Bob-net Never Dies

I like to start out my week with a healthy dose of incredulous outrage.

- “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level.”

- “Tell them we blew it.”

- The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

- “I don’t know what we were supposed to preemptively strike in Afghanistan.”

That should be enough to get you going.

Fracture: “Its time for Inter-state Commerce Clause: The Musical.” — The Border Fence

Hot Fuzz: “The American way that is banded out in Hollywood flicks is the equivalent of a weight watchers nightmare – Sweet fizz, polished grains, fries, red meat topped up with chocolate and cream!” — Womanly Tales

In The Land Of Women: “If I see Adam Brody walking down the street, I will punch him in the face like the high schooler in this movie for tricking me into thinking this movie would be worth the price of admission.” — Movies By Thor

Vacancy: “This is basically Luke Wilson’s first serious film.” — Ricky Stephens – The Movie Blog

Thanks so much for your voting in the _Baby Idol_ frenzy. We really won’t know until later this week if he’s made it to Round Two or not. And if he has, we won’t find out until it’s time to vote again. So keep those spare account passwords handy, because we might need you again this week! Thanks all!

I’m stuck at a departmental retreat this morning, so rather than the ten random songs I’d be listening to otherwise, here are ten of the songs that have run through my mind this morning.

“Kaw-Li-Ga,” Hank Williams Sr.
“Bookends,” Simon & Garfunkel
“My Love,” Justin Timberlake
“Veronica,” Elvis Costello
“We Might As Well Be Strangers,” Keane
“Long Arm,” Barnyard Slut
“Don’t You Want Me,” The Human League
“Sadeness,” Enigma
“Let Down,” Easy Star All Stars
“LSF,” Mark Ronson & Kasabian

Entertainment Weekly – May 17, 2002

“I have this joke I sometimes tell,” says Ahmed Best, munching on pizza at a Wolfgang Puck Café in L.A. one gray afternoon in April. A lanky actor/dancer who today is clad in loose denim and purple-tinted sunglasses, Best is responsible for the voice and on-set embodiment of Jar Jar Binks, The Phantom Menace’s much-maligned computer-genterated character. For three years now, Best has endured a barrage of barbs about Jar Jar, including more than a few from this magazine. Needless to say, we paid for lunch.

“It starts off, ‘Mini-Me jacked my summer,’” says Best, referring to the diminutive Dr. Evil played by Verne Troyer in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, released three weeks after The Phantom Menace. “Shooting Episode I, it was all good,” he says, slapping his hands on the two words for emphasis. “Everybody was saying ‘Jar Jar is going to be the sidekick character of the summer.’ And I started believing that s—. And then Mini-Me drops — and Mini-Me is the favorite character of the summer! He’s got the Playboy Mansion, getting sitcoms, shooting hoops with NBA players. Mini-Me.” Best shakes his head. “I was like, ‘How did this happen?’” — Jeff Jensen, “Plan of Attack“

I think Debbie Jellinsky might have gotten her hands on Phil Spector.

I hate back-to-back video posts, but you must check out this highlight from last night’s Idol.

Wow.

Just wow.

Just a reminder: if you haven’t voted for Ollie already, go vote!

Vanity Fair - May 2002

Thor Heyerdahl, 87. Tom Hanks’s climactic escape in Cast Away was a pleasure cruise compared with Heyerdahl’s epic Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. Despite a paralyzing fear of water as a youth, the Norwegian shoved off from Peru on a primitive balsa-log raft. His point: to prove to stodgy scholars his contention that Polynesia could have been settled by South Americans riding westward winds (rather than by Southeast Asians, as history held, paddling east against the current). For 101 days Heyerdahl and five fellow Scandinavians drifted through perfect storms and schools of sharks, covering 4,300 miles (think Moscow to Chicago) before washing ashore on the reef of Raroia. Heyerdahl’s unflagging belief that the oceans were conveyors, not barriers, for early seafarers prompted him to make several voyages in the 1970s in replica reed boats, including one from Morocco to Barbados. To this day, scientists debate and debunk his thesis. An anthropologist and archaeologist, Heyerdahl is set to embark on a dig in Western Samoa that may unearth further evidence of common origins among civilizations past. He is after nothing less, he says, than proving “the unity of mankind.” — Scott Gummer, “The Explorer’s Heart”