Men (which, ok, my dog wearing socks is funnier than Two and a Half). Tiger blood? Warlocks? WINNING? Such is the stuff that memes are made of, and memes are what the internet eats, so.

And while on the other hand, he has CLEARLY misplaced his marbles, my pity will do him no earthly good. The Sheen is too old and too rich for anyone’s pity (or sensible arguments) to derail his crazy train, not that anyone has been trying. Britney’s kids we take away, Lindsay we throw (however temporarily) in the clink, but His Royal Sheenness can trash hotels and smack hookers and we’re all, That guy is such a rascal. Let’s see what he’ll do next.

And I don’t want to Cassandra this shit but given the usual Celebrity Wheels of Fortune (shame spiral — come back, shame spiral — comfortable obscurity, shame spiral — probably dead by April) I’m afraid what he’ll do next is die, so we might want to ration our LOLs. There’s good odds we may come to rue them. Remember how we all had to feel bad for a second after Michael Jackson R.I.P.’d?

We are never going to stop rewarding insanity with fame (or infamy, which have become kissing cousins) and we aren’t going to stop laughing because it isn’t funny (it is), but for the sake of our future selves who don’t want to feel like assholes, let’s temper our hilarity with a bit of restraint. At least until we see what he does do next.

Dear Randy Quaid:

I hear Canadian authorities have decided to let you stay in Canada, and, indeed, that Canadian citizenship is now in the works for you. That’s because your wife’s dad was Canadian, so she was able to get her citizenship earlier this month, which means you can now get yours (though I don’t know why I’m telling you these things; I expect you already know).

Anyway, welcome. We’re glad to have you here. Frankly, I’ve always liked you better on screen than your little brother, who’s, well, let’s face it, a bit of a pretty boy (and, let’s face it — you’re not). Giving you refuge is in keeping with our best traditions — ones we seem to have lost touch with lately. And I think you’ll find we’re inclined to give you and Mrs. Quaid, and what some would call your wacky conspiracy theories, the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, if you’re crazy, it’s definitely craziness of the vulpine variety, as your now victorious campaign to stay here shows. But I think you’ll also find we’re more likely to believe you that there’s something fishy going on south of the border, that you might be in danger if you ended up in jail in Santa Barbara, even that there’s such a thing as star whackers. And not just because we’re pretty sure that 90% of Americans carry a gun.

We know that your country — your soon-to-be former country — is pretty messed-up right now, and has been since 9/11. That there’s a big gap down there between official reality and the real thing, and that a lot of people have a stake in making sure that gap isn’t closed. (We have similar gaps up here, but ours don’t matter nearly so much.) For all that we are much more deferential to authority in Canada, we are also less propagandized (at least for now), which means that we will not necessarily believe what we hear on FOX or MSNBC (or TMZ, for that matter). And besides, our longest-serving Prime Minister used to use ESP to communicate with his dead mother, so we’re completely down with the whole “offbeat” thing (which also explains William Shatner).

So welcome to you, Randy Quaid, and also to your resourceful wife, Evi, our prodigal daughter. Now, can I pitch you some movie ideas?

Bye Bieber Bunting rocks the cover of Rolling Stone next month, looking as bad-ass as his infant-face is capable of.  The Stone is teasing out its Biebernterview by releasing all the salacious bits, and the PITCHFORKS ARE A-GATHERIN.  Particularly around the Bieb’s stance on abortion which, though RStone calls it a “solid opinion,” he feels the need to end in a question mark.  “It’s like killing a baby?”

Heedless comments like that are interview-bait gold, and RStone knows how to capitalize on an interviewee who has not yet learned to curb his tongue by asking him about abortion in cases of rape.  Clearly disconcerted, the teenlette stammers, “Um.  Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason.”  REMARKABLY INSENSITIVE THING TO SAY, yes, even when followed by the admission that, never having been in that position, he “wouldn’t be able to judge.”  But what 16-year old pampered boy-child has a well-balanced, reasoned view of rape and abortion?  This is how we develop informed decisions, y’all, by saying really ignorant things and then having someone correct us.

Unfortunately for the Biebling, his learning is done on the pages of Rolling Stone and all the idiotic teenaged remarks that usually go reprimanded by parents are being SLATHERED on the intertubes.  His wranglers need to wrangle him better, because following his abortion comments he goes on to comment on the political situation in Korea.  Come ON, RStone!  That’s like letting a puppy talk about universal health care!  I’m hesitant to call shenanigans on an interview not yet released in full, but perhaps we should be hollering for the Bieber’s education before his blood.

I don’t think Ricky Gervais is a homophobe.  But in his Golden Globes opening monologue he delivered a right zinger that was entirely predicated on “gay” being an insult.  Referring to Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor in I Love You, Phillip Morris, he quipped,  ‘Two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay.  So the complete opposite of two famous Scientologists, then.”

Zing, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.  You two dudes like dudes, and that is a ridiculous and comical thing for two dudes to do.

