Tonight at 10 (British o’clock) on Sky 1, professional chatter with the dead Derek Acorah is going to hit Michael Jackson up on his Heaven Nextel!  ”Michael Jackson: The Live Seance” will be held “on an island … in a secret location familiar to Jackson.”

“We have chosen genuine Michael Jackson fans and people who knew him throughout his life to take part in this event,” Howell added. “Derek will also have a personal item from Michael Jackson, and will invite everyone to sit quietly and channel positive thoughts … he can’t force Michael to appear, but he will try inviting his spirit by creating welcoming environment.”

How much do you bet Michael Jackson appears?  I bet a million dollars that he does!  ”The spirit seems to be making a punching motion.  Does anyone in the audience have a deceased friend or family member or favorite pop music performer who might find a “hit it” or “whack it” motion significant?  Perhaps something to do with a beloved pet or childhood toy or number-one-charting 1982 single?… OK, look, it’s f*cking Michael Jackson, and he says, uh, thanks for liking my songs and, uh, don’t forget to feed my chimpanzee.”

MTV via Idolator.

“John Kanzius didn’t have a background in science or medicine.  He didn’t even have a college degree.  What he did have was a deadly form of leukemia.”  And he decided to do something about it.  Kanzius, using his expertise in the radio business, built a machine that essentially melts cancerous cells using radio waves.  It does not harm other cells in the body the way chemotherapy does.

In January of ‘08, Kanzius had gone through 36 rounds of chemo, was weak, sick, and close to death.  By summer of last year, he was playing 18 holes of golf a day.  Though Kanzius died earlier this year, millions of dollars have since been attached to his cancer project, which is being further developed in labs by guys who went to grad school for decades.

Via Gizmodo.

This news is just blowing the roof off the internet.  Or parts of the internet.  The parts labeled “Sports” and “How To Freeze Your Body After It Is Dead,” specifically.  Larry Johnson, a former exec at the cryogenic freezing facility Alcor Life Extension Foundation, is publishing a tell-all expose about how – duh – cryogenics is a pseudoscience aimed at milking big money from the estates of dead egos who couldn’t deal with the fact that the world would spin on without them.  Alcor’s grimmest offense:

Technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate [Ted Williams], the majors’ last .400 hitter.

Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.

Yeah.  It’s pretty bad, and gets worse, after the jump.   Continue »

Another reality show murder, this one at least as weird as the Ryan Jenkins/Jasmine Fiore one. Brian Lee Randone, an evangelical minister who appeared on the 2000 Fox show The Sexiest Bachelor in America (that is so 2000 – today it would be The Sexiest Bachelor in America Weight Loss Dance-Off Cook-Off), was arrested a few weeks ago for beating and choking to death his girlfriend, mainstream and adult film actress Felicia Lee.  It’s a pretty grim case:

“It appeared to be torture prior to the murder,” Sgt. Brian Schoonmaker, a homicide detective working the case, said Friday. Lee apparently suffered dozens of injuries in the 24 hours before she died, Schoonmaker said, but he did not provide details.

Lee did nude scenes but no hardcore, as well as appearing in Rush Hour 2 and The Fast and the Furious.  Randone, in those years, was doing the Lord’s work as sexily as possible, which he detailed on his blog…   Continue »

Everyone knows that gross, offensive displays are what Halloween cheer is all about, so I think it’s unlikely anyone will be able to spread more Halloween joy than Ohio’s King’s Island amusement park.  The main draw this year was a graveyard of dead celebrities, skeletons dressed up as Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Sonny Bono, and others.  It was dismantled within days of its setup, after a backlash of outrage hit the park.  Many people, I guess, find it in poor taste to display dead Steve McNair and dead Steve McNair’s girlfriend postmortem on their couch with a pistol at their feet (note the level of accuracy: somebody at King’s Island has been reading his TMZ).  And that’s Sonny Bono above.  YIKES.

