This past Friday, we went to the amusement park in nearby Sandusky, Ohio called Cedar Point. You may have heard of it, as far as I know it still ranks as one of the top amusement parks in the world, or at least in the US. I’m pretty sure it still can claim the novelty of having the tallest or fastest roller coaster, which one I cannot remember, but it also has the coolest new ride I’ve seen in years as an amusement park attendee in it’s newest addition, the Top Thrill Dragster.

I am a Netflix customer, and a happy one at that.  I love getting my movies in the mail, and only having to wait about one or two business days to get my movies after they’ve recieved my returned movies in the mail.  I think the membership prices they charge are more than reasonable, so I was surprised when I got an email saying that they were lowering the cost of several membership prices.  I already thought what I was paying for the two at a time price was great, so I thought wow, that’s even better.

Then I read today that the reason Netflix lowered it’s prices are because they have recently suffered a lot of customer loss, and are attempting to regain patronage by broadcasting lower membership fees.  I honestly wonder how they turn a healthy profit even on what they charge now, but relegated to the fact that they probably rely more on quantity of people than anything else to turn a profit, and don’t worry so much about the individual membership prices because they did have the corner on the market, so to speak, for a while. 

Blockbuster has edged in a bit on Netflix, taking some customers away with an online mail DVD rental offering where the customer can order movies online just like they can with Netflix, but with the added benefit that they can take their movies back and exchange them for a new one at any local Blockbuster store as well. This is a good benefit, and I must admit, I thought about switching, but the service I get from Netflix is so fast, and the rate at which I watch the movies is just right for the service right now.  Besides, I hate going to the stores, so that’s why Netflix is perfect for people like me! 

Lisa Rinna, the unusually pouty lipped soap star turned fashio maven, wife to Harry Hamlin and mom, is now going to be the replacement for Joan and Melissa Rivers to host the red carpets and comment on fashion and maybe even be as big of a pain in the butt as Joan was.  Joan is 73 years old, and there’s no telling why she was replaced, but age may have played a part. 

Although you’d never know her true age thanks to the advent of face and skin pulling.  She’d probably be much better looking without that plastic, frozen look on her face though!

Joan has basically made a career as being an outspoken, say-anything type of persona and a lot of people don’t like her, but you gotta give it to her, the lady’s been around in showbiz forever.  At 73 years old she’s still hangin’ with the young, hip Hollywood crowd, although she may not always be the most welcome guest admittedly!

Rosie O’Donnell, another outspoken woman who’s made a career out of sometimes being obnoxious and controversial, notably once ribbed Joan for having too many facelifts and said she does even look human any more once when Joan ripped someone a new you know what for what they were wearing.  I agree with Rosie on that one!

YouTube, the immensely popular video website, where anyone can upload pretty much anything they want, unless it’s unacceptable material (this seems somewhat subjective though), is in hot water with Thailand over a video mocking one of their leaders.  Wow, it’s a good thing the US doesn’t work like that.  Talk about opressive.  Thank God for free speech.

To boot, officials over in Thailand blocked YouTube until they could be promised by the still in it’s youth video company that could come up with a technology to edit out any individually offensive videos.  I’d say that’s an awfully tall order, but I’m sure it’s one the video company is thinking of doing just to appease a huge audience. 

Can you believe that insulting the monarchy in Thailand is considered a criminal act, and is prosecutable?  Google, who owns YouTube apparently exercised it’s US rights of anti-censorship and refused to remove the video clip (good for them). 

I still wonder how YouTube makes it’s money.  I mean, I know they were bought out by Google, and Google has some serious geniuses that can figure out how to make money in advertising in almost any medium, but how many ads are really served and clicked on YouTube? 

Maybe it’s a lot more than I can imagine, but I just think that for such a huge engine of public interest that gets millions of hits a day, it would be able to be exploited for profit a little more than it currently is.  But much kudos to YouTube.  They’ve taken a concept and revolutionized it, and the name in itself is pure genius, I think!

A big, big fan of the cult classic Christmas movie starring Ralphie as the kid who wants a Red Rider BB gun, “Christmas Story”, has decided to take his fanhood to the next level, and has refurbished the actual Cleveland home where the movie was filmed, and made it look exactly like the home, down to details. 

He has recently decided to open the home for tours and hopes that it will become a Cleveland tourist attraction.  The man, who is in the military and has an 8 month old kid, spent half a million dollars on the home’s renovation, and is hoping that charging an entrance fee for the home tour will help him regain some if not all of his investment. 

He also has sold the infamous “leg lamps” that the father wins as an award door to door for a side line for a while, so this guy is truly a devoted fan.  I absolutely love this movie.  I’ve watched it every Christmas since I was about 13 years old and it always makes me feel like it’s really the holiday when I see it. 

