Michael Phelps, who has now won more gold medals — 11, in fact — than any other athlete ever, is an eating machine. My kind of guy.

The difference is that when I pig out, I unfortunately don’t work off the extra calories. As for Phelps…well, you know that story.

Visit this site for an interesting look at Phelps’s daily intake. Amazing!

Online gossip columnist Perez Hilton is being sued by an Ohio woman for $25 million after he published a slur-filled email she sent him, and the suit stands as a reminder to what ought to be basic common sense.

Apparently, Hilton received an email from his “victim” that contained anti-gay slurs, and attacked both Hilton and actress Angelina Jolie.  Hilton, whose website lists a privacy policy that states he will not release private information of users who post comments on his site, then published the email in its entirety…including the woman’s email address.  Unfortunately, the woman used her work email, so her employer, a senior living center, was also identified.

Hilton’s fans then ran amok, sending hate mail to the emailer and her employer, and the emailer quickly found herself terminated.

There’s an old saying that you should never send anything in an email that you wouldn’t mind being published in a newspaper.  And most places of business have very clear policies about the use of company computers and internet time.

It would never even occur to me to send such an email from my work email address.  I can’t believe that others wouldn’t think twice about doing so.

What do you think:  should she collect?

“It takes a certain type of person to be a television star. I didn’t have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. … Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I’m fine.”

—Harvey Korman

One of the main reasons I loved watching the TV classic The Carol Burnett Show was the pairing of Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. Whenever those two shared a scene, you knew it was going to be funny…not only because of the performance itself, but because of Korman’s usually-failed attempts to keep a straight face as Conway did his schtick.

Korman has died at age 81.

From voicing the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones to his portrayal of the egomaniacal Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles, he has left a legacy of decades of good humor for kids of all ages.

Years ago, Korman explained his inability to refrain from laughing at Conway by pointing out that a fellow performer never knew what Conway was going to do next. He would do things one way in rehearsal and apparently a completely different way at the actual show taping.

Somehow, the audience never seemed to mind Korman’s breakups. In fact, it made already-funny material all the more enjoyable.

Back in January of this year, he was operated on for a brain tumor. The operation was successful, but just days after returning home, he suffered the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm and was given just hours to live. He proved his doctors wrong, but after several major operations, he was just too weak. His daughter, Kate, said he fought until the very end. “He didn’t want to die. He fought for months and months,” she said in an AP article.

Carol Burnett is said to be devastated by Korman’s passing. Understandable. The world has lost part of its sense of humor.

I’ll wrap up this sad news with a clip of one of Korman and Conway’s most famous moments: Conway is playing a novice dentist who is a little too careless with a needle full of Novocaine.

Thanks for the many, many laughs, Harvey.

If you’re a fan of CSI:, the original version, then it’s almost impossible for you not to know that one of the original cast members is leaving after tonight’s episode.

If you somehow have remained clueless, stop reading now.  Otherwise, you might just end up feeling the way I do about these constant “behind the scenes” details and “spoilers.”

In case you don’t know, and you’re stubbornly still reading this, I’ll throw in one more delay before getting to the meat of the issue.  Actress Marg Helgenberger has just signed a two-year contract extension.  That will keep her on the show as long as William Petersen, who signed his extension back in April.

Just knowing those two details, it seems to me, kills a lot of opportunities for suspense in the medical drama.  Odds are if either of their characters fall into a life or death situation in the next 15 months or so, they’ll probably survive.  (They could always die and come back as their own ghost, but that’s more of a soap stunt.)

Actor Gary Dourdan is leaving the show and tonight is his last episode.  There may be suspense in how he departs:  will he be shot to death by a perp or arrested for something he’s done?  Will he catch a contagious virus from a contaminated crime scene or get hit by a drunk driver running from police?

Who knows.  But he’s leaving.

The thing is, why do I know that?  Why do I need to know that before I see it actually happen?

Shows like Entertainment Tonight, which used to be a decent show in its early days before it turned more tabloid than the National Enquirer ever dreamed of being, are constanty revealing details that the audience really shouldn’t know going in.

I watch all of those behind the scenes documentaries about how this effect was done or how that trick was pulled off, then I see the show and can’t help but be less than impressed with the magic because I now know there’s no doubt about it being a trick.

Sometimes I actually want to be surprised.  Just once — and this is quite a fantasy these days — I’d like to know what the ending will be only after I see the episode actually end.

Sometimes, I wish these behind the scenes reports would just shut up.

…people who look like this guy really, really piss me off.

Mario Lopez was born in 1973, which means that on his birthday this year, he’ll actually be 35.

