Amy's Robot

As any of my old 5-year-olds will tell you, hand sanitizer is more effective than soap at killing germs. So effective, in fact, that many hospitals are making the switch. (via Chrissy)

You may have heard that the writer/director of the new movie Moonlight Mile (with Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, and Jake Gyllenhaal) based the story on when his own girlfriend was murdered. OK, I've read that in a few places. But then Roger Ebert brings you the really mind-blowing trivia: his girlfriend was Rebecca Schaeffer, that actress from "My Sister Sam" who was shot by a fan in the '80's.

Even when Fametracker does a Fame Audit on somebody sort of obvious, like Kevin Bacon, they just get it so totally right. Kevin Bacon: can't quite catch a break. Do you realize he hasn't been in a movie since that Hollow Man disaster? Right, THAT's why he's doing those self-parodying Visa ads.

I still say Stir of Echoes was better than The Sixth Sense, and my whole video collection really hangs on that one VHS tape. Thanks ADM.

Why am I driven to insatiable levels of craving and nerve-shattering want when I see ads for vanilla Coke? My dorsal striatum, and advertisers who tap into it to make my desire for their products almost totally uncontrollable.

Katrin Cartlidge, that English actress from Naked, Breaking the Waves, and Career Girls, apparently suddenly got sick and died early this month. Salon piece is duller than it should be, considering how incredible and often perverse her acting career was; Morrissey is dedicating performances to her.

Where's Waldo? Probably dead from the bombing. NYT tries to find Osama.

At last some advances are being made in Reality Television Theory: the next show is Surreal Life, and features the daily life of a house that includes Corey Feldman, MC Hammer, Vince Neil, and Natalie from The Facts of Life as roommates. [via Whiskas]

You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me.

Suddenly I sort of understand why I am too old to be on the Real World. The "Cast Talks Back" section on the MTV site includes 23-year old Steve, who appears to be hooking up with every woman in the house, sometimes simultaneously, while married, imploring us viewers to learn from the show. He writes, "Just remember, just because there is liquor available 24-hours a day and hot people around, doesn't mean that you have to partake all day. Moderation is key in life."

Multi-millionaire musicians Madonna, Britney Spears, and Puffy are all appealing to the public's sense of morality and justice by making anti-piracy ads, and as Whiskas suggests, need to Shut. The fuck. Up.

Robot vacuum cleaners!

From the director of "Kurt & Courtney", here comes "Tupac & Biggie".

Fake findings at Bell Labs, finally discredited. The 32-year-old scientist to blame was averaging a scientific paper every eight days. (NYT free reg.)

In honor of Amy's birthday, here are some things for people like her: Jude Law, Paul Rudd, F&B hotdogs.

Television Without Pity on "Real World: Las Vegas". What is wrong with these people? Dude, good question. Episode 2 tonight.

Google now has a news site that is not actually edited by anybody.

Looks like Denis Leary's "Shut The Fuck Up" cognitive therapy technique was right after all: people who repress their feelings of anxiety are healthier and happier, and "tend to perceive themselves as competent, self-controlled and having adequate coping skills."

Richard Linklater and Jack Black are making Rock n' Roll High School... um, I mean School of Rock, about some rockers who revolutionize an uptight high school (with the help of the ghosts of Joey and DeeDee.) Linklater is also making a film like the 7-Up series, but with actors, shot over 12 years about a boy growing up. Apparently Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke have signed on for all 12 years.

Whoa, check ADM and Amy giving 115% to the blog.

Girls Are Pretty man seems to really dig Spoon, which is good enough for me, and the NY references he makes in the article make me wonder why the hell I ever thought this guy lives in LA (yeah, I know it's for the NY Press.) Also the GAP post from the weekend was very super.

A little late (my fault), but still funny: Salon on Ecks vs. Sever.

Osama who? All the cool kids are worried about Saddam now.

Detroit has self-fertilizing hermaphrodite sharks.

Public Enemy vs. MTV. It looks like this is the first time MTV has censored a video due to its political content, instead of for Joe Perry making out with his wife in "Love in an Elevator".

That Mel Gibson is way too esoteric for me. He's filming The Passion, a movie about the end of Jesus' life, in Latin and Aramaic, with NO SUBTITLES. For crying out loud. (Derek Jarman apparently did this too years ago.)

