Here in an extension of our earlier guide to Bathroom Etiquette, we offer our male readers – and any female dexterous and bold enough to give it a go – 8 tips to ensure civilized conduct the next time you see a man about a horse (and by that we mean excuse yourself to urinate in a public washroom):

1. It goes without saying that conversation is verboten in this environment even if one utterance from you over your mobile phone could save the lives of thousands.

1b. Whistling is acceptable so long as you keep it at a lower register and don’t modulate to anything too grandiose.

2. Elbow depress the lever. Even industrial strength Purell would be no match for whatever strain of globe-annihilating super flu resides on its handles.

3. Flush that handle as if you’re dynamiting an enemy base — full way down with an eye peeled to ensure it all goes down. Nobody wants two nostrils full of your asparagus lunch.

4. Aim for the middle cake. Much like an eye patch cures lazy eye, you can train your urethra for future snow John Hancocks.

5. The most absurd configuration in the history of pub/restaurant bathroom design is the combined toilet and urinal in the same room with no dividers. Protest against this aberration by using each facility in a manner typically associated with the other.

6. If there’s splash-back, treat the sink like a baptismal pool and explain away the wetness being too close to the road when a car went by (hint, this is much more effective if it’s rained in the past 12 hours).

7. Anyone who’ll eat a urinal cake on a bet for less than what it would cost to buy mid-sized sedan should be electronically tagged and set loose in the wilderness.

8. If you enter a bathroom in which another urinal is in use, pick your spot as strategically far away from the person using it as possible. To judge if you have left enough space, imagine whether you would be able to hit the individual if you decided to stop and turn midstream. If so, move further away.

I had seen most of my movies as a kid, all very horrible movies. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. Bob Hope. Tyrone Power. The Three Stooges. Cary Grant. Those movies shook and rattled your brains, left you without hope or energy. I sat in those movie houses, sickened in the gut and soul.

His literary hero, John Fante, made his living through and had his creativity crippled by Hollywood. His best novel, Ask the Dust, was not a commercial success*, but he did find well paid work in Hollywood where he was put in the mill with other great writers for a buck, his deep talent as a novelist only recognized years later.

Bukowski’s Hollywood reflects this, most of the people in the industry are portrayed as either venal or so completely gone in the absurd world that they have created around them that they are incapable of having a genuine moment. The character in the book that he seems to have the most genuine affection for, oddly, is a film critic. He’s presented in Hollywood as Rick Talbot, though it’s clear that Roger Ebert was the basis for the character. (Ebert’s encounter with Bukowski was also wonderfully captured in this comic).
Some excerpts from Hollywood.

“Sarah and I sat in a booth. It was Friday night and there was a good feel in the air. We were sitting there when Rick Talbot walked in and sat down with us. There he was in our booth. He only wanted a coffee. I had seen him many times on TV reviewing movies with his counterpart, Kirby Hudson. They were very good at what they did and often got emotional about it all. They gave entertaining evaluations and although others had attempted to copy their format, they were far superior to their competitors.
Rick Talbot looked much younger than he did on TV. Also, he appeared to be more withdrawn, almost shy.
“We watch you often,” Sarah said.
“Thank you…”
“Listen,” I asked him, “what bothers you most about Kirby Hudson?”
“It’s his finger…When he points his finger.”

Ebert had suffered from alcoholism as a young man, joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and went to his grave without a drink. Surely drinking with Bukowski on the set of Barfly would be enough to test the steel of even the most ardent non-drinker. Bukowski kept on ordering the rounds, but Ebert abstained. And he was having a great time.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good time on a set,” said Rick Talbot.
“What do you mean, Rick?” Sarah asked.
“It’s a feel in the air. Sometimes with low budget films you get that feel, that carnival feel. It’s here. But I feel it more here than I ever have…”
He meant it. His eyes sparkled, he smiled with real joy.
I called for another round of drinks.
“Just coffee for me,” he said.

Later they spot “Sesteenov”, maker of the film “Pet Cemeteries”, a director Ebert recognized and was delighted to see. Actually it was Errol Morris, the great documentary film-maker, and the movie was not the Stephen King thing about Poochie rising again with murder on his mind, but the brilliant Gates of Heaven, one of Ebert’s favourite films.

We slid over to let him in. The booth was full.
“Care for a drink?” I asked him.
“Double vodka,” he said.
I liked that, waved to the barkeep.
“Double vodka,” he told the barkeep while fixing him with his crazy eyes. The barkeep ran off to do his duty.
“This is a great night,” said Rick.
I loved Rick’s lack of sophistication. That took guts, when you were on top, to say that you enjoyed what you did, that you were having fun while you did it.

And therein lied Ebert’s appeal. He was the most influential film reviewer of his time by a mile, but he didn’t wear it and there was no pretense there. He enjoyed conversations and had millions of (one-sided) good ones with the people who read his reviews. Ebert was kind enough to retweet us a few times — The 10 Horniest Cult Leaders and the “You Suck” Files, Christopher Hitchens’ best putdowns — and for that and more so his great work, we’re grateful.

RIPRoger Ebert.

*(Though he did, however, have one of the best “reasons the PR screwed me stories” ever – his publishers could not afford to promote his book because they had to printed Mein Kampf without securing the rights, leaving them with hefty legal fees when they had to settle up for the crime of violating the Fuhrer’s copyright. Recounted in his son Dan Fante’s excellent memoir, Fante: A Family’s Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving).

But as our friends over at List of the Day show the quality of police sketches can vary. First they depend on the reliability of witnesses’ memories. How reliable would your memory be after going through a traumatic event, such as an armed robbery at a bank or being flashed by someone who has let themselves go when it comes to personal fitness. (And in the latter case do the sketches get a bit more graphic?)

While some sketches may bear enough of a resemblance to the perpetrator to get Starbucks attendees to look twice at the guy with the false mustache sliding off and an “I Can’t Believe I Got Away With It” t-shirt, many are not much help. This one, for example, urges the public to be on the lookout for a guy who may or may not be represented by his 300 pound Samoan attorney once he’s apprehended.

Indeed these sketches show that after going through the trauma — or vicarious thrill if we’re talking about a misanthropic bastard — many people automatically think of someone in pop culture. For example, if we were witness to a liquor store heist, we probably would be more focused on what wine was best when paired with a weekend intended to focus on heavy alcohol consumption than whether the wild-eyed maniac waving around a gun had a mole on his neck or an overbite. As such the subsequent police sketch would likely show two perps who resemble Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis from Natural Born Killers regardless of the sex of the perpetrators or even whether there were actually two of them.

Here’ are some more Hilariously Bad Police Sketches.

1.

2. No nostalgic references to shows or films from your childhood that you grew fond of before developing the critical faculties to recognize how terrible they really were.

3. We will not admonish anyone to “Keep calm and carry on”. Drop whatever it is you’re doing and scream.

4. Does not bemoan technological progress and hanker for less complicated times when people separated by distance would only communicate twice a year due to expensive long distance telephone fees and letter writer apathy.

5. No animals — if you’re looking for a photo of a cat with a caption suggesting it has a brain bigger than a walnut and is bent on world domination, you’re out of luck.

6. No landscape clip art featuring new age banalities from either a best-selling “spiritual guru” or anonymous people who were shut out of the greeting card industry by the rise of the internet.

7. Free of foreigners — or rural people in your own countries — doing wacky things.

8. Contains a sentence, actually this one, that exceeds what most web pundits suggest is the optimal length when it comes to writing for the web because readers in this day and age have short attention spans and are unlikely to make it to the full stop. On a related point, these pundits say that rather than reading web pages, people scan them so having short paragraphs is preferable to longer ones — so you’ve likely skipped over this entry. Inexhaustible, the experts also say that varying sentence world length keeps the writer engaged. Good idea. Screw them. (Or we would say that if they could possibly have made it this far).

9. No pictures of babies pulling faces with accompanying captions suggesting that the child is way more skilled in language than his or her years would allow and is also vulgar.

10. Has the SEO link value of running outside and pointing at someone with your index finger.

Many of us have done “the cough” – that well timed hack during a phone-in, meant to convey that your time in sick bay could be extended – perhaps until an asteroid of sufficient size strikes the earth. And frankly, there’s no other better form of subterfuge than the fake illness, especially if every possible aunt has dropped from the family tree.

PLAYING HOOKY

Playing hooky (not to be confused with playing hockey – as we put it previously, a sport that indulges the desire to elbow a contemporary in the mouth at high speeds) is another term for truancy (in the UK, a record number of parents are apparently receiving criminal records for it).

The behavior carries on into adulthood and is arguably perfected in school and retained as one of the few things you might remember from class.

So, if you have managed to snag a day off, say by bringing back SARS, throwing your back out or citing some nebulous ‘personal problems’ that your boss is willing to concede to you for fear you might one day shoot up your place of work, it’s best to steer clear of “man on the street” interviews or high-profile sporting events.

Hollywood has explored the motif of people who aren’t nearly as sick as they look (or as sick as they might get while watching a Joel Schumacher career retrospective). So, grab some chicken soup and shot-gun ginseng with these playing hooky / pretend sick movies.

Then we recalled that back in 2002, the World Wrestling Federation, the WWF up until then, changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), presumably so nobody mistook it for an organization that would sweat the fate of the earless water rat. The World Wildlife Fund has been the lone WWF ever since.

Any ties between the two entities would seem to end there, but a closer look reveals how much they still have in common. Both are involved in great struggles, though one tends to employ more pyrotechnics and body oil. While the outcomes of pro wrestling bouts are predetermined, the same cannot be said for the fates of many species under threat on this planet (and maybe others, too — we just don’t know the science).

If the number of naked environmentalists spotted in public spaces is any indication, the WWF is losing its struggle. All sorts of species are vanishing and the environment is facing a crisis more epic than any Wrestlemania marquee, with the exception of the historic showdown between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant at the third installment of that event.

If the WWF is going to reverse this trend it needs to make drastic changes and for a role model it need look no further than the company it once sued for trademark infringement –  World Wrestling Entertainment. The WWE may have roots in guys punching out drunk hillbillies in circus tents, but today it’s a global media conglomerate with major cable television deals and its own division dedicating to producing terrible films. The WWF may have once sued to avoid any association with the WWE, but the latter’s success shows which of the two groups has the winning formula. Here is what the WWF can learn from the WWE:

Prick.

1. Villains Mean Money

In the WWE as in action films, the villains are usually more entertaining than the fan favorites.  Seeing a villain torment a good guy and carry out dastardly deeds against him that would be considered felonious in most states is what draws viewers in and is the cornerstone of the company’s success. Hurting the WWF’s promotional efforts is the fact that the organization does not have any villains. All animals are, in effect, good guys.

The WWF should select a few animals on its endangered species list that would not be missed if they disappeared off the planet completely and actively campaign for their extinction. Red imported fire ants would be  a good choice. These ants, according to the US Department of Agriculture, “cause significant economic losses in livestock and agricultural production and poses a serious threat to human health”. In short, who needs ‘em, save for a small handful of sadistic members of organized crime syndicates looking to extract information? The WWF could enjoy wider public support for the animals worth keeping around by supporting the decimation of this species.

2. Officials are Often Corrupt 

Referees in the WWE are a notoriously dodgy lot. As we mentioned in our Rules for Wrestling Refs, a storyline that has repeated several times over the years involves a referee making a biased call in a match to screw over the hero, resulting in him losing a major bout, his title, pension, etc. This sets up the inevitable confrontation when the good guy avenges his loss by pounding the tar out of the much smaller referee to the audience’s howling delight.

The WWF should take the shady practices of WWE referees as a warning about what can happen when power is placed in the wrong hands. While officials may give sweet reassurances at press events, behind the scenes they could be the very ones putting on bibs to chow down at the exotic animal cafe.

3. Name Changes Save Careers/Lives

Wrestling has proven time and again that species once thought extinct, like Hulk Hogan, can prove resilient and surprise everyone with many more lucrative runs (or tabloid scandals). All you have to do is change a person’s name or gimmick. After fans sickened of ten years of his catchphrases and horrible color red and yellow color combinations, the Hulkster became a villain, changing his name to Hollywood Hogan and taking on a darker appearance  (notably, by applying something to his face more commonly used to tar driveways).

Similarly, the gray wolf was nearly hunted to extinction, but has since made a comeback. This has not been happy news for ranchers in the business of trying to get products to market that the gray wolf would rather devour. So while the wolf is back, it’s negative reputation has proceeded it. An easy way around this: change its name to “The Large Siberian Husky-Like Fully Grown Puppy”. Now even the most rifle happy rancher would think twice about training his sights on a creature with a name like that.

4. The Face of the Organization is Crucial

Every organization needs a public face. For the WWE that was once Hulk Hogan and is now John Cena, in both cases the most commercially successful wrestlers of their respective generations. The WWF has the panda, a disastrous choice in many respects. The WWE always has a backup in case their top star decides to jump ship to inflict a horrible movie on an unsuspecting world, and the WWF too needs a succession plan for the slow-witted, slow-moving panda, which has an ice cream in the hot sun chance of surviving over the long term.

As evolutionary biology has taught us (well, not us specifically – we’re too busy), more than 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. The panda is unlikely to defy these odds, considering it only eats bamboo and consuming only one thing, from an evolutionary standpoint, should ensure that this overgrown, lazy dichromatic raccoon chows down on its last shoot soon enough. (If the WWF really wanted to get attention and mess with people’s minds, it could turn the panda into a villain. After all, they are Chinese and some of the WWE’s most popular wrestlers have been jingoistic flag-wavers beating up foreign interlopers.)

The shark, by comparison, is a less discriminate eater than people who enjoy The Olive Garden, and more evolutionarily evolved than the panda. It’s also under threat, giving the WWF a cause people can rally behind and the possibility of having a far more kick-ass logo than the wimpy current one.

5. Music Matters

The WWE has been very effective with its musical endeavors. Witness The Land of 1000 Dances, none of which, thankfully, are performed by the wrestlers unless you count the Magnificent Muraco at 1:27 (see below). The track was featured on The Wrestling Album, which also featured Russian-speaking Nikolai Volkoff denouncing western music (he probably had a point here). Despite its questionable musical value, the album was a major success and the WWE has went on to even more popular ventures, such as Motorhead penning the excellent entrance music for Triple H.

The WWF on the other hand, put out No One’s Gonna Change the World, featuring liner notes by none other than Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, way back in 1969, about as uncool a contribution as one could imagine, and another benefit album in 2006. Music penned by and for environmentalists may be soothing and assist in one’s bathroom delivery, but it won’t make an impact on iTunes. Might we suggest that the company makes use of this piano playing elephant?

6. Problems are Best Settled in a Cage

Two wrestling adversaries engaged in a long and bitter feud often have their final showdown in a steel cage match. Fans enjoy these matches because they don’t happen very often and when they do are sure to involve a shifty manager slamming the door shut on the head of the hero, wrestlers hitting each other full bore in the face on the top of the cage without plummeting to a broken neck on the floor and plenty of instances of body parts being bashed against steel. An enjoyable spectacle all around.

The WWF could make use of similar events, pitting the beasts they are trying to save against those who threaten their existence. For example, we could have Wealthy Hong Kong Fin Soup Eater Vs Shark in a closed aquarium death match, though a purist might argue that the odds would be unfairly stacked against the soup eater. Hemingway against all of the large mammals of Africa would have been a surefire moneymaker back in the day.

With their amazingly acute senses, this would not be a problem for sharks.

In case you’re wondering why that white cassock went up for sale recently on Roman Craigslist, we have news for you: the current pope, Benedict, has decided to retire. Evidently he wanted to give someone else the chance to say: “What? Someone trying to modernize the faith and bring us in line with contemporary laws around the world? To the popemobile, my lovelies!”

Benedict, who many will remember from the various Dark Sith comparisons at the time of his selection, is said by news agencies to be the first pope to retire in 600 years. (Actually, as any pedant who isn’t complaining to a newspaper about the deteriorating quality of its crossword puzzles will point out, he was the first to retire in 598 years). It’s a position that has drastically less power than it did back then – a time when a pope could press the impression of his ring on a bowing supplicant’s forehead without fear of reproach. It’s still a position that holds sway in many parts of the developing world with inadequate access to cable television, and involves overseeing vast stores of wealth and regular placement in doomsday prophecy programmes.

We have compared sharks favorably in the past with rabbits and cats. And since the animal kingdom has just as much business having foreign embassies as the Vatican, we decided to do the same with popes. Here are the Top 10 Reasons Sharks are Better Than Popes!

1. The pope is increasingly irrelevant to today’s youth, while the last youngster to question a shark’s relevance was unable to wave down a rescue boat with both arms.

2. A shark warning on a beach is enough to send people home. A pope warning on a beach would require paramedics to stand by to treat the old man in the layered robes for heatstroke.

3. No sports teams are named after popes (likely due to copyright concerns, but still).

4. The run-up to the selection of the new pope draws tedious media attention and speculation that finally it won’t be an old European guy who looks like he was shoeing horses before he got the call. The media only pay attention to sharks after a mauling or during Shark Week on Discovery Channel, which features lots of fun footage of guys getting terrorized on boats.

5. A fin cuts a more ominous silhouette than a pope hat.

6. If the rhetorical question is to be believed, popes shit in the woods. A shark does its business in the ocean, which is like dropping one in a giant pool with no repercussions.

Who ya got?

7. Sharks are constantly on the move, gliding through the seas and picking up speed when prey is in sight. Popes are old men who move slow (even when stalking prey) and can only pick up the pace in a “Popemobile”, which is the lamest “-mobile” ever.

8. Torturing an old European man for inclusion in a soup would appeal to only the tiniest minority of well-heeled Hong Kong wedding goers.

9. People’s view of sharks improves with education.

10. The pope may be infallible, but the Helicoprion, left, a shark that lived 270 million years ago, had teeth like a bloody chainsaw. Who would you rather see glaring you down at the other end of the aquarium?

We are far from cynical when it comes to romance and relationships. After all, some of the great pompadours have been grown and some of the finest smoking jackets worn in the interests of wooing women. Relationships too have their pluses –  once you look beyond the horrors of monogamy and the mental image of one’s significant other dancing a jig cashing in an insurance payout while they’re using tweezers to pull out your hard to get bits from the grill of a Mack truck. Statistically you live longer if you’re in a loving, committed relationship (unnatural bonds born in barnyards do not count)  and swinger resorts are surprisingly strict when it comes to letting in singles. Plus, it’s comforting to know that at least there will be a familiar face in the window when you drive slowly past what was once your home after a divorce.

The case for singlehood, on the other hand, is not made often enough. Prominent “confirmed bachelors” are few – Bill Maher and George Clooney are among the minority who are single and unapologetically opposed to marriage, though not because they would be legally unable to wed in socially unprogressive states. However, married couples are no longer in the majority. And even factoring in unmarried couples, polygamists and those who have given themselves to a higher power – like a really wealthy polygamist – that means there are many singles out there ignored today. Here, like a bartender who tells comforting mistruths for tips, we offer solace to singles out there, the men in particular since the women don’t return our calls any more, with these Our Top 6 Reasons to Stay Single!

1. No Smartphone Hassles: Relationships are hell for smartphone users as they inevitably are obliged to add a photo of one’s sweetheart his/her phonebook entry, and in some extreme but sadly not uncommon cases, a distinctive ring tone. While this may sound charming, your friends and coworkers will soon sicken of hearing Ride of the Valkyries every time your significant other wants to nag or do an infidelity spot check.

2. Freed from Facebook Updates: In a similar vein, all of your friends who actually pay attention will be spared learning of the troubled waters through which you are sailing via the relationship status update. When married people suddenly go “single” (one of the better Facebook pranks you can play on your attached friends, by the way), all manner of speculation and “Yes! Now it’s my turn!” reverie ensues. This is bad form. One would be better off communicating one’s relationship status via revealing dress in Facebook photos and/or entirely solipsistic postings that show zero evidence of contact with other humans.

3. Wide Open Bed: The smaller your sleeping surface the more important this becomes, although only to a point – if you’re sleeping on a couch and have someone on the floor holding your hand, marry that individual or report him/her to the home’s owners immediately. As far as actual sleeping goes, unaccompanied slumber has much to be said for it – being able to do horizontal jumping jacks or pit fight in one’s dreams without fear of injuring another, for example.

4. Ring Finger Free for Bling: Now when you tell someone, “Do you see a ring on this finger?” and they say, “Yes, several,” you can reply, “And not a single one represents the unholy tether of marriage.”

5. No Invites to “Couples Only” Anything: The older you get as a single person, the more socially ostracized you become. As people pair off, they hang out with other couples who have shared experiences and the names of handymen who won’t end up on the opposing side in small claims court. Singles are only invited in pairs in the hopes that they too will give in to desperation and crippling social pressure and make a “better late than never” love match. At some point even those invites stop coming. But is that such a bad thing? An unencumbered single person could fly somewhere tropical and be haggling down a shoeless beach vendor tomorrow. Would that not be preferable to being stuck across the table from your friend’s spouse who wants to know your feelings of septic technology in out of the way places?

6. Single People Die Sooner: An unscientific survey of everything we can see with our eyes tells us that the last few years of a person’s life are usually the worst, barring some really horrible stuff having preceded it. It’s more difficult to get around, mouthy young people respond mockingly to threats and by the time you remember you poured yourself some tea, it’s already lukewarm and who the hell wants to drink that? Imagine that times two and you have your golden years spent in a relationship.

The Shark Guys are the authors of Tastes Like Human: The Shark Guys’ Book of Bitingly Funny Lists

Bill Murray lives the same day over and over and is conveniently snowed in so he can’t jet-set off to somewhere more interesting.

Punxsutawney Phil has spring in his step. The vermin emerged from his lair, didn’t see its shadow, wasn’t picked off by coyotes and didn’t otherwise disappoint the thousands watching in the unfortunately named burg of Gobbler’s Knob, PA.

One of our favorite movies of all time is the splendid Groundhog Day (for our least favorite, see Batman & Robin and the case we made that it’s the worst film of all time).

In the existential comedy Bill Murray wakes up one day to live the same life over and over -the conceit of the film expertly safeguarded by a snowstorm, preventing him from easily going anywhere more interesting (Pittsburgh is a 90-minute drive, NYC four and a half hours and it’s safe to assume that anywhere would be more interesting than a town whose primary tourist draw is something that looks like it escaped from one of the nation’s finer cosmetics labs.)

Of course, living the same day over and over isn’t a problem if you’re in Tokyo or London, where one could “sure as heckfire” be swallowed up in fun hedonistic pursuits and lost in the crowd with fewer chance encounters with (one would hope), “Ned…Ned Ryerson!!”

Murray’s character grows increasing weary of small town existence after bedding all the eligible women (not many as it turns out – you’d be better off marooned in Vegas or LA). As in the modern vampire trope, immortality soon becomes wearisome as Murray’s Phil Connors experiences the in toto hell of small town living – knowing absolutely everything about everyone instead of merely more than you’d want to. He soon becomes perfectly adapted to his environment – as philosopher John Gray put it, “What could be more dreary than the perfection of mankind? The idea of progress is only the longing for immortality…”

Even a dream realized of no longer having to work, becomes a nightmare from which escape is impossible.

A line from the present Pennsylvania Groundhog Day celebration can be drawn to to Candlemas Day, an ancient festival marking the midpoint of winter, halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox. In Germany, it was said that “For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far will the snow swirl until May. For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day, so far will the sun shine before May.”

Germans brought their folklore (if not their animal – a hedgehog) to Pennsylvania and now, cities great and small have something furry whose prognostications could shame even the most shameless cold-reading “psychics” (as a point of interest, when the St Louis Zoo ran out of groundhogs, they conscripted a potbellied pig named Bacon, who sounds delicious and probably was, to cover the 96 forecast).

Other cultures have similar rituals. In Thailand and Cambodia, the Royal Plowing Ceremony involves hitching “sacred” oxen to a wooden plow and furrowing ceremonial ground while seeds are sown and the animals are given offerings of rice, corn, and strangely, rice whiskey. Depending on the chosen repast, astrologers predict whether the upcoming growing season will be a prosperous one and which of their livestock will have to 12-hoof it.

Of course, the equivalent call for an early spring would be met with indifference in two countries with damn-near perfect climates (at least to anyone hunkering down in an Ontario February, where it’s possible to freeze to death making a run for smokes).

Beyonce gets a message into her ear-piece: “this is probably a bad move, career-wise”.

You know you’re on precarious ethical ground when the only defense is “well, so and so also did it…”

This works both for barely contrite cyclists as well as Beyonce defending her musical tribute to John Cage’s 4’33,  gesticulating dramatically in front of the Leader of the Free World – “well, Pavarotti also did it!”

Pavarotti also sang a duet with Canuck croaker Bryan Adams on ‘O Solo Mio’, the worst thing to happen to Naples since the last time Vesuvius blew. When the King of the High C’s, as he was known (both for hitting the right notes and absorbing carbs like a ship takes on ballast) , was called out for miming/lip sync – he was forced to pay back his fee to the BBC. Whether a guy who both resembled a refrigerator as much as he could quickly empty all of its contents was embarrassed by the scandal, we’re not sure.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, “Big Lucy” didn’t do his reputation any favors by fathering a child at 67, a few years before he paid for the second homes of pall-bearers’ chiropractors when he died at 71. His performance with Lou Reed (the exceedingly awful rendition of Perfect Day) didn’t help his artistic one either.

We’ll see if the so-called Mime-gate scandal stench lingers and whether Beyonce is resoundingly booed during the Superbowl half-time show (the demographics for which favor aging rockers and dads looking for any excuse to let a pop star have it).

Beyonce might as well call in sick for the big game and have someone hologram her in when a tech presses “play”, but her audience is a forgiving sort – as one person recently commented, “I don’t care if she blows bubbles out of her arse…”