What I Learned This Week

• When you say a dramatic statement like "I'm done dating girls. I'm only going to date women!", try not to pause after "I'm done dating girls". Someone jumped to conclusions...

• You can put a slice of tenderloin wrapped in a potato pancake on a plate with 3 sprouts and a cherry tomato, call it a salad, and charge $16.

• Outkast's "Hey Ya" is apparently not in 4:4 time as I assumed. This post breaks it all down, and that song has got a very elaborate architecture. The guys in Outkast have a sophisticated knowledge of music.

• Ghostbusters was originally intended to team Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Eddie Murphy. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis initially wrote the script with roles written especially for Belushi, Eddie Murphy and John Candy. However, Belushi died due to a drug overdose during the writing of the screenplay, and neither Murphy nor Candy could commit to the movie due to prior commitments, so Aykroyd and Ramis shifted some of these changes around and polished a basic, yet sci-fi oriented screenplay for their final draft. (Wiki) (It has been rumoured that Slimer was jokingly referred to as "the ghost of John Belushi" on set.)

• John Belushi died 25 years ago this week, March 5th, 1982. Rob Salem at the Toronto Star had an excellent piece on Belushi last weekend, where he pointed out that his role as Bluto in Animal House, if you removed the dialogue, was a fantastic emotive piece of silent acting on par with Buster Keaton. The scenes where he tries to cheer up Flounder by smashing plates on his own head, or when he plays music critic at the frat party still kill me, and nary a work of dialogue aside form a mumbled "sorry" to the musician.

• Premiere magazine is ceasing publication this month. It was a trailblazer in it's day, once the only source of info for cinephiles and movie geeks, with in-depth essays and interviews. It's hard for them to compete these days, with their monthly issue not being able to satisfy movie fans who get Entertainment Weekly or hundreds of websites. After high school, reading Premiere expanded my knowledge of movies and cinema, and contributed to the pop culture neurotic you all know and love today. The Premiere website will continue: they've posted a fun article on the Top 20 Worst Post-Oscar Career Choices. It's not just Cuba and Halle Berry: Robin Williams followed up his win for Good Will Hunting with Patch Adams (the clowning doctor treacle).

• Captain America, the fictional Marvel Comics character, was gunned down this week in his comic book, causing a media frenzy on par with crazy diaper wearing pepper spraying astronauts. Caleb gave me the heads up that people are buying up copies of the book and selling them on E-Bay. Hey look, it's 1993 and a poly-bagged variant holographic covered comic book is going to put your kids through college. I learned this lesson, and you comic book guys will understand this reference, as my 10 copies of X-Force #1 polybagged with trading cards stagnate in the basement.

• Variety announces that Maggie Gyllenhaal is offically replacing Katie Holmes in the next Batman movie. Thank you universe. Now go rent "Sherrybaby" and tell me why Gyllenhaal didn't get an Oscar nomination.