Sheen's response: "They continue to be in breach, like so many whales"

Strange though it may seem, Charlie may be in the right. Not verbally of course, or mentally, but he may be right legally. His behavior has been the same for years - worse, in fact, because there was violence in the past - but they never fired him until he bad-mouthed his producer. That indicates that they did not fire him for the behavior, but for the comments. Pointing out that his producer and other network execs are assholes, however racist his verbiage, is probably not legal grounds for termination. I haven't seen Charlie's contract, but I have to think that those guys are speeding toward quicksand and are trying to back-pedal. Some general clause in the contract probably does permit them to fire him for public "moral turpitude," which is the precise phraseology they used in their release, but if his current behavior constitutes moral turpitude and grounds for dismissal, why didn't they fire him for the same behavior in the past? Let's face it, they should have fired him the first day that he failed to make a call without a good excuse, because that probably was a legitimate contractual violation, but they let everything slide over the years because Charlie was a cash cow. Charlie can prove that they felt that way because they made him the highest-paid guy on TV in spite of a history of wacky antics just as bad as the current ones.

Besides, do a bunch of Hollywood suits want to try to go to court and prove that Charlie was wrong and that they aren't assholes?

"Last night a friend of Flores, who claims to have seen the pictures, said: 'They are really explicit images that will shock and disgust the majority of her fans.'"

I'll just have to see them before I can determine my level of disgust. I may even have to study them at length.

“Kathy, pick on me. Come up to Alaska and pick on me, but leave my kids alone.”

That sounds to me like Palin doesn't really understand how Kathy operates. That ought to be Kathy's cue to reach the next level and really start ridiculing Palin's kids unmercifully!

One criticism: Palin refers to Griffin inaccurately as a "has-been." I think Griffin would be the first to admit that, despite her advancing years, there was never a time when she was more popular than she is now.

Interestingly, "Hell" is not one of the options.

The headline notes that he likes his Vodka on the rocks.

Why is it so late this year?

It is the most complicated holiday in the modern calendar. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon which falls on or after March 21st, which is a fixed date used by Christians to represent the vernal equinox. (The actual equinox may not fall precisely on that date.) This process was established in 325 AD by the Council of Nicea. Before then it was calculated by the Jewish calendar ("the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb"), and before 190 AD it could even occur on weekdays!

Bottom line, modern Easter can occur as early as March 22nd (which means that the full moon is on March 21st, and March 21st is on a Saturday), and as late as April 25th (which means that the full moon is on April 18th; and that April 18th occurs on a Sunday). This year Easter almost maxxes out. It's on April 24th. Just three years ago it was more thana full month earlier, on March 23rd.

The Orthodox churches use essentially the same method, but base it on their own calendar, so they sometimes match with the Western churches, and sometimes not, depending on whether the full moon occurs in the period between March 21st on our calendar and March 21st on theirs. This year and last year the dates coincide. Next year the Orthodox Easter is a week later than the Western. Their Easter can occur as late as May 8th on our calendar.

Why is the date determined that way? You can get much more detail about the evolution of the process in early Christianity at the Catholic Encyclopedia.

In 2010, Easter fell on the same day as Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day, another celebration of Spring. We have to wait until 2015 for that serendipitous alignment to reoccur. This year GPJPD occurs three weeks earlier than Easter.

Urkel-os? As much as I love pop culture, that one snuck by me.

This is some great nostalgia for the children of the baby boomers.

How bad do you have to be before Gary Busey thinks you're a little nutty? Sheen is there.

The quality is impressive.

Rango won the weekend handily. It didn't make it into the 40s, but came close with a healthy $38m. The Adjustment Bureau was a solid second at $21m. Beastly did quite a bit better than its modest expectations, finishing third with $10 million.

Take Me Home Tonight bombed so completely that it failed to make the top ten! It made the all-time list of worst openings (2000 or more theaters), and was the worst film in that 2o00-theater category in the past two calendar years. (The last film to do worse was Bandslam in August of 2009. I don't even remember that film.)

