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Good grief. Some UK “internet monitoring” company says that musical mobile phone ring tones could be considered to be in breach of copyright law. This could be costing the record company up to $1 million a day. Yeah, right. This is getting ridiculous. Are you telling me that a five-second midi version of “The Girl from Ipanema” is damaging the integrity of the song and costing the songwriter profits? What about if I record my own voice humming the song – am I still breaking copyright? What if I *gasp* sing a few bars while walking through the park? Should I pay royalties for giving a “public performance”? Money-grubbing bastards.

Ebert’s got a new Answer Man column that includes some good discussion of “Memento”. I haven’t seen it yet, but my flatmates saw it in London last year and really liked it…

New Poll: In honor of our shopping excursion Saturday, a new poll topic is up. Please give me your opinion on the world of IKEA.
 
Results from the old poll: Out of 23 respondents, almost half of you (eleven, to be exact) bow down to the god that is hummus. As a fellow addict, I’m right there with you. A further five of you admit that you like hummus but, as Snookums put it, don’t feel the need to “eat it til it comes out your ears.” That’s cool. Four of you haven’t tried it, which is a real shame. (I know at least one of these people is my own mother, who would love the stuff if she gave it a chance.) Two of you seem to have some sort of tastebud-impairment, because you claim to dislike our favorite dip. I urge you to seek medical help right away. And lastly, one person admits that she doesn’t eat things with “tahini” in them. I’ll bet you $20 this was my sister. I totally set that up for her.

Salon has vindicated everything I predicted about the American reception of “The Weakest Link.” Could I be any more suited for a career in film/television criticism??

R.E.M. News: Wow. So Peter got busted for “air rage” and Michael’s at war with his neighbors. Way to go guys. You better be ready to play this weekend. (Please, God, let me get tickets!)

Snookums and I were wondering yesterday about Daylight Savings Time. I mean, why put the clock forward an hour in the summer when it’s light all the time then anyway? Why not move it forward in the winter so it doesn’t get dark at 4:30 pm in London (like it bloody does now)? I’m happy to report that I found the answer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with “extra time to frolic on summer evenings.” It has to do with saving energy. Interesting…

Imagine my surprise, while reading Zannah‘s site, to come across another ninja reference! This one’s a humor piece entitled “How To Hide Your Ninja Lifestyle From Your Co-workers“.

Apparently some “ghostbusters” from Hertfordshire University have been poking around the vaults of Edinburgh. Though Snookums and I chickened out on our recent trip, I did do the Ghost Tour during a visit in 1998. It was the scariest experience of my life. I was such a wimp that the tour guide let me hold her only flashlight. I’m tellin’ you, there’s stuff down there. Seriously.

I just found an old Salon story about someone who was tapped for the “Skull and Bones” society I mentioned yesterday. The guy also slams Bush quite a bit, which is nice.

Roald Dahl’s “The Twits” is currently playing in London, so of course Snookums and I headed off to see the opening night performance Tuesday. I’m sorry to say that I was rather underwhelmed by the show. It seemed more like a Christmas panto than legitimate children’s theater. I could count on one hand the lines of text that actually survived from Dahl’s book, and those were mostly the insults that the Twits hurled at each other. The problem with dramatizing this story is that it was always a crude and confusing piece. One one hand you’re supposed to loathe the Twits and on the other you’re supposed to laugh at them. In the book, Quentin Blake’s manic scribbled illustrations hit the right tone and made the crude bits seem more cartoony and surreal. Playing it straight is not the right strategy for a stage adaptation, I fear. And, as with all the Dahl dramatizations I’ve seen lately, there was an emphasis on cheezy moralizing that wasn’t present in the original work. This production wanted us to feel sorry for the poor Mugglewumps, captured from the jungle and forced into degrading circus slavery, yet at the same time it urged us to laugh delightedly as the monkeys’ captors scratched their bums and farted. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy it. (I do feel a bit guilty for saying that though, considering that Sadler’s Wells linked to my Dahl site. Oh well.)