Gunfire rang throughout a Chicago suburb as an employee of Little Nero’s, a popular pizza chain, was attacked after making a delivery.

According the pizza boy, who wished to remain anonymous, the assailant was an agitated old man who not only took pleasure in attacking him, but laughed while doing so.

“He said he was gonna give me to the count of ten,” said the blonde-haired delivery boy. “There’s no way that crazed maniac got to ten before that tommy gun started firing off rounds.”

The pizza boy was also emotionally distressed from the ordeal. “He called me ugly, yellow, and a filthy animal. Plus, the guy was a real cheapskate. Barely left a tip.”

A police investigation, led by an officer who only went by “Harry,” yielded no further evidence. The residence, belonging to the McCallister family, showed no damages.

“If there were in fact gunshots, wouldn’t there have been bullet holes?” said the officer with a gold tooth. “The place has been jumping too. Parties, dancing. I saw Michael Jordan there one night.”

Nefarious gambler and anti-manure lobbyist Biff Tannen has announced plans to erect a twenty-eight floor hotel and casino in downtown Detroit. Tannen, famous for legalizing gambling in crime-ridden Hill Valley, will live in the casino’s penthouse with his wife, Lorraine, and stepson, Marty.

The hedonistic haven, named the Pleasure Paradise Hotel and Casino, will be a welcomed economic boost for Detroit, a city Tannen likens to his hometown of Hill Valley.

“Detroit has that same post-apocolyptic ambience that Hill Valley had back in ‘85,” said Tannen, adding that Hill Valley was “filled with crazed scientists and punk kids who wanted nothing more than to see [him] fail,” but that Detroit seemed to have “no signs of any scientists, or any intellectuals at all.”

“It was time for me to make like a tree and get out of there,” Tannen said with no sense of irony.

Tannen, who accumulated his fortune on a suspiciously lucky day at the race track, went on to state that his arrival would provide much needed employment opportunities for the once mighty Motor City.

“I’ll have to find some buttheads to wax my car,” Tannen scoffed. “Those two coats are not gonna wax themselves.”

While Tannen has been riding a hot gambling streak since the mid-50s, he did specify that when it comes to Detroit sports, he would never wager on the Lions.

“I have a good feeling they won’t ever win another game,” Tannen confidently stated after consulting a nearby “Ooh La La” magazine.

An archaeological dig in Turkey unburied former teen heartthrob James Van Der Beek, finally revealing where he’s been for the past decade.

While the goal of the dig was to uncover ruins from the Ottoman Empire, the archaeologist who first saw Van Der Beek showed no surprise and calmly announced, “I found him. We got Van Der Beek,” and continued on with his work.

“It makes perfect sense that he was buried under there,” said the man who made the discovery, acknowledging that’s the only place he could have been since the end of Dawson’s Creek. “What doesn’t make sense is why he was buried so deep. He was among artifacts from thousands of year ago. Literally hundreds of feet in the ground.”

Van Der Beek, known for playing characters you want to smack, dusted himself off and headed toward the camp to grab a glass of water, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Crew members say he slapped a few people on the back, said “thanks, homes,” and walked off.

And as soon as he came, he was gone.

“I almost didn’t report it in the log,” the crew leader recalled, referring to the discovery as ‘no big deal’. “If it had been Joshua Jackson, then we’d have a something to write home about.”

For years, TV and Film fans have mistaken the identities of actors Dermot Mulroney and Dylan McDermott. A modern day “Pullman and Paxton,” these dark-haired leading men are often thought of as interchangeable.

Until now.

In a statement released by both actors, they have agreed to join forces and become a single entity known as “Dermot McDermott.”

“Why separate us?” Dermot McDermott said. “You need someone laid back for a romantic comedy? Dermot McDermott at your services. How about a procedural show? You guessed it. Dermot McDermott.”

The merging will clear up America’s confusion regarding the two actors. No longer will fans of My Best Friend’s Wedding or The Practice be afraid to talk about the dreamy male leads, fearing they will accidentally say the wrong name.

“With one easy to remember name, we are one actor,” they added. “And with our combined talents, we’re now the greatest actor ever. Not to mention the most handsome, dark-haired actor who got his start in the late 80s or early 90s.”

Dermot McDermott plans to tag team many projects, filling in for the other when a break is needed.

“Say Dermot gets sick,” the other Dermot said. “I step in. Nobody knows the difference between us anyway.”

TNT execs revealed that they only own the rights to second half of the film The Shawshank Redemption, and has never actually broadcast the first “hour or so.”

“Most Shawshank fans claim they can watch it from any point and it doesn’t affect the viewing experience,” explained one TNT exec. “So why should we waste money buying the rights to the whole thing? Andy goes to jail, Andy gets raped, blah blah. Did you really need to see that? No. Now watch him become besties with Morgan Freeman and go to Mexico.”

This startling revelation reveals why even the most avid fans of the film have trouble recalling the beginning.

“I swear I’ve seen that flick like a hundred times,” said one oblivious fan, who admitted he thought the beginning was when Brooks dies. “It’s amazing that a Hollywood movie could only be an hour long.”

