Be forewarned, gentle viewer. Just as Penn & Teller are no ordinary magicians, this is no ordinary two-part documentary about magic. It's more than just pulling rabbits from hats, it's a graphic treatise on cultural differences (and similarities) and the ramifications of economic inequity and political pressure on the individual and society as a whole-- and you get to see some guy get his tongue cut out.

Not to worry, though. It's only magic, after all. But it does get pretty gross in Shadipur, India, the first stop on this pilgrimage of prestidigitation. P&T seek out magicians giving performances on streets crowded with sacred cows. The grinding poverty is everywhere, and the dank, fly-infested alleys give a fair idea of what it must smell like. But people seem to need entertainment no matter what their rung on the economic ladder. […]

[…] Point Pale Ale is not as bad as it could be; you can swallow it without hearing your stomach lining sizzle away, and if you pour it in a ficus planter the leaves will still be on the branches tomorrow. A professionable reviewer would probably call it "amusingly vomitable." But after I drank it I opened a James Page Pale Ale, and found the Page to be undrinkable. It was as if the Point had rewired my palate. A Trojan Horse ale that destroys your ability to recognize good beer! I checked the label to see if it was really called Pale Ale.exe, but no.

I also visited the Depressing Tequila Section today, so named for its sparse and predictable supply. The bad stuff is plentiful, and is meant to be mixed with Coke or paint thinner to make it palatable; the good stuff is hideously overpriced, and given its Mexican origins you really don't know if it's the best of the best or something ladled out of a ditch behind a Tijuana clap clinic. I mean, they sell you one bottle for 80 bucks, they don't need to sell a second. The very concept of good tequila strikes some as oxymoronic, but that's a mistake; good tequila is worthy of the honor of being taken neat. (Which always sounds like you've been seduced by someone with clean fingernails who makes the bed afterwards.) My favorite among the affordable non-blinding tequilas is Hornitos Green. (Avoid the Brown, or "Commemorativo." I don't know what it's commemorating, but I'm sure all the bodies haven't been found yet.) It has a crisp taste, a small bite, a mellow finish, and it plays well with others, i.e. the incomparable Yucatan beer Leon. […]

Sending TV images into a gentle orbit around the screen is the latest strategy to tackle the burning issue of fixed logos permanently marking screens.

Sony's new Pixel Orbiting system will be incorporated into its new range of WEGA plasma TVs, when they launch around Europe in June 2002, at a cost of £6,000 each. "We cannot prevent burn," said Product Manager John Anderson at Sony's headquarters in Berlin recently. "But we can lower the risk". […]

The logos, called DOGS (Digital Onscreen Graphics) by broadcasters and electronic acne by concerned viewers, have increased in number over the last five years. This is because the many new TV channels are trying to win viewer loyalty and are signalling interactive options with coloured blobs.

The Radio, Electrical & Television Retailers' Association (RETRA) has warned of the dangers of screen burn. A spokesperson says: "One customer had to pay out nearly £800 to have his projection system repaired when a DOG image was burnt onto the screen." Home cinema enthusiasts are also up in arms with an "onscreen logos must die" campaign.

[…] Halle Berry made history last night, not so much for being the first African-American woman to win an Oscar in the best actress category, but for freaking horribly, uncontrollably out and making the worst, most hysterically rambling, discomfiting and liquefied acceptance speech in Oscar's 74-year history, and I thought Julia Roberts was going to hold that title for a long time. I know it was a big deal for Halle, who claimed her award for All Black Women Everywhere Ever, but her acceptance tantrum had such an alarming cringe factor, I had to leave the room. When they tried to pry her off the stage, she made that screeching Bilbo Baggins monster addiction-face when he Wants the Ring. It was a heavy, strange, grand-mal meltdown. America squirmed. […]

Because of your recent discussion of Quorn, I wondered if you'd seen the new commercials for Charmin that tout the toilet paper innovation "Silq." At least here in Pittsburgh, Silq is this special tulip-patterned toilet paper layer designed to make Charmin even more "squeezably soft."

I really hope this spelling trend will not persevere. I simply refuse to eat a bowl of "Special Q" in the morning.

One reader suggested we would be eating Quorndogs at the State Fair.

They'll have to qill me first.

I went to the Charmin Web site and found no mention of Silq. (I can't help but pronounced it "Sil-Que," like some inordinately smooth SLA leader.) Perhaps you're lucky enough to live in a test market, although if I knew my city came to mind when a company wanted to test bathroom tissue, I'd move.

On Charmin's Frequently Asked Questions page, incidentally, I saw this question: "What are Charmin Fresh Mates, and Why Do I Need Them?" I cannot possibly think of a question whose answer I need less to hear, except, for the next question: "When Will Charmin Fresh Mates Be In My Area?"

That really is no one's business, frankly.

Keep Your Kids Away From Those Guys: A half century after A.A. Milne wrote her seven-volume tale of the Hobbits and encouraged many pot-bellied hippies to play Dungeons & Dragons while listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer records, Australian director Peter O'Toole has finally brought the epic miniseries to the Big Screen. And the Academy couldn't be happier! Only Ian McKellen's convincing portrayal of Dumbledore earned an acting nomination, but this hobbitacular blockbuster is sure to win the awards for Best Movie, Best Little Weirdo Guys, Best Non-Naked Liv Tyler and Best Non-Harry Potter Story. Bravo! Or, as the Hobbits say, El Bravo! […]

[…] Emerson began to believe his own press and came to fancy himself the keyboardist equivalent of Jimmy Hendrix - which was sort of true, in that he had the same skills with keys as Hendrix possessed with strings. But poor Emerson never realized that keyboardists are, in the words of Frank Zappa, nothing but frustrated guitarists. So when Emerson approached Hendrix with the idea of starting a supergroup starring the two of them, the American guitar legend simply gave him a cold, disdainful stare before returning to the important task of trying to kill himself with drugs. Not one to be deterred, Emerson vowed to make a supergroup no matter what. Unfortunately the zeitgeist of the era (either pot or heroin, most likely) caused him to think that the pudgy young bassist/vocalist of King Crimson, Greg Lake, would be almost as a good as Hendrix. In the sense that Lake lived through the decade he was actually better than Jimmy, but in terms of musical chops, erm... well, just remember that the lead instrument in 90% of ELP's songs is the keyboard and that electric guitars show up so rarely as to be a novelty. The band was rounded off with the inclusion of Carl Palmer, a young lad of about 13 or so who dreamed of being Bill Bruford. […]

As part of the Bush Administration's ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration* of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us. If you are a non-terrorist (American Patriot), your participation is required.

Pound Sign
The name of this has only recently been standardized, and many still refer to it as a hash symbol, an octothorp, or a "tic-tac-toe board for little tiny miniature people." I don't mind the name, but on the other hand I've never seen it used to actually indicate pounds either in the scale sense or the quid sense. ("My quid sense is tingling!") I like to think of it as coming from the practice of pounding the phone buttons after going through one too many labyrinthine voice mail systems, but that's probably due to my fanciful nature. B

Backslash
I have, at various points in my life, been in the position to use both some form of DOS and some form of UNIX. Those of you who have no duck-strangling idea what I'm talking about, just smile and nod. The only point here is that DOS uses backslashes a lot and UNIX uses forward slashes a lot and the effect of using both is somewhat like having Darth Vader for homeroom and Yoda for first period. Many say that DOS is the dark side, but actually UNIX is more like the dark side: It's less likely to find the one way to destroy your incredibly powerful machine, and more likely to make upper management choke. C-

Burger King unveiled the BK Veggie on Monday, hoping to provide a meatless alternative to the Whopper and other fast-food fare.

The flame-broiled, soy-free patty offers a blend of vegetables, grains and spices on a sesame seed bun. Topped with reduced fat mayonnaise, lettuce and tomatoes, the burger provides a leaner fast-food alternative - only 10 grams of fat and 330 calories. A Whopper has 39 grams of fat and 680 calories.

The veggie burger debuted at all 8,500 Burger King restaurants in the United States on Monday. It has been available for some time in Canada and other countries.

The company said the burger is being marketed as a meatless alternative and not as a vegan product. The mayonnaise contains eggs and the sesame seed bun includes natural and artificial butter flavoring, which could be taboo for some vegetarians.

That's not to say that everyone appreciates Reduced Shakespeare's irreverent approach to the sacred texts. Sign-waving protesters greeted the company's Bible show when it played in Ireland. A lawyer in England tried unsuccessfully to use that country's blasphemy laws to shut down the play. And in Texarkana, some religious students dramatically expressed their distaste for the troupe's unique take on American history.

"One of the speeches in the history show is full of anagrams," Martin recalls. "You rearrange the letters in American and it spells 'I can ream.' You rearrange the letters in George Washington and it spells 'Gaggin' on wet horse.' And if you rearrange the letters in Spiro Agnew, it spells 'Grow a penis.' Right about then, we had 150 home schoolers in the balcony stand up in unison and walk out. So I think we did our job that day."

The movie is about the class system. We meet about fifty-million characters, some of whom are the privileged class, and the rest of whom are the servants who work at the estate. There are all sorts of clever bits about the difference in the class system. About as interesting as a detailed textbook.

Don't let anyone tell you this is about a murder. The murder doesn't take place until easily half way through the movie, and then no one seems to care that it even took place. Oh sure, there's an inspector who comes by, but he['s] the most useless police inspector ever introduced in cinema. He's there, mainly, to create more poignant bits on the topic of the class system. Solve the case? Hardly.

So why is this movie being heralded as a triumph? Why is it getting a bunch of major awards? Why are people whispering that it may be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar?

Because they're all lemmings. […]

[T]his is an intelligent movie about intelligent people. Just about every member of the Tenebaums has either written a book or been the subject of one. Genius is a term tossed about like rice at a politically incorrect wedding. It's a film about eggheads, and what makes them eggheads.

It is possible that some people will not like this movie. Quite simply, there is no ordinary character with which a normal audience can identify. No Mortimer from Arsenic and Old Lace, no Lisa from The Simpsons. This may well turn people off, unable to accept the world as it's presented to them.

Those people are sad, and we mock them openly.

The rest of us can sit back and enjoy a truly funky little film […]

[…] any movie that contains Christopher Lloyd wearing a mask that looks like a big melted suppository, insisting that his name is Big Boo-tay, not Big Booty, AND brings in War of the Worlds AND features Ellen Barkin at her dewy-fresh-yet-slatternly best, AND celebrates science as a hip pursuit, is my kind of movie. I love the 80s, and this is one of the tent-pole movies of the 80s cultural experience, so I will cut it vast bolts of slack. Now I can stop worshipping it… and go back to enjoying it. Beside, any small molecule-sized disappointment I had was healed by the end credit sequence, which just makes you sit up and salute and feel sorry for the World Crime League.

Just like humans, small primates can acquire a taste for alcohol and behave in a similar fashion when under its influence, scientists have discovered.

A controversial research project that involves giving alcohol to 1000 green vervet monkeys has found that the animals can be divided into four categories: binge drinker, steady drinker, social drinker and teetotaller.

The vast majority are social drinkers who indulge in moderation and only when they are with other monkeys. But they never drink before lunch, and prefer their alcohol to be diluted with fruit juice.

Fifteen per cent drink regularly and heavily and prefer their alcohol neat or diluted with water. The same proportion drink little or no alcohol.

Five per cent are classed as "seriously abusive binge drinkers". They get drunk, start fights and consume as much as they can until passing out. As with humans, most heavy drinkers are young males, but monkeys of both sexes and all ages like a drink.

The other day AT&T (Motto: "We used to be the phone company; now we don't know what the heck we are. I think we sell gloves. No -- rakes.") called to offer me something or other, and in the middle of the call the oven timer started beeping, Toddler Gnat fell off her chair, and the doorbell rang, which set the dog into a frenzy. I'm not kidding. The salesman, upon hearing this calamity, apologized for the intrusion, chuckled, "Sounds like you have your hands full, sir," and apologized for the intrusion.

Hah! On some planet where men walk on their hands and Spock wears a beard, maybe. On this planet, the AT&T salesman just talked louder, as though a customer with a crying baby, a barking dog, a burning roast and a deliveryman at the door really needs to rethink his long-distance situation right now. CAN I ASK WHO YOUR LONG DISTANCE CARRIER IS NOW? he shouted.

I hung up so hard that phones across town blew off their hooks, like manhole covers dancing from some underground bomb test.

The name alone gives me pause, since my diet prohibits cleverly spelled food. For example, here are some other new fungus-based food replacement names I've just invented, and would never eat:

Quarrots

Bleef

Spleas

Rutabeetles […]

The ground war in Afghanistan hotted up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of Taleban zealots by proving the non-existence of God.

Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or 'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of pavement cafes at strategic points near the front lines. There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else. […]