Sad, sad news. W. Pauline Nicholson–Elvis’s cook–has passed on.

The gentle soul who made the King’s meatloaf, banana pudding, and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Nicholson was part of a different time, when people of Elvis’s stature didn’t fuss over macrobiotic diets.

May she rest in peace.

Continuing with idea of Oliver Stone directing the first 9/11 movie, a Galley Friend and hot-shot Hollywood writer emails in with this analysis:

On one hand, Stone’s not likely to go quietly if he’s yanked off (and by the way, as Roger Simon points out, there has indeed been a huge “off with their heads and out of our country” sentiment in GB), which Brad Grey knows could taint the film. On the other hand, Grey clearly doesn’t want to misstep right out of the box. On the third hand, it seems so astonishingly tone deaf for Grey to give Stone the film in the first place, given what the red-state reaction is likely to be with Stone at the helm. Predicting what anyone is going to do here is like Johnny Apple telling us that Afghanistan has become a quagmire 48 hours after the Marines landed. In other words, I don’t have any idea.

Yet I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we start to hear something about “creative differences” and all that, with Paramount saying that it wanted to go in another direction, thus freeing Stone to do “a pet project that he feels more passionately about,” one that they’ve wanted him to do for a long time–that is, a bribe. I also can’t figure out why, if they’ve got $60 mill to spend on a 9-11 film, that it even GOT TO Stone. That, I think, says more about Hollywood sensibilities than anything else. No other A-list director wanted this? Weird. The only thing I can surmise is that no one wanted to be on record as somehow justifying the war, so to them, Stone’s directing is Nixon going to China. They knew they could count on him to bring in the film without it looking the SANDS OF IWO JIMA.

Not that the brain trust at Paramount is asking for my advice, but if I wanted to put an off-beat director on the job after Stone leaves the project, and I didn’t want it to look like I was simply giving in to McCarthyite pressure, I’d see if David Lynch would be interested.

As David Skinner recently observed, Lynch doesn’t just have depths as a director, he has crystal-clear depths. His talents lend themselves very well to the straight-forward, touching story that Paramount wants to tell. And he’s unconventional enough that it won’t look like the studio was simply selling out to popular demand. No one in the arts community could pick a fight with the decision to hire Lynch.

P.S.: Lest you think I’m an anti-Stone partisan, I would argue that while his work is uneven, Any Given Sunday is the best sports movie ever made.

How’s them for fightin’ words?

Time for you to do a good deed. The Cake Editrix is raising money for a Diabetes Walk to help benefit, in part, her very adorable nephew James.

Go read her touching post on the subject and, if you can, help out.

Following up on last night’s call for an over-under on how long Oliver Stone gets to stay at the helm of Paramount’s 9/11 project is this morning’s piece on Stone in the LA Times. Key graph:

The director himself thinks that a film about 9/11 should have “been done right away. I don’t think you should run from things. You should confront them. It’s better for the country. Look at the English [reaction to the recent London subway bombings]. They took it and absorbed it and continued on. They didn’t run around and call for huge pieces of legislation costing billions of dollars to defend our homeland and create a huge war in a foreign country.”

So Stone apparently believes that terrorist attacks should be “absorbed,” but not preempted, or defended against. Let’s move that over-under line up a few days.

If you thought I was simply being excitable the other day when I raged against the incompetance of the Money magazine editors who picked my home town, Moorestown, NJ, as America’s best town, I now have further proof that these hacks have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

The Philadelphia NBC station reports that Money magazine’s 28th best town in America–Wexford, PA–doesn’t exist.

Wexford, you see, is a postal designation, not a town. It has no mayor. No borders. No main street. The USPS simply uses “Wexford” has shorthand for an area comprising parts of four other towns.

Really, shouldn’t someone at Money lose their job over this?

Mickey Kaus is riding the story of Paramount tapping Oliver Stone to direct the first 9/11 movie. He has the goods, including Stone referring to the terrorist attacks as a “revolt.”

Anyone want to set the over-under for when Paramount dumps Stone, appoints a bland director like Chris Columbus, and then quietly disappears the project into turnaround?

I’ll start the bidding at 4 weeks.

Galley Friend B.W. sends along this sad report on the death of Lil’Penny:

St. Louis, MO – Li’l Penny Hardaway, who rose to fame in the early 1990’s as the diminutive television alter ego of then-Orlando Magic star Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, was found dead Tuesday in the decrepit bathroom of a notorious East St. Louis crack house.

In my younger days, I used to tell people, “You can’t guard me. The Secret Service couldn’t guard me.” Lil’ Penny was an inspiration to us all.

Here’s a real hair-raising story from today’s Washington Post: Over the weekend, police and animal control officials entered the home of Ruth Knueven in Mount Vernon, Virginia, where they literally stumbled upon 273 cats–86 of them dead. Authorities responded after receiving neighborhood complaints of a foul odor emanating from the Knueven house. As of yesterday, writes Post staff writer Leef Smith, “Cats were still being plucked from the house … extracted from the walls and from deep within the brick chimney.” Needless to say, the house, described as “overflowing with feline feces and urine,” has since been condemned. But the real shocker is this: Knueven doesn’t live alone. In fact, the 82-year-old is married and has a daughter, all of whom reside there.

I am sure this all started as a selfless act of taking in a stray. (Even my sister and her husband took in a feral kitten that has practically become the subject of every single conversation I have with them. It usually starts with, “You’ll never guess what Dusty did today!”) In any event, even if the Knuevens meant well, their domicile is simply not equipped to handle such numbers. Besides that, where does the family eat and sleep? Sadly the cats are now destined for destruction.

I know what you’re thinking. Thank God we made it through this item without the usual eye-rolling puns. But suddenly I am feeling possessed by the spirit of Gene Shalit, who is now in command of my keyboard:

What a cat-astrophe! What a purr-dicament! Talk about cats on a hot tin roof! Get MEOWt of here!

Gene could’ve said more, but he wasn’t feline like it. (His spirit is now commanding me to get lunch.)