Well ADM, I'll tell you what Ebert says is just as good as you would hope, if not better: Spirited Away, the latest movie by the anime director who did Princess Mononoke and the much-loved Kiki's Delivery Service. He says it's one of the best films of the year. I know what I'm doing tonight.

NYT has details about the Lackawanna terrorist cell. One of them, some say, is too fat to be a terrorist.

PETA to party schools: Forget milk. Got beer?

First base coach attacked by fans (apparently a father-and-juvenile-son team).

Uh-oh. Ebert says Ecks vs. Sever isn't as good as the posters in the subway would have you believe. Shoot -- now what am I supposed to do tonight?

In case you didn't realize that cats are inherently funny. [via Whiskas]

Naomi Watts: about to be everywhere, deservedly. [login required]

OK, so I have nothing to say except for snarky television commentary. So, I don't watch The Real World on MTV. I just don't. You, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. OK, whatever, because this new season in Las Vegas Must be watched by all. At last MTV has realized that nobody cares about a house full of psychopaths and bitchy girls with too much attitude. Which is why for this show, probably the last RW they will ever do (we hope) they decided to just cast the horniest, drunkest, nakedest people in America. Total, total genius.

So this Push, Nevada business. Twin Peaks, Nevada, more like. I don't know how much we can expect from a series produced and partially written by Ben "Mama Talent Where Can You Be" Affleck, at least he had the sense to rip off something good and innovative. But with dialogue like "he's the concierge of Nut Hotel", there is no way I would watch this show again if not for one thing. The alarmingly handsome (in a prissy, IRS-agent kind of way) star. And the excellent usage of the Social Distortion cover of "Ring of Fire" on the soundtrack.

Salon on the fall TV season. Tim Curry as an English butler. John Ritter as Mr. Huxtable. And do people realize that the main investigator/Agent Cooper character on that Push, Nevada show is named James A. (Alfred?) Prufrock? Come ON.

The childhood friend of my (and ADM's former) workplace's ex-janitor Jesus, Forest Whitaker, is going to host a new Twilight Zone series. Will the new series find a new Scariest Moment Ever to freak ADM out?

My favorite part of these moderate-drinking studies is how the definition of moderate drinking, when the result is a health benefit, is a whole lot higher than for studies that claim that drinking is unhealthy. This one says 4 beers a day for men and 3 for women is moderate (and so good for you!).

Compelling reason not to move to LA #856: LA air kills babies.

Record companies are going to absurd and poorly thought-out measures to try to keep music critics from putting advance copies of albums on music-sharing sites. [login required] Like by GLUING the CD into a whole PORTABLE CD PLAYER and sending that with HEADPHONES also GLUED INTO IT. So then the music critics just have to spend an extra 4 minutes to unscrew the CD player and get the disc out before they put the whole thing up online. [via Dylan]

But more important: Tori Amos has a New Album coming out!

Just saw the outstanding new movie Igby Goes Down, starring yet another Culkin (Kieran). It's another movie about disaffected wealthy city kids generally screwing up their lives, but the performances (Kieran C., Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Ryan Phillippe [yeah, I know] and Amanda Peet [I know, I know!!] especially) are incredibly good. The NY Times has a good review [login required]. This movie has elements of Catcher in the Rye, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Cruel Intentions, plus the best use of the Dandy Warhols (remember them?) in a movie soundtrack.

Good old Tony Shalhoub, the man who can play any ethnicity, is going to be on a major network this fall, since ABC picked up his show Monk, which was on USA this summer. And does everyone know that Donnie Wahlberg is in that new show Boomtown? How did I miss this?

The best new album by a new band that I've heard in ages in by NY's own Interpol. Salon likes them too, though the track they feature here is not my favorite (I prefer "Obstacle 1"). This band is being pretty well media-hyped, but best of all, you can buy the album for super-cheap just about anywhere.

100 million years ago, Brazilian ostracods had two penises.

Shortlist is giving out their annual prize to a band who has yet to find big commercial success, and their, uh, shortlist is the strongest I've seen put together by any awards panel, maybe ever. Though Bjork? Yet to find big commercial success? Who sold out three nights in Radio City Music Hall last fall?

Lots of weird movie news in this article: Darren Aronofsky is making a big-buget sci-fi movie called The Fountain. Brad Pitt was supposed to star in it, but just backed out. He is instead going to play Achilles in a movie called Troy. He had been growing the Kenny Rogers beard for The Fountain, and now I guess will have to shave it off and do something to make his ankles all funky for this new role.

