News for Youse: Madonna bids farewell to sanity, we say “bye” to Jackie Treehorn, Zip, and Zombie X

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      Madonna, Super Bowl, enough already. Yes, it was pointless, kind of awesome, and now we know for sure that Madge and her friends can lip-synch the shit out of anything if the price is right (in this case 800 bazillion dollars and the soul of a nation).

      I wish Howard Cosell was here for the recap, but in brief: she still can’t dance, Cee Lo got the lyrics right, M.I.A. flipped the bird, and the most talented person on the stage turned out to be the Napolean Dynamite tightrope guy. It was ever thus.

      Madonna wins extra points for giving the synchro-mystical types something to masturbate over when she dressed Cee Lo up like a Cenobite and made the all-seeing eye and an image of a burning world appear at her feet during “Like a Prayer”. That was definitely cute. Those feet enjoy a pampering budget that exceeds your annual income, by the way. Those feet were taking the piss when they wished for world peace.

      In less ostentatious but far more meaningful entertainment news: three deaths, beginning with actor Ben Gazzara, who died Friday at 81. Besides the work he did with his friend John Cassavetes, Gazzara cemented his legend with roles in four of our favourite movies from the '90s: The Big Lebowski, Buffalo 66, The Spanish Prisoner, and Happiness. Farewell, Jackie Treehorn.

      Also gone is 69-year-old Zalman King. He’s best known for producing and directing high erotic cheese like Wild Orchid and The Red Shoe Diaries, but News for Youse will always love King for his sweaty-mumbly starring role as fugitive radical Jerry Zipkin in Blue Sunshine. Goodbye, Zip.

      And finally, his name isn’t familiar but you definitely know Bill Hinzman’s contorted face. Hinzman, who crossed over on Sunday at the age of 75, played the lumbering ghoul who attacks Johnny and Barbara in the opening minutes of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

      It all started there, meaning Hinzman's impact on pop culture probably exceeds even Madonna's. He just wasn't so obnoxious about it. See you on the other side, Zombie X.

      Since News for Youse has failed to deliver anything all that newsy or horrifying this morning, there probably isn’t a better time to introduce our friend, the Chinese penis-fish. We've been sitting on this for weeks, as it were.

      Anyway, you’ll notice that they don’t circumcise their marine life in China.

      Comments

      4 Comments

      Carl Spackler

      Feb 6, 2012 at 10:41am

      Mr. Treehorn drew a lot of water. You don't draw shit Mack!

      Carl Spackler

      Feb 6, 2012 at 1:37pm

      Ha!

      A. MacInnis

      Feb 10, 2012 at 12:33am

      Maybe that's what was in Dick Cheney's pants.

      PS - Gazarra-wise, there's a totally un-appreciated Bogdanovich film called Saint Jack that he's pretty great in:
      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079843/

      Anyone really wanting to pay their respects to him should check out both versions of Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (I recommend watching the later, shorter cut first, before trying to grapple with the relative, but very rich chaos of the original version - both came out on DVD via Criterion. That fart-obsessed madman, Timothy Carey - who shoots the horse in Kubrick's The Killing - is in both versions...).