Not only that, since it was filmed in Cleveland, where I live only an hour away, and which I frequently visited when my grandparents were alive and they lived there.  I even visited downtown when they still had a Higbees, so this is really like a trip down memory lane. 

Pete Townshend of the famous band “The Who” was scheduled to do a Howard Stern Sirius Satellite Radion interview.  He was actually waiting in a studio to be interviewed along with Roger Daltry and another bandmate, and when he heard Howard talking about the “child porn thing”, he reportedly stormed out, not wanting to talk about something he’d been 100% aquitted of years ago.

The Who prodigy was accused of looking at child pornography several years ago, and claims he was sexually abused as a child, but he was just looking at the images for research on a book. 

He was fully aquitted, and Roger Daltry stuck up for him when he went on Stern, basically telling Stern to cut him a break, and that he deserved to not be harassed about something that he was not guilty of.  What’s in the past is in the past….good for Roger - it takes a lot to get a shock jock like Howard to apologize - which is exactly what he did. 

Howard said he’s a big fan of their work, and that he loves them, and wants to have Pete on - Hmm Howard, I remember listening to your show a while ago when you were still on terrestrial radio, and you said you didn’t care for the Who - as a matter of fact - I think you said “Who cares about the Who?” or something to that effect….

Hilary Duff and her boyfriend Joel Madden have had to recently seek a restraining order against a man they say is stalking them, for the purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved with Hilary.  The man, a 19 year old Russian guy, came over from Russia with, what Hilary’s people say, the intentions of meeting her and having contact with her at any expense. 

He has even written her letters saying he will do whatever it takes.  Ouch - scary.  Good thing they got a restraining order.  Apparently this guy’s been to a few of Good Charlotte’s concerts (that’s Duff’s boyfriends band), and also has had contact with Joel’s family and Hilary’s family so this guy definitely doesn’t have all his marbles and needs to be stopped. 

He’s also stated that Hilary is in love with him (at least in his mind) and that her boyfriend is basically the only barrier in the way.  I hope this dude just disappears.  These kinds of people typically don’t give up.  Hopefully Hilary and Joel aren’t too much on edge - which is more than I’d be able to say for myself if I were in this situation!

Poor Angelina and Brad.  Why won’t the press just leave them and their happy little family alone?  Perhaps I shouldn’t be feeling so sorry for them, since together I’m sure they make thirty times more than any one of us would make in a lifetime, but I have to admit the picture I saw of them today, just trying to have some fun with their kid, made me kind of sad.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt tried taking their son Maddox on a rickshaw ride in India where they are currently filming the movie of the story about Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was killed and his wife, whom Angelina is playing.  They were so mobbed by photogs and paparazzi that they couldn’t even leave their hotel.

When they did leave their hotel to take their kid on a ride, bodyguards reportedly had to hop off the ride at every stop just to get the photographers to stop hounding them.  You couldn’t pay me enough to harass people like that, I swear.  I know everyone says, oh the poor rich celebrities - this is what they wanted by being famous and now that they have it they seem ungrateful. 

But you know what, enough is enough - leave these people alone.  They are human beings too.

OK, this is getting crazy.  We truly know we live in the 21st century now.  Richard Branson, the free spirited billionaire head of Virgin enterprises, is creating a space travel program where the very rich can pay about $200,000 per ticket for the priveledge of travelling to outerspace in his space craft. 

You get to wear a diaper, because there will not be any toilets on board.  Some of the stars who have reportedly expressed interest, or already bought tickets for the space flights are Paris Hilton (can’t picture her wearing a diaper, or being in space), Dave Navarro, Prince Harry, possibly Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. 

That’s just the beginning.  It looks like a lot of stars will be wanting to get in on the action.  Let’s hope Branson is ready for all this and this whole space flight thing is not just a complete disaster, as it would be so easy to see it becoming that way.  There are reportedly already about 7,000 celebrities and ridiculously rich people already signed on to get their trip to outer space.

And I couldn’t agree more.  I think Scarlett is just starting off on a great career, and her naturally curvy body has gotten a lot of interest from the male sex over the past few years. 

The young star - she’s only 21 damn her! - got her start playing the young horse owner in Robert Redford’s “Horse Whisperer”, was absent from the movie scene for a while, and then exploded back onto the movie scene with a grown up face and body, and sudden boobs! 

Men love her curviness, and she also has a slight Angelina pout going on, with good bone structure too, so she’s pretty much a shoe in for a glamorous movie star.  She also seems to have a good head on her shoulders, acknowledging that the whole Hollywood hoopla should be taken in stride, because your career can take a turn for the worst at any moment, and adding that every time she wraps a movie, she always thinks it must be the last one she’ll ever get. 

Her down to earth attitude and versatile bombshell look earned this girl the sexiest woman alive title from the men’s magazine Esquire.