On the one hand, Ricky Gervais is British, which means that he can literally say anything and at least one person in the room will laugh.  Also, he is wildly successful, which means ditto.  Also also, the entirety of the awards show was awesomely or uncomfortably (depending on your tastes) uncomfortable.  And the fact that he meant Tom Cruise and John Travolta but didn’t say “Tom Cruise and John Travolta” but everyone metaphorically looked over at Tom Cruise and John Travolta means the joke landed.  Successful joke, in that everyone got it.  But not a successful joke, perhaps, in its pointed meanness.

Because, ok.  I’m not a fan of making fun of the gays right now, but I support the idea of one day being able to do so.  A sign of the General Non-Oppression of White People is how “cracker” carries no real insultory weight.  We’ll have reached Utopia when we can good-naturedly josh the gays and no one’s hackles will rise because they can get married and be in the military and all-around be treated like people.  We are, obviously, not there.

So until we’re there, I suggest passing on the “You’re so gay” comments.  How about “You’re such a Real Housewife of New York,” for a change, or “You’re so Jersey Shore”?  Things that are actually mean.

The internet is not all boobs and trolls. I mean, it’s mostly boobs and trolls. If you were to answer either “boobs” or “trolls” for every question in an Identify This Internet Thing Pop Quiz, you’d get a passing grade, which is better than usual for you.

But the occasional trickle of goodwill does force its way in. First there was Antoine Dodson, the unabashed camera ham who frightened an intruder out of his sister’s bedroom and became an instant meme. Due to the internet’s OCD need to auto-tune everything, an interview with the charismatic rapist-thwarter was turned into a Billboard Top 100 song. The proceeds from sales of that song on iTunes as well as of merchandise urging you to “hide yo kids” allowed Dodson to move himself and his family out of the Lincoln Park projects, and to set up a foundation for juvenile diabetes. Point: internet.

Then there was Jenny the Bloggess and her taxidermied boar’s head, James Garfield. The Bloggess designed Christmas cards featuring the JOLLIEST STUFFED BOAR’S HEAD EVER and because the internet has a penchant for wtfery, it purchased said cards to the tune of $600. Jenny graciously offered that money in $30 gift cards to the first 20 people to comment that they couldn’t afford Christmas for their kids. Before long, a commenter offered to help the 21^st person, and another the 22^nd. After a few heady days of online bonhomie, over $42,000 worth of Christmas-making goods had been sent to random people who needed it by other random people who perhaps did not need it as much. Point: internet.

Most recently, Ted Williams, a homeless man with the most illegible sign and silkiest vocal chords in all of Homelesslandia, received his internet boon. A web producer filmed Williams saying radio-y things and then threw it online on a slow news day. Within hours, the world’s ear drums had found a new lover. Since then, Williams has done voice-overs for everything from MSNBC to Kraft Dinner, appeared on The Early Show and Jimmy Fallon, and been offered a job and a house by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The internet literally scored this man a house.

So kudos, internet. You may be overloaded with cuss words and outdated Sad Keanu memes, and recent studies may suggest that you have a deleterious effect on our creative thinking skills and ability to follow an ar – hey look!

see more Gifs

Ha ha ha, bears. They don’t know what’s up. Ok what? Oh yes. But as long as you keep throwing us the occasional philanthropic bone, internet, I think we’ll hang on to you.

My New Year’s resolution for 2011 is to like Justin Bieber.

I’m quite serious.

My first reaction to the news that The Bieber caused a near-riot when he appeared at a Kitchener, Ont. mall on Boxing Day, there to buy some shades (because, after all, his future really is so bright he’s gotta wear them), was the standard derision: Oh how ridiculous, he’s this generation’s David Cassidy, or is that Shaun Cassidy, get a grip people (and by “people,” I mean you, 13-year old Kitchener-area girls).

Or, as the manager of the Sunglass Hut put it, with admirable southern Ontario laconicism: “I thought, my God it’s a 16-year-old boy who’s shopping — what’s the big deal here?”

But it happened that I had just finished watching Michael Bublé on HDNet, playing Madison Square Garden.  And just days before, at my end of the country, Diana Krall and hubby Elvis Costello had shown up at a mall in Nanaimo, B.C. to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, causing, if not a near-riot, a lot of texting and twittering among my son’s friends. And I thought how great it is that Canadians, particularly young Canadians, have these undeniably international and A-list celebrities to call their own. (Yes, I know Elvis isn’t a native son, but we’ve adopted him.)

In my day we had Gordon Lightfoot and The Guess Who. Good, but not the same thing.

So why not add Bieber to the list of Canadian mega-things in whose halos we bask? After all, he’s the biggest star of them all at the moment. And he himself put his finger on why they really matter to us: according to that same store manager, “he said he keeps some of his money in Canada.” These one-person industries bring some big coin back to the homeland. And not just when they go Christmas shopping or pay the taxes on their local manses; Bublé has already laid-out the bucks to buy a piece of the WHL Vancouver Giants and before long he’ll be able to afford the Canucks.

So I apologize for all the nasty things I’ve said about Bieber in the last year. Sure, I thought “Baby, Baby” made The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” sound like “Appalachian Spring,” but the kid won four American Music Awards in November, including Artist of the Year, so what do I know? I’m out of the Lightfoot/Guess Who era. I’ll be doing my best in 2011 to understand the error of my ways.

