It's Not The Holiday Season It's The Christmas Season

PHIRST OF 

Are you ready? Are you ready for the Peverett Phile? I am your host, Jason of the Bells. OJ Simpson was found guilty of burglary and other charges in Nevada. Keeping track — double murder no prison time, stealing back your own football cards, 15 years. The big lesson here — if you’re going to commit a crime, make sure you kill somebody. Remember all the money the Republican National Committee supposedly spent on Sarah Palin for her clothes . . . $150,000? The RNC tacked on another $30,000 they say was spent on Victoria Secret and Toys "R" Us. Palin says she would have gladly bought everything herself, but in Alaska, her salary is paid entirely in fish. Wait a freakin' minute. Sarah bought stuff from Victoria Secret? Oh, man. Let me pause while I fantasize................................ It’s a great day for Jay Leno. He is not leaving NBC. He is going to do his current show in an earlier time slot, 10 p.m. Jay’s getting a little older now, so 10 p.m. is kind of “late night” for Jay. The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was arrested in Chicago for trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Which I guess is illegal. He’s supposed to appoint somebody. But he’s in Chicago — he has Barack Obama’s seat for sale — shouldn’t he go directly to Oprah? Who would pay more for the seat than her? Does anybody want to buy my seat and sit and write the Peverett Phile every Friday? President Bush has just over a month left in office, and as is customary, he sat for an official portrait. This weekend in Philadelphia, they unveiled the portrait of our 43rd president...

Barack Obama has said he will use his full name when he is sworn in: Barack Hussein Obama. In a show of support, Joe Biden said he would use his full name: Joseph Adolf Fidel Puppy Killer Biden. Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice had dinner this week. They have a lot in common: They’re both women; they’ve both been appointed secretary of state; neither one of them is having sex with Bill Clinton . . . Joe the plumber in the news. He told Glenn Beck that he felt “dirty” after discussing the issues with John McCain while on McCain’s tour bus. I don’t know how to tell you this, Joe. You work in other people’s toilets. He says he almost walked off the bus. He didn’t because he knew he would have to return to life as a simple tax-evading fame whore. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said a few days ago that we are headed for financial Armageddon. He also said California’s credit rating could “die hard,” possibly “with a vengeance.” He has a bold plan: He wants to use two space shuttles to drop nuclear bombs on the budget. Barack Obama had another press conference. Among other things, he talked about the economy, which I guess is in bad shape. I wasn’t aware of this. He says job prospects are the worst they’ve been in 26 years. This Obama is turning out to be a real bummer with these speeches. So, last Saturday I posted the first Peverett Phile interview with actress Jill Wagner. And you know what, I totally forgot to ask her about her latest movie Splinter. Well, the interviews will get better and better. That's all I've been doing on my week off from work, interviewing celebrities (and some soon to be celebrities). Tomorrow's interview is with a singer named Jennifer McKee. 

THE PEVERETT PHILE TOP TEN LIST

From the home office in Groveland, Florida, here is this week's top ten list...

Top Ten Least Popular Holiday TV Specials 

10. "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus"
9. "Hanukkah Montana"
8. "A Very Cheney Christmas"
7. "The Anatomically Correct Gingerbread Man"
6. "Martha Stewart's Annual Reindeer Casserole"
5. "It's A Charlie Brown Bailout"
4. "Joe, The Little Plumber Boy"
3. "Charlie Sheen's Ho Ho Ho's" (Actually, I would watch that)
2. "George W. Bush's 'It's A Blunderful Life'"
And the number one least popular holiday TV special...
1. "How The Grinch Stole Your 401K"

SOMEONE PHAMOUS HAS DIED

Sunny von Bulow: Forecast for tomorrow: a little less Sunny than today.

Robert Prosky: He's REALLY blue now.

Betty Page: She was on my death pool list for for 2009 — a tease to the very end.

