Getting mugged

While my close friend and personal life coach Rich Siegel is busy over at Round Seventeen writing about issues of the day like Islamic clerics, Israel and Palestine, the Holocaust and the sorry state of advertising, I notice he has yet to tackle a vital subject that affects us all on a deeper, even more visceral level.

Of course I'm talking about celebrity mug shots.

It's always good, wholesome fun to have a laugh at someone else's expense. So let's start with one of the classics: Nick Nolte. Now the go-to choice would've been to contrast and compare a glamour boy shot of Nolte from the Rich Man Poor Man days with his now infamous Don King-esque, "Have you ever heard of conditioner?" hairstyle mug shot.

Instead, I chose an earlier mug shot of Nolte as a counterpoint to the one we all know and love. In fact, as you'll see, I've pretty much restricted all my choices to celebutards who have enjoyed the luxurious accommodations of an 8x6 holding cell more than once.

It's hard to know exactly what's more embarrassing about this early Tim Allen mug shot. The '70's stache? That he was busted in Kalamazoo (which coincidentally is the word magicians use when they forget "abracadabra"), or the fact people kept mistaking him for Geraldo Rivera?

Clearly his success from Home Improvement and voicing Buzz Lightyear is reflected in the more recent, more styled shot on the right. You can tell he's aware of the lighting, as well as his best angle. It could almost be the head shot his agent sends out for roles on shows like, you know, Oz or Prison Break.

Unfortunately for Tim, thanks to the interwebs these mug shots will be around to infinity and beyond. (See what I did there?)

                                        

Ladies and gentlemen, the man who's single-handedly putting the glamour back in anti-semitism, the one and only Mel Gibson.

This suitable-for-wallet-size mug shot on the left is from Mel's drunk driving episode a few years back on Pacific Coast Highway. Clearly, Mel still has plenty of alcohol in his bloodstream. You can see the sly smile, the sparkly eyes - the look that says "Hey, I know Jews run the business, but guess which ten-year old, independently financed film shot in a dead language grossed the most money in history?"

I'll give him this: it was a good film, even if I did know how it ended.

But see, you can't smack talk the people who run the business and still expect to have a career in it, as an older, paler and jowlier Mel knows judging by the photo on the right.

I suppose everybody's human and nobody's perfect. But sometimes stupidity just rules the day, and the mistakes we make have a way of sticking to our shoes.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I was going to post Lindsey Lohan's mug shots. But even on the internet, there just wasn't enough room.

Bad Luck

At the risk of putting my hoof in my mouth, I'm going to take an unpopular position. I know it's unpopular because Facebook has been all a twitter about it (notice the subtle yet deliberate blending of two social networks in the same sentence).

I don't think HBO should have cancelled Luck. At least not for the reason they did.

Because three horses have had to be put down since the series began shooting at Santa Anita Racetrack, HBO decided to cancel the series. I don't think that's the real reason, but more on that in a minute.

It's unrelentingly heartbreaking that three horses died in the making of the show. But sad as it is, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the series that killed them. However you'd never know that if you've been online today.

Judging from the reaction on the interwebs, there seems to be a lot of agreement that Hollywood should never make a movie with horses in it again.

Goodbye Seabiscuit. So long Secretariat. I'll never forget you Black Beauty. You were a good friend Flicka.

War Horse? That's just crazy talk.

If that's going to be the policy going forward, it's also going to rule out westerns. And movies like Ben Hur. Maybe all those extras can pull the chariots instead.

I completely understand the emotion behind the anger. Everyone loves horses. My wife's family used to stable and breed thoroughbred race horses for years at their ranch in Northern California (important safety tip: never walk behind a thoroughbred). But the fact is it's not like the 40's and 50's when studios were using trip wires to make horses fall. In this latest incident, the horse got spooked while being walked back to the stable, reared up and fell over backwards injuring it's head and breaking it's neck. The first two suffered permanent leg injuries during racing scenes. Just like horses do sometimes in real races.

In those scenes the horses were being ridden by professional jockeys, not actors or production assistants. And the entire shoot was being monitored and supervised by the Humane Society. Here's what HBO had to say about it:

"We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures. While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won't in the future. Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision."

I tend to believe them when they say they took every precaution possible. There's really no upside for them to have horses dying on set.

I'm a little more skeptical about it being a "difficult decision" to cancel the series.

HBO ordered a second season of the show after the pilot aired. While they were excited about it, the viewers weren't. And with Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte and Dennis Farina as stars of the show, and Michael Mann and David Milch as producers, they had a very expensive flop on their hands. A flop they'd just renewed.

So the horse accidents gave them an out and they took it. This isn't to say they don't genuinely feel awful about what happened. I'm sure they do. At the same time, I imagine they also feel a certain amount of relief that they were able to cut their losses.

The tagline for the series is "Leave nothing to chance." Unfortunately even when you take every precaution, in Hollywood, as in horse racing, that's not always possible.