John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Darth Maul cooks Christmas dinner for the whole family

The Space channel is airing this promo for a Star Wars marathon, tied into a promotion called the 12 Days of Spacemas. The title doesn't matter much, though, when you see Darth Maul fret over his kitchen, and Vader and the other unhappy Christmas guests at the table. (Best touch: a stormtrooper with a napkin.)

Five-fact Friday

The cabinet in Nepal donned oxygen tanks today for an event billed as the world's highest cabinet meeting ever. The meeting was organized to draw attention to the environment of the Himalayas. 

The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan owns the hand-written manuscript of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, but has only put one page per year on display for public viewing. This year, though, it allowed the New York Times to make high-quality scans of the manuscript - showing some judicious editing on Dickens's part - online. You can see some details here; this link should take you to the full text, although I and other readers have been getting compression error messages.

The name of Tiger Woods's yacht is, fittingly, Privacy.

A Montreal study that set out to compare men in their 20s who watched pornography with those who did not had to readjust, after researchers could not find a single subject in the second category.

 

The characters of Sheldon and Leonard on the comedy The Big Bang Theory are not randomly named. Creator Chuck Lorre named the physicists after the late, great Sheldon Leonard, the actor, writer and a producer of the Dick Van Dyke Show, among many other programs. 

The problem with you, you and you: Rick Mercer on the leaders

From this week's episode of the RIck Mercer Report. A minute long, and pretty much summing up the electorate mood of 2009.

The CSI secret: just keep zooming, indefinitely

One of the best-known films of all time is Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, about a London photographer who believes he may have inadvertently recorded a crime on film, but learns how meaning is lost the more intensely he looks at the details of a photograph. 

Not so, of course, on the various CSI shows, where investigators not only zoom in on any image - security video, phone video, etc. - but get increasingly clear and superior results. That's why I got such a laugh out of this bit.

The Conan O'Brien Screech-in, and the weakest-looking rum ever seen

Natasha Henstridge, the Newfoundland-born actor, decided to do what she called a Screech-In during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien the other night. You can see the clip below.[UPDATE: I've been informed this is a six-year-old clip, which makes sense; Henstridge is promoting a show that went off the air in 2004. See the comments below.]

I groan whenever I encounter a Screech-In, and actively avoid them. I have to say I was caught off guard by Henstridge's explanations.

In the clip, you'll see her define Screech first as "moonshine," although she later calls it rum. (If you look closely, it looks like the dark rum she describes has been replaced by something clear. Like water. Especially when you see O'Brien ham it up and reach for the bottle.)

Then there's explanation of when Screech-Ins occur.

"In Newfoundland, we celebrate a little differently," she said, adding that Screech-Ins happen "when you have babies, or you get married."

Um ... what??

Here's a thought. A Screech-in, in which unsuspecting tourists are told this is a fine tradition (but aren't told that it was invented as a marketing ploy, dates back only to the Seventies, and is as widely loathed as it is admired), might just as well adopt Natasha Henstridge's proposed new definitions. They are, after all, just as authentic as what the NLC once came up with, and as genuine as the codswallop that the downtown bars get on with to this day. 

A T-shirt from Evergreen Terrace

A still life, of sorts, based on the Simpsons. As seen here.

Life and death at the new age ER

From the comedians at the UK television series That Mitchell and Webb Look, a sketch on what would happen if the people who believed in the healing properties of ever-diluted tinctures and of quartz took care of trauma patients. Stick around for the beer at the end.

When R2-D2 found true love ... on Sesame Street

A gem I had never seen before, from 1980, when C-3P0 and R2-D2 arrived in the nicest block in New York.

Christopher Walken puts on his Poker Face

My PVR is set to record Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, although BBC Canada airs the episodes weeks after they air in the U.K. The latest episode had the always entertaining Christopher Walken on, with a line reading of the lyrics of Lady Gaga's Poker Face.

Lost: The poster

Eric Tan is a California artist who does incredible posters, and often just for his own purposes. (He works for Disney, though.) Above is a poster he did for Lost, the TV show; many of the items on his blog relate to movies. He doesn't post often, but much of what you'll see are gems.