The King's Speech is not only the Oscar winner, but is also a massive earner. It has now grossed $123 million in the USA alone, and its budget was a modest $15 million.

He's nutty as a fruitcake, but he's also kind of a genius in his own twisted way. If he wrote books, he'd be Hunter Thompson. He even talks a little like Hunter.

Rango won the day, but not as convincingly as expected. It is falling behind its predicted level, and may not reach $40m. The Adjustment Bureau is right on target for the high teens. Beastly is doing better than expected, but expectations were very low ($6m). Take Me Home Tonight was expected to bomb, but is coming in even lower than those modest expectations.

Only 94 of those hours are spent on food.

"An alleged call to 911 requesting 'something to eat' has prompted the arrest of two Kingsport residents — including a naked woman, who reportedly had to be dragged down a flight of stairs and pepper sprayed."

"Sure, it's not Mother's Day, not by a longshot, but Diane Lane just got cast as Clark Kent's mom in the Superman reboot, so it's time to look back on all of the most pants-tighteningly hot MILFs in film history, what roles they played, and what made them so hot. Here are the hottest movie moms of all time."

Rango 82%

Adjustment Bureau 69%

Take Me Home Tonight 32%

Beastly 10%. Ugly reviews. "What really grates about this movie, apart from the atrocious script, direction and acting, is the premise." Apart from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

I'm still a little pissed off that capicola hasn't made it yet. Some say it's because of the steroid scandal.

By the way, the meat Hall of Fame has something in common with the Rock Hall of Fame. Tommie Lee is in both.

En francais

"We love a good soundtrack as much as anyone, but for this list we considered only those scenes in which the music -- whether emanating from an onscreen band, a boombox, a disco's sound system, the mouths of the characters, etc. -- is part of the action. (Film nerds refer to scenes like this as being "diegetic." Non-nerds, you just learned something.) This explains, for instance, the absence of movies with killer, primarily non-diegetic soundtracks, such as 'Rushmore' and 'The Graduate.'"

"After years of sending his regrets, John Travolta has finally agreed to reunite with his fellow Sweathogs for a Welcome Back, Kotter 35th anniversary reunion."

"Forget Drive Angry and please, please forget Bad Teacher; if any movie was ever justified in jumping on this red-band trailer trend, its Rubber. I mean, points for effort, but how are you supposed to sell a high concept movie about a tire that can explode people’s heads without actually showing some exploding heads? Or at least an exploding bunny. Thus, I present the just-released red-band trailer for Rubber which features all sorts of creatures exploding. Only, why does this suddenly look like an art film?"

"To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools - especially minority students."

He thinks Rango will be #1 by a mile, as it raises the bar into the 40s, probably on its way to $150+. The Adjustment Bureau is expected to finish a distant (but fairly respectable) second with $19m.

Beastly and Take Me Home Tonight are expected to barely make the top 10.

Note: when these CBS vids claim to be expired, you can still play them if you press "play," but the video is partially hidden by those "other choices." I guess that's OK, at least for me, because I don't generally look at the video. I listen to the monologues while I'm doing other things. CBS.com has been deeply fucked-up for several days. For a while today it was completely off the web.

This time The Daily Show won every demographic. Conan was down about 10% from January.

"People were genuinely and often passionately upset with James Franco’s lackadaisical approach to the his hosting duties. So, maybe Franco did fail miserably as a host of the Academy Awards, but what he has demonstrated is that people do care about this Institution. We may mock it mercilessly, and we may feign indifference, but goddamnit, it’s not within a smug celebrity’s right to intentionally ruin our fun. Our fun should ruined organically, and not through determined laziness. Indeed, by approaching his hosting stint with the same detached listlessness that many of us pretend to have about the Academy Awards themselves, Franco has inadvertently stumbled upon a revelation: We do care. The Oscars do matter. Maybe the awards don’t. And maybe to many the movies don’t, either. But when it comes to sitting for four hours in front of the television to watch a 'self-congratulatory circle jerk,' we care more than many of us are willing to let on, enough to get outraged when the host shits on the Oscars. That’s our job, and that motherfucker James Franco took all the fun out of it.