Is anybody still watching The Anna Nicole Show? At all? Just so you know what you're missing, we now have Kimmy, the live-in personal assistant of ANS who has short purple hair, an "Anna" tattoo, and is widely speculated to be Anna's not-really-secret trashy lesbian lover. Anna bought her a table dance at a strip club recently. [via Becky]

Beautiful and heart-breaking article in The New Yorker by Lyz Glick, the widow of my brother's good friend Jeremy, who you may remember reading about last year. [via Michael]

I don't care what Girls Are Pretty has to say about it, today is definitely Get Drunk To Protest Terrorism Day. What the hell else can we do.

We all came thiiiiis close to losing Television Without Pity forever. shudder. [via Whiskas]

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame requires a band to have been around for 25 years before they can be inducted. Since 2003 is 25 years after 1978, you better believe the inductees starting next year are finally going to be really good.

The special Sept. 11 related TV programming this week is going to be pretty cloying and repetitive, I'm sure, but my guess is that PBS' will be the best. Tonight is "Stranded Yanks", an hour-long show about the nearly 44,000 travelers who were stranded in Newfoundland for several days after their flights were diverted. [via m@]

Poetry from the website of our nation's number one movie. Via Whiskas.

Remember when Art Garfunkel was the relatively attractive one, and Paul Simon looked like a toad? Yeah, well. [via King Pigeon]

Wistful piece on the usually hilarious Tomato Nation site about how absurd September 11 media memorials seem when many of us haven't forgotten about that day for one second, and hardly need to look back in remembrance.

If you want to feel like you are really mentally healthy and in control of your life, this article from the NY Times on online chat groups and clubs for girls with eating disorders should do it for you. [login required] It also might depress the hell out of you. It's one thing for these girls who suffer from a common affliction to come together to support each other, but it seems some of the communities on these sites might be appealing enough to some insecure girls to encourage them to start in on the same self-destrictive behavior. Photo galleries of "thinspirational" super-skinny actresses like Calista Flockhart? Doesn't sound so supportive to me.

This article illustrates why I wish I was Russell Crowe. [i.e. ASSAULTING MOBY] [via King Pigeon]

Review of the Rolling Stones' opening show of their latest tour. After reading Neal Pollack's NYT piece about attending such a [horror]show, um, 20 years ago, it makes the description of Mick as a "possessed Monkey Man" all the more pathetic.

There's going to be a sequel to Legally Blonde! Red White & Blonde! [hopefully it won't have anything beyond the title in common with Red, White & Blaine] My favorite part of this article is that Ryan Phillippe is still apparently only remembered for Cruel Intentions.

If you ever have any uncertainties in your life at all, the man to seek out for some directional advice is, obviously, Ted Nugent. Please just read this entire article. I'm serious.

My love for Neal Pollack has been redoubled due to this article about how much he hates "exciting" and "important" rock shows. He missed all the good concerts in college too! Like when I didn't bother to go see Nirvana and the Pixies play at MY OWN COLLEGE because I was sort of tired that night! And didn't see the Ride/Lush tour because I was in high school and my parents would have looked wary if I had asked to go into Boston by myself! Plus he has a new Rock Book coming out. [login required, via T-Rock]

If you want to swell with nationalistic pride and simultaneously puke all over yourself, read this. [via Trashrock]

Glacial geology at a non-glacial pace: dramatic changes screw up Alaska inside of a week. (NYT, free reg req'd)

"I will first remind the United Nations that for 11 long years Saddam Hussein has sidestepped, crawfished, wheedled out of any agreement he made not to develop weapons of mass destruction," Bush told reporters. "And so I'm going to call upon the world to recognize that he is stiffing the world."

Right on, again: Fametrackers' Fame Audit of Stephen Dorff, who seemed so promising in, oh, about 1997. FT posits that the best possible scenario resulting from this Fear Dot Com catastrophe of a movie is a sequel in 2004, Fear Dot Org--this time death is not-for-profit!

I predict that Ballistic, with Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas, is going to be the next good action movie to come out. The director, "Kaos", is Thai, and directed the biggest-budgeted movie to ever come out of Thailand. This is his western debut.

That deadbeat Lance Bass keeps screwing over those poor, opportunistic Russians. Who does he think he is? Doesn't he realize his $20 million was going to be the foundation for the Russian GNP for the next 15 years?