• "Pansies" in a twist: North Carolina governor Mike Easley says Hillary Clinton is so tough she "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy," effectively slurring homosexuals and Sylvester Stallone in one fell swoop.
• Over Cher: Cher used to be so hot that she could turn gay men straight. Unrelated: She used to date Tom Cruise. Remember? She told you a couple of months ago but is apparently not over it yet.
• Mexi-meltdown: One day soon the Mexican emo violence trend is going to merge with the Mexican fake kidnapping trend to form some sort of crazy violent supertrend. And then Lou Dobbs will implode into a white-hot ball of light.
• Winning hearts, minds: In further proof that the surge is working, Baghdad his its own "cat lady," who's made it her mission to save furry friends from the the terr'sts. But what if the cats themselves are terrorists, hmm?
• Way to back y'boy!: TMZ's Harvey Levin lends his voice and image to People's Court Raw, which lets users upload themselves bitching at each other so other people who like to watch strangers air their dirt can vote on who's right. A spokeswoman for People's Court tells Mixed Media's Jeff Bercovici that Levin is "not the creator or the voice and the image" of the site. He's its soul.
• When in Rome do as the Nazis: Rome's new mayor, Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, wins a runoff, adopts the Mussolini-era title off Duce (like the German Führer), is ushered into office with stiff-arm salutes, shouts out to old school supporters of dictator Francisco Franco and promises to use his 300,000-member army against any liberals that give him guff.