Murphy's Law: What ever happened to Jim Corr

goosing loose ends

Back in the early 90's the Irish pop group the Corrs picked up a whole lot of international attention with their smooth light pop stylistics. The group had some real success and then went their separate ways. The sisters went on to marry and quarrel amongst themselves. That left brother Jim at loose ends. Now it is sort of an unwritten law of the universe that when some one is at loose ends something is gonna come along to fill that void. In Jim's case it's an avid and active interest in conspiracy theories.

It's life Jim, but not as we know it

What sort of theories is Jim interested in? Well you know the usual stuff - the Royal Family are shape shifting reptilians, air port security is a plot to render the American male impotent, the financial crash was engineered by the Rothschilds, and oh yeah - 911 was an inside job. Here's a little video that just recently surfaced on the Irish Central website. It features Jim defending his beliefs against some glibly dismissive assholes.



Now I know that looks bad but wait - it gets worse (getting worse is an inviolable law of the universe. Cynics call it "Murphy's Law" but physicists know it better as the 2nd law of thermodynamics. IN practical terms it means that things fall apart because it's thte tendency of things to do so.). Jim had this to say about the usual suspects and the usual subjects.

WTF?

Saying that Jim finally found a way to take the attention away from his beautiful sisters would be cheap shot - so naturally most people are gonna do that. I feel that Jim isn't really to blame for whatever ideas have found their way into his head. I think that the blame goes directly to George W Bush. I mean his two term presidency was an unmitigated disaster; that saw the tide run out on the USA, and inflamed the market for conspiracies theories to the point that Alex Jones reputedly has a small shrine dedicated to W in his home and makes daily thanks offering to it.

The Menacing Idiot: Presitard

So that had people who's brains weren't completely numbed with denial asking "what the fuck actually happened in the past 8 years?" It's a fair question. During the Bill Clinton Era America ruled the roost. When the President said "jump" foreign leaders said "how high?" (nowadays they simply guide the President to the nearest ledge and say "you first"). The economy was in overdrive to the point that any Forrest Gump type numskull could make it rich if he wasn't too honest and knew how to bend the rules. Now middle class Americans have to ask for govt stimulus packages so that they can avoid the indignity of buying smaller cars and flipping burgers to make ends meet.

Who spiked the Punch? Optimism is seeing the glass as half full; paranoia is asking what it's full of!

So what went wrong? The inevitable conclusion seems to be, as usual with pro politicians, that Bush was either dishonest or incompetent. Jim Corr has given W the benefit of the doubt and decided he's dishonest, rather than a fucking moron. While that may be the flaw in his conspiracy theory, you do have to empathize. The alternative is that a majority of the American public voted a moron into the Presidency - for a second term if not a first. That would be enough to undermine a sensible person's faith in human nature ( a really sensible person has already lost that). So you can't blame Jim for wanting to give just plain people, as well as W, the benefit of the doubt. Jim Corr - I salute your crazy optimism!

Andrew Cunanan was a mafia patsy!

some days

July 17, 1997 started out a good day for fashion king pin Gianni Versace. His ear cancer was in remission and his latest AIDS test was negative. However life was to go from good to bad to dead quick enough. As Versace opened the gates to his Miami spread he was shot from behind in the head and neck. Witnesses on the scene found the designer lying in a pool of his own blood with his face blown off. A dead pigeon was near by, and a well known young man was spotted fleeing the scene.

"I'm so mad I could go on a 5 state killing spree!"
~Cunanan's favorite expression when mad

The young man was infamous serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Cunanan was a bright and ambitious young man who chose the life of a gay escort as a short cut to the top. By servicing the rich, famous, and gay he got admission to a world it might ordinarily have taken him years if not decades to get to on his own merits (Cunanan was a border line genius with a 149 IQ - so he probably might have got there on his merits eventually). So Mr Cunanan was often scene in the comapny of wealthy older business and political types. Some where along the way the life of wine and roses went off the rails, and when the world learned of Cunanan he'd 'gone ballistic' and was wanted for the deaths of 4 men. This was prior to the Versace killing - by the time Versace was killed the public had already been asking "who's next?'

Miami Vice

No one is sure what Cunanan's motive for killing Versace might have been, except that the two vaguely knew each other. They'd attended some of the same parties together - Versace was well known around the Miami hot spots and used to solicit companions for the evening by going into gay strip clubs and learning at the dancers. When they turned up their noses at the older man, he'd point at himself and mouth "Versace". After that they'd line up and Gianni could have his pick!

the day the shit hit the fan

As said Versace and Cunanan seemed to have known each other in some way. So the working theory is that when the shit hit the fan Cunanan went in search of some one to help him, like Versace. Versace had a boat and tons of bucks so he was the go to guy if you needed to get out of the country quick. Now folk think that Versace told Cunanan to fuck the hell off when asked for help. That set Cunanan off his pretty little head and provoked another killing, followed by Cunanan's suicide. Though most folk belive that, some others think different.

that's a morte

Others in this case is Italian journalist Gialuigi Nuzzi. He's the author of a new book on the infamous Versace killing, and has pointed out that there were some irregularities in the case. Like that dead pigeon. A dead pigeon left at the scene of a day time killing, according to Nuzzi, is the traditional calling card of the Mafia. in fact it's where we get the phrase "stool pigeon" from. So the dead pigeon would seem to poitn to some one other than Cunanan as the killer.

low friends in high places

Now Nuzzi should know a thing or two about the mafia 'cause he's got plenty of friends in the business. Friends like Giuseppe Di Bella. Di Bella is a sort of godfather figure in the Italian mob with a reputation for veracity with the authorities. In fact Italian coppers say that he ain't steered 'em wrong yet! Di Bella's says that Versace got mixed up with a bad guy named Franco Coco Trovato. Trovato's bag was laundering money for South American drug lords. He'd take a trip down south, pick up some cash, find a semi legitimate business to invest in, then leave said business a piece of the action before spreading the wealth around.

strange bedfellows

According to Di Bella that's how Trovato knew Versace. Versace was, allegedly, a business associate of Trovato. That association is said to include pumping money into Versace's business for laundering and eventual return to South America. The fashion industry would come in handy for a South American connection. Now things went wrong, according to informant Di Bella, and corroborated by another mobster - Filippo Barecca -when Versace started skimming. Since Trovato had some very ruthless dudes to answer to, that could be tolerated. So shit happened. The dead pigeon was just the mob's way of confirming that the job had been done!

vulgar favors

Di Bella insists that Trovato knew Versace well. Trovato was a fashion freak and loved to show off his Versace originals - gifts that had been signed by the man himself. Di Bella also goes on to claim that this arrangement went as far back as 1983-84, when the pair would take vacations,or business trips, together to such exotic locales as Majorca and Brazil! Di Bella also gives Versace the benefit opf the doubt, claiming that the designer may not have realized trovato was amob boss, and so didn't know where the money came from. Versace may merely have got cute with the wrong guy.

Blood & money down at the bookstore!

In an interesting side note the boat where Cunanan was found dead - allegedly suicide - was owned by a mafioso. Now the authorities didn't make too much out of that. They had their man, who was dead - so they didn't even have to go to the trouble & expense of a trial. That's a big incentive to close the case without asking too many awkward questions. However Nuzzi goes on to hint in his book that Cunanan was set up by the mob as a fall guy, to take the blame for the killing. Nuzzi's book is called Metastasi, A Chronicle of Blood & Money. That book deals with the Calabrian gang known as N'drangheta - in which Versace allegedly some how got himself mixed up with. For the record Versace's surviving kin Donatella and Santo vehemently deny this. They even went to court in Sydney, Australia to have a similar book - The Spying Game by Frank Monte - banned. They won that case so who knows how much there is to this beyond a good story. However Nuzzi's book hasn't been banned so you should be able to get your hands on it and decide for yourself!

Wondertrash: America's Most Wanted!

Lucky Stiffs

Fame is like being the stiff at your own funeral

Remember when Randy & Evi Quaid went off their heads and sought refugee status in Vancouver? They claimed that organized bands of "starwhackers" were targeting the rich and famous, like themselves, for death. The motive was money. The Quaids maintained that with unpredictable and flighty stars out the way, unprincipled business types in three piece suits could gain control of their royalty streams in perpetuity. They could then cash in! Naturally everyone laughed. Sensible folk assumed that the Quaids had gone off their flighty little Hollywood heads, perhaps with the help of crack, meth, or some other substance that required a stint in Dr Drew's Celebrity Rehab!