TNT announced Shawshank would not be the only movie to be cut in half. Others include My Cousin Vinny, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and any John Cusack film from 1984-1989. They also admitted they never run Remember the Titans in its entirety, just the scene where racial harmony is achieved through a Motown song.

Despite the upcoming release of a new album, R&B singer Chris Brown has felt lost recently, as his damaged public image has left him devoid of women to beat.

“I have a new album out and I need to celebrate,” announced the beleaguered batterer of women, “I haven’t felt this great since I was on my way to the Grammy’s. But without channelling it into some good ol’ fashion fist to face action, it just feels empty.”

Brown went on to state add to that it’s “been far too long since [he] laid a haymaker into the body of a woman” and would settle for any girl who “knew the deal.”

When asked if he had any preference, Brown was quick to say that he’d be grateful just to punch the cashier at Denny’s. “That’s what it has come to. Raining pain on the old lady working the graveyard shift at my favorite restaurant. I mean, she’s asking for it - wondering how me meal was, and all. Bitch please, it was delicious. Now stay still for a second.”

To celebrate the release of his new album, Graffiti, Brown threw a record release party and invited many women. Nobody was punched.

“It was a good time, I guess,” recalled a noticeably crestfallen Brown, who took a couple practice swings at the air to “stay fresh”. “It’s all relative though. A man needs a good woman by his side to enjoy life. And then he needs to teach her a lesson.”

With the popularity of vampires peaking, observers of cultural trends have turned to the centaur as the candidate most likely to gallop into the hearts of America’s youth.

Citing the success of the Broadway production of Equus starring Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, analysts contend that there has never been a more opportune moment for the mythical Greek creature composed of a human torso atop a horse’s body.

“In fact the real question is why it’s taken this long for the centaur to break through,” contends Phil Davis, a Greek mythologist-turned-market analyst avowedly bullish on centaur futures. “Look, it’s simple: little girls love ponies and women love bare-chested men, so it follows that centaurs skew young adolescent.  This thing is going to hit them right in their sweet spot.”

Asked who he envisions as the face of the forthcoming trend, Davis suggests Twilight star Robert Pattinson.  “He’s already so closely associated with sexy mythological creatures, so it will simply be a lateral move for him.   Plus he’s got those washboard abs, which are going to be front, center and on top of those glistening horse haunches.   Yeah, a centaur-Pattinson has major stud potential.”

While surpassing the popularity of vampires will be no easy task, the consensus among analysts is that centaurs are the cream of the crop when it came to “second-tier mythical creatures,” beating out lackluster contenders like the Minotaur and America’s own Bigfoot. Davis refers to the latter as “too mopey for the mainstream audience.”

“Bigfoot is to vampire as David Schwimmer is to Robert Pattinson,” elaborates Davis. “Unless whining is your thing, Bigfoot is no sex symbol.”

*co-written with Peter Queck

Despite raking in over $32 million during its opening weekend, Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are did not attract its expected audience. In an attempt to be ironic, hipsters took to coffee houses throughout the nation, organizing a boycott of the heavily anticipated film.

“Sure the trifecta of Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers, and Karen O. is a dream of mine,” said a hipster who later admitted that by “mine” he meant “everyone he interacts with”. “And as much as I want to see this movie - and I’d trade my Nicolas Cage autograph to see it - that’s just what the mainstream expects me to do. And I don’t subscribe to that society. I do, however, subscribe to The Believer, which I’ll be reading in the meantime.”

In addition to the hipster darlings behind the film, the subject matter is especially appealing to those boycotting it.

“In the book, Max gets sent to bed without dinner, and I relate to that because I often go to bed hungry because I can’t afford groceries,” said hipster David Hoffman, whose parents send him a weekly gift card to Whole Foods. “But I won’t see this movie no matter how much they cater it to me. It’s why I don’t shop at Urban Outfitters.”

Those Hipsters who did go to the movies this weekend built on the ironic support for Where The Wild Things Are by seeing Couples Retreat.

“I hated it so much,” smiled Hoffman as he wistfully watched children exit the Wild Things theater. “I bet the studios didn’t expect that. I can’t wait to add it to my Laser Disc collection.”

Charles Buckman, the last known fan of the NBC drama Heroes, has been raving to seemingly nobody in particular about the lesbian kiss that took place between costars Hayden Panettiere and Madeline Zima.

“It was so hot,” Buckman said to a blank wall. “Heroes is back! Am I right?”

Buckman’s wife Alison, who stopped watching the fantastical drama when it “started to suck,” has begun to be uncomfortable her husband’s incessant rambling.

“There are no other fans left for him to talk to about this,” said Dansky, who could only feign interest for the first two days. “Since Monday he’s been calling everybody he knows to recap the kiss and how ‘it’s exactly what the show needs.’ But he doesn’t know anybody who still watches it. I’m starting to think he’s just putting the phone up to his ear but not actually dialing anyone.”

Though the show’s fan base has been nearly depleted, NBC expressed optimism after receiving the ratings for the much hyped episode.

“Our numbers indicate that the episode was watched,” said an NBC programming exec. “That’s up from last week.”

Buckman, the one viewer, unfortunately missed last week’s episode, as he was preoccupied telling nobody about the upcoming season of Real World/Road Rules Challenge.