News for Youse: Mel Gibson, James Cameron, or Michael Mann—who’s crazier?

Two by-elections in BC today are sure to reflect the Liberal party’s precarious hold on… oh, fuck it, there’s so much trivial insanity in the news this morning we literally need to Scotchguard the chair.

Up first: Holy Mother of Ass, it’s like Willy Wonka was reincarnated as a Larry Bird lookalike in Gerry Todd-style utility pants. To put it another way, James Cameron is at it again—like, really at it again—with the release of a media alert yesterday indicating that the “filmmaker-explorer” has entered into the business of, wait for it—asteroid mining!!!

Cameron, perhaps best known for his film Piranha 2: The Spawning, is named as one of the investors behind Planetary Resources, a company that intends to “overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources.” As the first commenter over at Deadline Hollywood points out, it looks like Cameron has actually invested in the Weyland Corporation—and just in time for the release of Prometheus, God bless serendipity.

Cameron is joined in the venture by Ross Perot Jr., Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and “space philanthropist” Charles Simonyi. Meanwhile, at the other end of the Hollywood-based resource extraction spectrum, Joe Eszterhas continues to mine his feud with Mel Gibson for whatever its worth.

As promised, the screenwriter has released an audio file capturing Mad Mel at his very maddest, knocking over totem poles at his villa in Costa Rica and ranting about cocksuckers, cunts, whores, and, er, food while Eszterhas’ kid sits their secretly recording it all (classy!)

Down here on earth, surely we can all agree that if there’s one thing our higher education system lacks, it’s slides. Bravo to UBC for tackling this critical shortfall with a proposed indoor slide system at its new Student Union building—an idea that’s been seen to significantly increase both floor-to-floor commute efficiency and the opportunity for upskirt pictures at the head offices of Google (and also the Batcave).

Sadly, designer Micheal Kingsmill nixed the original plan for a full-on five-story slide because students are often drunk and stupid (in so many words), bless their hearts.

Over in the failed state known as Italy, the director of the Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples publicly set fire to a painting by Séverine Bourguignon yesterday. Antonio Manfredi said he’ll burn three paintings a week as a form of “Art War” waged against recently installed austerity measures. "Our 1,000 artworks are headed for destruction anyway because of the indifference of the government," Manfredi told reporters.

With the unforgivable dismantling of arts funding in our own failed state, News for Youse hopes that Canada’s art community adopts this radical measure, specifically Robert Bateman.

Speaking of these matters, the slightly controversial op-ed piece by Georgia Straight contributor Michael Mann calling for Canadian musicians to pay for his blow jobs (I think that’s what he was saying) has prompted a YouTube response from a fellow named Big James, who reasons, “Go fuck yourself, you stupid fuck.”

Full disclosure: when News for Youse’s first kid was born, Michael Mann commemorated the event by presenting the child with an evil contraption that’s still giving me seizures six years later called Chicken Dance Elmo. Seriously, I’m convinced that little yellow fucker might be sentient (Elmo, not Mann). News for Youse now cedes the floor to Big James: