American Idol is certainly something of a hot topic amongst pop culture bloggers all over the world, but especially in the US. Cowell is famed for his blunt and critical style of judging, which have become a popular topic with online writers. Even fans of the show who might only watch occasionally, are frequently keen to hear about Cowell’s latest comments, and to share their own opinion of such remarks online. Of course, there is a fine line between such opinions and factual statements, as was discovered by one UK blogger recently.

In the UK, Cowell is best known for his role on talent shows such as the The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. It was the latter of these programmes which recently landed one writer in hot water, as he falsely claimed that Cowell had fixed it so that one particular contestant would win.

This might not sound like anything out of the ordinary – it’s well known that stories with little truth attached to them are frequently published online, to little effect. However, in the particular case, the blogger was issued a caution under the Malicious Communications Act, and forced to remove the post. He also issues an apology to Cowell, as well as the contestant involved.

Although this almost certainly won’t put an end to false rumours about talent show judges circulating, but it might make blogger think twice about what they choose to post online. Cowell might have stepped down from his American Idol position, but with the US version of X Factor launching later this year, we’re sure to see plenty more online discussions regarding his controversial criticisms of various contestants.

We just moved in with each other, you see. And, along with bashed thumbs, bruised shins, sore backs, and woefully misplaced boxes which we won’t see again until the next move, this gave us an ideal opportunity to discover all the dirty little secrets we’ve been hiding from one another in the past many months of blissful dating.

He discovered that, despite my incarceration at the University of Chicago English department and the appreciation for fine literature which it implies, my collection of the classics is substantially dwarfed by my mass of flimsy paperback murder mysteries. My Nero Wolfe novels alone take up two times the shelf space of my collection of Shakespeare. He discovered that I care more about my house plants than I do about his cat. (He: Tux is eating that plant. Is that gonna hurt him? Me: Ohmygod! My poor plant. My poor baby! Was the big mean kitty biting you? Serves him right if he gets a belly ache, the fuzzy little creep. Here, have some Miracle-Gro. You’ll feel better.) He’s discovered that, at 4’11″, I’m entirely indifferent to whether shelves and cabinets and such are placed artistically and eye-pleasingly on the walls. I only care if I can reach them. He’s discovered that I own five different kinds of vinegar, six kinds of oil, and two varieties of bread crumbs. He’s discovered all of this, and he still loves me.

I, on the other hand, have discovered that he owns a lathe and am tormented by sudden nightmares and doubts about the relationship. It’s not that I fear that instead of spending quiet evenings cuddled up with me at the computer playing Tex Murphy he’ll spend all his night out in the garage lathing things. (Is lathe a verb? It should be.) For one thing, his love for his computer is surpassed only by his love for me…I think. For another, we don’t have a garage. It’s not that I fear that he’ll bash me on the head with the thing in a fit of rage. He doesn’t have those.

It’s not even that I’m worried that it will scar the surface of the table where it’s sitting. So, what’s my problem?

It’s simple. While everyone in my family can spell “lathe” and most of us can probably define it as “that spinny thing that carpenters use…makes table legs, right?” no one I’m related to has ever used, much less owned one. Ever. We wouldn’t know what to do with one. We wouldn’t know if it had to be plugged in, run off a battery pack, turned by hand, hitched to oxen, or baked at 350 until golden brown. We would probably kill ourselves if we tried to find out. In my family if a table needs a new leg, we either get a new table or repair the problem by propping up the legless side with a stack of paperback mysteries. In my family, household repair crises that can’t be ignored or fixed with a stack of books are solved in an easy three step process. 1. Panic 2. Call repair guy 3. Pay said repair guy.

I guess things are a bit different in my honey’s family. First of all, they can not only spell and define “lathe,” they can use a lathe for repairs and for…fun. If a table needs a new leg, my honey and his family would be liable to make a whole new set of legs just for the sheer joy of it. Heck, they might make several sets until they could decide which legs looked just exactly perfect with that particular table top. My darling would probably get so inspired that he’d make a set of chairs and a sideboard just to keep the table company. And they would all look great. And all the legs would stay on forever. In his family, household repair crises are never crises. They’re a gladsome opportunity to haul out the tools and have some fun.

How can I, a hereditary mechanical incompetent, find eternal bliss and joy with a man who has more power tools than I’ve got medieval dream poetry? What will I do the first time he calls from work and asks me to have the lathe ready for him when he gets home? Will he still love me when he discovers that I don’t really understand why double-sided mounting tape doesn’t work as well as dry wall anchors?

So, okay, it’s not Romeo and Juliet. Our worlds aren’t all that far apart, and I love it that I live with someone who can fix broken things, and build new things, and install entertaining gadgets. But that lathe still makes me nervous. I think I’ll feed it to my houseplants.

The rise of break dancing in Lexington, Kentucky hit in approximately June o f 1982, just six years after it became popular on the coast. I was 12, at the end of my sixth grade year, living in a predominantly caucasion suburban community not known for its cutting edge ways. The dance craze took my peers and me by storm. We were mesmerized by the musicas well as the sleek marketing of the albums that graced the shelves of the local record stores. Our mothers immediately signed us up for breakin’ lessons given by two high school students in the elementary school’s gymnasium who claimed they could do the head spin (they couldn’t). It was all so unbelievably fresh. On the last day of school, two of my friends and I did a break dance routine that we choreographed for the talent show. Several parents complained of deteriorating morals in the school, but we were undaunted.

By the beginning of seventh grade, break dancing was at its peak. Parachute pants were worn by everyone, and the halls began to look like walking licorice. I had become known for my breakdancing abilities over the summer. I was especially good at body rocking – which included the wave, the electric pop, bouncing the ball, the snake, the moonwalk- and some limited floor moves. I felt like the John Travolta of a new generation.

The movie Breakin’ was released, and I was one of the first in line to see Bugaloo Shrimp and Turbo take on the mean streets of New York’s dancing underground. When The Break Dancing Terminology Handbook was published, I was the first to have every term memorized. I bought the Footloose soundtrack and, much to my parent’s chagrin, fell in love with the song, “Dancin’ In The Sheets.”

At about this time, the Reaganesque suburb where I lived had finally realized that breakin’ was just another fad and had decided to get involved. A Break dancing contest was to be held at our public library. My mom brought the flier home to me. I recruited my good friend, himself an accomplished suburban breaker who lived down the street, and we went to work in my parent’s basement putting together a routine for the ages. I was the director. I set forth creating moves and combinations that had never before been seen or would be seen again. I was obsessed. We worked day and night to create the greatest show the front walk of the public library would ever see. Finally, two days before the big event, a Jerry Maguire sized-breakthrough in coreography: I realized that what the routine truly needed was spontaneity. The routine was fast becoming totally whack! We threw out the game plan and decided to just dance…

The aviator glasses were beginning to feel heavy on my face. It was getting difficult to focus. Thousands of eyes were transfixed upon me, waiting to see if I would live up to the billing (‘Best 13 year old Break Dancer in Upper Arlington’). The music started. I immediately noticed that something was amiss. “My God!” I thought, “They’re playing the wrong song!” My life flashed before my eyes. Everything I had painstakingly worked for was being ruined! (What I found out later was that my partner’s mom was vehemently opposed to her son body rockin’ to “Dancin’ In the Sheets.” She decided that a more appropriate number would be “Lets Hear It For The Boy”, another track on the aforementioned Footloose soundtrack). After the initial shock, I was forced to make a decision. Do I stop now and tell the judges to reset the music to the correct song? Or should I ride out what was sure to be a disastrous attempt to perform to this hideous little tune. I decided on the latter.

Four minutes and many stifled laughs later, my number was complete. I had made every attempt to remain fresh, despite being forced to dance to the lamest song in history. It was like if Barney opened for Metallica. Yet, I held my chin high for I felt a deep pride for what I had just accomplished. When the balloting came in, we came in fourth in the doubles category, ages 9-14. My partner and I shook hands firmly, happily noting that five teams had entered. The crowd dispersed quickly into their minivans and drove away to homemade dinners. Something inside me had changed. A rite of passage had been completed and somewhere in the distance, as I was getting into my mother’s K-car, I could swear I heard someone say “…Let’s hear it for the man.”

wilstar.net/patrick.htm

For people who live by Cliff’s Notes. A simple one-pager on who the guy was, what he did and did not do, why he is commemorated, why he wished there was an electronic cigarette in his time and a variety of quality links. Oh, and great downloadables of “My Wild Irish Rose” and “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”.

IRISHFOOD.COM

www.irishfood.com/

Very comprehensive. Recipes, cookbooks, discussion groups, restaurant listings, services and suppliers. Unless you live in or are visiting Ireland, most of this is inapplicable. Click right to recipes. Meat lovers delight- Irish Stew (of course), Fillets of Whiting, Herring in many ways, Sausage Pies. But there’s also time-tested favorites like Soda Bread, Whiskey and Ginger Cream and Rutabaga Pudding. Screw the diet and go for it.

LUCKY LEPRECHAUN’S LANE

usacitylink.com/lucky/default.html

What a great site! In addition to a fantastic virtual tour of Ireland complete with stats and beautiful countryside imagery, you can trace your Irish ancestry, even if you don’t think you have any (remember, everybody’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day!). There are charming limericks, amusing little games, and other delights. Visit this site any time of the year.

ST. PATRICK’S FESTIVAL ’98

www.irish-times.com/StPatricks/

While this Irish Times-sponsored site is more friendly to users in Ireland, it is interesting to get the local feel of the day. Has a distinct newsmagazine feel to it, complete with a readers poll. Makes you think our green beer fests are more than a little embarrassing compared to the homeland’s celebration.

THREE MYTHS

www.paddynet.com/digitalisland/mythology/index.html

Not attractive, not abundant with important text and eye candy graphics, but an trivia-based site that will give you fodder for one day a year. Did St. Pat drive the snakes out of Ireland? Did he single-handedly convert the Irish to Christianity? Did he introduce the shamrock to Irish society? Not groundbreaking news, but good conversation starters at the bar selling green beer.

Spend hours relating people to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less. Try other similar games. It may be passe, but you’re alone, so who will know if you beat the snare and play along?

beck2. Beck
www.rockonthenet.com/artists/info/beck.htm

Meet Beck. He’s a loser, too.

3. Unsolved Mysteries
www.unsolved.com

You’ve got some time on your hands- put it to good use. Either offer your well- founded opinion on what happened to D.B. Cooper, or ask others to help you find a life.

4. The 80s Server
www.80s.com

Remember the good old days when you wore parachute pants and pink bandanas to New Years Eve bashes. Find your old Bangles cassettes and download pictures of Tom Cruise in his underwear.

5. Ask Dr. Weil
www.pathfinder.com/drweil/

Maybe there’s an herb, or relaxation method you can use to make yourself feel better.

6. Heavens Gate
www.levelabovehuman.orghale-boppiness

It’s possible that you think the tradition of celebrating the New Year in a drunken, irresponsible stupor is base and unclean and in no way supportive of attaining a higher level of spirituality. Meet your fellow freaks. Get a good deal on Nikes

7. Shareware
www.shareware.com

If you’re too cheap to buy a date for the evening, then you’re too cheap to buy software. Get it for free here, tightwad..

8. Supreme Court Decisions
www.lweekly.com/sup2.htm

Don’t give me any lip. You’ve got nothing better to do. Why not educate yourself on who’s telling you how to do what. There are a lot of laws out there that everybody else is out breaking tonight, you may as well bone up on them.

Eye On the World

9. Eye on the World
www.iwaynet.net/~kwroejr/violent.html

Earthquakes, floods, death, destruction. There are bigger disasters than your life.

10. Webtender
www.pvv.unit.no/~pallo/webtender

CONTENT no mention of actors or other characters, base information about films
LAYOUT Web Design 101
GRAPHICS a few photos on main page, less than a dozen to download- pretty weak
LINKS mostly internal
UNIQUENESS none, formulaic fan page (thankfully, Shaft was a cool badass mutha)

STAR GALAXY

www.stargalaxy.comthe kids from caper.

Does anyone remember The Kids from C.A.P.E.R.? Saturday morning teen sleuth musical adventure sitcom? Well, I do, and in appealing to the gods of all web searches to provide proof of what most people think is my pot-induced tv fantasy, I found this little gem of a place. Star Galaxy is simply a picture gallery of young actors and other indiscriminate prepubescent celebrities. Jimmy Baio is enshrined here (or should I say entombed?). You can download the Lawrence Brothers family photo. And all the heartthrobs from my day and before are lost in time at Star Galaxy- Willie Ames, Lance Kerwin and Leif Garrett are not paunchy, balding middle-agers, they’re the golden-smiled, curly-haired, sunken-chested sixteen year-olds that were taped to my bedroom wall. Not many gals are represented in the hundreds of available photos. Many are obscure names, lots are Canadian, but the diversity is praiseworthy albeit peculiar.

CONTENT will make you long for the Shazam/Isis Hour
LAYOUT lists and links
GRAPHICS all photos, all the time
LINKS gobs of other teeniebopper sites, and to the webmaster’s wedding album (huh?)
UNIQUENESS not quite unique, but worth a bookmark just for the memories

SHAKE-N-BACON

Fly.hiwaay.net/%7Epaul/index.html

This page has singularly destroyed my love of writing, my joie de vivre, my very faith. Why question the validity of the most influencial, profound, spirit-enhancing author of all eternity? Because there’s damn good reason to. Come here and sit down. This is scandelous. Seems this no-name wannabe called Sir Francis Bacon is more likely to have penned the vast works of William Shakespeare than the quasi-credible actor-turned-playright William Shakespere. I’m sick just thinking about it. Extensive parallel biographies place the two in the same place at the same time, with similar skills and possibilities. But there are fatal (almost Shakespearean) differences, the most stunning included (actually, lacking) in Shakespere’s death documentation. Read it yourself. The site, honestly, is thought-provoking and studiously well-researched. For the frivolous of mind, the writing’s dry and scholarly, with numerous footnoted passages and quotes. Supporting documents are wordy and lofty at times. But the point is made. And with this, gentle Reader, I write my last. (Psych!)

CONTENT prepared like a court case
LAYOUT mundane, like a text book
GRAPHICS minimal
LINKS internal, with obscurely-phrased titles- hard to tell where you’re going
UNIQUENESS definitely one of those “that’s got a website?” places

CONTENT: thoughtful and dark (in a bubblewrap sorta way)
LAYOUT: easy to follow
GRAPHICS: complement the text rather than overwhelm it
LINKS: only within the site
UNIQUENESS: how-to’s and text-o-matics aren’t new but these fun examples are well done

The Scary Baby ConspiracyOoh…scary

Babies frighten me. At last, someone understands. This tongue-in-pudgy-cheek site features photographs of babies who have been known to engage in criminal activities. Check out the photo of “Sid” who is clearly demonstrating one of the gang’s secret hand signals. Another, perhaps of Rosemary’s baby, will make you want to start using four types of birth control simultaneously, or give up on sex altogether. Well, okay, but I stand by the four types of birth control thing. Parents everywhere should start submitting pictures of their own mutant spawn. I was left wanting more. More, more!

CONTENT: it’s all fun and games until someone puts out an eye!
LAYOUT: pretty straightforward
GRAPHICS: the essence of the site
LINKS: a hilarious one to the article “Babies Are Stupid”
UNIQUENESS: other than one Geraldo show on wilding toddlers, I’ve never seen anything like it

Cathedral of the Hydrogenated Snack Cake

Forgive me, Bob, for I’m about to sin against you. Now denizens, get a book. A long book. I used “War and Peace”. The Bible would be fitting. (However, if you tend to thump it a lot, you may not wish to view this site.) Now click on this link, open up your book, and start reading. The “cathedral” takes a long time to download but the graphics are almost worth it and the text most certainly is. The look is tawdry Byzantine bauble crossed with Seven Eleven’s snack section. The message is Tower of Babble all the way. As Bob says, “This site is largely devoid of anything genuinely spiritual but it is chock full of religion. I hope you know the difference.” Man, I love men who preach at me! The less sense it makes, the better! Get on your knees, denizens! (Make sure you put a pillow under ‘em, though. I told you it’d take a while.)

