What does that have to do with Star Trek, you might ask. Just take a look.

• Beaming up
• Miracle worker

José Mujica, Cons:

• Will be forced to spend over seven decades trapped in a transporter beam until rescued by the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D
• Cannae change the laws o’ physics

If you’re the sort who doesn’t like clicking on links, allow me to quote the opening sentence:

“Seven bulls being used on the set of a film starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have broken free in Spain and slightly injured two people.”

Can you believe it? No less than seven angry mancows are rampaging across Iberia and it’s essentially Tom Cruise’s fault. Four out of five scientists agree, that is freakin’ hilarious. (Come on, it’s okay to laugh. They were only slightly injured.)

Now consider this further information:

The bulls “broke free from the downtown location and ran through streets to a nearby beach.”

They’re party animals, these bulls! They couldn’t wait to hit the beach. Soak up a few rays, ride the wild surf, maybe get in a few games of volleyball while “All Summer Long” blares from somebody’s boom box.

But most importantly, the article makes no mention the escaped bulls having been rounded up. And consider the tense in that opening sentence: “Seven bulls…have broken free.” Oh please oh please tell me these bulls are still on the loose, terrorizing townspeople before retreating to their hideout in the hills. Tell me they’ll come make nightly raids on the sleeping populace, burglarizing houses and committing acts property damage, until eventually they pass into legend, this roving gang of Cruise’s Mad Cows.

Please tell me that, on Cadiz’s local newscast tonight, a somber-faced anchor will tell his viewers that the bulls are still at large, and that if you see them you shouldn’t attempt to apprehend them as they are considered horned and dangerous.

Oh what a glorious time to be alive!

Get a load of this trailer.

If they had to make a sequel, they at least should have thrown out all the terrible mistakes they made the first time around, starting with the size of the chipmunks themselves. They worked in cartoon form because they were basically children. But when something that is actually the size of a rodent goes around kissing girls on the hand, it’s profoundly creepy.

I close with a plea to all the filmmakers of the world: STOP DOING SHIT LIKE THIS. Thank you.

For thirty years, McMahon was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show, and for the same thirty years he was the greatest sidekick, real or fictional, who had ever been devised. Who will tell us where Johnny is now, I ask you? For that matter, who will aid Alex Trebek in telling old people about the importance of Colonial Penn Life Insurance?

It’s too painful to continue. Ed McMahon was one of the all time broadcasting greats—for proof, I invite you to look at the wonderful things just about every person in the entire industry has to say about him—and now he’s gone. I ask you, how is that fair?

He may have lost the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes of life, but at least now he’s moved on to paradise, where the streets are paved with Cash 4 Gold.

Shoooooooot heeeeerrrrr!!!

Here are some facts to help you realize why Futurama is so awesome.

Facts About Futurama That Prove it is Awesome

• Futurama is a better show than The Simpsons, as measured by a percentage of the total number of episodes that are great.
• Futurama has more references to Star Trek than any show except Star Trek.
• “We tore the universe a new space-hole, all right, but it’s clenching shut fast.” GENIUS
• Watching Futurama will make you lose weight, except in your wang which will grow significantly, plus it will save you gas money.
• Futurama is emphatically not a show about a soul-devouring harridan, her emasculated husband and their brood of unexceptional children.

I’m setting my TiVo now, people. (FACT: I only have a vague awareness of what TiVo is. I do not personally have TiVo. I don’t even have cable. I’ll be watching the new Futurama episodes at somebody else’s house, assuming my neighbors haven’t changed their locks and/or gotten a dog.)

Of course, the problem with that is one of the things he does is spew to anyone who will listen the completely ridiculous claim that vaccines give children autism. That idea is so far removed from anything resembling the reality we live in here on this planet, that the only conclusion you can draw is that people like Carrey, who repeat these bullshit claims, are either stupid or deliberately trying to get kids to contract infectious disease. You may think people aren’t getting their medical information from a professional farter and his washed-up girlfriend, but they are. For celebrities like these to purposefully spread this kind of potentially lethal misinformation is unconscionable.

What should we say to Jim Carrey about this? I think Captain Picard can say it best:

What else does he have to say about his New Agey spirituality? In talking about the enlightenment he’s achieved, he remarked: “I had this amazing feeling of freedom – from myself, from my problems. I saw that I was bigger than what I do. I was bigger than my body. I was no longer a fragment of the universe – I was the universe.”

