Good luck on that tan.

“The guy helping us with our luggage said, ‘You’re going to Canada.’ We all laughed it off.”

MSC Cruises had informed passengers of the change in a single e-mail sent out the night before the seven-day cruise commenced.

I’m sure somebody must already have noted this, but surely they did not have the right clothing for a visit to Newfoundland. It it had been my cruise, I would have packed nothing but shorts, underwear, swim trunks and t-shirts.

Because Europeans love autopsies (and apparently, green lighting)!

In fact, Switzerland has an entire network dedicated entirely to autopsies. It’s the only network with higher ratings than the Cuckoo Clock Channel. It’s also their funniest channel, their equivalent of Comedy Central. Hosted by the top Swiss comedians, most of whom are moonlighting coroners, their motto is: “We’re a bunch of cut-ups.” The obsession is not limited to TV in that ever-wacky, chocolate-happy land. Swiss Radio 1 is dedicated entirely to songs about autopsies. The slogan of the top-rated show is “all autopsies, all the time,” starring their most famous DJ, Wolfgang Jack. The Wolfman’s catch phrase: “less talk, less rock, more autopsies.”

Some of the zany hijinks can be seen below.


Eleonora Haerens in episode 1

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Klarissa Vadenja in episode 2

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(A special request)

Jamie Bernadette spends most of the film with her head tilted down, looking at the other woman through furrowed eyebrows. (A technique known as the full Patrick McGoohan.)


Jamie Bernadette

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Victoria Vertuga

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Career retrospective

Jamie Bernadette

Jamie Bernadette didn’t do much nudity early in her career. The best I know of was this brief butt shot in Elder Island (2016)


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She definitely took a left turn in her nudography when she absolutely went all-in with full nudity in 2019’s I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu.


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Victoria Vertuga

First there was the immortal cinema treasure, Caesar and Otto’s Deadly XMas (2012), traditional holiday fun for the whole family.


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Then there was an absolutely gorgeous appearance on the premiere of the last season of Dexter (2013).


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And most recently, there was the 2022 film Lexi


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When Sydney first became the internet’s official “it” girl, I thought she would probably have a Kira Reed career. She kinda looks and talks like a vacuous, run-of-the-mill starlet.

It seems that I was very wrong. Not only has she sensibly exploited and capitalized on her beauty while it lasts, but she has turned out to be a deceptively smart and hard-working woman who produces her own projects and goes all-in on promoting them. By all accounts, she was an important driving force behind Anyone But You (as exec producer), and she has been absolutely ubiquitous on the promotion circuit. Not only that, but it turns out that she can handle herself in front of the camera. She’s not taking work from Kate Winslet, but she works within her capabilities and is highly competent in her own niche. The trailer for Anyone But You shows that she’s actually funny.

As you may have noticed, she’s also mighty easy on the eyes. Somewhere along the line she realized that her resting expression is not that attractive, so she has taught herself to keep her expressions animated and to smile a lot.

She turned out to be damned impressive.

And of course, there is that body, as seen at the premiere of her film.

The Raiders scored no points last Sunday in a bizarre 3-0 game. That was a big zippity-do-dah on their home field. That was odd enough, since it was the lowest scoring game of the past 15 years, but that’s an insignificant part of the strange goings-on.

The Raiders played another game at home on Thursday, giving them less time than usual to recover from their injuries and weariness. This time they broke their all-time franchise scoring record with 63 points against the Chargers. In other words, the Raiders had the fewest points in team history followed by the most points in team history, all within five days.

Eight different Raiders scored TDs in Thursday’s game, tying an NFL record. Wide receiver Jacobi “Law Firm” Meyers, threw a touchdown pass and caught another one. The Raiders led 42-0 at halftime, which was surprisingly not the biggest halftime curb-stomping in NFL history. I had to look that one up. I didn’t remember that New England led Tennessee 45-0 at halftime on a snow-shrouded Foxborough field in 2009.

(The Pats didn’t make it to 63 or more. They “only” won that game 59-0. They scored on the first series of the second half to make the score 52-0, whereupon Mr. Brady found a seat on the bench and tried to stay warm. Brady’s back-up that day was Brian Hoyer, who is still playing now, the NFL’s perennial “back-up to the stars.”)

I hope you didn’t have the Chargers’ defense in your fantasy league. They also set a franchise record, because they had never given up that many points before. Few teams have. The Raiders’ total was the second-highest number of points scored by a team in a single game since the AFL-NFL merger. (Oddly, the highest was also this year. The Dolphins scored 70 on ten TDs against the Broncos back in September.)

That’s not the end of the odd stuff. The Raiders managed to score 63 despite accumulating fewer than 400 yards of offense from scrimmage, only 52 more yards than their opponents (378-326). What’s more amazing is that the net total yardage (yards from scrimmage plus runback yardage on kicks, punts and interceptions) was actually in the Chargers favor! Moreover, the Raiders were so sluggish that they had to punt six times! (For reference, the Dolphins amassed more than 700 yards from scrimmage in their 70-point game, and only had to punt once.)

So how the hell can you score 63 when you have to punt the ball away six times? The Raiders dominated the turnover battle. They had five take-aways and no give-aways. The Chargers handed them the ball five times, and they obviously knew what to do with it.