CONTENT: unwholesome (and unholy) goodness
LAYOUT: surprisingly straightforward
GRAPHICS: a little too extravagant (stop sending him money; see what he spends it on?)
LINKS: quirky, some are broken
UNIQUENESS: I’d say this is the oldest profession

Barkley’s Bark: And speaking of girls and basketball, low-IQ quote machine Charles Barkley had this to say about the two new female referees in the NBA this season: “Women don’t belong in the Army or the NBA.” Which branch of the armed services did you say you served in, Charles?
On the subject of marching orders, Charles was whining about the NBA telling him to have a bodyguard with him at all times when he goes out. This after he allegedly threw another bar-goer through a window last week. Charles has reported that a lawyer who was present at the melee approached him, saying that he felt Barkley had been provoked, and offered to take his case. When Charles turned him down, the attorney took up the case of the throwee instead. Dirt-dumb egomaniacal athletes, dumbshits that throw drinks at 6′ 8″ musclemen, and cocksucking lawyers–where is this bar, anyway? Hey Chuck: Have you ever thought of maybe NOT GOING OUT DRINKING EVERY SINGLE NIGHT? Just wondering.

Weekly Rider: Since our last update, Portland Trail Blazers gang member and starting guard Isaiah Rider has thrown yet another fit in the presence of an airline employee, verbally abusing a flight attendant when his flight out of Oakland was delayed due to fog, then missing a shootaround in Spokane later that day. Isaiah was investigated last year for threatening employees of a charter airline company when they refused to fly him to an out-of-town Blazer game after he had missed yet another team flight. And on November 3rd, he blew off another practice, supposedly showing up at the wrong facility. He was fined, but the Blazers’ easygoing new coach, Mike Dunleavy, refused to bench him, saying, “Why punish the whole team?” Translation: (Blazer GM “Trader Bob”) Whitsitt wanted him to play. Rider had already missed the first two games of the season because of a suspension by the NBA for all the crap he pulled (including three arrests) during the off-season a year ago. Hell, why punish anyone? Wait for him to beat the crap out of somebody and let the police handle it. This is what the Blazers have been doing with reserve forward Gary Trent, who has beaten up three people, including his girlfriend, since January.

Do You Know The Way To Ban Jose? Since we’re on the subject of criminal losers who beat up women, free agent outfielder Jose Canseco allegedly kicked the shit out of his wife, Jessica, while returning in a car from their child’s birthday party. This gun-toting delinquent, whose fading baseball abilities are the only thing that ever kept him out of prison in the first place, will undoubtedly be offered a contract for next season by some loser baseball team with a farm club in an appropriate place, like San Quentin, Joliet or Walla Walla.

F1 Goes NASCAR: Apparently, Formula One auto racing is no longer the sport of gentlemen: Drivers were warned not to “purposely crash” into Jacques Villeneuve or Michael Schumacher during the October 26th F1 finale, the European Grand Prix. The two aformentioned drivers were locked in a battle for the points championship going into that race. Villeneuve won the championship by placing third, but not before Schumacher himself allegedly tried to take Villeneuve out during the 48th lap of the race. That is one expensive destruction derby, kids!

Tonya Con: We would be horribly remiss to do a sort-of-female-themed column without updating our readers on our beloved hometown girl Tonya Harding. Readers of the first installment of this column will recall how the Queen of the Trailer Parks got her alarm-equipped pickup truck stolen (wink, wink) from the local mall a few weeks back. We haven’t heard a thing about this since, which we take to mean that the truck has still not been recovered. Surprise! No word about what Tonya is driving now, but we’ll bet she paid cash for it.

Cheesy Rider: Portland Trail Blazers guard and perennial arrestee Isaiah (J.R.) Rider, just days after a fluff-piece in the local paper about how he had cleaned up his act and was providing leadership to the team, was caught doing 73 in a 50 mph zone. No real problem here, except J.R. had no Oregon driver’s license. He did, however, produce both a Minnesota and California license. Hey, he’s only been here a year, let’s cut him some slack! His red Range Rover was towed. We wonder whether other Blazers will now be skirting the law and getting their expensive iron hauled away as a result of Isaiah’s new-found leadership.

More-On Rider: The NBA finally suspended J.R. for two games as a result of some or all of his three arrests last summer. Rider sat out more games than that last year just while pouting, not to mention all the minutes he was benched for showing up late, or not at all, for games and practices. J.R. appealed his case anyway, complaining that the NBA had waited too long before meting out the punishment. That reminds us, has the Terry Nichols trial started yet? We feel just about as sorry for him. Rider’s initial appeal was rejected.

