By Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter and the Boston City Paper 7/2007. (Paris Hilton / $1 million interview comments also ran in “Letters to the Editor" in the Boston Herald on 6/26/2007)

Slow news day.

You know who we never see any more? Paris Hilton. Whatever happened to her?

Something I would love to see: “Ladies and Gentlemen, we here at NBC have decided not to pay one million dollars for the first exclusive interview with Paris Hilton when she is released from jail. If she has a message to share with the public, we will be happy to interview her at no charge. We’re going to take that one million dollars and give $50,000 each to twenty of the neediest city food banks across the nation. That way, rather than giving ONE MILLION DOLLARS to someone who doesn’t need the money, we will be helping thousands of people find food to put on the table. We here at NBC hope you understand.”

Yeah, that’ll happen.

On a related topic: Note to the Boston Herald: It’s not, "slammer," it’s "jail."

Second note to the Boston Herald: Stop referring to Gisele Bundchen as Tom Brady’s “Brazilian boo.”

And a note to everyone regarding the Gisele Bundchen / Tom Brady / Bridget Moynahan baby thing: Can you just mind your own damn business?

You know what I dislike about Foxboro Common? There’s just no way to figure out how to get to Route 140.

Mr. Pibb and Red Vines = CRAZY DELICIOUS

Any news article that mentions "arrested" and "mens room" in the same sentence is never a happy story.

Speaking of skanky, like most people in this day and age, when faced with a moral dilemma, I ask myself, “What would Lindsay Lohan do?” And then I do the opposite of that.

One thing I love about America is the equality in our justice system. I’m very sure that, like Lindsay Lohan, I can appear publicly intoxicated on a regular basis, have the police find “useable cocaine” in my car, and just like Lindsay, I can just go to rehab for a few days and it will all be forgotten. What? No? That’s not what would happen if it were me? How unfair.

Great quote about presidential elections: "Because I'm tired of it. Year, after year, after year, after year, having to choose between the lesser of who cares. Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low I can hardly look at it. They say a good man can't get elected. Well, I don't believe that." -- Leo McGarry, the West Wing.

Also on the topic of America: Can we stop saying, “Celebrate July 4th?” It’s INDEPENDENCE DAY, people. Look it up – some pretty amazing stuff happened on that day.

"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17…” {pause} “…1976." – President George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2007

Did you ever realize that on TV and in the movies, whenever anyone orders Chinese food takeout, they eat it out of the container with chopsticks? I have never, ever seen this done in real life with Chinese take out food.

"Olsen, where are the photos of that birthday clown massacre thing?" -- Perry White.

So last night we’re watching “America’s got Talent” and the judges vote yes to the 30 year old man in the bra and dress and blonde wig, prancing around the stage to Shakira music, and I muse about the scientific fact that all our television signals go out into space and will perhaps one day be intercepted by an alien civilization. And I realize, after watching this show, that the most conclusive proof of intelligent life on other planets is that NONE of it has ever tried to contact us.

Finally, speaking of television, the Sopranos was one of the most ground-breaking television series ever created, but its recent series finale confused many people. In the last moments, Tony looks up, and the screen suddenly goes black. Are we to interpret that the black screen is Tony’s perspective – that he was shot by someone in the restaurant and died? Remember in an earlier episode, Tony and his brother-in-law Bobby muse about what it feels like to die: At the end, you probably don’t hear anything, everything just goes black. That scene is recalled in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate “Sopranos” episode. But these supposed “clues” are misleading red herrings. I found an exclusive interview with David Chase, creator of the show, and he definitively explained the ending as follows. At the moment he looks up, and the screen goes dark, Tony