While visiting a friend in New York, I got hooked on The Learning Channel. Mind you, TLC was one of those channels that I would flip right on by, looking for either a music video, a good cartoon, maybe an old episode of ER. But my friend is hooked on TLC, and now I am too! I think they truly have a show for everyone. They make the most obscure stuff interesting.

They have one show called Small People, Big World and it's all about a husband and wife who are both little people (under 4 feet tall). Apparently there are different medical reasons for being that short, including dwarfism and other stuff. Anyways, they have 3 kids and that totally keeps them busy. They have an average height daughter, and twin boys, one who's a little person, and another who's average height (so they're fraternal twins). It answers a lot of questions, like how do little people get along in a house built for big people, how do they drive cars made for average height people, and how do you parent a kid that's taller than you? It's really intersting!

They have show on making over cars (think Pimp My Ride except with important details), a show on a family with 16 children (all natural born - ouch), and shows on birth stories, wedding stories, emergency room miracles. They have shows on everything! So check it out sometime, you might be surprised that you can't change the channel.

I rolled my eyes when I saw a mention of this movie a few days ago. I even joked about Samuel L. Jackson's decision to make this movie. But looks like many other people have a different view:

[Samuel L.] Jackson stars as an FBI agent who has to fight a planeload of snakes unleashed by an assassin bent on killing a witness in protective custody. Sight unseen, the movie has grown from something of a joke into a phenomenon slithering untamed throughout the Internet... the movie already is the talk of a certain segment of the Net... It all started with the provocative and buzzworthy, if also reductive, title... there were skeptics who viewed "Snakes on a Plane" as nothing but a simple programmer with a "stupid title"... "Who wants to be in a movie called "Snakes on a Plane'?" asked one talent agent at the time... But once production began, a funny thing happened. Movie fans began noticing... They seized upon the title and created fan sites, blogs, T-shirts, poems, fiction and songs. The title itself, sometimes abbreviated as "SoaP," has emerged as Internet-speak for fatalistic sentiments that range from c'est la vie to "s--- happens."... "That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title," Jackson [said]. He added, "You either want to see that, or you don't."

I got to watch the R.I.P. Chef episode of South Park last night on Comedy Central. I have to say, I think they handled Isaac Hayes sudden departure rather well. I mean, Chef's been an integral member of the South Park community. I've always enjoyed when Chef would inappropriately break out into song and sing about making love to a woman and laying her "down by the fi-ya [fire]".

I think that Kyle was voicing the feelings of Matt and Trey on the loss of one of their best characters on the show during his eulogy for Chef.

"Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us," he says. "But we can't let the events of the last week take away our memories of how much Chef made us smile... We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us. We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."

Today I watched season one of South Park and just enjoyed the Chef I knew and loved. Farewell Chef!

(Submitted by Tara)

When I first saw this I thought it was something done by The Onion or similar satire site. But, unless I'm being very gullible, this seems on the level:

A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the “ideal” model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.

“Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” believed Pro-Life’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears’ pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head.

Their site has three pictures of the life-size statue of Britney. Take a look. I'm curious how many Pro-Life people actually like the statue.

One of the most anticipated movies in a while is Thank You For Smoking, starring Aaron Eckhart, KatieHolmes, Maria Bello, William H. Macy and Sam Elliott. A few weeks ago there was quite a brouhaha because a sex scene with Katie Holmes was omitted during the showing of the movie at the Sundance Film Festival. Rumors spread that the omission was the work of Tom Cruise, who didn't want the scene shown.

But Jason Reitman, the movie's director says the scene was omitted as a result of an error. He said that the scene was "at the end of the reel, the projector probably just accidentally cut it out." He adds: "The problem with 'projection error' is that it’s the truth but it sounds like a lie. It sounds an awful lot like 'wardrobe malfunction.'"

I buy Jason's story. No question Tom Cruise has exhibited some odd behavior lately, but the rumors that he had something to do with the removal of the scene make no sense. Not only is the sex scene "as tame as anything you’d see on the Disney Channel" according to Reitman, but the movie was just released and it includes the scene.

I'm visiting New York City this week and have discovered that there's nothing more pleasant than walking around, or taking the subway while listening to my iPod. Obviously, I'm not the only one. The white earbuds are evident all over. New York is a perfect city for iPod listening, and I'm starting to wonder if Apple didn't have big cities in mind when they designed the iPod.

You put on your headphones as you leave your apartment and don't take them off again until you reach your destination. If your phone rings, you might remove one headphone to answer it, but while you're underground the phone's are useless anyways. If you're listening to your iPod, the crazies are less likely to talk to you and you've joined a brotherhood of music afficionados.

This has truly been a vacation of music for me. Oh to be a New Yorker and get to do this every day.

Review by VictorM

Starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving (as V), and Stephen Rae (in an excellent performance), this movie might not please everyone but I really liked it. To enjoy it you have to remember that this was based on a comic strip -- it looks and feels that way. It also helps if you like your art painted with broad strokes rather than realistic images.

This movie is a cross between the Phantom of the Opera, Zorro, and Che Gueverra on steroids. The movie uses many symbols and metaphors to tell a common idea: the human desire for freedom. That idea has survived many attempts to kill it, and in this movie, that killing tradition is carried on by John Hurt's character.

The hero may at times appear like a super hero -- is he? Maybe, maybe not -- but it all makes sense when he's shot several times and the bad guy asks: "Why don't you die?" The answer by V makes the story believable. If you were paying attention, you would have known the answer, so there's a bit too much exposition for my taste but it might help those less inclined to analyze films.

(Oh, and if you were paying attention to this review, I gave away the answer to the bad guy's question. Can you spot it?)

Have you heard of the Arctic Monkeys? Well, they're an indie band making a name for themselves. Here's how they have done it:

A year ago, the impossibly young indie rock quartet were playing small clubs in their native Sheffield, UK. Now they have a best-selling album. They are currently playing a few shows in the major North American cities (all of which sold out in minutes), and afterwards, they will set out on a thirty-plus date tour of Japan and Europe before doing the obligatory festival circuit this summer.

None of this is really remarkable in a music industry that sees two or three overnight successes come and go every year. What makes Arctic Monkeys remarkable is that they are an indie band on an independent label, and that they achieved their sudden success almost entirely through grassroots promotion on the web.

The foursome got together in 2002. They started playing shows around Sheffield and passing out free CDs at gigs. They encouraged their fans to trade the tunes online and to post them to websites and P2P networks. Yes, they encouraged file trading. Eventually, more and more people found them on MySpace or on their website via word-of-mouth, and their reach started to widen. Fans started booking them in venues farther and farther away from their hometown. Wherever they played, everyone in the crowd knew the words to the songs. This is all before they even signed to a record label.

I love seeing examples where bands encouraged file sharing. I still think this is the way of the future, regardless of the many scare tactics the music moguls come up with.

A couple years ago, Jessica Cutler, a young US Senate aide, made a big splash when she started a blog and wrote in great detail about her sexual escapades in Washington. She even listed her price for a "quick lunch" ($400, if you're curious). In addition to the success of that blog, a novel was written based on it. Now HBO announced they will do a sitcom based on Jessica Cutler's exploits. The same people who produced Sex and the City are producing this show. And if the casting is right, I bet many of the same people will watch it. Who says sex doesn't pay!

This is what the real Jessica Cutler looks like:

Isaac Hayes has a lot of nerve, leaving South Park because they ripped on Scientology and he's a Scientologist! What a hypocrite! South Park rips on everybody, including themselves. Matt Stone is Jewish, and Trey Parker is Christian, and they'll be the first to show the ridiculousness of their faith and some of the people who follow it. If Isaac Hayes had a problem with the lack of religious sensitivity on the show, he should have quit during season one, where they show Kyle's mother Sheila, as a stereotypical Jewish mama. And he never had a problem with the representations of Jesus as a 99 pound weakling either.

Matt Stone says it best:

This has nothing to do with intolerance and bigotry and everything to do with the fact that Isaac Hayes is a Scientologist and that we recently featured Scientology in an episode of 'South Park.' In ten years and over 150 episodes of 'South Park,' Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show. To bring the civil rights struggle into this is just a non-sequiter. Of course we will release Isaac from his contract and we wish him well.

I wish him well too. Now my curiosity lies in how they're going to get rid of Chef. On one messageboard someone had the cool idea that Chef loses his voice and has to sign for the rest of the series. Or maybe he can wear Kenny's orange parka and nobody will understand him anymore because his voice is muffled.

Either way, South Park is still going to kick ass!