However, I still refuse to like Nickelback.

Update: Here’s video of the visit (guaranteed 100% importance-free):

But I prefer this, of The Biebs escaping — or rather, not escaping — a horde of teenage girls on a . . . well, you’ll see:

This is what we’re doing now, Universe?  It’s not enough that Snooki has a book deal and that the Bieber-fetus has a biopic.  We’re giving Courtney Love a reality show now?

Because this show isn’t going to be whatever Courtney thinks this show is going to be (“America’s Next Top Model” meets “American Idol” meets “Rock Band III” where Courtney gets to be Tyra, Simon, AND that guy with the bangs).  It’s going to be an extended version of this clip where Courtney comes to pitch her show.

 
No arguing the gal’s belfry is flooded with bats.  But this clip frames her bats, highlights her bats, puts those little neon sticky notes on her bats.  Here she is phenomenally early!  How amusingly punctual.  Here she is laughing uproariously while we edit in some other footage of the lackeys looking blank, because her joke was actually seriously funny and everyone hooted but that undermines the message we want to portray which is BAAAAAAAAAATS.

Oh damn, now she has said something sincere about mentoring girls.  Let’s just cut to silence to indicate that that is kooky.  Crickets?  Too overdone?  Just silence then.

Because reality tv is no longer about dumping real people into wacky faux-realities and then sitting back to watch.  It’s about exposing them for cowards and harpies and ass-bags.  There’s a reason competition shows run their challenges so close together, and it has everything to do with the delicious DRAMA high-stress and no-sleep produces.  Or at least the fragments of drama, which can then be stitched together with shrieking violins to make it look like everyone is full of hate-beans.  Because not all of those contestants on “The Bachelor” can be lying about the editing making them look bad.

And that is why Courtney’s show is an option now, when she is clearly running wild and her mouth is right there with her, and not in 1998 when her shit was so firmly together.  Inspiring stories of struggle and success are for PBS documentaries.  Prime time demands disaster, and disaster to the last degree.

Katy Perry’s boobs have been deemed unfit for audiences aged 1-6.  Shocked, are we?

The singer’s duet with Elmo, already disseminated via the Youtubes, won’t be appearing on Sesame Street after all.  Perry sings a reworking of her song “Hot N Cold” where lines such as “like a bitch, I should know” are changed to the more child-friendly “left me here in this pose.”  She saw the wisdom in editing her song lyrics (obviously) but opted to retain her Kitty-Purry, hyper-sexy persona, chasing Elmo in a lime-green strapless frock. (Illusion netting does not count as straps.)

The issue has, as usual, divided the internets into two variations on Appalled.  Column A is Appalled that Perry would appear on a children’s show so nearly naked.  Column B is Appalled that Column A is Appalled.  Breasts are food! they cry, defending Perry’s décolletage as the sartorial equivalent of breastfeeding.

Perry seemed genuinely delighted to be appearing on the show, calling the taping “the highlight of [her] entire career.”  And if her tight Elmo T-shirt on last weekend’s SNL appearance is any indication, she’s disappointed by the Street’s decision.  But her outfit is inarguably tarty.  Whether it’s too tarty for children is sort of a moot point, because it’s clearly too much for this particular children’s show.  

Perry had to know that people would complain.  Maybe she thought Sesame Street would buck the heat and have her back, not realizing that the show’s loyalty is to its viewers and not to her California Gurls.  With a fraction more foresight and fabric, she could have avoided forcing their hand while keeping her coveted appearance.  If, however, her goal was to stay true to her vision (doubtful) or generate controversy (likely), then she has made boobs of us all.

One of the things “Glee” has going for it is its wacky normalcy. With the possible exception of Finn and Mr Schuester, none of the characters is Hollywoodily attractive. They look like they legitimately go to high school.

And I hesitate to say that Lea Michele is “normal-looking” because that has become code for “uggers .” What I mean is that she — like most 24-year olds with their original faces — is pretty in some lights, manky in others. If she were unwaveringly flawless (I’m looking at you, Halle Berry), she’d hardly be believable as nerdy, unpopular Rachel Berry.

Likewise I can’t call her a “healthy weight” because that reads as “fat,” even though all I mean is that a good stiff breeze wouldn’t knock her over. I’m only marginally bothered by her skinnying up over the summer, and only because that’s one less reasonable-sized gal in the limelight. Team Healthy-Weight is shorthanded enough as it is.

My main beef is with the oglers. Michele received acclaim for her voice back when she was just slender, but now that she’s downright thin she’s in October’s Glamour in her underthings, in an MTV article titled “Only the Hot Parts,” and has just been offered a place in the pages of Playboy. The voice apparently has a body worth looking at.

I don’t object to Lea-Michele-as-sexpot. She is Of Age, and will need to break free from her Glee-skirts eventually. And I don’t object to her trimming down, because she seems to be doing it smartlike, and for smart reasons. More energy, and so forth. It’s just a shame that in order to be able to flaunt what she’s got, she had to lose a bit of it first.