You and these dudes, Jim

Proudly transformational since 1984

But my real point is that Jim Carrey is all-around crazy, though perhaps not as crazy as the people who listen to him. It’s not like he was just in the audience, trying to learn what he could about being a New Age hippy-dippy douchebag. He was one of the headliners. He was up there on the rostrum telling others about the secret way to become enlightened and smug. People were looking to Jim Carrey—a man who pretends to make his anus talk for money—for fulfillment they find nowhere else in life. Jim Carrey has become something of a spiritual leader.Can you imagine having to admit to somebody that your new guru is, in fact, The Cable Guy? Can you even imagine having to admit that to yourself? Or how about having to admit it to Captain Picard? I think we know how that would go:

“Captain, I’m pretty sure Jim Carrey holds the key to all the universe’s secrets.”

But yeah, it turns out there’s gonna be a new live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventure coming in 2011. I’m a dude who grew up crazynuts for the Turtles. The 1990 movie was probably the first flick I was ever excited to go see during the pre-release buildup. (Gremlins 2 came out in 1990, too! What a banner year for a five-year-old movie guy!) And I may be the only person in the Milky Way galaxy who thoroughly enjoyed 2007’s TMNT. I can still remember all the words to the Partnerz in Kryme rap that plays over the end credits of the first movie. So what I’m saying is, I can’t effin’ wait for this new Turtles movie.

I finally made it through Star Trek and thought I wouldn’t be called upon to become a gushing fanboy idiot about a movie for a long time. After all, Lord of the Rings is long over and so, mercifully, are Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Two out of the last three James Bond movies were total steaming turds, so I’m done worrying about those. Star Trek was good but not great, so I won’t be bouncing off the walls for sequels. And the right around the corner Terminator flick, while appealing to me, isn’t making me into a slavering moron. So I really assumed I was done getting uber-exicted about hyped-up movies for the rest of my life.

Then along came the announcement of a new Ninja Turtles movie, and I realized that I will never be done. I’ll always get excited like this because I have the emotional and intellecutal maturity of a nine-year-old, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So what I’m saying is, get ready for two solid years of retarded posts about reptiles that say “tubular” and their various disembodied brain / cajun crocodile / robot nemeses.

But age isn’t the only issue. If I heard there was going to be a Playboy spread  featuring some 75-year-old nobody, I probably wouldn’t even bat an eye. But this is Shirley Jones we’re talking about it. Be very honest: are you at all comfortable with the idea of Mrs. Partridge letting all her goodies hang out? Come on, get awkward!

So I’m not saying Shirley Jones just shouldn’t be allowed to be naked. I’m just saying that of all the things I thought I would ever hear, this is among the most totally unexpected.

Do I love The Golden Girls? Will I be watching every single episode of The Golden Girls to honor her memory? The answer to both of those questions is a big-time yes.

One time she was on Futurama! And she’s in History of the World, Part One (she says a swear!). Bea Arthur was a freaking comic genius, and I don’t see much purpose in continuing to live in a Bea Arthurless world.

For some Melted Reel Bea Arthur action, you can read about her appearance in The Star Wars Holiday Special.

But this one was just a little too good to pass up. Cult leader Tom Cruise was called out by celebrity shrink Dr. Drew last week for his unrelenting zeal for Scientology.

Drew had this to say:

“Take a guy like Tom Cruise. Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that’s a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood — maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect.”

Hey Dr. Drew — it’s not that hard. Scientology is a religion for profit. You pay for your membership. So becoming a leader in it is tantamount to becoming an executive at a major corporation. Get it? Still, the good Doc has a point. Cruise always struck me as quite the lonely, emotionally confused guy. It makes sense, then, that he would be attracted to a “religion” whose main selling point is the bashing of psychiatry.

Speaking of which, Cruise’s lawyer Bert Feilds was quick to tow the traditional “Psychiatry is Nazism” line from Scientology:

“This unqualified television performer, who is obviously just looking for notoriety, is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them,” the lawyer said. “He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill. The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels.”

Want more on Scientology’s view of Psychiatry? Check out this now-infamous video of Tom Cruise on the Today show: