Every once in a while, there’s a week where Celebrity Slam pickings are pretty slim.

It’s not that famous people aren’t getting up to stuff – they totally are – so much as it is that the stuff they’re getting up to isn’t all that funny. It’s like, sure, we know that many of these celebrities are sh—y people – but when the events in question are bleak and sad, well … our hearts just aren’t in it.

We thought we might have something when we saw a story about how a movie chimp that died a while back actually didn’t die and it turned out that its handler had faked its death, but then Alan Cumming (who had worked with the chimp) and PETA both got involved and then the story stopped being funny and started being sad and … well, you get it.

So when we have weeks like this, we sometimes find that we need to put a couple of less-vital items together and call it a day.

Hence, we are poking fun at a pair of years-late efforts by non-famous people to sue famous people in an effort to get paid. These suits are both rather dumb, though one is far dumber than the other (we’ll let you decide which is the dumber of the two).

Avian enigma

BERLIN (AP) — Is anyone missing an ostrich?

An animal shelter says it is looking for the owner of an ostrich chick that was found in the German town of Krefeld late Friday.

German news agency dpa reported Saturday that passers-by called the fire service after catching the 1.4-meter (4-foot-6) -tall bird in a town park.

A vet found the 4-to-5-month-old chick to be in good health, dpa reported.

Krefeld Zoo said the bird wasn’t one of theirs.

TME – We were told ostriches were flightless.

Breaking bear

THORNTON, N.H. (AP) — Surveillance video helped police get to the bottom of a series of vehicle break-ins in town of Thornton.

Home security footage captured the bandit — a black bear — opening the door of a vehicle and then crawling inside.

Police believe the bear was rummaging for food and that the bear is responsible for damaging other vehicles. Police warned residents to remove food from their vehicles to avoid enticing the bear.

The good news is the criminal is unarmed, and probably not dangerous. Officials say that making loud noises is usually enough to send a black bear scampering away.

TME –Among the bears of interest are notorious food thieves Yogi and Boo Boo.

Here at Celebrity Slam, while we spend the majority of our time taking famous folks to task for the idiotic things that they say and do, we’re well-rounded celebrity-following individuals. There’s more to us than just snark and derision. We contain multitudes, as they say.

For instance, anyone who follows this space with any degree of regularity already knows that we are lovers of lovers here at the Slam. We are HUGE fans of celebrity relationships – we’re all about coming up with those cutesy portmanteau couple names (although we freely admit that we sometimes get a little out of hand and wind up with some weird ones – our all-time favorite was “Hiddleswift” during the blink-and-you-missed-it PR-driven courtship between T-Swift and everyone’s favorite Marvel villain Tom Hiddleston) – and we enjoy watching these people find each other amidst the rarified air of celebrity culture.

On that note, we’ve always had a real soft spot in our collective heart for J-Rod, the pairing of global pop superstar Jennifer Lopez and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez. It was one of those couples where the degrees of fame seemed to level out; J.Lo is more famous than A-Rod, but not so much more famous as to create an imbalance in the dynamic, especially since the overlap in the Venn diagram between fans of either person seems relatively small.

So obviously, we were sad to hear the rumblings about trouble in that particular paradise, with reports coming out last week that the couple had broken up after four years together, officially calling off the wedding that had already been delayed twice before due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comedian Carmen Lynch, a veteran of “The Late Show,” “Last Comic Standing,” “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Inside Amy Schumer,” is set to perform in Maine for the first time on Friday, January 10, at Empire Comedy Club, 575 Congress St. in Portland.

Ambulance chasers

GASTONIA, N.C. - A North Carolina man has been charged with stealing an ambulance from a hospital parking bay and leading police on a high-speed chase.

News outlets report that the ambulance belonging to the Dallas Rescue Squad was taken from CaroMont Regional Medical Center Friday night.

Police charged 29-year-old Joshua Kyle Poindexter of Kings Mountain with larceny of a motor vehicle, fleeing to elude arrest, failing to heed a siren and reckless driving.

Authorities say GPS software allowed police to track the stolen ambulance. They said Poindexter led police on a chase that exceeded the speed limit by 15 mph (24 km/h) before he was arrested in Cherryville, almost 20 miles (32 km) away.

No one was injured.

TME – Maybe his emergency was getting away from the cops?

One of the most interesting things about this feature is how quickly strange stuff can happen when it comes to celebrities. Everything plays out at an accelerated pace – including relationships.

We’ve seen a ton of romantic connection burn out rather than burn on; the nature of fame makes balancing the dynamics tricky. Maybe one person is more famous than the other. Maybe one person is famous and the other person isn’t famous at all. Either way, navigating the relationship is a difficult task.

But then you have celebs who take it into a whole different place. Celebs like Nicolas Cage, who we’re absolutely thrilled to be hosting in this space once again.

Recently, I had the pleasure to pour for Gneiss Brewing Company at the 2019 Extreme Beer Festival in Boston. This is the fourth time Gneiss has attended the festival and it just gets more fun every year. 

This year brought an interesting wrinkle to the festivities, as the organizers, BeerAdvocate, asked brewers to bring “Extreme Session Beers” – beers that are at or below five percent alcohol but also utilize ingredients or techniques that make them extreme! 

There were all sorts of wonderful low-alcohol beers packed with flavor, a favorite of mine being the Key Lime Gose from Weldworks Brewing.

At Gneiss, we brewed up a beer inspired by Mexican sipping chocolate and cheeseball Star Wars jokes called “Hot Rebellion,” an Anti-Imperial Stout made with cocoa nibs, cinnamon and habanero peppers. Clocking at 2.5 percent, it had a ton of flavor but wouldn’t get you so drunk that you can’t pilot your X-Wing home.

(Editor’s note: I’m disappointed that you didn’t use blue milk in the process. That being said, I’m proud of your commitment to safety and responsibility. Friends don’t let friends fly drunk.)

New to EBF this year was the VIP ticket, which got attendees in 30 minutes early as well as access to the VIP lounge where they were serving some special beers and free pickles! I think every brew fest needs to have pickles from here on out, but that’s just me. I’ve seen some festivals where the VIP ticket doesn’t really get you much, but BeerAdvocate really seemed to make it worth the upcharge. 

All in all, it was another fantastic weekend celebrating the quirky weird things that seem to unite us all in the Brewing community. Sure, we all love a classically crafted pilsner, but sometimes it’s fun to try a beer made with hot dog water too. I mean, it wasn’t good, but that’s not the point!

It was so … EXTREME! 

Today’s craft beer marketplace is very much a “What have you done for me lately?” type of market, where the new shiny object seems to get all the attention until some other new shiny object comes along and replaces it. This month’s must-have hazy IPA is next month’s shelf turd as a newer, even more dry-hopped beer takes its place in the craft beer zeitgeist, as it were.

With the recent drop in temps as of late, I figured it would be a good time to talk about what has become a bit of an occupational hazard for me and something that maybe a few of you have experienced before: frozen beer.