That also means that the infamous slowing metabolism that strikes in the thirties either hasn’t hit him, yet, or that he has some unimaginable obsession with working out.

He, like nearly every other celebrity these days, is about to release a new book on fitness.  The cynic in me suspects that the majority of people who buy this book are doing so just to drool over him in his shirtless glory.

I hope they enjoy themselves.

I, on the other hand, find myself particularly amused by the red balloon on the cover, which reads, “The Six-Week Plan for Sculpting Your BEST BODY EVER.”

You know, if I thought I could look like that in six weeks, I’d go to every book store in Charleston and buy every copy I could find.

Maybe this is the beginning of the end. The real “end times” the Bible-thumpers have been shouting about for so long.

Maybe this image is an accurate depiction of what is going on right now.

Where would I get such an idea? From two pieces of news I’ve read about online. The first involves author Ann Coulter. Coulter is one of those people who I immediately change the channel to avoid any time she appears on the screen. She’s one of those people who generally tries to get people as upset as she can — and she tends to be good at it. But that’s just not my cup of tea.

However, I find out that during a recent appearance on Hannity and Colmes, she actually said she’d support Hillary Clinton if John McCain became the Republican nominee.

No, seriously. First, she said that Clinton would be tougher on terrorism than McCain. Then, she added this:

“Moreover, she lies less than John McCain. I’m a Hillary girl now. She lies less than John McCain. She’s smarter than John McCain, so that when she’s caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they’ve been caught lying. McCain is so stupid, he doesn’t even know he’s been caught.”

Coulter? A Hillary girl?

Then, I find myself — much to my horror — in agreement with a daytime talk show host. Montel Williams made an appearance Saturday morning on Fox and Friends, and when asked about the death of celebrity Heath Ledger, the talk show host, himself a former Marine, went off on the hosts about getting their priorities straight:

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make sure my Blue Cross is paid up.

Two days ago, 89-year-old Mike Wallace, one of my all-time favorite journalists, underwent triple bypass surgery, CBS has revealed.

Today, he took his first steps since the procedure that doctors are calling a success.

Heart surgery.  At 89.

I think if I had heart surgery at 39, I’d be off my feet for at least a week.  Hell, the pain would probably be enough for me to request being placed in a medically-induced coma for a good month-and-a-half.

May we all be going that strong just months from the big 9-0!

Mourners visiting the final resting place of TV mogul Merv Griffin are due for a laugh:

You gotta love tombstone humor.

In light of recent headlines, I thought I’d take a look at how many celebrities we’ve lost to drugs. WCBS-TV in New York compiled a list of 79 famous people who were killed by drugs in one way or another; for example, some died of overdoses, some died of complications from alcohol abuse, some from lethal mixes of physician-prescribed medication and alcohol. Some of the deaths were accidental and others were suicides. But all of them shouldn’t have happened.

Here are just a dozen from WCBS’s list:

• Singer Hank Williams, Sr., on January 1, 1953, age 29
• Singer Billie Holliday, on July 17, 1959, age 44
• Marilyn Monroe, on August 5, 1962, age 36
• Comedian Lenny Bruce, on August 3, 1966, age 40
• Musician Jimi Hendrix, on September 18, 1970, age 27
• Singer Janis Joplin, on October 4, 1970, age 27
• Singer Jim Morrison, on July 3, 1971, age 27
• Actress Anissa Jones, on August 28, 1976, age 18
• Actor Freddie Prinze, Sr., on January 29, 1977, age 22
• Actor/Comedian John Belushi, on March 5, 1982, age 33
• Actor River Phoenix, on October 31, 1993, age 23
• Actor/Comedian Chris Farley, on December 18, 1997, age 33

All of them were under 45 when they died. There are a lot of people who like to argue that drug use is a “victimless crime.” Tell it to their families and let me know what they say in response.

It seems like only a week ago — then again, it was just a week ago…to the day, in fact — that I wrote a piece about the needless death of a young celebrity.

I expressed in that piece the frustration of seeing the demise of someone who should have had at least seventy more years of life left in him. At least that much.

The news reports that actor Heath Ledger, 28, was found dead next to a collection of pills elicited the same reaction, with perhaps slightly more anger because it happened once again and so soon, and because I didn’t really need to know that he was found naked at the foot of his bed. The detail about the pills was plenty of information.

In any case, you can go back and read it here. I think everything there pretty much still applies.

Actor Brad Renfro was found dead at his Los Angeles home today.

At age 25.

The cause of death, so far, hasn’t been released, although reports are mentioning his apparent long history of drug problems.

Renfro wasn’t the greatest actor in the world, although I thought he did a respectable job in Stephen King’s thriller, Apt Pupil. That’s probably not the role he is most known for, but I am the first to admit that I haven’t followed his career with any particular interest.