I've been puzzled by the success and image of Matisyahu. Here's an interesting article for those as curious as I was:

When I first heard the Hasidic Jewish reggae vocalist Matisyahu, I assumed his was a novelty act with distinctly limited appeal... silly me. Matisyahu is a hit with the goyim. The 26-year-old singer's 2005 album Live at Stubb's spent eight weeks at the top of Billboard's reggae chart, went gold, and continues to sell briskly. A single, "King Without a Crown," cracked the Top 40 and has made Matisyahu a mainstay on alternative-rock radio. Last week, Matisyahu released a new album, Youth, which seems likely to enter in the upper reaches of the Billboard 200. What's next, an Amish boy band?

Turns out, he's a Baal Teshuvah, or penitent, a secular Jew who "returned" to the Orthodox fold—before he was Matisyahu, he was Matthew Miller, White Plains, N.Y., native and student at the New School University in Greenwich Village. Most tellingly, he was a dreadlocked Phish fanatic... His religious awakening occurred in college, after meeting a young Lubavitcher rabbi in Washington Square Park, where many impressionable young men have experienced spiritual epiphanies... Lubavitcher Hasidim are famous for their aggressive efforts to proselytize to non-Orthodox Jews.

For Jody Rosen, Slate's music critic, further history and music review, plus links to sample songs, click here.

Randomness:

Pink's new single, "Stupid Girl" is so totally awesome. Check out some of the lyrics:

What happened to the dreams of a girl president
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent
They travel in packs of two or three
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees
Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?
Oh where, oh where could they be?

I also love the "cameos" of Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Black Eye'd Peas' Fergie! It's about time someone point out how idiotic our current idols are. Mind you, I certainly don't aspire to be the next Paris Hilton, but bling and sex is definitely the current picture of achievement for the general public.

"Signs, Signs, Everywhere there's signs
Blocking up the scenery
Breaking up my mind"

Yeah, but there's plenty of money in these signs, as you can see in this story:

Asia Francis, 21, auctioned off the advertising rights to her pregnancy on eBay. The winning bid of $1,000 went to a California Internet company, giving it exclusive rights to temporarily tattoo its brand-name on Francis's belly and broadcast the birth of her daughter live on the Internet... Twenty-one year old Andrew Fischer... earned more than $37,000 last year by bearing a corporate logo on his forehead for a month. Michele Hutchison of Lanhorne, Pa., auctioned ad rights for her baby's clothing on eBay last year, seeking $1,000 for a months' lease... "It's a well-held theory in the advertising industry that the average person on the street receives up to 3,000 branded messages a day"... The pregnant belly is prime real estate for auction because its likely to get people talking... "If they were to buy the free coverage they will receive for this, it would cost them many times more the fee they paid the person".

OK, it's time to put that huge nose of yours to good use.

HBO is coming out with a new show that's causing quite a stir in the state of Utah. The show, about a Utah polygamist and his three sometimes desperate housewives, has the Mormon church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, groups that have a history with polygamy but are trying to leave it in the past, to Tapestry Against Polygamy, and anti-poligamy group, and Principal Voices, a pro-poligamy group, up in arms for one reason or another.

In this article, which cover all the objections by the various groups in more detail, this is how the show is described:

The "Big Love" lead character Bill Henrickson (played by Bill Paxton) runs a home improvement store in Salt Lake City and is just opening another. Besides the struggles of his expanding business, Henrickson faces the challenges of life with three women (Ginnifer Goodwin, Chloe Sevigny and Jeanne Tripplehorn) and seven children, and the nefarious "prophet" (Harry Dean Stanton) from a rural sect in fictional Juniper Creek who wants his share of Henrickson's success.

I don't know about you, but any TV show that riles up people like this will more than likely make me want to watch it, at least at first to see what the fuss is all about. Besides, pissing off people in Utah for this reason is just fun.

Oh I just adore whenever VH1 comes out with a new series. Mind you, I think their celebreality is kind of trashy, but they really earn cool points with their I Love The _____. Most of I Love The 70's was lost to me, since I was too small for most of the 70's to really participate in anything cool. I Love The 80's rawks! I did so much of my growing up during the 80's and VH1 just brings it all out, well organized by year, with cool commentary by people who are famous or who will likely be famous any day now.

