TV Without Liz

"Oh, Great Altar of Passive Entertainment," says Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, kneeling before a television, "bestow upon me thy discordant images at such speed as to render linear thought impossible." He turns the TV on. He sits open-mouthed.

Liz Smith on Lindsay Lohan and Liz Taylor

Now listen -- Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield is worried about Lindsay Lohan’s career. He has already turned a premature thumb down on her coming thriller “I Know Who Killed Me” and asks “has any ‘world’s most famous movie star’ ever reigned so long without having a recent hit movie?”

Well, sure they have! Elizabeth Taylor to name one. Between 1968 and 1994, Miss Taylor made 17 feature films. The only bona fide hit was 1994’s “The Flintstones,” which was also her last big-screen effort.

Of course, La Liz is always the exception to the rule. The less popular her movies were, the more famous she became. We don’t call her “The Star of Stars” for nothing!