So why does his death bother me? Maybe because earlier this evening, I dropped by a visitation at a funeral home for a man who lived a full life, accomplished many things he wanted to do and had the respect of friends and family. He lived a long time, although no length of time is long enough.

Maybe because earlier this evening, that all-too-common thought many of us have from time to time popped into my brain: that nagging question about why we have such a relatively short amount of time here. Sure, I’m a Christian, so I believe without any doubt that there’s a life after this one. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder why this particular one has to be so short, filled for many with trying to amass so much fame and riches that they’ll never be able to take with them, anyway.

Or maybe it’s just the annoyance with what I’m sure will be many blog posts about how much pressure young stars face, as if that somehow justifies a 25-year-old pushing his body to life-shortening extremes on illegal substances.

There are lots of young people who suffer much worse fates than becoming a celebrity. There are, I am reliably informed, worse things in the world.

And they never try drugs. Not even once.

I know, I know, some of you — likely the Renfro fans in particular — will jump on me about my presumptions. And you’re right…I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know why he ever had a problem with drugs to begin with. I don’t know what it’s like to have that kind of pressure.

But like the rest of you, I know what it’s like to have my kind of pressure…and lots of it. I know what it’s like not to be happy, to wish for more of some things and less of others, to yearn for things that will never be more than a dream. That makes me sad. It makes me angry. And it makes me look at a story like this with utter disgust.

Twenty-five is just too damn young to die.

It’s the time of year when we traditionally wrap ourselves in a blanket of nostalgia and ponder those who passed away over the last twelve months.

In keeping with that tradition, I offer this page of notable deaths as compiled by the Associated Press.

And there’s something striking about the list:  the fact that the majority of those who died were well into their seventies and eighties.  The youngest person, a rapper, was 33.  Anna Nicole Smith was the second-youngest at 39.

The third-youngest on the AP’s list were Boston’s lead singer Brad Delp, who died on March 9th and pro football’s Darryl Stingley, who died on April 5th.  Both were 55.

The oldest, Brooke Astor, was 105.   A second centenarian on the list, Oliver Hill, a lawyer who argued the Brown v. Board of Education case, was 100.

I guess we really are living longer.  And I’m all for that.

Brittney Spears’s little sister, Jamie Lynn, is pregnant.

Sure, that’s old news by now, and that’s fine.  This isn’t the kind of story — it certainly doesn’t qualify as “news,” to anyone who is interested in real news — that I’d want to break, anyway.

There are a lot of people, no doubt, who will drag out those tired old arguments about how the media’s mentions of the Spears family sagas du jour is unnecessary.  I think that sometimes, it’s easier for people to blame the media for covering non-news so that they can avoid some more important observations about our society that an rabid interest in such coverage really reveals.

Take a listen to the people who are actually interested in this sort of thing.  They don’t seem to mind that a 16-year-old is pregnant; they think it’s marvelous.  They don’t seem to mind referring to said 16-year-old’s boyfriend as the “baby daddy” as opposed to a father.  They don’t seem to mind that he’s not the husband.  And shortly, when the paparazzi succeeds in capturing Spears’s image when she begins to show, her unborn child will be referred to as a “bump,” not a baby.

And yet there are so many right-wing nuts who worry that gays are the ones to blame for damaging our national image of a family!

(Before anyone jumps on me about the husband remark, I’m sure that there are readers of mine who have had children out of wedlock.  I mean no offense, and if you made the decision that doing so was the best for your situation, that’s your call and I wouldn’t take it upon myself to question your motive.  But it seems to me that we should be encouraging people not to find themselves in such a predicament to start with, not getting so obsessed with those to whom it happens.  And whether you are obsessed with the story or not, the fact that there are so many people who are still says a lot about our culture…like it or not.)

Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn says her pregnancy “shocked” her.  That can only mean that either the father’s sperm reached her egg by some heretofore-undiscovered osmosis that might make couples everywhere think twice before getting close enough to even hold hands, or that she really did believe those childhood stories that babies come not from sex…but from the stork.

First, there was actor/fitness guru Chuck Norris. Now former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has gotten another celebrity endorsement.

This time, it’s from legendary pro-wrestler Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair:

“His authentic conservative qualifications and level of executive leadership experience are unmatched by his opponents. And like I always say, to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man and Mike Huckabee is the man. Whoooooooo!”

Seriously…if there is anyone who’d vote for Huckabee because of either Norris or Flair, those people should have their voting rights revoked.

For life.

Do the country a favor: vote for a candidate because you believe in what they stand for. Not because some celebrity says you should.