Ridiculous picture gallery, ATJ:   Continue »

Here we are, finally able to focus on our work and lives again in the wake of our grief at the Taco Bell chihuahua’s passing, when the inexorable march of time again claims a cherished product-shilling stunt animal, this time, the Toys ‘R Us giraffe.

Tweet the giraffe died Friday at the Franklin Park Zoo where producers are filming the Kevin James movie “The Zookeeper.”

The 18-year-old giraffe didn’t belong to the zoo and had no known health problems.

Tweet also appeared in Ace Venture: Pet Detective, as a giraffe.  But PETA claims there’s something suspicious about Tweet’s death…   Continue »

Of course I had a Nirvana phase.  They’re just a band that does that to you.  Cobain and co. usually get you in mid-to-late high school, when you’re feeling restless and dissatisfied and generally caged in.  The guys had a sense of humor though.  Cobain wrote “I Hate Myself and Want To Die” to poke fun at his media image as a sad sack longhair.  He ultimately kind of ruined the punchline there, but still.  Hard to think he’d be laughing about the new Guitar Hero 5, though, in which he’s a playable avatar.

The game’s career mode has the animated Nirvana frontman sing Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name, yell Flava Flav’s catch phrase and do Bush karaoke.

Indeed, why would Kurt Cobain even yell, “FLAVA FLAAAAV!!”?  It just don’t sit right.  So as you might imagine, Courtney Love has been fumbling through pages of phone books, take-out menus, and Dianetics, looking for someone or something to sue over this…   Continue »

If I missed this on the internet websites yesterday, maybe you did too.  A conspiracy theory is springing up around this video of a L.A. Coroner van.  The van parks behind a fence in some sort of garage, the driver opens the trunk door, and out pops a long-haired man with his face obscured: obviously Michael Jackson.  The original poster of the video says,

I checked the license plate number and it looks like the King of Pop is jumping out of the same van, his dead body has been in. I got the original video tape from a trustworthy source. I know him for years. And I am sure it´s real and Michael is alive.

So there you have it: Michael Jackson is alive.  Click through for the video.   Continue »

Here’s a bizarre and kind of icky celebrity story for you: the crypt above Marilyn Monroe’s has just been sold for $4.6 million on eBay.  By the widow of the unfortunate guy who currently occupies it.  Westwood Memorial Cemetery, probably home to more dead celebrities than anywhere else in the world, has plots that go for as much as $1 million, standard.  Elsie Poncher, seeing an opportunity to pay off her debts just like that, put

her late husband’s crypt up for auction to help pay off the $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills home.

Poncher told the newspaper that her husband, Richard Poncher, bought the crypt from Monroe’s former husband, Joe DiMaggio, during his 1954 divorce from Monroe. Her husband died 23 years ago at 81.

In the process, a legend surrounding the burial of Poncher and Marilyn Monroe was proved true…   Continue »

Since we posted yesterday about the murder of model/stripper/Playboy employee Jasmine Fiore and the subsequent disappearance of her husband, reality show contestant Ryan Alexander Jenkins, details about the case have flooded in.  Here they are, in chronological order, plus more pictures of the victim and the wedding:

1. VH1 put Megan Wants a Millionaire, the show Jenkins was a contestant on, on hold: “Given the unfortunate circumstances, VH1 has postponed any future airings. This is a tragic situation and our thoughts go out to the victim’s family.”  This was probably a kneejerk reaction on VH1′a part: there was a death, our show was related to it, we should shut it down.  But news networks are already churning out gory details, splashing pictures of Fiore onscreen, and generally making bank on this lucrative story – VH1 is sitting on a golden egg.  And the deceased is not even on the show; Jenkins is.  I don’t think VH1 airing the show would be any less exploitative or opportunistic than the rest of the media carousel that this case is driving.  You bet I want to watch it now.  (And: sources say Jenkins not only appeared on but won the upcoming I Love Money 3.)
2. Jenkins has a history of beating up his women…   Continue »