It's great how they bring back people from that decade to talk about their experiences either creating music, being on a TV show, or in a movie. It's great how they have people like Wendy the Snapple Lady read the viewers questions, or Billy Idol to introduce the rock songs of that time, or even Gedde Wantabe (the nerd from Sixteen Candles) to talk about the top 3 dorks of that year.

I remember back when VH1 first came out and it was considered the lame adult contemporary channel but I think that by now, VH1 has found its niche with the twenty- and thirty-somethings. They have captured our culture and then shows it to us before it truly becomes history.

My current addiction? VH1's I Love Toys. Oh man, nothing gets me more nostalgic for the 80's like old toy commercials!

I've always been a music-whore, but the iPod has immensely changed the way I listen to music. In my lifetime I've gone from buying records, to buying tapes, to CDs, and now I have over 4000 songs on my 20 gig iPod. From the moment I got my iPod, it changed so much. I stopped listening to radio. I used to listen to a mix of CDs and talk radio, but I don't even bother listening to NPR for the most part. I can listen to podcasts of NPR at my leisure. And it's all commercial-free.

Now you might think, well we could do that with CDs. But even with CDs there's the loss of variety simply from the way we censor ourselves when it comes to what we pick to listen to. I own over 300 CDs collected from the 90's through the present day. Sure, I had a big collection, but how often did I pull out a Muppet CD? How often did I listen to something cheesy like the Spice Girls? Enter random. I love the way iTunes randomly selects songs for me to listen to. Once I'd imported my entire collection, I suddenly rediscovered old bands I'd forgotten about, childhood songs where maybe I want to hear one or two Animaniac tunes, but I sure don't feel like listening to a whole CD of them in one sitting.

Then I discovered playlists. Feeling girlie? I organized one playlist called Chicks Rock full of Tori Amos, Bjork, PJ Harvey and Madonna. Want to explore the male persuasion? I have another playlist called Dicks Rock that's got a ton of the Police, Linkin Park, The Beatles and Nirvana. iTunes even has automatic playlists like Highest Rated Songs. How do you rate a song? Click a button and spin the wheel to denote how many stars you give to an individual song. Totally sweet! Curious about undiscovered treasures in your library? I made another playlist called Unheard Of and it plays songs that either I've never listened to, or haven't listened to in over a month. And unlike the radio, when I don't feel like listening to a song, I just skip to the next song.

The only bad thing about iPods is the inevitable feeling of loss and confusion when you run out of space. Sadly enough, I've almost filled my 20 gig. Please, Apple, come out with a 100 gig!

It's like a train wreck, I can't help but watch Flavor of Love on VH1. Flavor Flav is an aging rapper who used to have a lot more street cred when he was talking about being a "Cop Killer" with hardcore 80's group Public Enemy. Nowadays, he's become fodder for VH1's so-called Celebreality programming. Viewers were introduced to Flav on The Surreal Life, and his Brigitte Nielson-chasing antics got him his own show called Strange Love. When he eventually lost Brigitte to her fiance, he got another show with VH1 that opened with 20 hopeful girls, wanting to hook up with our man, Flav.

Now whether they wanted him for his money or his heart, that remains to be seen. Most of the girls he got rid of right off the bat. We were introduced to some real doozies, particularly Hottie (and I loved the cha-ching audio they played every time she blinked) and New York (who seriously is nuts the way she talks about Flavor Flav.) Along the way there was back stabbing, bitching, and whoring it up, trying to hook up with Flavor Flav. On the most recent episode, we even got to see hair-pulling and face-spitting. Right on Pumkin!

I have to wonder, does Flav really think he's going to meet the woman of his dreams on a reality show? And are these girls seriously considering hooking up with a guy who already has 10+ kids with multiple women? He's not a catch by most standards, and I'm not talking his looks. If he had an online profile and we didn't know what his name was, most girls would delete/block/ban him. They'd take one look at his numerous kids and lack of involvement in their lives and realize what kind of potential he really had.

Seems to me like we're so hooked on bling and money, that anyone with money, anyone, and anyone with 15 minutes of fame, be it the first or second time around, suddenly is considered the bomb. When Flav kicked Pumkin off the show for being on prior reality shows, I felt like he had a lot of nerve. He'd already had 2 reality shows to his name. Good luck Flav, and good luck girls. Y'all are looking in the wrong place if you're looking for true love.