Now there is some validation for the Quaids flaky theories. In a story unrelated to the Quaids, 60 Minutes recently covered the new phenomenon of dead earners. A dead earners is a dead celebrity, or "delebrity" as their handlers call them, who continues to make a mint even after passing from this veil of tears.This was made possible by some innovations in law that allow the celebs' estates to continue marketing the celebrities' images even after the celebrities themselves have parted company with them. Before that once a famous person died their image, likeness, voice, etc were up for grabs. Any shrewd marketer could stick James Dean or John Wayne on a T shirt or lunch box and cash in to their hearts content. Once the law got changed the estate could put the image etc to work earning money for an indefinite future in a kind of postmortem indentured servitude. To think that they laughed when Scientology offered adherents billion year contracts. Those billion year contracts proved to be decades ahead of their time!

Now milking dead celebs of their residual fame has become a lucrative and even multi billion dollar business on par with developing social networks for the Internet. The agent interviewed in 60 Minutes brags representation of some 250 show business and sports figures the majority of whom lost their vital signs many years back - celebs like Marilyn Munroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley, and the mother of all lucky stiffs Albert Einstein! That has made him, his colleagues in the deleb business, and the estates of the dearly departed wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice! How wealthy you might ask? Well as an indication Michael Jackson earned more last years than her highness Oprah Winfrey!

Jackson has had a real career resurgence since dying. While he lived the poor man was dogged day and night by pedophilia rumours. Nor was that the only image damage he had incurred. He was easy tabloid fodder as stories emerged of him hanging around Bahrain dressed as a Muslim woman, and their were frequent references to the poor man's freaky plastic surgery. It was believed that he'd had skin bleaching to deblack himself, and that he'd lost his original nose some where long the way. The nose was believed to have been replaced with a paraffin prosthesis which was uncomfortable and could start to melt at high temperatures. So Jackson began leaving the schnoz at home and wore a surgical mask on his infrequent but hi profile jaunts out into the real world. That sort of alleged behavior earned him the moniker of Whacko Jacko and made him unmarketable. His last live venture was a series of performances in London which bombed hard. At the time of his death the Prince of Pop was in debt bad.

Once he died everything changed. Whacko Jacko wasn't about to mess anything up anymore. So his image was due for some rehabilitation. The Jackson 3 where trotted out at the memorial to proclaim that Jackson was the best dad ever. That kind of killed the pedo stories. Also Jacko got a promotion from Prince of Pop to King - just like his late but still lucrative father in law. A few weepy testimonials from ex wife Lisa Marie Presley and the deal was sealed. Jackson was cleaning up with a vengeance! No one is quite sure where the money is going since the Jackson clan, including his beloved mother, claim that they haven't seen one thin dime out of the estate handlers. Yet no less an authority than Forbes Magazine declared him the top earner of the year.

So with all these death benefits racking up that brings us back to the Quaids. The whole dead earners angle seems to add even more validity to their flaky story. That validity comes in the form of one of the strongest principles of the lot - quo bono. Quo bono is a fancy Latin legal way of saying "who benefits?", and in effect means that when there's a ton of loot to be made there will be some pretty unprincipled operators maneuvering around like sharks on chum to take advantage of the wind fall. If that sounds pretty far fetched then remember that the more decimal points you add behind the dollar sign the less far fetched the scheme seems. Besides, considering how all those corrupt wall street bakers carried on, would you put anything past an executroid in a suit? Now here's that 60 Minutes piece that puts it in perspective with a lucidity and relevance that Gary the Spaceman Bell might envy!




That was unintentionally convincing wasn't it? In fact it might have some of the more conspiratorial minded among you asking "who's next?" It's very doubtful that there will be any kind of organized mass cull of celebrities though. Business doesn't work that way, only power politics. It's probably closer to the truth that Mark Zuckerberg, in collaboration with Bill Gates and the Rand Corporation are even now developing complicated 'personality simulator' algorithms for computers. That way the current crop of delebrities can be made to do even more with out the need to add to their ranks. They would continue to annoy and irritate ordinary people much the way hologramatic prat Arnold Rimmer did with average guy Dave Lister on Brit com space parody Red Dwarf.

