The Ten Best Bands That Never Existed

William Gibson discusses his new novel Spook Country in this Wired interview.

Maps of War presents an animated map showing the History of Religion in 90 seconds.

Smart Money magazine presents, "The Best Time to Buy Everything."

The Family Guy looks at what the world would be like if Al Gore was president in this YouTube clip.

I know what you're thinking. What would it look like if 1,500 Filipino prison inmates decided to recreate Michael Jackson's Thriller video? Well, it would look like this.

Vanity Fair magazine presents an oral history of The Simpsons.

Last weekend Mrs. Blogenheimer and I enjoyed watching The Best of Will Ferrell on DVD. My favorite clip was this appearance by Ferrell as Robert Goulet on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

The Chinese Popeye.

The Office's Creed Bratton shares his opinions in his blog Creed Thoughts.

A video showing 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art in 3 minutes.

Michael Cera has a funny new web-only show called Clark and Michael. It is a mockumentary about two young writers trying to sell their script in Hollywood.

In this funny video clip Arrested Development's Michael Cera gets fired on the set of the movie Knocked Up.

Last Friday, Mrs. Blogenheimer and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary by enjoying Jon Stewart's show at the Orpheum Theater. Here's an interview with Jon Stewart from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers. How many do you recognize?

Follow this link to watch Akira Kurosawa and Francis Ford Coppola in a series of Japanese television ads for Suntory whisky.

Alan Bacchus examines The Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema in this post from his blog Daily Film Dose.

In this NFL Films video, Will Ferrell plays Chuck Barry, the self-proclaimed "best NFL trainer in the universe," who helps train USC center Ryan Kalil for the NFL draft.

"After a rather inauspicious career as a walk-on USC linebacker (five career tackles, five career ejections for unorthodox play) and what amounts to tryouts with 12 NFL teams in the 1970s, Barry set his sights on molding young men. His revolutionary style of training -- including "Crab Legs", the "Twinkie Drill" and "The Old Caboose" -- has made an impact on USC players like Kalil, Matt Leinart and others."

On Friday's premier of Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers began by saying, "I start my day with Josh Marshall and end it with Jon Stewart." It's like I have a twin! You can watch Moyers interview with Jon Stewart here and his interview with Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall here.

Spinal Tap reunites to fight global warming.

For this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, David Letterman presented an updated version of his Top 10 George W. Bush moments.

"It's official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American."

Finally, someone is asking the uncomfortable question: Was the attack on the Death Star an inside job?

This New Yorker article discusses Parkour, “a quasi commando system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person avoid or surmount whatever lies in his path,” founded in France by David Belle. You can watch videos of successful and unsuccessful parkour here.

Jazz Tube brings you "the best Jazz videos that have been collected by Jazz lovers thru out the world and made available on the great YOU Tube Web Site."

Hacking Netflix is a blog dedicated to "fully understanding" everything there is to know about Netflix. This post explains what it's like working for Netflix at a shipping center.

This NASA photo shows, "the Shiveluch Volcano on the Russian Federation's Kamchatka Peninsula erupt[ing], sending an ash cloud skyward roughly 9,750 meters (32,000 feet). Satellites often capture images of volcanic ash plumes, but usually as the plumes are blowing away. This image, however, is different. It shows the gray-brown ash cloud suspended directly over the summit."

Ricky Gervais is doing a series of television intervews with well-known comedians. Through the magic of You Tube you can watch Ricky Gervais Meets... Gary Shandling.

Tad Friend compares the British and American versions of the television show "The Office" in this New Yorker article.

The VOCO Clock is an alarm clock that wakes you with the soothing voice of Stephen Frye, the perfect valet.

"The VOCO alarm will lure a man from his secret recesses with the sound of gentle birdsong. This is followed by a discrete cough. Then the comforting words, "Good Morning, Sir," insinuate themselves into the room. This is followed by a message -- a different one every morning (there are three months' worth, before they start repeating, depending on how you use the clock). They say things like:

I'm sorry to disturb you, Sir, but it appears to be morning. Very inconvenient, I agree. I believe it is the rotation of the earth that is to blame, Sir."

Glenn Greenwald explains why the national media is failing in its coverage of the U.S. attorneys scandal in this post from his blog.

"The overriding goal of most of our national media elites is to preserve the prevailing Republican power system that rules Washington because of how beneficial that system is to them. As a result, they admire and want to protect those who rule that system, and thus reflexively view scandals which entail accusations of true corruption by our political leaders -- and especially unpleasant formal investigations and threats of criminal prosecution -- as frivolous and inherently false and unfair."

