Fresh Intelligence : Radar Online: "South Park is the highest-rated show on Comedy Central thanks to its willingness to slaughter sacred cows, but sources say even show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are a bit nervous about the blowback from tonight’s episode. Entitled “Trapped in the Closet,” the duo set their crudely animated sights on Scientology and Tom Cruise—topics previously deemed “off limits” due to the actor’s close ties to Comedy Central’s sister company, Paramount Pictures, we’re told.
According to a source who has read a draft of the script, it begins with Stan leaving a psychiatrist’s office only to be hailed as a savior by the leaders of a strange, Scientology-esque cult because of his off-the-chart results on an E-meter-like “personality test.” A group of Hollywood A-listers quickly gather outside Stan’s house, we’re told, with Tom Cruise somehow ending up stuck in a closet—leading a news crew stationed at the scene to report that Cruise’s fans fervently want the actor to “just come out.”
In the end, R&B star R. Kelly—whose multi-song summer opus gave the episode its name—swoops in to save the day. (We suspect Chef will be sitting this one out. A rep for Isaac Hayes, who supplies the voice of South Park’s horny cook and who happens to be a Scientologist, said her client hadn’t heard about the plot and that she didn’t “think Chef was even in it.”)" |
The (Art) Thief
" A working manuscript of one of Beethoven's final compositions has been found in a seminary library, and could fetch over $2 million at auction. The 80-page manuscript of Beethoven's Gross Fuge for piano duet was composed when he was deaf, and is filled with editing and notations from the composer's own hand. Never before seen by scholars, it was written just a few months before the composer's death in 1827. The manuscript was found by a long-serving librarian clearing out old archives at the Palmer Theological Seminary. "