Ante Meridiem Eye Openers-March 11, 2008CE

1) Stay tuned for Eliot Spitzer news, but first Headline Wars. This one comes to us from USA Today with their touching and reverent Ledger's will excludes Williams, daughter. When the whole world is still reeling from the news that beloved actor and all around god on earth, Heath Ledger, left us all too early, we now find that his inability to smell his own death on the rim of the sleeping pill bottle he so frequently drank from kept him from including inconsequential people like his former fiance and daughter in his will. It's the small oversights, like forgetting to include your progeny in the document that can give her your worth when you shuffle, or in some cases, float peacefully through slumberland, off this mortal coil. Oops. Heath's daughter is reportedly working on her first book, One Really Big Thing I Hate About You.

2) Comedian Billy Crystal (irrelevant) signed a minor league contract (irrelevant) to play in a spring training game (irrelevant) with the New York Yankees (slightly relevant). Crystal is known for his undying love for the Highlanders, as well as singing impromptu musical numbers about movies that came out the previous year. No report on if his friends Muhammad Ali or Sammy Davis Junior, who have never been seen in the same room as Billy (?), will attend the game.

3) Hugh Laurie, star of my favorite show currently on the air, House, is sort of miffed that his British countrymen think he has sold out. The actor who began at Cambridge as a comedian and eventually became one of the most famous funnymen on the island, has gone on to success as a dramatic actor across the pond.

4) As previously reported here, and everywhere I suppose, Dorkmaster Number One, Gary Gygax died recently. This is the man who bequeathed Dungeons and Dragons upon us. Well, turns out, not every nerd worships at his temple, like Erik Sofge of Slate. Malformed, simple, violent and:

"It's the reason that tabletop gaming is not only stuck in the pop culture
gutter but considered pathetic even by the standards of mouth-breathing Star
Trek (Hey, what?-Ed) conventioneers."

This guy doesn't take the point that RPG's are, as the kids say, "gay", but that you can find ones that are so much better! Don't drink that bottle of lemon juice; try this sulfuric acid, it's stronger!!

5) Finally, a frozen airman from World War II found in a glacier in California has been identified and his family notified. The airman is reported to have said, before he passed away 66 years ago, "Man, this fucking sucks donkey dicks." How right he was. How right he was...

Well, that's about it. It's like Hugh Laurie said of his hit show House, and his own voice: "I don't watch regularly, I hate seeing myself, but it's even worse hearing my American accent. I had no idea I sound so retarded, a dull monotone, full of clunking mistakes."