Hi, my name is Charlie Sheen and I might be having a mental breakdown. Winning!

Like Tom Cruise, I'm unfortunately to be a manchild who never grew up and can't face the thought of turning 50 in just 4 years. So after the drug binges and the porn stars, I'm going on an attention binge. Because I'm immortal or at least high enough on whatever I'm taking to run away from my life to think so.

You know how we're all born and then we die. Well that doesn't apply to me. Because I'm special. I'm a ninja pirate warlock with tiger's blood and an inability to confront my mortality. Or even the thought of getting old. How do I deal with that? Winning!

As long as people are paying attention to me, I'm obviously alive. So as long as I can get people to keep focusing on me, then for all intents and purposes, I'm immortal. Winning!

Look at you normal people who try to have functional lives, going through the stages of life like chumps. You know who's not a chump, Charlie Sheen. Charlie realized life ends at 23 and he's still 23. In his own mind. Where he's also a Vatican warlock and the coolest guy on earth. And damn it, he will sue everyone who tells him otherwise. Because he can't fail. Can't lose. Can't deal. He's Charlie Sheen.

The sight of the road flashing outward before you, turning and swooping around hills, into valleys and up into mountains. Your hand on the wheel, your foot on the pedal and your eyes on the horizon. And your heart racing before you to the finish line.

Speed is a universal language. Perhaps the universal language. The pulse of a roaring motor, the rush of the road rising up before you and the swoosh of an object slicing through air as it passes forward at great speed, these things need no translation. And that is why the cars of the world, whether they come from Milan or Detroit, speak to their drivers in the universal language of speed.

And at Garage Del Parco, you find men and women who speak that universal language expertly. And when you find yourself looking to compro auto usate or buy a used car, when you search for used cars in Milan or auto usate milano, whatever language you speak, the place to find great automobiles is at Garage Del Parco. Though your native language may be from another continent or another hemisphere, the native language of all great automobiles is spoken here.

The universal language of speed is about more than just knowing how to take apart an engine and put it back together so that it suddenly begins to work better than ever, more than being able to tell the journeys that a car has been on by a glance at its tires and more than the knowledge of tools and instruments, it is the sum total of these and ever so much more. And at Garage Del Parco, that language in all its sum totality is spoken fluently and expertly by those who love cars for what they do and how they make us feel. And whether you look for used cars for sale or vendita auto usate in the mother tongue of the Ferrari, the Fiat and the Maserati, you can find no better place to seek out the chariots of the universal language of speed than at Garage Del Parco, where the road of the heart meets engine and wheel.

Oscar season usually brings out the snubs and the aggressive campaigns, and the media usually gets into the act. This year was no different, but still Salon Magazine (yes it's still around and more obscure than ever) took the cake with a really slimy campaign aimed at The Hurt Locker.

How bad was it? First an article by Martha P. Nochimson that called Kathryn Bigelow a transvestite because her movies weren't feminine enough. The use of transvestite as an insult is hypocritical enough from a supposedly LGBT friendly site. It's also ironic coming from a woman who wrote a book about Hong Kong gangster movies.

The first woman to win a Directors Guild of America award, and now favored to become the first to win an Oscar for directing. But no cheers for Miss Kathy for breaking the glass ceiling by fabricating my worst cinematic nightmare. Quentin Tarantino, who should know better, having just directed a piercingly original ironic study of war and blood lust, dubbed Bigelow the "Queen of Directors" when she took the DGA award. I prefer the "Transvestite of Directors."

Then once The Hurt Locker had already won, Salon topped itself again with an even viler piece by Erik Nelson which compared Kathryn Bigelow to Tracy Flick. Because you know how much Bigelow, an understated and unappreciated director for most of her career has in common with Tracy Flick. You know aside from them both being women. Who get in a man's way.

Two films went head to head last night. One was the ultimate "indie"; it redefined how people look at movies, brought the world back into theaters, pushed the technological boundaries of the art form in a way not seen since D.W Griffith perfected the "close-up" and was a passionate labor of love by its creator, who bent the studio system to his will in order to make it. The other was a queasily immoral war movie that had the audacity to turn a human tragedy into a "Call of Duty"-style video game

But should we expect anything more? The Oscars are, as ever, a shabby high school popularity contest and a new, soon-to-be-forgotten head of student council has just been elected: Long live the King of the World. He wuz robbed by Tracy Flick.

Nelson slimly argues that Avatar, a 500 million dollar CG filled FOX movie is the "real indie" (in other news, rich white men are the "real" minority) that was robbed by "Tracy Flick". Because Bigelow took something that Nelson felt a man was entitled to.

Nachimson and Nelson both attack Bigelow, in order to defend industry hacks like Nora Ephron and James Cameron. If Erik Nelson was capable of being honest, he would admit that his anger at Bigelow was motivated precisely because the odd girl out beat the golden boy on merit. Which is not how student elections are supposed to go. And if Nochimson were being honest, she would admit that her real problem with Bigelow, is that she dares go where Nochimson herself does not. That The Hurt Locker is outside her Nora Ephron comfort zone.