FLORIDA: AMERICA'S WANG

(CNN) -- Four men, now in their 60s, met over the Internet, shared stories about the darkest days of their pasts and spurred an investigation into 32 graves at a reform school. Authorities have agreed to investigate 32 graves on the grounds of a former Florida reform school. Roger Kiser, Michael McCarthy, Bryant Middleton and Dick Colon talked about whippings and beatings and other boys who disappeared. They discussed the 32 crosses marking the graves of persons unknown on the grounds of the former Florida Industrial School for Boys. They called their group the White House Boys, taking the name from the single story concrete building where, they say, boys were beaten and tortured decades ago. The White House Boys believe that delinquents and orphans sent to the concrete White House were killed and their remains buried to cover up the brutality. This week, the four called on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to investigate. Crist agreed and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to search for remains, identify them and determine whether any crimes were committed. The department agreed to look into the mystery of the 32 crosses on the grounds of what is now known as the Dozier School, in Marianna, just south of the Alabama state line. Two of the White House Boys, Middleton and Colon, spoke with CNN. The stories they told were chilling. Middleton said he was "an incorrigible youth of 14 or 15" when he was sent to the reform school for breaking and entering. During a 30-minute phone interview, he recounted story after horrific story about his time there. Middleton said he took six trips to the concrete White House, where he endured brutal beatings. He says boys were regularly struck with a metal-reinforced double strap with a long wooden handle. "You could hear it coming through the air, and when it hit your body, the pain was unbelievable," he recalled. "They just beat you to the point of unconsciousness, or you could no longer understand what was happening to you." He recalled another occasion in which he and another boy decided to get drunk. They mixed orange juice with rubbing alcohol. It make Middleton sick and his friend intoxicated. A guard confronted the other boy and began to treat him roughly, Middleton said. "He dragged him to the administration building, and I never saw him again. He never came back to work or to the cottage," Middleton said. "He literally disappeared off the face of the Earth." Colon is an electrical contractor in Baltimore, Maryland. But in the 1950s, he acknowledged, he was a wayward youth who gritted his teeth through 11 beatings inside the White House. Colon said he remembers entering the laundry one day, and his life has never been the same. Inside a large tumble dryer was a black teen. The White House boys, who are all white, said black kids at the school were beaten even more savagely than white kids. "I said to myself, 'What's going to happen to me if I take him out?' " Colon said.

He recalled being about 15 feet away from the boy in the dryer. He thought about helping him but was afraid. "I said to myself, 'I can't do it, 'cause I'm gonna be the next one in the God------ dryer if I take him out,' " he said. "I turned my back and walked out, and it torments me every day of my life." So far, all authorities have are allegations and the collective memories of the White House Boys. But they say it's worth looking into the case. "Questions remain unanswered as to the identity of the deceased and the origin of these graves," Crist wrote in his letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "The main goal is to determine the location of the graves, who owned the property at the time, and determine if any crimes were committed," agency spokeswoman Kristin Perezluha said. Authorities are only now beginning their investigation, so no one can say for certain who, if anyone, is buried under the 32 white metal crosses. Middleton learned about the investigation from a CNN producer. "My God! That's remarkable. My God! That's all I ever wanted," he said. "That will begin a lot of the healing for those that survived that school. "Some of us will never get over the brutality, the sexual assaults and the fear. But this is a major step in the right direction," he added. Colon has established an educational trust fund at the same campus, the Dozier School for high academic achievers, today operated by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. At least one former student says the school was strict but fair. "They were justified in giving me these paddlings, because, hey, I was wrong," Phil Hail of Anniston, Alabama, told The Miami Herald. Hail told the Herald he remembers going to the white building once for getting low grades in 1957. "Was [the school] run with a very strict hand? Yes, it was ... Were the paddlings very severe? Yes, they were," he told the newspaper. There are lingering questions no one seems able to answer: Why was there no outcry from the parents of boys who disappeared? Why did no one look for them? Colon and Middleton say they're valid questions. They firmly believe that bodies will be found and that they will be the bodies of both black and white boys. "I believe, in my own heart, that there has been a coverup," Middleton said. Added Colon, "White, African-American, they're all there ... I believe they will find crushed skulls, and broken bones -- and hopefully, one day, the murderers."

