Where There's A Will There's A Way

The granite mausoleum she built for herself cost a cool $1.4 million; it's keeping the Queen of Mean nice and cool now, for which she must be eternally grateful. I bet it's plenty hot where she is.

Despite the extravagance, the cost of it barely made a dent in her fortune; at the time of her death real estate mogul Leona Helmsley had a very real estate herself, valued at $2.5 billion. Much of it will likely go to charity, which is at least a legal form of tax evasion. Who said prison doesn't lead to rehabilitation?

Since she famously felt that "only little people pay taxes", she's about to get her last cackle. It seems that giving it all away is the best way to avoid paying - you guessed it - estate taxes on it.

But what would a eulogy be without a suitable anecdote to sum it all up, one which highlights her oh-so charitable nature?

Helmsley didn't have a generous bone in her body - even her funny bone snarled - and for her charity always began at home, preferably someone else's. When her son Jay Panzirer died one of the richest women in the world sued his widow Mimi for all of his possessions, leaving her former daughter-in-law and four grandchildren virtually penniless.

Which must be making it extra hard to get that camel through the eye of a needle right about now.
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Muh-Fuh Don't Even Take His Own Advice

Proof that power corrupts... Witness the change in Cheney over a dozen years; from calm and reasonable then to a growling ogre today.

Proof also that corruption is like vitamins to a Republican. How else could a man with a heartbeat you could crunk to still be living?

Clearly, to assist in his recovery, the Vice President's heart was removed and replaced by a turnip. It's a similar surgery to the one the President had when he was still at Yale, sparing him a lifetime of wear-and-tear on his brain by replacing it with a cauliflower.
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Dare We Call Him "Poached Salman"?

Troubled Bollywood heart-throb Salman Khan seldom fails to heat up a movie screen or a gossip column. This time, though, he may have gone too far.



In 2002 he killed one person and injured 3 others while driving drunk in Mumbai; he appears to have gotten away with it. His turbulent relationship with famed beauty Aishwarya Rai ended in scandal, and featured revelations of his ties to organized crime as well as candid assessments of his colleagues in the Indian cinema.

Now, though, it seems he's really done it. For poaching a Chinkara, Salman Khan received a five-year jail term. Khan was himself poached by police yesterday; today he's known as 'prisoner number 343'.
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