Punks In Pigskin: Temperamental (emphasis on mental) Indianapolis quarterback Jim Harbaugh punched NBC broadcaster and former Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Jim Kelly last Saturday night, breaking his hand, after Kelly called Harbaugh a baby for sitting out one game too many for the 0-8 Colts. This news, taken with the egomaniacal, childish antics of overrated quarterback Jim McMahon a few years back, makes us aware that the NFL’s low-IQ club apparently extends beyond linemen and now includes quarterbacks named Jim.

Horsehide Horseshit: The only-five-years-old Florida Marlins are baseball’s new world champions after what was actually a pretty exciting seven-game World Series. There was much squawking about how Marlins’ owner Wayne Huizenga, he of the deep pockets, used his heavy cash-flow to quickly assemble a championship-caliber team that won it all. Haven’t any of these boneheads ever heard of George Steinbrenner? And speaking of losers, what kind of idiots build a new ballpark as far north as Cleveland without a removable dome? After nearly getting a World Series game snowed out, those dorks must be sorry they… oh… the editor just walked by and reminded me he is originally from Cleveland… Hats off to the heroic minds of Cleveland who had the good sense to respect the sanctity of baseball and avoid building one of those sterile, tradition-ignorant stadiums with the silly removable domes!

Kill The Broadcasters: There was also a lot of whining about how the broadcasters were too light on incompetent umpire Eric Gregg during the AL Championship Series, who was calling a strike zone as wide as a garage door. But we can remember worse baseball broadcasting: During the 1981 NL playoffs, annoying fathead Joe Garagiola was doing color when he was suddenly possessed to say this about a Houston Astros infielder coming to bat: “Dickie Thon. That sounds like a country-western song. Dickie Thon, Dickie Thon, Dickie Dickie Dickie Thon!” We were glad the game was also on the radio.

Tonya update: Miss Harding recently moved into the same Portland suburb as yours truly, and promptly got her fancy Ford pickup stolen while parked out at the mall. Tonya claims to have set the alarm, locked the doors, and had the only key to the truck on her person. As one of the locals pointed out, “Tonya going to Vancouver Mall by herself? I don’t think so.” Maybe the thieves around here are getting more clever all the time, but this was the same pickup in which she claimed to have been kidnapped a few months back, foiling her pursuer by crashing the truck into a tree in a wooded area and escaping on foot, then not telling the police about it until the next day. The local papers kindly pointed out that if Tonya had just gotten drunk and smashed her pickup into a tree on her own, and didn’t want to see her name plastered all over the tabloids (“Drunken Tonya Smashes Ford After Swerving To Avoid Elvis”), she might be compelled to make up a story about being kidnapped. The kidnapper, a shaggy-haired stranger (perhaps the same one who shot Elizabeth Diane Downs’ kids?), was never found. Surprise!

The New World (Series) Order: Two of baseball’s best teams during the regular season are oddly absent from this season’s fall classic, and many of us couldn’t be happier: The Atlanta Braves, with their perennially annoying Tomahawk Chop and U.N.-groupie owner (who sits one foot away from Jane for every year he’s been married to her), were vanquished by an upstart team from even further south. And the Baltimore Orioles, whom inexplicably play John Denver’s “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” during the seventh-inning stretch (Christ, that is enough to ruin an entire World Series for me), were eliminated by, as the PC idiots at the Portland Oregonian call them, the Cleveland Baseball Team, striking a blow for those of us not currently caught up in the heavy-sympathy-for-a-bugfaced-singer trend. Hurrah!

Errata: As senile office-holder Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stupid things.” However, facts are important because they are true, as opposed to lies, which aren’t. And with facts like these, why bother making anything up? And so, a little correction from last month’s column, in which I described Cliff Robinson and a gang of fellow goons getting arrested for driving around Portland and scaring people by aiming paint guns at them from a Suburban. Well, only a pack of genuine morons would do this sort of thing from a showy monstrosity like a Chevy Suburban. As a colleague of mine reminded me, they were in Cliff’s AM General Humvee