In Memoriam: Bea Arthur

It is our sad duty to inform Lino fans everywhere of the passing of talented actress (and Lino's one-time presidential running-mate) Bea Arthur, who died of cancer this morning at the age of 86. Just last Thursday Lino was lamenting on Facebook that if he died in his sleep, his only real regret would be never getting to meet Bea in person. Looks like he missed his opportunity altogether.

Click on the video above to view Bea in her brief role in the Mel Brooks movie History Of The World, Part I. (CAUTION: Some language may be inappropriate for people who find such language inappropriate.)

Tracking Lino to the bitter end

Since Lino's being such a fatalist about his flight to Italy tonight, we at Lino Watch feel it is appropriate to provide you, his loyal fans, a means to pinpoint the exact moment that Lino's plane explodes in a fireball. Click here to follow his flight's progress towards purgatory!

We also have word that Rob Astorino has reruns of Seize The Day all queued up and ready to go in case it really does happen.

UPDATE 4/25 @ 8:30am ET: Lino made it… to Italy, that is. His plane arrived at the gate in Rome 18 minutes late. Oh well, there's always the plane ride home.

Hey, I still have three more Emmys than you do

Yesterday the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. That got me to thinking… didn't Lino submit for one of those back in January? Well no, but he did apply for another award that began with the letter 'P': the Peabody Award. As it turns out, the list of winners for the Peabody Award was released three weeks ago.

Sadly, The Catholic Guy with Lino Rulli didn't meet the Peabody Board's standards of excellence and innovation. I feel for Lino… he spent a lot of time (about 30 hours) working on the show's application. And because Busted Halo Show producer Brett Siddell was helping him out, he was put in the awkward position of having to help him with their application as well. Not to mention the entry fee he had to shell out… there's $250 he'll never see again.

If it's any consolation, The Busted Halo Show didn't win, either. That would've been really awkward. And just imagine if Seize The Day had applied and won… I don't think I've ever seen someone's head actually explode before.

"Catholic Guy" clip du Jour

In case you missed last Friday's edition of "Who's More Catholic?", click the image above to enjoy the game's wacky last five minutes as Lino gets put out of his misery (his words) and goes down to defeat. Final score: Father Jim - 4, Lino - 1.

"A fella could have himself a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff"*

As a public service to the loyal readers of Lino Watch (all six of you or so), we are now syndicating the postings from Lino's newly-established Twitter account on this site. We've gone through great pains to place this important source of Lino information in a prominent location on the site… near the top of the right-hand column. Heck, we even had to push Gus Lloyd's blog feed down the page a bit to fit it in. A tough sacrifice for sure… but one we knew we had to make. At one point we were considering adding our own Twitter feed to the page. But now that Lino's posting his own material, why go through that much trouble when Lino can do all the work for us?

Fortunately, Lino's new-found Twittering (or 'Tweet'-ing as manly-man Lino likes to put it) is already producing results. The photo above was taken by one of Lino's dining companions in Dallas on Saturday night, who himself got in a mild jab or two at Lino. We'll just let the photo speak for itself. We'll also let his very first Twitter post speak for itself as well.

* Said by Major T. J. "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens) in the movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" as he goes over the contents of his survival kit. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination that took place in Dallas just two months before the film's release, the word "Vegas" was dubbed over "Dallas" in the final cut that made it to theaters.

April Fools from TCC: Lino swaps shows with Greg & Jennifer Willits

As an April Fool's prank directed at us Catholic Channel listeners, Lino is hosting hosted The Catholics Next Door from 10:00am-1:00pm ET this morning in place of Greg and Jennifer Willits, who themselves will be hosting hosted The Catholic Guy this afternoon from 4:00pm-7:00pm ET (albeit with Lou, Jared & Christine in studio). If you want your Lino fix today, TUNE IN NOW well, you missed it!!!

Personally, I think that the ultimate April Fool's prank would've been for Lino to switch places with Gus Lloyd... that would've been MINT WAM*!

* WAM (Willits Against MINT) – Greg and Jennifer's suggested replacement for the highly overused and overrated "MINT" catchphrase.