If Franco’s intent was to hold up a mirror to the rest of us and show us how ugly we look when he pretend not to care, he accomplished that."

Pattison is a sad dude. He has everything that most of us want, and it has made him agoraphobic and miserable.

The good side of that, at least from our point of view, is that he's genuine. Such unfiltered candor is rare from a big star - and pretty damned refreshing.

There are four films in wide distribution this week:

Rango, the animated pseudo-Western starring the voice of Johnny Depp, will be in every theater in the known universe, and has thus far garnered a sterling total of 88% positive reviews. It was directed by the same guy who directed Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it sounds pretty cool. One reviewer called it "What a Coen Brothers animated flick might look like and sound like if they got an assist from Terry Gilliam. This is a deeply weird and deeply demented movie, and thrillingly so."

The Adjustment Bureau, a sci-fi thriller starring Matt Damon, will also make it into a lot of theaters (2750+) and is running right on the borderline between "fresh" and "rotten" at 60% positive reviews. Given its Phillip K. Dick provenance, you can bet it will be about how the powerful manipulate our minds and our fate.

Take Me Home Tonight (2000 theaters) is rated R. The official blurb calls it "a raunchy, romantic and ultimately touching blast from the past set to an awesome soundtrack of timeless rock and hip-hop." Variety said, "Take Me Home Tonight is a pleasant-enough all-in-one-night comedy, featuring a protagonist facing the classic Graduate-like existential dilemma of post-college paralysis." Chances are it's not too bad because the Village Voice gave it a thumb down, and they are wrong nearly 100% of the time.

Beastly (1900 theaters) is "an edgy teen romance about learning how to see past false surfaces to discover true inner beauty." It's rated PG-13 and targets a teen demographic with stars like Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, one of the Olsen twins, and the ubiquitous Neil Patrick Harris." It has not been pre-screened for critics, and not a single review is available.

I have to give the junior division to Alba.

The ultimate GILF? I vote for Demi Moore, by a Secretariat-like margin. While not technically a grandmother, she qualifies on the basis of having an adult daughter.

No, he's not expecting a visit from James Franco.

"A farmer from Jiayu county of Hubei Province has lived 55 years without an anus, after being born with congenital anal atresia in the Wuhan Union Hospital. But now doctors have reshaped a new fundament for him in January."

Here's one from a guy who knows a thing or two about reviewing the film world:

"This was the worst Oscarcast I’ve ever endured. It’s time for the Board of Governors to have a long, sad talk with itself. Franco and Hathaway lacked a single clever line."

— Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

I haven't found her characterizations convincing in any movie but Garden State, but what does that matter? Bottom line: she has acted well enough to persuade the Academy members that she can act.

How many great actors are there, really? Except for a few versatile geniuses like Edward Norton, DDL, Depp, and Ken Brannagh, acting success depends on casting. Audrey Hepburn had one character, but people loved her performances. John Wayne would have sucked as Valmont, but he won an Oscar for playing Rooster Cogburn. (Any of those other four guys I mentioned could play either of those roles.) Sure, Portman often talks in a robot voice and has the diction of a whiny Valley Girl, and she always seems to be either crying or posing with ironic detachment, but many people are like that and sound like that. Find a role where that works and she gets her John Wayne Oscar. Maybe she'll win even more. But I reckon that don't make her Meryl Streep.

Why not let her host next year. She couldn't be worse than Franco.

In addition to Wendy Williams, "other participants include: former Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio (fans are likely surprised he's still alive), rapper Lil' Romeo (introduced as the son of Master P.), supermodel Petra Nemcova, tween TV star Chelsea Kane, WWE wrestler Chris Jericho, Playboy model Kendra Wilkinson, former Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward, and Loveline co-host Mike Catherwood."

She is most famous as the woman holding Bob's arm on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

It's a good list, but should include Deniro for Raging Bull.