Lively lately - Making the transition to suspended animation

So Walter Cronkite might come back to host the CBS News again, should Katie Couric finally be encouraged to leave. Or Johnny Carson could be conjured up and help NBC with the Leno problem. Since their response parameters would be programed in to some control program; they would make the same remarks, tell the same jokes, and use the same stock phrases as when they were alive. In fact even careful observers wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the hologramtic delebrity's performance, and their rote routines performed back in life. That is unless some hot shot programmer tweaks the algorithms for charisma, intelligence, emotion, or independent thought. Then the jig would be up when viewers began noticing that their favorite entertainment personalities seemed to lively lately! Let's face it, 80% of popular entertainment is the art of repetitiveness.





Speaking of freaky conspiracies here's the latest full broadcast of Gary Bell & the View From Space!

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Is Harry Potter Evil?

Harry Potter has gotten millions of kids reading. He's also made authoress J.K. Rowling richer than Oprah! He might be doing even more than that if Gary Bell, host of controversial Toronto radio program The View From Space can be believed. According to Gary the Harry Potter books are a gateway into deeper occult involvement, and further more -part of a deliberate Illuminati conspiracy to occult up our kids, and prepare them for the New World Order. You can get the details for yourself by listening to Gary's latest broadcast below - just click on the media player.



So Harry Potter is pretty fishy, according to Bell. Then again anything might be made to look suspicious from the wrong or right angle. Let's just be thankful that Gary hasn't turned his attention to comic book Amazon Wonder Woman. With her Greek gods and heavy pagan references, Bell would be sure to find something sinister there - other than the usual mild SM & bondage!

Comeback kids

'Wound modern, aged band-waggon.'

Yesterday's post covered the sad strange tale of Randy and Evi Quaid. They are the former B List entertainers who ran afoul of a Hollywood business cult called the Starwhackers, and wound up having to run to Canada to seek political asylum, and to speak out freely on organized crime in Hollywood. It's sounds funny when you put it that way. That's probably why everyone laughed about it. Though people laughed, they couldn't help paying attention. The tale just kept getting weirder with accusations that starwhackers in suits had killed Heath Ledger and others for the bottom line. They even produced a hit list of names like Britney Spears (currently being black mailed by her bodyguard) and Lindsay Lohan (currently being held against her will in rehab, but being charged with the bill for treatment!). People laughed, but we also believed Balloon Boy's dad, and that chick who splashed her own face with acid outside Starbuck's and then claimed a black woman attacked her.

running a shit treadmill - not literally, figuratively!

Since people didn't believe a word of this, and since the Quaids kept on talking and talking and talking about it; their credibility kept tumbling farther and farther down the toilet. That's bad since the Quaids allegedly owe a lot of money, and are gonna owe even more in legal fees. Randy last worked seriously in Brokeback Mountain, but turned around and sued the producers for a bigger piece of the action when the film did better than expected. Perhaps that's when he first antagonized the Starwhackers. Short answer is that with nothing coming in and plenty going out Randy is gonna need some kind of good paying work lined up and soon. However with his current image troubles the only plausible line they could get into would be reality TV. "On The Lam" with Randy and Evi Quaid - think of it like Dog the Bounty Hunter but from the other side of the looking glass.

IN Hollywood you can recover from anything - even TV!

Still you can't count anyone out. About 5 years or so ago Robert Downey Jr was considered a done deal. Like many troubled performers of today, Downey's then substance issues left him unreliable and unemployable. This even though the talented actor had earned an Oscar nomination for his brilliant work in Chaplin. A brief stint on Alley McBeal didn't help his creditability either; since for a former A List movie star to resort to TV is the equivalent of hitting the skids! "I sold the mansion, I asked friends for money, and God help me I even took some TV work!" - "Oh my! I had no idea that things were that bad!" Yet that was back in the days when Tom Cruise was the #1 action hero and Mel Gibson was Hollywood's most beloved leading man. A lot can change in a relatively short time!

