To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Aug. 30, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/30/ribman Is Captain RibMan dodging the coke question? Suzanne Somers gets cartooned online; "Hard science" reveals missing link between Stephen Hawking and a whoopee cushion. Plus: Brad Pitt's deep thoughts on rape. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Real-life political candidates should have it so easy as Captain RibMan, an online BBQ-sauce-squirting superhero running for Meatropolis' Chief Vigilante who has yet to be asked the coke question. When last we met Captain RibMan, he was getting the full treatment (minus the toe-sucking) from former Clinton advisor and avowed sex addict Dick Morris, who is collaborating with the strip's co-creators, John Sprengelmeyer and Rich Davis, on Captain RibMan's Campaign 2000 -- talking strategy and keeping the oft-wayward aspiring pol in line. (Morris' cartoon character, it need be noted, comes off far more favorably than, say, fictional George Steptinalotofit, whose real-life inspiration didn't return the creators' faxed and e-mailed invitation to "have some fun with us.") Now, after "eating himself into this fat slob," the slothful superguy, whose real-life model Davis is loath to name -- "Ask Dick Morris," he says (NP tried; he's on vacation) -- is set to get whipped into shape by none other than sex symbol turned health guru Suzanne Somers, whom Davis says he's "always enjoyed ... back from when she played Chrissy" on the '70s laff-track sitcom "Three's Company." Plus, "who doesn't have a Thighmaster?" asks Davis, who worked with Somers on everything from dialogue to diet and exercise tips. (That's a question nice girls never answer.) But now that the collaboration with Somers is nearing an end (she debuts in the strip in a few weeks), Davis is polishing up his wish list for the next Captain RibMan celebrity guest star; Tom Hanks, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox and Sandra Bullock are all said to be considering appearances. And at the tippy-top of Davis and Sprengelmeyer's list is yet another forgotten face of the '70s: Ron Palillo, whose Arnold Horshack "oh-oh-oh" on "Welcome Back, Kotter" made viewers all over the world flinch in unison. Says Davis, "We thought of Palillo because there is hard science that establishes Horshack as the missing link between Stephen Hawking and a whoopee cushion." Right, but how would you spell that Horshack laugh? - - - - - - - - - - - - News flash: Brad Pitt is a man! "The fact that Pitt is a man and here's the proof, it is not news. [My] feelings would be the closest thing I could understand to rape." -- Brad Pitt on Playgirl's thwarted attempt more than a year ago to publish photos of him frolicking in the buff on a St. Bart's beach with then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow. - - - - - - - - - - - - Get set for the jet set And you thought "Cops," "The World's Deadliest Car Chases" and "The World's Wildest Police Videos" were bad. Now Fox, the thinking man's choice for televised tragedy, is trying to work out a deal with the Federal Aviation Administration to bring the anxiously waiting world the chance to watch a real-live plane crash on prime-time TV. According to the Sept. 4 issue of TV Guide, the channel's execs are hoping to make a pretty big impact during November sweeps with "Jumbo Jet Crash Live: The Ultimate Safety Test." "I mean, are you going to watch 'Friends' or a jumbo jet crash?" asks Fox exec VP Michael Darnell, adding that, if successful, the televised crash could become an annual event. Darnell also tells the magazine it's not unusual for the FAA to deliberately crash a plane from time to time, in order to collect the data. The pilots will bail out prior to the fateful moment, he says, and while viewers will see the crash live, "we will have a few seconds' delay to give us an out in case anybody dies." Sounds like a smashing idea, but an FAA spokeswoman has told the New York Post her agency generally tests planes by dropping the fuselage off a tower and monitoring the impact. "We do not fly aircraft and crash them," she said. ValuJet could not be reached for comment. - - - - - - - - - - - - Kids' show creators say the darnedest things "Kids are not nice, innocent, flower-loving little rainbow children. Kids are all little bastards; they don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette." -- "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone, expressing an opinion he's animatedly set out to prove to the world. salon.com | Aug. 30, 1999