the Unexpressed Advantage

Heath Ledger found dead in New York | Reuters

I have to admit that I'm as shocked as the next person at the untimely passing of Heath Ledger at age 28. He stood out as one of the better actors in a film industry plagued by mediocricy and corrupted by the bottom line; I think a lot of movie fans expected great things from him, but it's fair to say that he accomplished a lot already at age 28. Sad to see him go, and I suspect that once the cause of his death is revealed, it will raise more questions about living and living in despair in our culture.

"We're gonna go minister to the world on MTV." – washingtonpost.com

There's something on TV called "Run's House". I don't really know what it is, but occasionally my bitTorrent client will start downlading it because it thinks that it is the tv show "house" (generally quite a good show except for the fact that it's not on the air because there's some kind of strike going on so now there's no tv but only lots and lots of reality shows). What is this world coming to. Wasn't there a movie about this? Some kind of thing where it was like 500 years in the future, and due to the inbreeding of dumb people we wound up with a situation where the only things that people did were eat fast foot, drink beer, and sit around watching NASCAR and reality TV?

What movie was that anyway?

Oh yeah, back to Run's house.

There's a lot of speculation as to whether Will Smith, the greatest movie star of all time¹, is now turning to scientology because of his friendship with Tom Cruise² I know this is big news, because it's dominating my Google News Sidebar, even replacing the likes of She that shall never be named on this blog It's also bad news.

From the New York Daily News...

Will Smith has joined the ranks of Hollywood power players actively recruiting for the Church of Scientology.

Big stars traditionally distribute "wrap presents" to crew members after completing a film. His recent gift after wrapping next summer's comedy "Hancock" was a card good for a personality test at your local Scientology center.