Mickey Rourke has clearly been making a play lately for coverage by RWB, and so I hereby grant it to him, partly out of fear as to what further extreme he may go if I continue to ignore him.

So, on receiving a Golden Globe award the other night, among the people Mickey Rourke singled out for thanks were some non-human people: his dogs, both present and past.

“I’d like to thank all my dogs,” he said, “the ones that are here, the ones that aren’t here anymore, because sometimes when a man’s alone that’s all you got is your dog, and they meant the world to me.”

Good for you, Mickey. The noble canine thanks us every time we come home, and appreciates our every meager offering and moment of attention. It’s about time someone thanked their dogs at one of these award shows. It sure beats thanking some of those back-stabbing fellow Hollywood-travelers who would just as soon kick you to the side of the road and forget you ever existed. And a number of them may want to do just that after Rourke’s interview with GQ magazine, excerpts of which are garnering attention in various outlets:

Unlike many of his Hollywood peers, who are vocal supporters of President Elect Barack Obama, Rourke said he had not followed last year’s historic election battle between Mr Obama and John McCain.

Instead he spoke up for Mr Bush, who with just days of his presidency left, has the lowest approval rating since Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.

Rourke urged people to consider the pressures Mr Bush was under after the 2001 terror attacks and in the early days of the War on Terror.

“President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don’t know how anyone could have handled this situation,” the actor said in an interview with GQ magazine.

“I don’t give a —- who’s in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem… I’m not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This —- between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn’t it.” He added: “It’s too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don’t think that anyone really knows quite what to do.”

The actor also told the magazine he was surprised at Britain’s approach to fundamentalists and the freedom of speech in the UK.

“I was in London recently and I couldn’t believe all these hate-talking fanatics you have over here who are allowed to carry on doing their thing even when a bus full of women and children gets blown to pieces.”

Mickey Rourke, a paradigm of commonsense? Well, take it where you find it.

Rourke is also part of that motley and merry band who are understood to be Friends of Bob Dylan. As the report goes:

Rourke describes Dylan as the most interesting person in the world. He was shocked to get a call late night from Dylan.

He said: “I’ve known him several years and we talk on the phone. Well, he’s not big talking on the phone. I had a little part in some arty farty movie we did. He called me in the middle of the night and I’d say, ‘Who’s this?’ And he’d say, ‘Bob.’ And I’d say, ‘Bob who?’ And he said, ‘You know… Bob.’ Oh f***. Bob Dylan. He would ask me what he should be doing in a scene when he had no dialogue, and I would say, ‘Why not do some activity?’ I’d give him some little acting points, and we became friends.”

Well, hopefully their friendship will survive Mickey Rourke’s description of Bob’s film “Masked and Anonymous” as an “arty farty movie.” It probably will. “Masked and Anonymous” is that, undeniably, although some of us feel it’s more than that too. And Mickey Rourke is pretty darned good in it, I think.

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