The Top 11 Underground Transit Systems in the World

John Rogers explains what is wrong with the Fox News Daily Show rip-off, The 1/2 Hour News Hour, in this post from his blog, Kung Fu Monkey.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses "The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters" in this Observer article.

Panoramas.dk presents 360 degree panoramas of the six Apollo missions to the moon.

BoatingSF.com's website uses the U.S. Coast Guard's Automated Identification System to track Current Ship Positions on San Francisco Bay.

This video for U2's song "Window in the Skies" is a mash-up of 20th century popular music history.

The Calvin Workshop can solve all your marketing problems with their film "Your Name Here."

The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film

From Ant Farms to Zoot Suits, Neatorama lists 37 Fads that Swept the Nation.

David Denby examines the future of movies in this New Yorker article.

Gobler Toys presents Star Wars Toys That Never Were.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars, here are David Letterman's Top 10 Favorite George W. Bush Moments.

In 1994, 1000 animation industry professionals voted for the 50 Greatest Cartoons. Now the City Rag blog has gathered links to online videos of the 50 Greatest Cartoons.

John Hall, "the first bona fide rock ’n’ roll musician in the House of Representatives," is profiled in this New York Times article.

Arrested Development's Michael Cera explains how to be succesful in this You Tube video.

The 2007 Fiesta Bowl was one of the most exciting football games I've ever seen. The last two minutes and the overtime include three successful trick plays and several lead changes. Follow this link to watch a condensed version of the game's last two minutes and overtime.

E. J. Dionne Jr. examines 2006's political and cultural changes in this Washington Post column:

"It wasn't all that long ago that Democrats and liberals were said to be out of touch with "the real America," which was defined as encompassing the states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including the entire South. Democrats seemed to accept this definition of reality, and they struggled -- often looking ridiculous in the process -- to become fluent in NASCAR talk and to discuss religion with the inflections of a white Southern evangelicalism foreign to so many of them.

Now the conventional wisdom sees Republicans in danger of becoming merely a Southern regional party. Isn't it amazing how quickly the supposedly "real America" was transformed into a besieged conservative enclave out of touch with the rest of the country?"

For the 5th straight year, Fimoculous has compiled his list of Best of the Year lists.

The Dayton Daily News compiled this list of the worst Christmas specials and TV movies ever.

This Washington Post article explains how the Madden football video game is bringing a new generation of fans to the NFL.

"This is a phenomenon the National Football League never could have anticipated. In a world in which 53 million copies of the game have been sold in the last 17 years -- the latest version sold an unprecedented two million copies in its first weekend of release last summer -- Madden has provided the league a perfect conduit to its next generation of fans. And all because of attention to arcane details that has demystified the complexities of football to a population that never before understood them."

According to this New York Times article, the surf's up in Cleveland:

"It was the kind of day that lives mostly in Cleveland surfers’ fantasies. Pushed by the storm’s winds, water the color of chocolate milk rose 10 feet in the air before slamming onto a beach of boulders and logs. The temperature was 40 degrees and falling. One surfer, Vince Labbe, climbed onto his board only to get blown backward by 40-mile-an-hour winds."

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones lists the 50 works of art you should see before you die.

Richard Simmons returns to the Late Show for the first time in five years in this funny YouTube Video.

Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government presents "A Conversation with Stephen Colbert."

This Associated Press article explains the origin of the "Wave."

This New Scientist article imagines what would happen to the Earth if all the people disappeared.

"Imagine that all the people on Earth - all 6.5 billion of us and counting - could be spirited away tomorrow. . . . Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust."

Before the last presidential election, Washington Monthly asked a panel of 16 writers "What if Bush Wins?" Two years later, it looks like Kevin Drum got it right with his prediction, "The Scandals Finally Break."

This Washington Post article discusses the demise of cursive handwriting.

"When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive."

"Fast Film is an animated homage to motion pictures, hand-made by folding 65,000 print outs of film frames into three dimensional objects." Watch Fast Film here. The official Fast Film site is here.

Jon Stewart answers the question, "What Is the President's Job?" in this clip from The Daily Show.

David Remnick discusses Bill Clinton's post-Presidency in this New Yorker article.

In this Oxford American article, music historian Charles Wolfe discusses Louis Armstrong's connection with country music. This video introduction to the article includes video of a duet between Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash.

This Business Week article explains that the health care industry is "What's Really Propping Up The Economy."

"If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don't go to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington. Just take a short trip to your local hospital. . . Without it the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago."

