O: Was any specific band the inspiration for either Spinal Tap or The Folksmen?

HS: No. We basically, in both cases, were combining bits and pieces of different groups and different individuals in groups we'd seen over the years. It's always been a pastiche. There are a lot of people walking around saying, "That's about us." That's nice, but it's not true. In neither case was it about a particular band.

O: Did you have any idea Spinal Tap would have the longevity it's had?

HS: Absolutely not. We were trying to sell it to these Hollywood studios who were telling us that rock 'n' roll movies never work. We kept saying, "No, this is a story that's pretty familiar to people. We're not introducing them to anything they don't really know." So I thought it would at least have some resonance with the public. But nobody makes a movie thinking it's still going to be watched and talked about and quoted 20 years later. It's just a wonderful stroke of luck, and it's doubly improbable because when the movie opened theatrically, it was not that big a success. That movie rose to prominence because it was one of the first films to benefit from the home-video revolution. People found out about it on video much more than they did from seeing it in the theaters. We were chased out of theaters– not because people weren't coming to see the movie, but because we were distributed by a company that was in the process of going bankrupt. […]

Sex and drugs have been associated with rock 'n' roll from its very beginnings. But what about finely granulated sugar? Corn syrup? Yellow dye #5? The recipe for musical magic includes all of these and more. Presented here for your Easter edification are several snapshots from rock history, as seen through the little wax eyes of colorful marshmallow chicks and bunnies.

Not since the PalmPilot debuted in 1996 has a new electronic contraption sparked a cultlike following and so many zealous proselytizers. Type the phrase "TiVo changed my life" into Google, and you will summon an afternoon's worth of reading (including the observation that there are "as many TiVo-praise Web sites out there as there are hairs on Robin Williams"). Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, once called TiVo "God's machine." TiVo has around 700,000 subscribers – a tiny fraction of American television viewers, 70 percent of whom have never even heard of TiVo, according to Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. But, Mr. Bernoff said, TiVo's fans are a vocal minority.

The Colossal Colon is a 40-foot long, 4-foot high replica of a human colon. Visitors who crawl through the colon, or look through the viewing windows, will see healthy colon tissue, colon disease, polyps and various stages of colon cancer. The Colon was modeled after a real colon taken from colonoscopy film footage and is extremely lifelike.

"It's a love story," Trick told her. "It's a story about love, and jealousy, and betrayal. A story about a yong man, the young woman who loved him, and a terrible villain— a story about death, and destruction, and fire. It is a story about thieves and cutthroats, and one man's vision, and the poor man's burden, and the rich man's condescension.

"It is a story about Kid Twist, the gangster, and Gyp the Blood, who was a killer, and Big Tim the politician, and poor Beansy Rosenthal, who couldn't keep his mouth shut. It is a story about Sadie the whore, and the brave Esther, and the mad Carlotta, and the last summer they all came together in the great park.

"It is a story about the Great Head Doctors from Vienna, and the rampages of beasts, and the wonders of the Modern Age. It is a story about a great city, and a little city, and a land of dreams. And always, above all, it is a story about fire."

"Ah," said Yolanda, satisfied now, leaning back and lighting up her pipe. "Ah. The usual."

In mid-1996, Winn's Value America vision was arguably the most ambitious Internet retailing vision in existence. WHile other Internet retailers oft he day were building online specialty shops selling books, CDs, and zithers, Winn's goal was not just to sell a lot of one kind of stuff or another. He wanted to use the Internet to revolutionize every facet of retail, creating a one-stop Internet shopping site of unparalleled selection, product information, and efficiency. It would be for the Internet age what Harrods was for the entire British Empire at its height; the shopping source for all things. Winn knew it was an inspired — and possibly psychotically lucrative — vision.

The mid-'90s were an age that no one really knew, but many were beginning to suspect, would be an Age. The Internet and the World Wide Web were without definition but full of wild expectations. While few Yahoo!'d, America Online was just a dorky company in a bland Virginia suburb, and the expression dot.com sounded odd in conversation, there was an expectant sense that those were just temporary realities — that the Internet was going to change the world, and the retail conducted over it would be the engine. What that meant wasn't exactly clear. […]

But I will grant that, like "Spirited Away," "Cowboy Bebop" could be considered anime for people who don't like anime (as well as, of course, for those who do). "Cowboy Bebop" is a kind of sci-fi noir, set against an odd but fascinating patchwork of pop music styles. The movie's soundtrack features everything from faux Lynyrd Skynyrd to faux James Brown to faux versions of that bland but chirpy "ba-ba-dee-dah" middle-of-the-road scatting you used to hear on '60s movie soundtracks. Just as the visuals in "Cowboy Bebop" mesh to form an incredible simulation of a futuristic real-life world, its music is an incredible simulation of things we've heard many times before -- they sound fresh and strange and familiar, all at the same time.

A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved virtually intact from the surface of the ocean…

Starting Saturday, April 5, the Iron chefs will be battling one another for the first time ever to find out who really reigns supreme. Using our handy party planner, you can ensure that these important battles receive the stellar celebrations they deserve. Allez cuisine!

"It burns! It burns!"
"It's loaded with wasabi."