DECEMBER 12TH IN HISTORY

1915

Francis Albert Sinatra's birthday. I've been asked not to bring up his mafia connections, so today we will not be resorting to that cheap gimmick to slander the Chairman of the Board.
1917
The worst train wreck in history, leaving 543 Frenchmen dead. Actually, over 500 French people dead... is that such a bad thing?
1937
US gunboat Panay is sunk by the Japanese military on the Yangtze River by a combined action of bombing, dive bombing, and strafing. Japan apologized, disciplining those involved and paying $2.2M reparations.
1980
"Whip It" earns Devo a gold record. It is the first distinction of its kind for any song about masturbation. Whip it good.
1989
Leona Helmsley fined $7 million and sentenced to jail for 21 months for tax evasion. They made the bitch serve 900 hours of community service.
1991
Richard Gere (claims he is not gay) marries supermodel Cindy Crawford (ditto). Widespread rumors that Gere was intimate with a gerbil have yet to be verified.

IMAGES YOU WON'T BELIEVE ARE NOT PHOTOSHOPPED

I couldn't tell if this was the most horrifying or most adorable thing I'd ever seen, until I learned the backstory. First terrifying detail: it is real. There's even video. This species of giant gray bunnies are bred by a guy in Germany ... for food. Look people, I'm going to say it extra slow Germany. Is. Freaking. Weird. If you choose to travel there, please don't return with photographs.

THE AMAZING RACE

After covering five continents in 23 days, "The Amazing Race 13" concluded last Sunday in Portland (where fake teams raced), and sibling team Nick and Starr Spangler defeated Ken and Tina Greene to win the $1 million prize. Frat boys Andrew Lappitt and Dan Honig came in third, apparently far behind everyone else. Toward the end, Ken and Tina were leading, but Nick and Starr caught up, and it seemed to come down to cab rides, especially since Dan and Andrew were in a slow cab. Once the finish line arrived, Dallas and Toni were missing from the finish line because they couldn’t get out of Russia with Dallas’ missing-but-eventually-recovered passport, but clearly they reconnected with the rest of the cast since Dallas and Starr are now dating. As always, the tension led the final three teams to say—and do—some hysterically stupid things. Phil’s introduction said Ken and Tina “came on the race in hopes of repairing their broken marriage” and that “they rediscovered each other.” Thankfully, there was no footage of that. Phil said that Dan and Andrew “overcame huge odds as they bumbled and marched their way to the final three relying on a lot of brutal tenacity and a little bit of luck.” The “marched” was inserted just to have one last excuse to show Dan marching like a squirrel that fell off an electric line onto its head and was trying to get out of the way of a semi.

