'Bred Crumbs

10:09 PM Slang alert! "Off the hinges" has supplanted "off the hook." I heard it from the mouth of an actual teen. Please make a note of it.

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How odd it is to see a friend of mine referred to as "the brown guy."

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With Solstice upon us, it's time to festively cover my seasonal ass and wish everyone out there a Happy Chosen Holiday! (And we'll just pretend I remembered to say it before Hanukkah.)

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11:24 PM A shoutout* to noted Trek fan Gabriel, who found my scribblings about his appearance in a certain documentary "amusing, actually" and dropped me a note. Gabriel is now married, mullet-free, and appearing occasionally on a TV near you via Comedy Central's Beat the Geeks (the next scheduled Gabriel ep is Friday). Find out more about his real life now in the news section of his site.

The fact that I was so intrigued by that brief, filmed glimpse of Gabriel's young life, and that it made him somewhat famous, and that I'm kind of excited to have been contacted by him -- all this has me thinking about the nature of modern American celebrity until my head itches.

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Speaking of modern American celebrities who make me itch, here are two.

-- Michael Rosenbaum: Far and away the best reason to watch Smallville (though the show itself is getting better). Those sly eyes, that crafty smile, that great pate. And he gets extra points for voicing Flash on the new Justice League cartoon -- which I can't see because of my crappy cable system, which now falls into the hands of Comcast -- which, as fate would have it, ran the very first cable system I was ever hooked into. Anyway, Michael Rosenbaum is shiny.

-- Sean Astin: Puts the hot in hobbit. Who knew from The Goonies that he would grow up so, so nicely? (Although Toy Soldiers was a clue.)

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What's that grumbling I hear beneath the film acclaim for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring? Why, it's long-forgotten animator Ralph Bakshi, being shocked and appalled as only an out-of-touch egotist could be that no one consulted him before making this movie. What, the maker of a drab, botched film version that no one saw wasn't consulted?

* "Shoutout" -- a chunk of slang that was popular among teens for about a month a lustrum ago, yet it still amuses me greatly.

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11:44 PM Witness the modern miracle of radio programming format crossover! Driving home, I heard Linkin Park's "In the End" on the pop-hits station for the first time. Five minutes later, I heard it on the adult-alternative station for the first time.

And it occurred to me -- and this thought will lodge hard in the craws of fans -- that Linkin Park, with all its melody and Tiger Beat cuteness, is, in the end, a testosterock boy band.

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Curses to the Sci-Fi Channel, which has pushed back new Farscape eps to April. Noting, but doubting, the possibility that production has been delayed, Farscape followers are left to wonder, are the programmers hoping that if they hold out on their one good show, we'll give in and watch the crap they air the rest of the time?

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Need something to be angry about? "US [Southern] Baptists push Muslim conversion."

The head of the [Southern Baptist] convention, James Merritt, called on Baptists to unite in prayer for Muslims to try to bring Christ to the world's Muslims because they were lost without him.

He said God had been moving powerfully all over the world since 11 September and Christians should plead with God on the behalf of Muslims.

Gee, Mr. Merritt, then where was God on Sept. 11?

Something tells me the leader of the Southern Baptists is more successful at repelling potential Christians than recruiting them. At least I hope so.

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12:43 PM My to-do list today is a hydra. Every time I knock off one task, two more spring up in its place.

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After long deliberation, my verdict is that I hate dimes more than nickels. They're just too damn small. But my more important stand remains that all change except the quarter should be done away with. So there.

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