Maternity Corset

...Remember that one really creepy kid in school?

Rats

This book on rats was one of the most interesting things I read last year. Did you know they can chew through concrete? Anyway, tonight, after a concert, a friend who also had read the book took me to the alley where the author had done most of his rat watching. Indeed, the alley, which is behind an Irish bar and a Chinese restaurant, has a hell of a lot of big, creepy, active rats. While I was watching (for about 30 seconds, which was all I needed), it occurred to me that the alley still had a severe rat problem after a nationally published book had been written on that particular infestation. Are they refusing to deal with the problem because they're proud of the rats?

The Batbelt

Unless you've been hanging out with Morgan Freeman on the downlow, knowing where to get your wonderful toys can be a problem. Yes, Dave Eggers' superhero supply store is convenient when you're running low on canned Chaos, but it still doesn't have the real-world nuts-and-bolts gear required for many basic missions. Now, thanks to DARPA, here's all you'll need to scale tall buildings quickly for under $10K.

Peeking out the blinds, online.

Local home-grown bulletin boards are a great way to research the character of your neighborhood. Daily Heights is the BB for Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Find one near you. Not Yahoo! Local or whatever the corporate equivalent is, but something run by people who actually live near you.

Pornstar Bears

My grandmother collects ceramics.

Precious Moments, Christmas ornaments, craft show pieces -- she has them all. She keeps all of these treasures locked away inside a sealed glass case that she keeps in the front drawing room of her house. This is the same room that holds her Tiffany Lamps, her "Gone With the Wind" commemorative china set, and her books about opera.

During our childhood years my brother and I were forbidden from going into that room out of a fear that we might accidentally break something. As a result -- for nearly all of my adult life I have harbored a secret desire to someday go into the forbidden room and cerimoniously smash all of those friggin' ceramic figurines to bits.

Of course I'm not gonna do it, because despite her crazy house rules, her lunatic southern politics, and her tendency to tell the same story over and over and over and over again -- she's still my grandmother, you know?

Unfortunatly all of kinda this leaves me in a state of emotional limbo where I desperately want to take out my vengance, but ethically know that I shouldn't.

But now, with the advent of these plucky (and hopefully protected) forest creatures -- I might just have found the perfect way to eviscerate those childhood demons without physically demolishing 70-odd years of heartfelt (yet fanatical) collecting and preserving.

My grandmother collects ceramics.

mad love to Monster for the link.

Walken 2008

Finally, a candidate we can trust to carry the uncomfortable piece of metal that is democracy up their ass for the next 4 years.

Zero Stars

Forever and ever in the world of high-profile syndicated movie reviewing, even the worst of movies found ways to avoid the dreaded goose egg. The rating itself seemed like one of those things that only existed in theoretical mathematics, reserved especially for films that were so morally disturbing or offensive that critics felt they had some sort of duty to warn the public away from seeing them (an interesting example being the Rob Reiner film "North") -- But hardly ever has a zero star rating given out when a critic felt a movie was just out and out bad.

Well not anymore.

Last week Roger Ebert laid the zero bomb on "Deuce Bigalo, European Gigolo."

Not to be outdone, Rolling Stone followed up quickly and capped a blank of it's own into "The Dukes of Hazzard", which was then followed by a second zero star salvo from Ebert for a film called "Chaos" (although in all fairness Ebert felt “Chaos” was violent to the point of being brutal, and gave the zero based on that more than any sense of personal dislike).

This is a big change. For whatever reasons you want to assign, even the most horrifically bad of movies could find a way to salvage at least a star. The prime example of this being the original “Deuce Bigalo,” which has basically the same plot and um ..charm as its sequel, but still managed to get 1.5 stars from Ebert.

And it's not like Ebert hasn't ever blasted actors for bad choices or laid the wood to what he considered a stupid movie -- but dropping the zero on a film is a step tantamount to bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Understand something here -- “Ishtar” didn’t get a zero. "Howard the Duck" didn't get a zero. Pauly Shore never got a zero.

But now in the space of a week, there’ve been three.

I know it seems like a silly little thing, and that most people don’t really pay that much attention to critics one way or another when they choose a movie to see, but the studios do. And for years the critics kinda tipped a considerate hat to that (or not biting the hand that feeds them, depending on your point of view) by at least giving one star here and there no matter how bad the film might seem.

But now if national critics (and the companies behind their publications) are willing to call a studio’s product and employees worthless, it could affect all sorts of things. Not that I’m advocating some sort of no mas policy for Rob frikkin’ Schneider – but that if these sorts of reviews become commonplace and the public starts taking heed, people could start losing their jobs.

So if you ever pen a reivew for the local entertainment weekly, or like to do your part tagging up Amazon or IMdb with your two cents about the movies, feel free to take the gloves all the way off.

Who knows, you might just be the hero that finally helps us to stop the hurting and pain when Ben Stiller tries to pitch another "Meet the Fokking Parents" movie to Dreamworks.

RICANSTRUCTION

Do you miss Rage Against The Machine? Here's your new band, from Harlem. Scroll down for downloads.

Electric Marshmallow Toaster

When my great-grandchildren ask how we squandered our resources, I'd like to say it was on better things than this. Yet, here it is.

Buddyping

Now this is a really great idea. It's a service that enables you to use your cell phone to automatically locate and message all your friends in the area to let them know where you are.

Say you're barhopping alone and want to hook into whatever's going on where your friends are at, or just want to let people know you're somewhere that they shouldn't be missing out on, this system takes care of everything with just one message.

No more "We were all going here but it was lame so everyone decided to go there instead." confusion.

The bad news is that so far it's only wired for the pub-rich streets of the UK -- but there's an international beta in the works that should open up all sorts of possibilities.

Leave it to the British to come up with a huge advance in interpersonal drinking technology...

I say we invade.

The Backstroke of the West

Just in case you thought the plotholes in Episode III weren't glaring enough, check out this recap of a bootleg DVD version someone bought overseas that features a unique surprise -- a direct English translation of the Chinese interpretation of the script, with hilarious results.

Enjoy, imperialist pigdogs!

Jowlers.com

If you've reached your wits end trying to sift through profile pic after profile pic on myspace or friendster or whatever site you find yourself surfing this month looking for the next super-special person in your life then you might want to give this place a try.

Participants submit photos of themselves taken while they shake their heads back and forth as fast as they can. No cheesy slogans, no cartoon avatars -- just interactive humanity at it's drool-spraying best.

Shut the rest of the web down.. We have a winner.

Homo Sausage

We Highly Recommend snickering like Beavis. It's good for you.

Cycling Activism

It's preposterous to have to lobby for the right to ride a bicycle without getting arrested, but that's where things are at.