“We can’t focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we’re constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense — while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years.”

– Matt Taibbi

It’s been two weeks since we checked in with Celebrity Psychic, Miranda Celeste-Walters, about the inner worlds of Hollywood’s hottest studs. We needed our fix, so we called her direct line to ask for a personal peek into the daily dalliances of heartthrob, Pierce Brosnan. Here’s the revealing interview that transpired:

Nightcharm: So what can you tell us about Pierce?

Miranda Celeste-Walters: I can tell you that he’s eating a lot of crackers these days, and I don’t know why. (laughs) I’ve just been feeling this from him. These could be health-oriented crackers.

NC: So more likely, these are Triscuits and not Cheese Nips?

MCW: Well, if you compare the nutritional data of Triscuits versus Cheese Nips, you’re going to find a lot of the same things. You’re going to be shocked at how similar they really are. We’re only talking about a 30 calorie difference, per serving, for instance. These crackers, for Pierce, are not Triscuits or Cheese Nips. Maybe Vegetable Thins. (read the full article)

Beware Nightcharmers!

The evil bunnyman is back to haunt our Easter morning dreams.

Not one thing or another, he appears as a sort of manthing, a creature with buff body and hellish costume head.

How many men have been led astray by this sinister hallucination, who comes always during the nighttime of the soul, chatting James Stewart out of his mind in Harvey or opening a portal into yet another mad world for Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko?

It was the bunnyman, was it not, cinema scholars, who sent Jack Nicholson right around that final bend in The Shining when the spooky cottontail was spied out of the corner of the eye, sitting eerily on a hotel bed in full head-to-toe rabbit suit, about to give a blow job.

Oh, evil is the evil bunnyman. How evil? Just ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall. (read the full article)

She’s a certain character type played by actresses of a certain age in a certain type of horror movie genre.

She’s a Horror Hag.

After all the big bugs, saucer men and pod people of the Eisenhower Era horror movies had abdicated the throne, the Horror Hag became Queen of the new tide of terrors made up of Psychos, Bad Seeds and Peeping Toms.

This matronly malefactor embodied all the mistrust toward Picket Fence Babylon we’d come to harbor. Like chocolate cookies laced with gilt-edged razors, her nurture instinct had grown sick, delusional, deadly.

While her subgenre may have largely fallen by the wayside, the Horror Hag’s shadow still remains in popular culture. Every year there’s a notable real-life contender who takes a cue from the big screen and proceeds to go publicly bat shit and just dares us to bar the door at Thanksgiving.

This year it’s erstwhile Psycho-Biddy and Oklahoma Legislator Sally Kern (above right: upper left pic) who seems to be clutching like mad for the current title of Hag Supreme. (read the full article)

News of the verdict exploded across the Net like a Peter North money shot:
Italy’s highest court ruled last week that a 42-year-old workman broke the law by “ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing” and must pay a fine.

The fact that this decision was handed down in Italy — a country that has fostered phallic veneration and worship for centuries — seemed absurd. As Slate pointed out today: “The crotch grab goes back at least to the pre-Christian Roman era…”

Yes, long before Marky (Mark) Wahlberg was pawing his jewels for Calvin Klein or Michael Jackson was proving his manhood by repeatedly cupping his tackle, Italian men were doing corno (the bulge grab) to conjure protection and good luck around their person.

What is it about the male crotch that generates so much self-touching? (We love questions like this). Slate tells us even (read the full article)

As a kid I grew up with my mother and grandmother’s copies of Rona Barrett’s Hollywood and The National Enquirer scattered around the house.

My grandmother especially was unapologetic about the gossip rags, and her ardor made it all the easier for me to revel in them too.

Some of my sweetest memories involve everyone in my family lying around on Sunday afternoons discussing Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand having sex together on the set of The Way We Were. Or at least how we imagined they were having sex together. Tabloid time like this was considered quality time in my family.

To this day I still argue with friends about the veracity of The National Enquirer, and why I still read it — explaining how the potential threat of high-cost litigation keeps the paper trustworthy. This pretty much guarantees that whatever sort of outrageous revelation they are publishing is fact-based (well, maybe). (read the full article)

Very Early Spring by Katherine Mansfield

The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky–
So many white clouds — and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver. (read the full article)