Media Notes

"A terribly sad announcement from Aspen has gone out announcing the death of artist Michael Turner, who had been battling bone cancer for the last 8 years. Turner was best known as the artist of WITCHBLADE, but in recent years had been a much sought after cover artist. In 2002 he founded his own publishing company, Aspen Comics." (PW)

EG: A very gifted man and a real loss.

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"Susie Bright, who first heard Carlin when she was in 7th grade, recalls playing his Class Clown album for her mother, "a woman whose first twenty years were entirely dominated by the Irish Catholic Church -- and it was a comic exorcism for her. She peed in her pants! She was cured in one LP [long-playing vinyl record]!"" (Paul Krassner in Huffington Post about his friend George Carlin)

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"There’s some idea out there in the world that Will Smith "owns" the July 4 holiday weekend in terms of box office. I guess this is because of "Independence Day," one of my favorite movies, and "Men in Black," also quite good, released, respectively, in 1996 and 1997 on that weekend.

"Alas, all good hype must come to an end. "Hancock," with which Sony is hoping to have a merry July 4, 2008, may not duplicate Smith’s previous successes. It is one of the worst family holiday weekend releases of recent memory — and jaw-droppingly so. And that’s hard to do, since it clocks in at a mere wisp of one hour and 20 minutes." (Roger Freidman)

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Ed here: A few years ago I posted several comments about The Real Housewives of Orange County. They were like studying an alien species, fun for awhile but tedious when you realized they had no recognizable human qualities, or at least none you wanted to get cose to for very long.

Well, if you've been starved for them Bravo's airing a mini-marathon tonight. In noting this The NY Observer said: ""(They) taught us everything we'd ever wanted to know about plastic surgery, Southern California Republicans and bad parenting." I'd add greed, dishonesty, venality and stupidity. But hey, that's just me.