The Matrix - the Muppet version.

The Mother of All Trailers is a very funny combination of every movie preview cliche.

In 1999 Jack Black and Owen Wilson stared in Heat Vision and Jack, a TV comedy about a former astronaut and his talking motorcycle. Only one episode of the show was made. Now, thanks to You Tube, you can watch Heat Vision and Jack here.

In 1991 Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel wrote Lookwell!, a TV comedy about a crime-solving former star of a cancelled cop TV show. Only one episode of the show, which stared Adam West, was made. Now, thanks to You Tube, you can watch Lookwell! here.

In this Slate article, Jeff MacIntyre discusses the unusual process David Milch uses to create the television show Deadwood.

RateThatCommentary.com is the "definitive commentary track database" featuring reviews of DVD commentary tracks their list of the 100 best DVD commentary tracks.

In 2004 Ricky Gervais made two in-house training videos for Microsoft as David Brent, his character from the Office. These videos which Microsoft said were "a light-hearted way of getting our staff to think about the values they attach to working at Microsoft," have now been posted on Google video. This Reuters article has more information on the videos.

Sportswriter Henry Abbot attempts to explain how the NBA works by investigating the life of a man named William Wesley in this post from the blog True Hoop.

"In many ways, the most important things I have learned from the William Wesley investigation so far are not about Wesley at all. They are about the nature of celebrity and power in the NBA. Here's an attempt to explain.

You can see it in pictures for yourself online. There he is: arriving late at night at a hotel in Shanghai with Allen Iverson, helping to break up the famous Piston-Pacer squabble in Auburn Hills, and in snappy formalwear arm in arm with the birthday boy at LeBron James’ 21st.

He has a clean-shaven head, a ready smile, and an appearance that has been compared to a grown-up Urkel.

His name is William Wesley, and for more than a decade it has been something of an open secret in the NBA that he is about as connected an NBA insider as there has ever been."

The Beloit College Mindset List "is a general statement of the experiences and events that shaped the view of the world maintained by entering students" of Beloit College's Class of 2010, who were mostly born in 1988. Some examples from the list:

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.

7. They have never heard anyone actually "ring it up" on a cash register.

23. Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.

24. Madden has always been a game, not a Superbowl-winning coach.

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

"Game Over" is a short film that uses stop-motion animation to turn various household objects into classic video games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man.

What right-wingers see when they read the New York Times.

I don't follow tennis, but every few years David Foster Wallace writes an article about tennis that makes it sound fascinating. In this New York Times Magazine article, Wallace explains why Roger Federer is the best tennis player in the world.

In this Atlantic Monthly article, Jack Beatty explains why the current state of the economy could mean trouble for Republican candidates:

"In short, either falling real incomes or rising unemployment strongly predicts defeat for the incumbent—that is, the president’s party in off-year elections. If the experts quoted in the Times are right, real personal incomes, which have fallen since 2001, will fall this year—that’s what inflation means. If, to moderate inflation, the Fed raises interest rates to slow the economy, then unemployment will rise. Both are likely to rise together, if Gordon is right, between now and 2008. Thus, if history is any guide, economic retrospective voting should cost the Republicans the House this year and the presidency in 2008."

The word planet has never had an official definition. As this Space.com article explains, the International Astronomical Union's proposed new definition of planet could mean the solar system has at least 12 planets.

"The proposal, which sources tell SPACE.com is gaining broad support, tries to plug a big gap in astronomy textbooks, which have never had a definition for the word "planet." It addresses discoveries of Pluto-sized worlds that have in recent years pitched astronomers into heated debates over terminology.

The asteroid Ceres, which is round, would be recast as a dwarf planet in the new scheme. Pluto would remain a planet and its moon Charon would be reclassified as a planet. Both would be called "plutons," however, to distinguish them from the eight "classical" planets. A far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313 would also be called a pluton."

Recently Geraldo Rivera said that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert "count for nothing" because they "make a living putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice." Colbert responded by appearing on the Daily Show to demand that Jon Stewart apologize to Geraldo. Stewart refused to apologize. Later, Colbert brought Stewart to his show to convince him to apologize by getting him to walk a mile in Geraldo's moustache.

I have been watching and enjoying the second season of Deadwood on DVD. Deadwood was created by David Milch, who had previously worked on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. This profile of David Milch originally ran in the New Yorker and tells the interesting story of Milch's life and how he created Deadwood.

Minnesota Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kennedy has endorsed Connecticut Senate candidate Joe Lieberman. The Blotter tries to make sense of this endorsement here.

