We thought we were up sh*t creek for the evening’s entertainment when our couch potato partner rented Without A Paddle because three dudes looking for lost treasure sounds just so dumb. But it stars J-man Seth Green, whom we adore for his self-effacing brilliance, as well as Matthew Lillard, who can be creepy (Scream) but funny in an attention deficit disordered kind of way (Scooby Doo.) Then there’s the smart guy from MTV’s Punk’d, Dax Shepard, who could make a paper bag explode into guffaws, even without a lighter. So these guys plus good dialogue, some rockin’ action/adventure scenes, a killer soundtrack and a cameo by Burt Reynolds as a grizzled mountaineer (“You got a purty mouth, boy”) beats out any comedy we’ve seen since the Hebrew Hammer. Even the meathead redneck villains go above and beyond stereotype

Sima Bakhar, aka Mrs. Israel, beat out more than forty other hot married women for the title of “Mrs. World” near Bombay last week. Bakhar brought the audience to its feet after announcing that “being away from her daughter” was the biggest challenge of competing in the pageant, which began in 1977 “with the intention of recognizing the contribution of a woman to her community, country and modern contemporary life” but has evolved to showcase “the modern married women who has imbibed style, grace, beauty and intelligence”

80’s icon and karmic chameleon Boy George (see him change from junkie to DJ and back again!) called out Madonna as a “hypocritical homophobe” for her devotion to Kabbalah, which he says preaches homosexuality is “a disease and should be cured.” If that were true, he might be right. But we couldn’t find anything that supported his claim; in fact, Michael Berg and the Kabbalah Center are very careful to include all people, regardless of sexual identity, into their culty club. As long as they’ve got the cash, that is.
Besides, the Boy seems to be making a bigger career these days out making trouble among his former celebrity friends rather than making records.

Everyone deserves a superhero to call their own. AK Comics has launched the the first Arab caped wonder known as Zein, a masked marvel in tights “who is endowed with supernatural strength and a mission to ‘fight evil until the end of time.'” We admit that we assumed an Arab comic would be a vehicle for Israel-hating propaganda, and we tempted to throw up the Jew signal to call upon Menorah Man and the rest of the Jewish Hero Corps. But Marwan Nashar, AK’s managing director out of Cairo, asserts that the Last Pharaoh and his desert-dwelling cohorts mean only to promote truth and justice in the world:
“Islamic liberals who have long preached tolerance lament that their religion is tarred by extremists and by Westerners who contend that the Osama bin Ladens of the world represent a whole culture.”
Indeed, any direct mention of religion is conspicuously absent from the comics. A note in one issue explains why: “The religious backgrounds of the heroes remain undisclosed so that no religion or faith can be perceived as better than another.” Now that’s a heroic value.