This Week In Stupid - 7/21/07
Stupid, Meet Stupid
John Lovitz beats the crap out of Andy Dick. I’m actually surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
It was fight night at an L.A. comedy club last week when Jon Lovitz roughed up Andy Dick over the murder of their “Saturday Night Live” colleague, Phil Hartman.
Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada, who witnessed the assault, said, “Jon picked Andy up by the head and smashed him into the bar four or five times, and blood started pouring out of his nose.” Lovitz told Page Six, “All the comedians are glad I did it because this guy is a [bleep]hole.”
Lovitz and Dick have been at loggerheads since a 1997 Christmas party at Hartman’s house, five months before his troubled wife Brynn flipped out, fatally shooting Hartman, then killing herself. “Andy was doing cocaine, and he gave Brynn some after she had been sober for 10 years. Phil was furious about it - and then five months later he’s dead,” said Lovitz, adding that when he filled in on Hartman’s “Newsradio” sitcom, “I told Andy, ‘I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t given Brynn that cocaine.’ ”
Last year, Lovitz related, a drunken Dick strolled up to his table at Ago in West Hollywood, rudely downed his guests’ peach liqueur drinks, and “looked at me and said, ‘I put the “Phil Hartman hex” on you - you’re the next one to die.’
Unfunny comedian Jamie Kennedy dies a miserable death hosting Activision’s E3 conference. High? Stupid? You decide. It’s pretty obvious Tony Hawk thought he was a moron. The only laughs and applause from the audience come when Kennedy gets slammed by the other guys on stage.
Our Business Is Stupid, And Business Is Good
Faith Hill before and after being photoshopped for a magazine cover.
Sony manages to piss off everyone by claiming a price drop isn’t a price drop and a stock clearance isn’t a stock clearance. Not only does the left hand not know what the right hand’s doing, I think a foot has issued a press release.
EA and Jostens are setting up a program that lets players on Madden 08 unlock the ability to buy their own “Super Bowl” ring by winning in the game. Finally, there’s a level below “mathlete.”
New football videogame lets you play as O.J. Simpson, taunt murder victims.
The company, which has come under fire in the past for offensive content in its games, is now testing the taste barrier with its latest sports video game, All-Pro Football 2K8, which features O.J. Simpson, unquestionably America’s most infamous athlete.
A customized video clip on the Game Trailers Web site shows Simpson game highlights as his team, “The Assassins,” moves down the field. Toward the end of the clip, Simpson scores a touchdown, prompting a large hooded mascot (above) above the scoreboard to make stabbing motions with a large knife.
Stupid.net
An innovation in iPod security.
An open letter to Subway re: cheese.
A condolence card for the death of your Xbox 360.
Politically Stupid
The Senate wants to double the $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden. Why not throw in a pony and a gift card for Target, too? That’ll break down anyone’s resistance.
The International Association of Fire Fighters is questioning Rudy Giuliani’s 9/11 leadership, claiming he made the 9/11 toll worse. However, hindsight makes the fire department look bad, too.
Rather than reinforce the life-saving potential of rooftop rescues, the police department’s daring helicopter operation in 1993 had the opposite effect. After the garage bombing, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center, and the fire department made a deliberate decision not to plan for future helicopter rescues, officials with the two agencies say.
The agencies rejected recommendations from police pilots that an area of the north tower’s roof be kept clear for helicopter landings. . . . And mostly for security reasons, the Port Authority kept the two sets of heavy metal doors leading to the building’s only roof exit tightly locked–as they would be on the morning of Sept. 11.
Part of the explanation for this decision in the wake of the 1993 blast was an intense feud then raging between the city’s fire and police departments over who had control at emergencies. The fire department, which has no helicopters of its own, dismissed the 1993 rooftop rescue as grandstanding. Fire commanders said the mission was dangerous and unnecessary. And they said any future evacuations should be carried out by fire personnel from the ground.
And just to put icing on the cake:
New York’s fire code requires rooftop access in case of emergency. But because the Port Authority is a public agency, it is exempt. The Journal reports that the fire department “went along with the authority’s policy of keeping the trade center roof exits locked.”
Iranian students make a game about rescuing Iranian nuclear experts from the forces of the Great Satan. Because the “stoning the adultress” genre is played out?
In Rescue the Nuke Scientist, players take control of an Iranian security force carrying out a mission code-named “The Special Operation”. Penetrate the U.S. troops’ fortified locations, kill U.S. and Israeli troops, and seize their laptops to win the game.
“We tried to promote the idea of defense, sacrifice and martyrdom in this game,” one of the students told reporters. “This is our defense against the enemy’s cultural onslaught.”
Educated, Yet Stupid
Pittsburgh Public Shools stop referring to themselves as “public” schools. Because it’s easier to change the label than the product.
By dropping “public” from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools.
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Also, the district last night announced plans to upgrade its parent hotline into a “customer service center,” another initiative aimed at boosting the district’s image.
Graduates from Richmond’s Binford Middle School get a certificate with a picture of Karl Marx. Turns out it wasn’t a communist plot, it was just a case of someone not knowing what the heck they were doing.
Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby called last night to explain: “She really thought she was capturing clip art representing Frederick Douglass. She did a search to pull up Frederick Douglass and this is what came up . . . with the beard and the hair.” Hold on. Wait a minute. One was a German philosopher, the other an African-American slave who became a leading abolitionist.
Dangerously Stupid
Parents’ obsession with online game results in severe malnutrition and child neglect charges. Too bad the popularity of bottled water has made the introduction of birth control drugs into the water supply impractical.
The couple faces a potential 12 year prison sentence each. “They had food; they just chose not to give it to their kids because they were too busy playing video games,” said the prosecutor to the Reno Gazette-Journal.
China executes the government official responsible for food and drug safety. The US is more civilized. We send our corrupt former government officials on book tours and speaking engagements.
California’s highway department shuts down a highway due to driver behavior.
Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse—including death threats, BB gun shootings, even a flying burrito—that the state revoked a rush- hour window and shut down the highway altogether.
Now drivers who relied on California Highway 138 are being forced to take a detour that costs them at least a half-hour a day and businesses along the road are suffering.
