Worst Bar in the Entire World

By now, all Brooklynites know that Great Lakes has the best jukebox. Any bizarre song or band you thought that no other bar would play - they have it. It's a joy to go there with your hipster friends on a Friday night and find that all the songs you might play for them at a party you might host if you had a decent apartment with roommates who didn't have weekend internships at galleries in Chelsea. You step up to that jukebox, and you step up to a home away from home. The only problem? They never play your songs. Here's what'll happen. You'll lay down $2 for 7 songs. You'll get really excited to hear what you selected. You'll dance around to other random songs from the 80s. You'll forget that you laid down $2. Then, the bartender yells, "Last call!" You say, "Wait, I haven't heard my songs! It's been almost 3 hours!" And then he will say, "What do you think you're doing?" And then you'll take your hand off his girlfriend's leg and say, "I want my songs!" Then he'll yell at you some more and tell you to get out of the bar. All of your friends will pretend like they don't know you. Oh, and that Puerto Rican girl with the tattoo of a chrysanthemum on her hip? She's actually the bartender's girlfriend. What I'm trying to say is this: please boycott Great Lakes at all costs. They're crooked and they don't care about how many $2 you put into their jukebox. They are evil. Vindicated.

Let's Exhume a Mystery

By now, nearly two months after the fact, Anna Nicole Smith's death continues to rivet us all. The cover of this week's issue of InTouch magazine says, "Investigator's shocking claim, The Killer Is... Is Dannielynn in danger?" The editors lost their train of thought midway through that tagline there, but one thing reads loud and clear: the corpse of Anna Nicole is a first class ticket to Increasedreadershipville.

So many mysteries surround her tragic demise. How many pills did she take before she died? How long did it take for her to die? What did she do in the interim between taking those pills and finally dying? How exactly did she position her body just before death? Did she experience any pain in dying? Is she really dead? I don't think anyone will be satisfied until her body is autopsied at least four or five times.

Not to be outdone, the estate of another tragic and beautiful entertainer, Harry Houdini, has taken cues from our newsmagazines' relentless quest for truth and demanded the magician's body be exhumed and tested for traces of poison. Houdini's official cause of death was peritonitis caused by an appendix that ruptured after a young man punched him in the stomach in a test of abdominal strength. No autopsy was performed. That, of course, was 1926, and we've learned to treat our dead celebrities much differently since then.

What does the Houdini estate expect to do if they find that their relative was, in fact, murdered? "There will be an all-out witch hunt," says Brandon Houdini, great-grandson of the famous magician. "The name of the man or woman who killed my great-grandfather will be posthumously defamed and all of his or her titles will be stripped away, assuming he or she had any titles to be stripped of."

Harry Houdini's death raised suspicion immediately after it happened. In the final years of his life Houdini had received numerous death threats from members of a group called the Spiritualists, presumably because many of his stage shows included acts that exposed the group's fraudulent seances. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and a member of the group, said before the magician's death that Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out," and also, "the hour is nigh for this clever little weasel to make his date with the Mistress Arsenic."

What would it mean for fans of Sherlock Holmes to know that the author of their beloved detective could have conspired to kill the "Handcuff King"? Luckily for them, science has only advanced so far as to be able to verify how a long-dead person actually died. There's still no way to tell if Doyle had any hand in the killing. It seems no matter how many bodies we exhume, we'll never be able to answer the most important questions: not what, but who killed Houdini and Anna Nicole? It just goes to show that it doesn't matter how many mysteries you've buried, there are some things that science will not be able to posthumously determine. Never ever. Vindicated.

Coldplay Lead Singer is Very, Very, Very Excited

By now, everybody's heard about how Coldplay frontman Chris Martin stood on the stage of the Estadio River Plate last week, in front of hundreds of hungry Argentine fans, and unashamedly wet his pants. It was the last leg of the band's Latin America tour, and as the last chords of "God Put a Smile on Your Face" rang out, Martin started yelling excitedly into the microphone about having written the "best song ever," and apparently lost control of his bladder.
"Hey! Hey! Hey, listen to me!" he began. A hush came over the crowd as Martin jerked his knees and stood up on his tip-toes to get their attention. "Guess what I did! Guess!" he shouted. The crowd applauded wildly, having no idea of what was coming next, and Martin just got more excited and began stomping on the stage and trying to bend the mic stand. "Hey! Hey! Hey, guess what! I just wrote the best song ever! Best song ever!" Martin then attempted to lead the crowd in a chant of "best song ever," and most of the fans joined him - that is, until they noticed a heavy, dark stain gathering at his crotch.
"He goes pee. Right in front of everybody, he goes pee," said spectator Edmundo Federico. "What happened?"
The general consensus seems to be that Chris Martin was on drugs that night. But I'm here to tell you that that's just the way he is. I met Martin once. It was a little less than a year ago, and all he could talk about was how he had just made the "best Mother's Day card ever." He then stopped moving and quickly walked away to the bathroom, several drops of urine dotting his path. Vindicated.

Shameful Drivel Somehow Hits No. 1 Mark

By now, every Hollywood insider knows that Marisa Tomei is the golden ingredient to any hackneyed and painfully misconceived movie idea. You take a dull script, mix in a couple of hokey, unfunny actors, add a dash of cliche, and top it off with a sprinkling of Tomei. What do you get? The most popular movie in America. Not just the most popular: Wild Hogs grossed over $38 million in its first weekend. It made over twice as much as the film in the No. 2 spot (Zodiac). What else is a studio executive to say, except thank God for Marisa. I spoke with Disney spokesperson Maria Gladowski about the baffling success of the film.
"Marisa? She's just great," she responded. I then asked about the rest of the film. She said, "We green-lit this project way back in November. At that time it was supposed to be a Van Wilder sequel. And then (John) Travolta called and told us he had a great idea for a romantic comedy in space. I told (director Walt) Becker, 'If you can make this work, I'll eat my foot.' And then Tim Allen got involved, and Will Smith's little brother came onboard, and someone found dirty pictures of Bill Macy's wife, and it just really got out of hand."
I asked where the idea to make this a motorcycle road trip movie came from. "I think Travolta had some leather left over from his Batman auditions in the 90's. By the time the actual plot was decided on, it didn't matter. We knew we were in a quagmire and our only line out was Tomei."
While her choice of projects has been largely hit-or-miss, Marisa Tomei is regarded as a reliable actress who can deliver a compelling performance in spite of a weak script. She is best known for her Academy Award-winning turn as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny.
"She's the only way to explain what happened here," said Gladowski. "I mean, does anybody really want to see a bunch of out-of-touch, sagging blowhards ride through a mid-life crisis onscreen? Of course not. Did you know this film actually ends with the Wild Hogs driving off into the sunset to the tune of "Born to Be Wild" while the bad guy cries out from the arms a fat, ugly woman he accidentally married? That's what I heard anyway. I haven't seen it." Vindicated.