The Funny Papers

LaloAlcaraz, Chris Britt, Ed Hall, Clay Bennett, Nick Anderson, Bill Day, Bill Bramhall, Tim Campbell, Mike Luckovich, Michael de Adder, Steve Brodner, Gary Huck, Ann Telnaes,

Meme Dump

I Ain't One To Gossip But ...

After the original series, and at least nineteen reboots, Fox has finally decided that the six episodes of BH90210 were more than enough.

Goodbye. See you in about a year when another underling at Fox comes up with the brilliant idea of rebooting a show that has had more lives than a cat.

But why was it cancelled? Jennie and Tori. It seems there were major “creative issues” because Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth, who both also produced on the series, wanted to be too involved in the creative process, and that because of their over-involvement thirteen writers quit the show throughout its run.

It’s six-episode run.

Let it go, Fox; it’s dead.

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And speaking of reboots, apparently ABC’S Revenge is being Revived.

But unlike 90210, the producers have a twist … it’s all about Latinx in the update, in which a Latinx character gets revenge on a big pharmaceutical family who caused an epidemic.

Au currant. This reboot is coming from the same creator and executive producer as the original, Mike Kelley, so you know it’ll be really good in seasons 1 and 3, but season 2 and the last season will be all WTF.

But with Latinx characters.

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Have you ever heard of Lisa Falcone? Me neither, but she’s über rich, über crazy, über dumb, and über racist.  Lisa is married to Philip Falcone, a billionaire hedge fund guy, and she once pissed off the elite of the Hamptons by letting her horses use the pristine beaches a s a litter box.

And now, well, she says she’s allowed to use the n-word with good reason.

The Falcones have been sued by their former personal chef Brian Villanueva for discrimination and violation of New York labor laws. According to the lawsuit, on July 13, Brian brought his girlfriend, who is black, to the Falcones’ Hamptons home to help him out at a party where Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz were in attendance. After the event, Lisa told Villanueva how “articulate” his girlfriend was and everyone knows what that means. But Lisa continued:

“Your girlfriend speaks very well. She seems educated. I would describe her as a chocolate-covered marshmallow.”

Black on the outside, white on the inside. Villanueva says he was visibly offended, and yet Lisa went on:

 “Do you use the word ‘n*gger’ at home with your girlfriend?”

Villanueva asked Lisa to explain what she meant, and she decided to bring up Alicia and Swizz saying they were not as well-spoken:

“I meant she speaks really eloquently. Alicia [Keys] doesn’t speak that way. She didn’t have an education and was just discovered by Clive Davis when she was fifteen years old. Swizz [Beatz] definitely doesn’t speak that way either.”

That day, Villanueva, for some reason, served the Falcones lunch, and then quit because of the racism, and says in his lawsuit:

“Rather than accepting Plaintiff’s resignation, Defendant Lisa Falcone asked Plaintiff not to resign and stated “talk to my black friends” (seemingly referring to Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, both of whom were at the beach with the Falcones at that time), and emphasized “they will tell you that I am not racist.”“

Cuz she has black friends.

It’s like Countess LuAnn once famously sang:

♫ ♪ Money can’t by you claaaaaaaaas ♪ ♫

Or common decency.

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The divorce battle may be over but Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s court battles have lasted longer than their doomed-from-the-jump-street—see what I did there—marriage.

Depp is currently suing Heard for defamation—after she claimed he paid people to stay silent about witnessing his ALLEGED violent behavior—and for smearing his name after she filed for divorce.

And with the ball in her court, Heard recently filed a request for Deppy to submit to an IME [Independent Mental Evaluation] to confirm her ALLEGATIONS that Depp’s love affair with booze, drugs, and prescription medicines contributed to his violent behavior.

And since neither one of these fools can go a nanosecond without talking about the other, Depp’s attorney released a statement regarding Amber’s request for an IME:

“This is a defamation case in which Mr. Depp does not allege that he suffers from any mental disorder or condition. Thus, Mr. Depp’s mental condition is not ‘in controversy’ nor does good cause exist under the rule for an IME ... It is a preposterous notion that an IME now would shed light on Mr. Depp’s mental state at the time of Ms. Heard’s abuse hoax back in 2016. Ms. Heard’s effort treads a well-worn path of victim blaming using the pretext of mental health. ”

I’d like to suggest that they both undergo an IME and that, whatever the results, they are both told to go away, and be quiet.

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From the Height of High-larity file comes the tale of one Orenthal James Simpson, former football star and murderer, who is claiming that after a Las Vegas casino banned him for being ALLEGEDLY drunk and belligerent, he was defamed.

Seriously, he thinks his reputation suffered because someone called him a drunk? Most people call him a murderer and he’s fine with that.

Probably cuz it’s true.

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I saw a headline with the words ‘Cuba Gooding Jr.’ and ‘Nightclub’ in it and I just naturally assumed he’d groped another owman in a bar.

Color me surprised to learn that it wasn’t Cuba acting the fool but his girlfriend, Claudine De Niro, Robert De Niro’s ex daughter-in-law, who went over the edge at a Miami Nightclub called Mango’s Tropical Cafe.

Now, he was somehow involved because he was the one Claudine went after, by ALLEGEDLY shrieking at him and then hurling a shot glass at him, and then getting her ass kicked to the curb by security.

Ah, the couple that gets drunk and acts the fool together …

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Now we’ll end where we began … with the death of the 487th reboot if Beverly Hills 90210 and the so-desperate-for-a-job Jennie Garth saying the last reboot is not over. At a recent event, Us Weekly caught up with Garth who swears that BH90210 is not dead:

“I was very, very proud of the work we did in the first season … The show is very meta, so it’s good. The confusion is fine. Everybody’s like, “What is happening!?” We don’t even know. Nobody knows, but we are working it out. It was a very unique, creative vision and it was very specific, and it was hard to convey that to everyone.”

