Tom Cruise and Jerry O’Connell’s videos, Movies This Week, “Penelope”, Mega
Bubble Show at Planet Hollywood, What’s In A Name?,
Kidnapper
Madonna, and more…
Tom Cruise
and Jerry O’Connell’s videos.
If you haven’t seen Jerry O’Connell’s hilarious,
genius, and brilliant spot-on
spoof of Tom Cruise’s Scientology Video (Cruise
says, among many things, “We are the authorities on getting people off drugs, we
are the authorities on the mind, we are the authorities on improving conditions…
we can rehabilitate criminals.”)
Penelope. “Penelope” puts
to rest the adage “Only a face a mother could love” because beauty trumps
everything. You are only
ugly if you are poor and a nobody. Remember old
man
Aristotle Onassis? He
brought a wife who was the most famous woman in the world. (Jacqueline Kennedy’s
friend Eileen
Slocum said: “He resembles a frog.”) What about
morbidly obese (and lady’s man) Mexican artist Diego Rivera? Christina Onassis
brought all her husbands, as did plain-faced heiresses Barbara Hutton and Doris
Duke.
Why do I
bring up these dead people? Because Penelope (Christina Ricci) is a wealthy
aristocrat who lives in a fairy tale palace doted on by her parents and
servants. They indulge every whim since they have never allowed Penelope to go
outside. Her parents consider her a monster since she is the product of a family
curse. She has a pig’s nose and ears. Any mother would have said, “Penelope, I
love your nose. And look on the bright side. You’re not fat.”
In the real
world, appropriate suitors would be pounding at Penelope’s door since one kiss
and an “I Do” is said to lift the curse. If it doesn’t work, there is always the
guaranteed inheritance.
Her parents
raised Penelope like Lord Siddhartha. He fled the gilded cage and we all know
what happened afterwards.
Penelope’s
mother Jessica (Catherine O’Hara) is the real villain of this piece. Hey! She is
not to blame but is disgraced and shamed of her only child. She constantly
humiliates her daughter and insists on a parade of socially acceptable men (only
one of her own kind can lift the curse) to meet Penelope. One look at Penelope
and they jump out of a seven-story window!
Remember when E.T. went out on Halloween?
Couldn’t Penelope have worn a burqa or niqab like a million other women?
Did you ever see the Old Masters painting of Italian cardinals? They were proud
of their prominent, crooked noses!
Because of the media assault on the family, Jessica decided to fake Penelope’s
death. Penelope was hidden away in splendid isolation but hunted after by a
midget journalist who doesn’t feel any sympathy for Penelope. When a broke
aristocrat, cracks up at the sight of Penelope, he teams up with the journalist
to expose the pig-faced girl. They find another penniless aristocrat, Max
(McAvoy), to get a suitor “audition” and surreptitiously take a photo of
Penelope. Max is a degenerate gambler who likes to lose. He gambled away his
fortune so he must have daddy-mommy issues. He really wanted to be a musician
but wound up as a lousy poker player instead.
The constant shame Penelope faces from her mother and the suitors leads Penelope
to put a scarf over the bottom half of her face and venture outside!
WOW! The sky is blue and the world is filled with people who pass her right by!
This semi-charming tale, if only the mother-daughter relationship
had been re-figured, is wonderful to look at and, yes, I did shed a tear. You
will also.
It’s all because of James
McAvoy. So this is why he is being hailed as a likely Sexiest Man Alive! His previous film
roles – and I’m even counting “Atonement” – have not done him justice. He is
very sexy, charming, and downright fabulous here. Director
Mark Palansky should be given credit for giving the movie audience the McAvoy we
have been told about. The production is so wonderful you want to say, ‘Penelope,
you are better off at home in your colorfully-built dollhouse. Take your
father’s advice and get a puppy to love.”
Except for the horrible mother, “Penelope” does
send a heart-warming message to young girls, though it is a fantasy no girl over
5 years old would go along with. Stores are selling bras for toddlers and by the
time a girl is 5, she’s on a diet and saving up for Botox.
Mega Bubble Show.
Multi-Guinness Book World Record holder Fan Yang held
a Grand Opening VIP Night for a new show, "Mega Bubble Show", in
Las Vegas at the Steve Wyrick Theatre in the Miracle Mile Shops on February 8th.
The
updated version of the Gazillion Bubble Show is all about bubbles.
Tickets for The Mega Bubble Showcan be ordered by visiting
www.SteveWyrickTheatre.comor by calling 702-777-9974. Running time is 70
minutes with no intermission.
What’s
In A Name?
This naming game has been bothering me. Comets are named after their discoverers
(see Shoemaker-Levy Comet). Two
independent observers,
Alan Hale and
Thomas Bopp, were
jointly recognized for discovering the ancient comet at the same time! While
Hale had spent four hundred plus hours searching for comets without finding one,
Bopp didn’t even own a telescope!
Hale must have been furious but, since billing is always fought over, he got top
billing on the comet.
Bopp was out with friends near
Stanfield, Arizona
observing star clusters and
galaxies when he
chanced across the comet while at the eyepiece of his friend's telescope. He
realized he might have spotted something new and contacted the Central Bureau of
Astronomical Telegrams via
telegram. Comets
are traditionally seen as a bad omen. As Comet Hale-Bopp reached its brightest
point, Bopp's brother and sister-in-law were killed in a car accident after
photographing the
comet. "This has been the best week of my life. And the worst," he said.
Barnard's
Star was named in honor of Edward Emerson Bernard (1857-1923), its discoverer.
This red dwarf star has several claims to fame. It is currently the second
closest star to the Sun at 5.96 light years.
Then there’s
the naming of diseases and cures after the discovers, such as the Salk Vaccine.
However, the best why to get something named after you is to think up a
mathematical riddle. You don’t need to solve it, just pose it. There are lots of
“conjectures”: The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, the Hodge Conjecture,
and the Poincaré Conjecture. Offer up a hypothesis and they name it after you -
The Riemann Hypothesis. Let’s not leave out a theory - The Yang-Mills Theory.
Cultural
Imperialism. So why is
the collection of thirteen ancient codices, containing over fifty texts and
discovered in Egypt in 1945, known as the Nag Hammadi Library? This immensely
important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic scriptures
including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth.
Why wasn’t this discovery named after the man who found it?
It
is generally accepted that a
Bedouin goat- or
sheep-herder made the first discovery toward the beginning of
1947. In the most
commonly told story a shepherd threw a rock into a cave in an attempt to drive
out a missing animal under his care. The shattering sound of pottery drew him
into the cave, where he found several ancient jars containing
scrolls wrapped in
linen.
I
am on a campaign to re-name the Nag Hammadi Library collection “The Mohammed Ali
Samman Codices” (no photo of the discoverer available on Google Images!) and the
Dead Sea Scrolls “The Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed Scrolls” (I hunted around and
found this image, but not sure if el-Hamed is even pictured. Is that his mother
who used some of the scrolls to build a fire?)
www.webcom.com/gnosis/naghamm/nhl.html
The Indian renaming controversy is a result of a movement to change the names of
Indian cities from the names used during the British imperial control of India
back to Indian names. In 2006, the renaming of Indian cities began. The reason
behind the renamings was to erase the British legacy in India. Major cities that
have been renamed include
Mumbai (formerly
Bombay),
Chennai (formerly
Madras),
Kolkata (formerly
Calcutta),
Pune (formerly
Poona) and
Bengaluru (formerly
Bangalore).
Madonna Does
Know What People Think of Her.
New-faced Madonna (pictured with her daughter) hosted to a celebrity-studded
event on the lawns of the United Nations to aid Malawi orphans, UNICEF, and to
inaugurate a new Gucci store.
Madonna
told the crowd: "I've earned a reputation for many things: pushing the envelope,
for being a provocateur, for never taking no for an answer. For endlessly
reinventing myself, for being a cult member, a kidnapper. For being ambitious,
outrageous and irreverent. And for never settling for second best."
The
Future. US
scientists say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, in an
attempt to produce patient-specific stem cells.
Well, at
least that’s what they say they are doing. But we know better.
Researchers removed DNA from donated human eggs, and replaced it with DNA from
the skin cells of two volunteers. They produced embryos with genetic material
that matched the men's, but did not go on to extract stem cells.
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man 
and an “I Do” is said to lift the curse. If it doesn’t work, there is always the
guaranteed inheritance.
Remember when E.T. went out on Halloween?
Couldn’t Penelope have worn a burqa or niqab like a million other women? 
WOW! The sky is blue and the world is filled with people who pass her right by!
Cultural
Imperialism. 
It
is generally accepted that a
Madonna Does
Know What People Think of Her.