Dan said, “For people who just think we’re going to be chicken feed for the other teams, they’re severely mistaken. It’s first or nothing.” Nothing it is! For no discernible reason, Tina said at one point, “I’m about to lose it.” Ken suddenly turned on his baby/dog owner voice and said, “you did, great, you good girl.” Nick and Starr started in Moscow wearing normal people clothes, but magically had their lucky camo on once they arrived in Portland. Ken described the Spanglers’ good luck with perhaps the most descriptive metaphor of the season: “Nick and Starr got a horseshoe stuck in their rear end.” “If we win today, it would be the biggest win in the history of the Amazing Race,” Andrew said. Then he and Dan all but evaporated from the race. Ken and Tina said “one million dollars” while putting their little fingers up to their mouths! Ha! You go with your 11-year-old pop-culture reference! The Austin Powers reference was significantly less annoying than Nick saying “million dollars,” “million dollars” over and over and over again. Aren’t camouflaged people supposed to be quiet? The final task involved remembering various legs of the race, as it usually does. But this time, teams had to both recall details from every leg of the race but had to then find photographs that matched them in 150 clue boxes that were lined up in a field. In other words, it was the most insane version of memory ever. “You look like Peter Pan,” Starr told Nick as he went down a zip line.
“I just don’t want it to come down to a freakin’ cab ride,” Starr said, panicked that Ken and Tina would beat them. Searching for a location based only on clue, Starr started yelling, “Does anyone know where the magic is in the hole?” Amazingly, that strategy actually worked, and someone directed them to a donut shop. Earlier, when Nick and Starr asked a woman the same question, she rudely suggested they check a phone book. But when Ken and Tina showed up, she suddenly had all kinds of knowledge and guided them there. She’s either a camouflage-wearing super-sibling-phobe or realized that she get her face-stuffing face on camera. Ken yelled into an open cab window that he’d pay the passenger $50 to get out. “This is a customer!” the driver screamed and pulled away. “You okay?” a cab driver asked Nick and Starr, who essentially hyperventilated their way through the race following the Detour. Once they finally showed up at the finish, Dan said, “I think any frat guy watching would be proud of our performance,” calling himself and Andrew “beer-guzzling idiots.” On the final mat, Ken said, “I’m asking you to start this thing over again.” He wasn’t talking about the race, since they placed second, but instead their marriage, so he pulled out their wedding rings and totally stole Nick and Starr’s moment. Except for being occasionally arrogant and impossibly cute, Nick and Starr were so consistently strong—they placed 7th out of 11 legs, never mind pulled ahead at the end after being behind—that they deserved to win. Now maybe they can buy something to wear other than camouflage.

HEROES

So you think your last office birthday party was bad? Well, you've obviously never invited Sylar to one of your gatherings. That was the main thing I learned this week: if there's an invitation list, it's better to keep Sylar off of it--lest you want your birthday cake covered in blood. While that was probably the most disturbing part of the episode, it probably wasn't the most important--after all, it was pretty inevitable that Sylar would be back to doing his Sylar thing eventually. The catalyst was actually the driving force behind this episode. Who gives it and who takes it plays a big role in what happens, and ends up ending one of my least favorite storylines from recent weeks. We saw at the end of last week that Claire and Hiro were finally going to get some screen time together, as he pulls her back 16 years and watches Hiro's father turn over the baby version of herself to HRG. Although they didn't do much together, it was about time that we got to see Hiro with the cheerleader he's been so intent on saving. Claire's decision to save the baby version of herself from becoming the catalyst ended up being kind of creepy. She follows her mother home, pretends to be their neighbor's niece, and quickly proceeds to change her own diaper. This whole scene also bothers me because while they caked her mother's face in enough pancake to fill an IHOP, they didn't do anything to HRG to make him look sixteen years younger. Since Claire's not-so-clever idea still managed to prevent her from becoming the catalyst, we still needed to find somewhere for it to go. I like that we finally get to see Hiro's mother and find out that she had powers as well. I do find it interesting that despite the fact that she seems to be a healer, she can't save herself. She dies after giving Hiro the catalyst, and it makes me wonder if her illness was brought on by the catalyst itself, or if that was what was keeping her alive. In any case, I'm so happy that she gave Hiro his memory back. I've had just about enough of 10-year-old Hiro and his waffle fetish. Hiro's possession of the catalyst is predictably short-lived, since Arthur tries to steal it from him. I actually wasn't expecting anyone to die in this scene, since it is Heroes, after all, and nobody ever dies. However, this episode was full of surprises for me. Not only is Elle actually dead, but Arthur appears to bite the big one as well. Despite the fact that Angela has been trying to bump off her husband for a while now, even enlisting Peter to do her dirty work for her, it was Sylar's daddy issues that allow him to actually get the job done. So, seriously. I was really sad to see that Sylar had actually killed Elle. I love Kristen Bell and enjoyed her and Gabriel/Sylar together. How is it that Ali Larter plays three really boring characters and stays on the show forever, but Elle gets her head sliced open?  It was nice to see Ando interacting with someone other than Hiro, and I'm really hoping that he gets some powers of his own. I kind of like how Sylar just seems to be killing because he missed it. I'm pretty sure he could have gotten what he wanted from Elle without murdering her, and that entire office party was a bit superfluous. Also: hilarious. Next week is the last episode of the calendar year, and I'm pretty excited. They seem to be tying up some of the fifty million storylines and streamlining the whole operation a bit. I have high hopes for next week's episode.

