Donnie Darko 2 Baffles Fans

"Donnie Darko 2, Are You Sure You Want to Go Out Today? makes Dumbo look like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre" said movie critic Ron Cramp Neck after seeing the Friday Night premier last week. "It's like Donnie Darko for kids. The only thing minutely frightening about the film is the title and lack of regard for the first Darko."

Movie producers gave little explanation for why this Teletubbies meets Alice in Wonderland rip-off held little mystery and included a twenty minute scene of the rabbit singing and laughing in front of a church (see photo). Other scenes included a lesser known fill-in for the protagonist from Darko 1, the first star of Blue's Clues, Steve Burns, going shopping for carrots with the rabbit who had just jumped out of his mirror with a bunch of balloons and a smile.

A fan of the first Darko had this to say of the premier, "The R rating on this movie is ludicrous. Let's put it this way... if your children love fluffy animals, walks in the park, animals talking to people about their day and 134 minutes of no plot, then skip Chuckie Cheese and head to this movie this weekend."

The title seems to sum up how most fans of psychological thrillers feel about the film itself: "Are you sure you want to go out today" and be so severely disappointed by a sequel that you won't even see the last Star Wars?

Real Bats Used as Weapons

An article about a man being attacked by his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend and his friends mistakenly wrote that the victim was attacked by "baseball bats". Authorities later corrected the paper when the sheriff told reporters, "At first we thought the perpetrators used baseball bats, you know, like in sports. A lot of times people use sporting goods as weapons and such. This time the attackers actually used 5 bats, you know, like the mammals. We apologize for the misunderstanding. We just don't usually see this kind of thing -- not in Chattanooga." The bats were apparently stolen the night before from a local zoo which features a bat sanctuary.

When we interviewed the victim, he told us that his attackers tied the bats to their arms and came at him, flaunting the animals in his face. The bats apparently gave the man several bites to the face and neck. The man, gave us a short description of his hellish evening, "It was really weird. It was just getting dark. I thought that the bats were rats or something, then they just kept pushing them into my face. The guys who attacked me got bit a little too. I don't know... I guess I was actually kind of lucky that they were using bats, not bats."

The district attorney was scrambling Friday to identify the charges against the men since there are no laws which identify bats as weapons. The girlfriend told reporters that she knows enough about law to know that the weapons issue is irrelevant. "I don't know what the holdup is," she complained, "who gives a crap what weapons they used? Whether it's parakeets, raccoons or marmots, assault is assault."(See the original article)

Supreme Court Bans Certain Pet Names

Consistent with some of their other inconsistent and/or arbitrary decisions as of late, the Supreme Court Wednesday announced that a list of pet names commonly found across the U.S., will from now on, be banned.

Some of note include, naming a calico cat "Patches", a gray cat "Smokey", a black and white cat "Sylvester" or "Oreo", a golden retriever "Rusty" and a Dalmation "Spot". Cherrystew was surprised, but not really, to discover that all white cats could still be named "Whitey" or "Snowball".

Due to some lobbying from an Association of Veterinarians out of Annapolis, Maryland, no animal, under any circumstance, can be named "Fluffy", "Furry", "Rover" or "Poochy". One aspect of the Supreme Court decision, which was luckily struck out, would have outlawed any state being able to issue a "Grandfather Clause" for any animals that had been given the banned names previous to the decision, which, if not struck down, would have generated a nationwide "collection" and "disposal" of the aforementioned animals.

The decision appears to have been made hastily, with names like "Tweedy" for birds and "Slinky", "Scaly" and "Fangs" for snakes, slipping through the cracks. Other names that were surprisingly excluded are, "Baby", "Bear", "Misty" and "Mini Me".

Hollywood got involved by collecting a petition which included signatures from celebrities like Tom Cruise and Paris Hilton, and lobbied that their names no longer be given to scraggly, stray animals, rather be reserved for naming Persian cats and other purebreeds.

Opponents of the decision say they are concerned that the Supreme Court will attach a bill to ban St. John's Wort with another one that strives to banish any humans named John or Jennifer.

Parade Participant Loses "Mojo"

"Just another wild parade," said Josh Horton of Mulberry, Ohio, as he set out on yet another of Bonnaroo's festive marches.

Josh's friend, Maria (shown in gold) said that she has never seen him like this before, "...he is usually the energizer in the group... I hate to say it, but it's like he's totally lost his mojo and it's rubbing off on all the other parade participants, especially the faux-goblins and space-suiters."

But who can blame him for losing some of his excitement? Records show that he has participated in over 55 festivals, parades, gatherings and hootinannies since 1993. He was most recently on stilts as a walking refrigerator for a Mulberry town parade and also wore a face mask the size of a couch for over six hours at the last Phish concert/festival in Coventry, Vermont.

"Sometimes you just kind of wonder why you're covering yourself in gold paint for the fifth time in a month... what in God's name is it all for?" mused Josh.

Well Josh, we hope you find your "joie de vivre" back as soon as possible. There's a giant Easter Island rock carving outfit waiting for you just a few blocks away.

First Sunrise of Bonnaroo

What could possibly keep this Death Star of an entity, Cherrystew, from producing its quota of blogs lately? Only a wedding and 4 days of camping with 90,000 of my best friends could. This is last Thursday... the gates opening up to let in the creative juices of Old Crow Medicine Show, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews, Herbie Hancock... and about fifty others. We were only hindered briefly by the newly recognized element: MUD. Let's just say that mud mixed with porta-potties blurs some disturbing lines. But who will remember that minor detail by the time next year's Bonnaroo comes around? Those memories will be replaced by the desire to see as many bands in a day as your feet can stand to walk to and to enjoy the thrill of being the first one to use a freshly sanitized porta-potty.