As this Salon article explains, Democrats in Wisconsin think that stem cell research could be the wedge issue that will help them win in November.

"In 2004, observers attributed much of President Bush's slim margin of victory to the clever use of a single wedge issue. Ballot initiatives banning gay marriage may have lured more conservative voters to the polls in 11 states, and Bush won all those states except Michigan and Oregon.

Two years later, Republicans are again using gay marriage to rouse their socially conservative base. In November six more states will vote on whether to ban same-sex unions. But in the battleground state of Wisconsin, early polling suggests that gay marriage may be losing some of its Election Day magic -- and that Democrats have found a wedge issue of their own with as much or more drawing power."

Darth Vader: Smart Ass

In this Washington Post column, E. J. Dionne surveys the political landscape and asks, "Is conservatism finished?

What might have seemed an absurd question less than two years ago is now one of the most important issues in American politics. The question is being asked -- mostly quietly but occasionally publicly -- by conservatives themselves as they survey the wreckage of their hopes, and as their champions in the Republican Party use any means necessary to survive this fall's elections."

The Republicans are in trouble, if even their own candidates don't want to admit they are loyal to their party. Republican Senate candidate Mark Kennedy is running TV ads that say he's really "independent" and often "crosses party lines." But as this Minneapolis Star Tribune article explains, he "voted along with the majority of Republicans on about 95 percent of all partisan votes."

In response Kennedy said, "that measuring how often he votes with other Republicans or in agreement with the Bush administration position in no way proves that he lacks independence." I guess Kennedy is independent about 5% of the time.

This Los Angeles Times article explains how man-made chemicals have "altered the basic chemistry of the seas."

"In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago."

Film Critic.com selects the Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time.

According to this New York Times article, scientists who study the differences between people today and people of the recent past have found, "one of the most striking shifts in human existence — a change from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable."

According to "Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”

The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.

The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to."

Sugarmegs.org allows you to listen to streaming audio recordings of concerts from hundreds of bands.

Stylus Magazine picks (and links to) the Top 100 Music Videos of All Time.

The Observer selects The 50 Albums That Changed Music.

Human Space Invaders

Moonpans.com has hi-res panoramic photos taken by the Apollo Astronauts when they visited the Moon between 1969 and 1972. These panoramas are Quicktime VR Movies are that you can navigate around using your mouse.

Sailwx.info's Shiptracker shows the current position of ships worldwide. Sailwx.info also tracks Tall Ships, Cruise Ships, and ships on the Great Lakes.

The Sci Fi Channel has put the pilot episode of their new animated comedy, "The Amazing Screw-On Head" on their website. After watching the show, you can vote to let the Sci Fi Channel know if you think the show should join their schedule. The show, based a comic book by Mike Mignola, is summarized below.

"In this hilarious send-up of Lovecraftian horror and steampunk adventure, President Abraham Lincoln's top spy is a bodyless head known only as Screw-On Head.

When arch-fiend Emperor Zombie steals an artifact that will enable him to threaten all life on Earth, the task of stopping him is assigned to Screw-on Head. Fortunately, Screw-On Head is not alone on this perilous quest. He is aided by his multitalented manservant, Mr. Groin, and by his talking canine cohort, Mr. Dog."

According to this Slate article, "The Republican answer to runaway health-care spending is to cap jury awards in medical malpractice suits. For the fifth time in four years, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tried and failed to cap awards at $250,000 during his self-proclaimed "Health Care Week" in May. But this time, the Democrats put a better idea on the table.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also want to save on health care. But rather than capping jury awards, they hope to cut the number of medical malpractice cases by reducing medical errors."

As this Beloit Daily News article explains, citizens of Beloit, Wisconsin recreated the George Seurat painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte” in Beloit's Riverside Park.

Is a major illness or injury necessary for an American cyclist to win the Tour de France? Greg Lemond survived an accidental gunshot wound to win the Tour de France three times. Lance Armstrong survived cancer and won the race seven times. Now Floyd Landis, who is currently in 2nd place in the Tour, has announced that he has osteonecrosis in his hip and will have to have hip replacement surgery after the Tour. Learn more about Floyd Landis and his injury in this New York Times magazine profile.

Kyle MacDonald has succeeded in trading one red paperclip for a house. He started with one red paperclip on July 12, 2005 and 14 trades later, on July 12, 2006 he will trade with the Town of Kipling, Saskatchewan for a house. Read the full story and see details of all 14 trades on his blog One Red Paperclip.