GEEK TALK

AICN's Moriarty has Part One of his visit to the Kick-Ass set online -- and it's such a long, enjoyable read that I honestly can't figure out what to cut and paste ... but I settled on his description of the character Hit Girl. "Hit Girl's the coolest of the bunch. Her outfit's a variation on a schoolgirl outfit, but with body armor, leather-wrapped. She's got a purple wig and a small black mask, and Chloe's got a sneer that would make Elvis Presley proud, like if Batman adopted a tiny female Billy Idol as his sidekick." 

Back in February, Fox optioned Jeff Kenney's graphic novel, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". Well, it now has a director in Thor Freudenthal, who's the hottest name for young adult fare thanks to the hotly-anticipated Hotel for Dogs. I'm sorry to say that in the intervening months, I never did purchase and read "Wimpy Kid". Any fans out there who can shed some light? (By the way, Mr. Freudenthal -- with that awesome name, I hope you direct a Marvel film someday.) 

Last week, Len Wiseman signed on to direct Atlantis Rising, and now the project has a writer. Joby Harold is in negotiations to pen the adaptation. Producer Roberto Orci describes the project's appeal for those of us who didn't get sucked in by the comics: "In all the classic versions of this kind of movie, the threat is always from the stars. The idea that it's somehow our cousins who went off in a different path of evolution who have been here, literally, underneath our oceans ... That's fascinating, the idea of secrets right under your nose."
ScreenCrave has some more from Liev Schreiber on playing Sabretooth. You might remember that gossip had him playing William Stryker, as that's the part he was originally offered. Schreiber's fandom took over: "I asked, 'Do you think there is any way I could play this Victor Creed guy? The research that I did, Victor's particular mutant issue, has nothing to do with his name 'Sabertooth' but that's where I decided to start. What is Sabertooth. How do they move? What are their behavioral characteristics? And I knew this stuff from the comic. I knew that he was a completely savage street fighter and that, that was his MO. But, what I hadn't seen in some of the earlier films that I was interested in trying to pursue, [which] is what drives the guy, and instead of saying this guy is just a violent brute, what is the cocktail that makes the brute tick. Hopefully people will like it."
What's it like to play Rorschach? MTV's Splash Page asked Jackie Earle Haley: "I feel like I'm inside the graphic novel and I'm seeing Rorschach's silhouette but I'm not just seeing Rorschach's silhouette, I'm seeing my silhouette and it's Rorschach's! It was just wonderfully empowering."

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

Here's your Christmas present from Warner Bros -- the Watchmen footage from ComicCon that was raved about for so long. Since then, much of it was incorporated into the second trailer, but not as stylishly as it was presented here. (Everything is stylish when accompanied by Philip Glass' Koyaanisquatsi score, though.) But now you can finally see the Dan Dreiberg footage raved about. Only three and a half more months, people. Three and a half more months! The footage is available as a free download on iTunes!!

PHINALLY

There you have it, pholks, another entry of the Phile. You know, since the Phile moved over to blogspot, it gets a lot more hits! The Phile is getting better and better! I am now gonna go off and download the Watchmen footage on iTunes, but before I do that let me remind you tomorrow sometime I will post the second Peverett Phile interview. This week it's with singer Jennifer McKee and is the best one yet. Thanks for reading, and as always, spread the word, not the turd.