Wait. So she admits no one understood the show, not even the team behind it, but that it was so good, they’re going to bring it back in a different form?

Jennie? You’ve been hanging around broke-ass Tori Spelling too long now, and you’re acting just as delusional.

Go back to waitressing.

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Just A Thought ...

The Funny Papers

Bill Day, David Horsey, Clay Bennett, Chris Britt, Nick Anderson, Adam Zyglis, Mike Luckovich, RJ Matson, Steve Sack

Random Musings

Sometimes, when a bill passes that paves the way for statewide discrimination — I’m looking at you Mississippi, right now — folks need a Come To Jesus moment.

Enter nonprofit organization Planting Peace who purchased space on a giant electronic billboard:

Yup, Planting Peace just countered a bill that discriminates in the name of religious freedom with one of Christianity's most fundamental principles. 

Aaron Jackson, president of Planting Peace:

"We will keep sharing this message as long as we need to, to counter hateful actions designed to infringe on people's basic human rights and dignity."

This isn’t the first time Planting Peace used a billboard to fight hate; last September, when Kentucky Kounty Klerk Kim Davis was to return to work after objecting to signing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Planting Peace bought billboard space in her hometown with a message about redefining marriage:

Planting Peace; it’s a good thing. 

Well the Supremes really gave a smackdown to the Conservatives and they did so unanimously … by ruling that states can rely on total population, and not just eligible voter population, when redrawing voter districts. 

It all began Texas Bigots Conservatives said that only the number of eligible voters should be relied upon when redistricting, and that the Constitution forbids counting immigrants, children, and prisoners, who are not legally eligible to vote.

Not so much said SCOTUS:

"The plaintiffs alleged the Texas legislative map effectively diluted the representation of citizens in rural, Republican-leaning areas in favor of Democratic-trending cities like Houston, where the population includes immigrants and children who are ineligible to vote. As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible to vote" — Notorious RBG, AKA Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

So sorry Texas, but your plan to keep your state red, and conservative, might just fall out of favor now.

In North Carolina News:

PayPal has announced it will cancel its planned expansion in Charlotte over North Carolina’s newly-imposed anti-LGBT bill which bans all local LGBT rights ordinances.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said:

“Two weeks ago, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ over 400 people in skilled jobs.  In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the State of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law … . As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.”

It’s on!

I kinda like, er, liked Martin Sheen but this idea of his sounds, well, disgusting.

It appears that Sheen believes that O.J. Simpson is innocent of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman; he doesn’t mean “not guilty,” he means “innocent.” And so he wants to prove it with a true crime TV show and is seeking to produce a six-part docuseries called Hard Evidence: O.J. Is Innocent for Investigation Discovery.

He says the show will reveal new evidence — like that rusty knife? — and cover a new hypothesis as to what happened on the night of the murders.

I know what happened: OJ murdered two people that night.

Most of Sheen’s docuseries — notice it isn’t a documentary but a docuseries, which is what Oprah called Lindsey Lohan’s “reality” show — will be based on a book by a private investigator called O.J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It. Except, um, he didn’t prove it.

Sheen will also narrate the series and says he hopes that O.J. Is Innocent will help answer the following three questions:

“What if there were enough evidence that proved O.J. Simpson did not murder his ex-wife Nicole or Ron Goldman?

What if the real killer were still at large?

And finally, what if a grand jury convened to reconsider the case based on new evidence.”

And a fourth question: what if this is a ploy to capitalize on the American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson?

Oh, and this: OJ did it.

Greensboro, North Carolina was one of those cities whose LGBT rights ordinance was overturned by Hate Bill 2 and this week the Greensboro City Council voted 8-1 in favor of a resolution opposing Hate.

The lone dissenting vote came from the council’s only Republican because … of course.

“This is one of the worst discrimination bills that we’ve seen in a long time. It’s not really about bathrooms; that’s to throw us off track.” — city council member, Sharon Hightower

It’s a symbolic move, sure, but these voices of reason need to be heard throughout the state.

And speaking of voices of reason, on the heels of Mississippi’s voraciously hate-filled anti-LGBT law, the Jackson, Mississippi City Council also passed a resolution regarding that state’s Religious Liberty Accommodations Act signed into law by Governor Phil Bryant.

“Regardless of what our Governor, our state agencies our legislature may have passed, the city of Jackson wants you here regardless of what color you are, regardless of your sexual orientation, regardless of what gender you are, we want you here in Jackson.” — Councilman Tyrone Hendrix

The resolution states that Jackson acknowledges the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits governments from respecting an establishment of religion and protects all people equally under the law.

Sound, sane voices in Mississippi; let’s hope they are heard and more join the fight.

Up there in New York Coty, the MCC Theater held its annual Miscast benefit, in which Broadway’s stars perform songs from roles in which they would never be cast. The benefit helps MCC Theater produce Off-Broadway shows and supports its Youth Company and in-school partnerships that serve New York City public high school students. 

This year’s steamiest duet was between Broadway vets Gavin Creel — Jimmy in Thoroughly Modern Millie,  Claude in the revival of in Hair, and Elder Price in The Book of Mormon in London — and Aaron Tveit —  Gabe in Next to Normal, Frank Abagnale Jr. in the stage version of Catch Me If You Can, and Danny Zuko in Grease Live—who stole the show by playing the parts of Maureen and Joanne singing “Take Me of Leave Me” from Rent:

Aaron Tveit also sang “As Long As He Needs Me” from Oliver which cannot be embedded so go HERE to see and hear it ... beautiful.