'Burned, goddamned wonga-wonga'

Some times things don't change in any time. In fact the remain more the same than ever and yet things turn out OK (a thought on tonight's American elections?). This would be the case with Charlie Sheen. Now Sheen has had so many brushes with serious trouble that it's a wonder how he managed to stay off of the Starwhackers' celebrity hit lists. In fact far from being on nay hit lists Charlie is so waterproof that you'd think he made a deal with darkness or something.

bad trips and strange bedfellows

Charlie has had a long history of booze, pills, hookers loose women of ill fame, and brushes with the law. His split with ex Denise Richards was one of the ugliest that Hollywood had seen, and it's seen some doozies! They have since made up but now Charlie has gone on to divorce his current Brooke Mueller. IN fact Charlie had violated his probation from a previous incident with Mueller (The Christmas Day Knife Fight) - with 8 days left - during his current misadventure.

laughing all the way to the nut house

That misadventure occurred while Sheen was out for a date with his ex and the two kids. Being Charlie Sheen he invited a hooker/porn star to meet him during this family time. Not that Charlie let the worlds collide in some seamy mess. He took the hooker to the Plaza Hotel for some fun time. Fun time included booze, drugs, a flip out, $7000 in damage to the hotel room, a trip in a police car, and a detention in a psych ward. Oh yeah, and he also violated his probation with 8 days left on the clock - as previously mentioned!

So you'd think that Charlie's goose was nuked by now. Well if that's what you're thinking then you can stop. Charlie is out of the nut house, complete with supportive words of confidence from Denise Richards "Charlie's one in a million, who makes 20 million a year!" What's more he's back on the set of his hit TV series Two and a Half Men!

winning the numbers game

Now if that sounds amazing then just stop to think about it. Last week, when Charlie's personal life went into full tilt, his TV show registered a 13. 6 million viewers, which is an increase of 7% in that very important 18-49 male demographic! What does that statistical gobbledygook mean in plain English? Last year it meant $155.1 million in ad revenue for CBS, and it also made Charlie Sheen the highest paid actor on TV.

Charlie has standards "I'm no Andy Dick!"

So as long as Charlie can keep the number up he can flip out as much as he likes. Just as long as no one gets hurt. Or if anyone does get hurt that they were asking for it. The industry does have standards, in a Dexter sort of way. I just hope that Randy & Evi Quaid can live with that. If they can then they might have a professional future. If they can really get with it then they could have a professional future well after their personal future runs out! That's fame for ya baby!

BTW anyone really can make a come back in Hollywood. Remember when Lynda Carter did Wonder Woman back in the 70's? Well not only did Lynda make a tremendous comeback from alcoholism and scandal (her husband was implicated in the BCCI banking scandal back in the 80-'s along with his law partner Clark Clifford. Some of you might have heard of that guy but to brief the rest, he was the guy who ran the Democratic Party back in the days when Sen Joseph Kennedy used to call him "sir"), but Wonder Woman is poised to make a come back too.

Over 30 years since a live action Wonder Woman series first came to TV producer David E Kelley - creator of Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart owes him so much; she wouldn't have Harrison Ford without him!) plans to bring the comic book warrior princess back tot he small screen. He announced the intention a few months back. Now there's even a name associated with the part - Tanit Pheoenix. She's a South African model that isn't half bad looking, but no Wonder Woman. Never mind, the rumours help build interest in the project. While it gains more and more support Kelley can go on to find some one better suited to the part, like Julia Voth!

Hollywood Refugees

Is it possible for some one to take over control of every aspect of your life? If you're married, or if you're Randy Quaid, then the answer is "yes". How does this secret band of Hollywood Star Whackers take control of an unsuspecting celebrity? Well according to Randy Quaid they tag you cell phone, put bogus stories about you into the media, and of course set up power of attorney documents giving them access to your royalty stream in perpetuity! After that they've got you right where they want you. They only thing left for them is to get you out of the way.

That's what Randy Quaid was afraid would happen to him and his wife Evi when their strange adventure began. It started with some legal beefs over unpaid bills. Quaid claims that he and his wife were totally set up. That's the way these 'total businessmen' operate. Then things got gradually worse, until the Quaids had become something of a joke in the entertainment community. With their reputation ruined and the law closing in with a vengeance, that left the Quaids looking for sanctuary. They attempted to find that in Vancouver, Canada, until the long arm of the law closed in on them there too. Once they were picked up outside a bank it looked like deportation, and a messy trial/media spectacle would follow.

The Quaids have so far short circuited that. They applied to the Canadian government for protection, claiming that they were refugees from Hollywood who only wanted to be left alone by the criminals in the United States. If they were sent back then their lives would be in immediate jeopardy from the band of above the law star whackers who've offed the likes of Heath Ledger and others.

Now when that first came out people thought that it must be a lame ploy to avoid deportation. Canada won't sent people back if they're in immanent danger of being killed. However if it's a ploy then the Quaids are taking it to the next level. Randy & Evi gave an interview on Good Morning America today in which they elaborated on their strange conspiracy theories. Not only did they give some details on what they believe is happening to them, but also named some names about who else might be at risk. According to Bonny & Clyde, Lindsay Lohan needs to watch her step - but not in the way that Dr. Drew means (If there are star whackers out there then Dr. Drew has got to be in on it. He already demonstrated criminal tendencies with his "frame her up better than the Mona Lisa" comments about Lohan.). Britney Spears is on thin ice too. Their master stroke was left for Mel Gibson.

According to the couple Gibson has been targeted by the Star Whackers. What's more Oksana Grigorieva was 'sent in' to 'destroy him'. Now that's consistent with their thinking. Gibson has been very successful, so his royalty stream has gotta flow like Niagra Falls, even after all those unpleasant telephone recordings about rose gardens and blow jobs. All some shrewd star whacker would have to do is get him declared mental, take over power of attorney, and make sure that he's discredited in the media so that he will neither be believed or defended! That would explain everything except the tapes themselves. Evi has an answer for that one thought - "He was drugged! Some one slipped him a mickey!" she claimed on GMA. Most people who know about Mel assume that he was drunk and that no one else slipped him anything that he wasn't voluntarily sipping. Still if some one wanted to slip him a mickey, it probably wouldn't be too hard - "Hey Gibson - wanna drink?"

But enough commentary. Here are the Quaids in their own words from that Good Morning America interview! They explain everything including how close Dennis Quaid is to becoming another Hollywood casualty. He's already been pigeon holed into making crap films, according to Evi. Dennis has also been mysteriously alienated from his brother and sister in law. The "crap movies" comment may have had something to do with that. You know how sensitive performers can be. However Evi reassures viewers that Dennis is talented, so no slight was meant. Here now is the interview, so put on your tin fiol hats and be prepared to be amazed.



A compelling argument. Lucidly communicated too. They've answered everything. In fact the only stone left unturned would be a possible Diana Napolis aka Curio Jones connection. I've always wondered why that particular story got buried by the media. I guess no one messes with Jennifer Love Hewitt! Now before you poo poo these ideas remember that stranger things have happened, unless Marylin Munroe really did od on sleeping pils. Besides, 'Hollywood Star Whackers' anagrams to 'Swarthy, hallowed crooks' That's gotta be more than coincidence!

It's easy to make fun of the Quaids. For one thing they're obviously crazy. However let's move out of our comfort zones for a moment, and assume for the sake of argument that they're sane. For one thing they're not saying anything that hasn't been said before. When the late lamented Michael Jackson passed on from Neverland to the final neverland, his own sister Janet claimed that he'd been helped along by people around him that had decided he was worth more dead. At the time we assumed that it was grief talking and so everyone cut her slack. Yet it has just been announced that Michael Jackson was Forbes Top Dead Earner last year. He made $270 million, and that's more than Oprah! Now Jackson's family say that they haven't seen one thin dime of this. The business managers pay the bills but won't issue them any checks. So where's the money going?

Also, in some twitter posts some time back Courtney Love claimed that she was being ripped off by a group of business managers who had set up bogus social insurance numbers for her late husband Kurt Cobain. They then proceeded to take out mortgages on these SIN's. Love claimed that these financial shenanigans had left her almost broke.

Now when Courtney starts talking strange people assume that she's on something and they stop paying attention. Yet a pattern is developing. So many Hollywood stars passed on back in 2009 that people began referring to it as the year of death. It seemed that there were more deaths than might be expected from coincidence alone. So who's to say whether or not there might be something to the talk of conspiracies and star whackers.

BTW happy birthday to the world's most beautiful woman Aishwarya Rai.

Incidentally, one of Ms. Rai's biggest pet peeves is people who pronounce her lat name as Buchanan! You can call her the most beautiful woman in the world though, well right after this chick!