The Week in Review

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2: Children, please leave the room and go watch "The Shield" or something while Week in Review and the adults have a special grown-up conversation about, ahem, ugs-dray. Sooo, grownups, didja read this Daily Mirror interview with Paul McCartney in which the former Beatle admitted he experimented recreationally with drugs and nothing dramatic happened? Didn't become a baby-eating junkie monster with hypodermic needles for teeth, didn't turn into a Tazmanian devil coke fiend whirling about with transvestite hookers for arms, didn't even slowly devolve, reverse caveman-like, into another Ringo Starr. Okay, he did form Wings. Otherwise, McCartney came clean about copious drug influences in Beatles classics. "'Day Tripper,' that's one about acid," he told the paper. "'Lucy in the Sky,' that's pretty obvious." The lesson: Er, yeah, on second thought, don't do drugs. They can only lead to banal, reductionist explanations of really great songs.

THURSDAY, JUNE 3: Retracting tentacles and all to its dank, red tape-lined lair, the city backed off threats to cite a northwest Las Vegas car dealership for using "attention-getting devices" on its cars--in this case, miniature American flags, each a sunny little dose of patriotism reminding Ameribots of their national duty to BUY NOW for NO MONEY DOWN and make NO PAYMENTS until August! Wait, isn't using crap laws to drum up a tornado of free press for a car dealership kind of an "attention-getting device," too? Just wondering!

FRIDAY, JUNE 4: For those you listening to the audiobook version of Week in Review, don't freak out too much when the fanfare blasts from 2001: A Space Odyssey make your head jackhammer the ceiling of your car: MGM Mirage announced Friday it had offered to buy Mandalay Resort Group to the tune of $7.65 billion--dum daaahm! If Mandalay agrees to the buyout, this could create the largest gaming company in the world--dum DAAAHM! But the real attention-getting device is that Deutsche Bankers and other analysts are tugging at their monocles and grunting "righto, chaps!" in favor of the deal, as though a flavorific concentration of corporate power is, like, no big deal--dawm DAAAAHM!

SATURDAY, JUNE 5: Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States, died today at 93. Known as the Great Communicator, he brought about the fall of the Soviet empire, an end to the Cold War and was an unflinching beacon of freedom to the world. And he was just sooo handsome and charismatic, you know? And let's not forget how he found a cure for cancer in his mobile lab while on tour with U2, filling in for Bono. And remember how his hair was so thick and healthy, every week he'd shave it off and donate it to kids with leukemia? And how he discovered a new form of renewable energy based on hugs? Know what? Out of drooling, mindless awe over the former president, Week in Review hereby pledges to suspend all skepticism, sense of perspective and common sense and instead just sit here in a state of tear-streaked gaga for the rest of the week. You know, like the rest of the press.

SUNDAY, JUNE 6: But enough tears, even if they are miraculously shaped like tiny, attention-getting flags. Let us take solace at the horchata-dispensing teat of vapid celeb news: J. Ho got hitched again this weekend, this time to singer Marc Anthony. The Associated Press reported Sunday that her exes--that's the other line you see stretching off into the horizon next to the Reagan mourners--approve of the union. "If she's in love with somebody and that makes her happy, I'm happy for her," Sean "Puffy" Combs, or Husband 3420 Series D, said.

MONDAY, JUNE 7: Al Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia, taking a brief but tasteful respite from eulogizing Ronald Reagan, purportedly released statements on two Islamic websites threatening attacks on American airlines. "All compounds...especially Western and American airlines, will be the direct target for our coming operations in the near future," the statement says. The posting also warns Muslims to avoid mingling with Westerners, since for every Muslim they accidentally blow up, Allah deducts one doe-eyed virgin and a jug of rosewater in the afterlife, and if a terrorist accidentally blows up more than three Muslims, Allah starts filling the offender's harem with Barbara Walters clones and cans of lukewarm Tab.

TUESDAY, JUNE 8: In a rare event not seen since 1882, Venus passed in front of the sun today over a period of six hours, a process called the transit of Venus. You know what that means: Transit of Venus par-tay! Uh-huh, do the transit, the transit, to the West Coast, to the East Coast, the transit, uh-huh... Astronomy buffs the world over gathered to watch this celestial event that happens twice, eight years apart, about every 120 years. The next one is set to occur in 2012, the same year fawning memorials for Ronald Reagan are scheduled to finally end.

--ANDREW KIRALY