Director Sandy Collora wanted to make a short film that would help him get noticed by the film industry. So he made an 8-minute film called Batman: Dead End, in which Batman fights the Joker and two other movie villains. You can read a review of the film here, and download Batman: Dead End here.

Some filmmakers in the Philippines have also made their own Batman movie. Their version is "an outlandish so-bad-it's-good production" that includes several musical numbers. Here's a review of Alyas Batman and Robin from Film Threat.com.

In this Slate article, Sam Tanenhaus explains why conservatives are afraid of Ann Coulter.

Dateline: Hollywood is a new satirical website that focuses on the entertainment industry. It's described as "a satire of Hollywood and entertainment journalism -- think The Onion meets Daily Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and Entertainment Tonight." This week's edition includes a story about movie marketing that begins:

"It was an impressive weekend for the marketing department at Dimension Films, a division of Miramax, as the people who promoted “Spy Kids 3D: Game Over" reached out and swindled the American public out of $32.5 million."

Yesterday Milwaukee Brewers radio announcer Bob Uecker was awarded the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcast excellence and inducted into the broadcaster's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pretty good for a lifetime .200 hitter. Here are articles on Uecker from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and ESPN.

In this Slate article, Ian Austen explains why this year's Tour de France is "promising to be one of the great Tours of the postwar era."

Here's an "interview" with science fiction author Phillip K. Dick, who died in 1982. The interview includes Dick's views on the topics "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Everything Dick says is taken from his fiction, letters, or essays.

You read it here first. The answer to the mystery of life is four.

Hey, "Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing,” the 2nd Annual Lebowski Fest was held last weekend. Lebowski Fest is an opportunity for fans of the movie "The Big Lebowski" to gather in Louisville, Kentucky for "an annual celebration of all things Lebowski." Click here to read an MSNBC article about Lebowski Fest.

Here's some internet fun. Go to Google. Type in "Weapons of Mass Destruction", and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Or, if you're in a hurry, just click here.

Steven Johnson writes that Google transformed "searching for information . . . from a sluggish, unreliable process to something you could do with genuine confidence." But Google is not perfect. In this Slate article Johnson discusses problems with Google.

I've seen several reunited punk bands over the last year. Last November I saw Mission of Burma. Last month I saw The Fall, and tonight I saw X. Both Mission of Burma and X put on great shows, and would be well worth seeing again. Who's next? Well, the Pixies may reunite.

BananaSlug is a search engine that helps you find new and unexpected information on the internet. According to the BananaSlug site:

"BananaSlug was designed to promote serendipitous surfing: finding the unexpected in the 3,083,324,652 web pages indexed by Google. Directed Google searches return pages most relevant to your search term, based on the pages' popularity on the Web. You may never see some of the pages way down the list that are relevant or interesting, but off the beaten path.

So we give you a little boost. We "seed" your search with another word, chosen at random, and this accidental encounter results in pages you may have overlooked."

I won't be posting this week because I will be on vacation. I'll leave you with a panorama of this year's 4th of July Fireworks from the Empire State Building.

Here are two very different articles about popular music. First, Robert Christgau of the Village Voice reviews the new Radiohead album and considers the state of rock music today. He finds that Radiohead is "the only youngish band standing that combines critical consensus with the ability to fill a venue larger than the Hammerstein Ballroom." and carries "the dubious, dangerous mantle of Only Band That Matters."

On the other hand, David Lee Roth is a little less serious in this interview from the Wave. When asked "Is it safe to say you were the first to marry rock ‘n’ roll and spandex?," Dave replies, " No. But I was the first to make sense out of it. "

Ruy Teixeira, co-author of the book The Emerging Democratic Majority and this companion New Republic article, has his own website called The Emerging Democratic Majority. It includes his weblog called Donkey Rising.

Jan Swafford tries to understand Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in this Slate article.