Calling Bigelow a transvestite or Tracy Flick is their way of dealing with it.

I don't know what Salon's issue with The Hurt Locker is. But the next time Salon cadges donations, readers might do the smart thing and say no, and explain why. And the same goes patronizing anything that Martha P. Nochimson and Erik Nelson do. Because there should be no room for racist and sexist dog whistles.

If you're like most of us these days, you're probably looking over your household budget and trying to find ways to cut back on your expenses. In the process you're trying to decide which purchases are optional and which are mandatory. And which mandatory purchases can be made affordable by shopping around. Most people view eyeglasses as being in the mandatory category, but don't think they can save any significant amount of money by shopping around. Which is where they are wrong, because Zenni Optical makes and ships eyeglasses to individual purchases at surprisingly low prices. While the glasses you find at the shopping mall have been part of an extended process in which manufacturers license brand names and ship them to distributors who then sell them to individual chains, which resell them to you, Zenni Optical manufacturers its own eyeglasses, under its own brand and sells them directly to you. This shortened process results in eyeglasses that start at 8 dollars. And while you might not think that incredible prices like these for eyeglasses can be real, as more and more people are discovering, they indeed are real. And what's more, Zenni Optical's eyeglasses have the same features and feature options on both the lens and frames as the high end glasses you would usually buy at the mall. For a fraction of the price. Just see the following Examiner article for a more in depth look at Zenni Optical and discover a new way to balance your budget.

The Oscars have wound down to their predictable conclusion. Avatar, like Lord of the Rings and Dark Knight, was stuck with the technical awards. James Cameron had to sit there uncomfortably with no chance of repeating his "I'm King of the World" speech (I'm guessing the speech he wrote this time ran more along the lines of "I'm King of the Galaxy") and The Hurt Locker took the golden trophies home.

The Hurt Locker is probably the most deserving film to win best picture in some time. Coming off Slumdog Millionaire, a movie hardly anyone remembers a year later, or the inexcusably wretched No Country for Old Men, or Scorcese's weakest effort in years with The Departed, or Paul Haggis' wretched two year reign with Million Dollar Baby and Crash, The Hurt Locker's win is a breath of fresh air cleaning out a lot of the tainted awards.

The Hurt Locker is not a fantastic movie. But it's solid enough to deserve the award. It stands on its own without being a gimmick picture and is has the courage of its convictions. Which is more than could be said for the competition.

After Speed Racer became one of the WB's bigger bombs, it seemed as if after a string of failures like Rock N Rolla, The Invasion, V for Vendetta; the end was here. And really a look at Joel Silver's recent string of movies, whether it's Whiteout or Ninja Assassin, is really a look at another string of failures.

But the question is, can Sherlock Holmes redeem Joel Silver?

Sherlock Holmes is by no means an uncomplicated success. Opening the weekend after Avatar denied it a first place spot and probably limited its box office. Still even in the number 8 spot, Sherlock Holmes is set to clear 200 million dollars. And with a projected budget of under a 100 million, itself a major achievement for a modern day action movie, Sherlock Holmes is profitable. There's no real doubt about that.

It's also a franchise. And there's little doubt about that. And even more so it might be a redemption for two men, Joel Silver and its director, Guy Ritchie, whose career downturn and Madonna association seemed to doom him for a while. And if not for Iron Man, it might even be the redemption for Robert Downey Jr, another fallen star, whose actual redemption in the Hollywood box office triumph of Iron Man, but whose charismatic turn certainly contributed to their redemption.

And now as Joel Silver moves into safe territory with Lethal Weapon 5, a movie no one wants, but that will make plenty of money anyway, he can thank the pulp fictions of one Arthur Conan Doyle.

Anyone who wears glasses knows that they usually come with a serious price tag. And most people who do wear glasses get used to seeing signs at the mall offering specials on eyeglasses in the hundred and hundred and fifty dollar price range. And that's often considered a bargain. But what if you didn't have to pay that kind of money to get a new or backup pair of glasses? What if you could meet your entire family's eyeglasses needs for what you might have expected to pay for a single pair. As this review at the Examiner reveals, there is one company that sells eyeglasses at a fraction of the cost you would expect to pay at the eyeglasses store at the mall. By cutting out the middleman Zenni Optical has made it possible to get a new pair of glasses at incredibly low prices. While the eyeglasses store at the mall is in the business of upselling brands to you, Zenni Optical produces the same quality glasses, without the pricey brand names and the huge markups. And since they manufacture the eyeglasses, you don't have all the markups that inflate eyeglasses prices along the way. In a tough economy everyone is trying to get more for their money. And Zenni Optical makes it possible to dramatically save money without cutting back on quality. So don't spend another year wearing an outdated prescription just to save some money. Zenni Optical lets you get eyeglasses for less.