If you haven’t noticed, Ethel the Blog has been in peak form of late. So much so, in fact, that it stands out far above the rest. All of them. In my opinion, of course. In the last few days alone, Steven’s written pages and pages of top-notch material.

Napster of Puppets: Using the same techniques Metallica used to force a gazillion people off Napster, the Brunching Shuttlecocks are awarding $100, a T-shirt, and candy to a random person hosting their Björk Song.

RIP, Tito Puente. He was the best band teacher Lisa Simpson ever had.

From Poor Clio (a newish & very well done weblog) comes the CornCam from Iowa Farmer Today. Watch the corn grow! Thanks to this, I can re-live my tenth grade geography class. It was tought by Mr. “Action” Jackson (retired as of last week) – a tall redhead with a low monotone voice. He spoke in cliches, and his catch phrases were very predictable. So predictable, in fact, that to keep me and my friend Ryan awake, I created an “Action Jackson Baseball” game. <Warning: Nerd alert!!!> I spent several weeks analyzing his catch phrases, coming up with the statistical probability that each would be uttered. I then matched them up with plays from baseball that had close statistical matches (Say, batters hit a single 7.3% of the time; Mr. Jackson said “You betcha” 7.1% of the time. Therefor, “You betcha” equaled a single.) based on numbers from a sports almanac. Once done, Ryan and I, sitting in different rows, could play baseball games against each other by carefully listening and documenting the utterance of the catch phrases. Oh, what fun! Well, it was something to do, anyway. It’s strange, now that I think about it, that I then taught Junior High geography for a while. But, I digressed somehow. The CornCam. I distinctly remember (though my mind may be exaggerating a bit) a slide show that Action Jackson gave us titled “My Vacation to Iowa”. I think it was a multi-day presentation. It went something like this: “_< click> Here you see another typical Iowa corn field. You’ll notice my lovely wife standing next to the boulder. That boulder was transported here by glaciers thousands of years ago. Here you see a typical Iowa corn field. If you’ll look closely at the dirt I’m holding in my hand, you’ll see that it’s very black. Iowa dirt is very fertile. This is an Iowa corn field. The large boulder there at the side of the road was transported here by … _” Ahhh… high school! Oh – Mr. Jackson: If by some wonder of the modern age you are actually reading this… it’s been thirteen years now since I had that class. I’m sure my memory is playing tricks on me. I’m sure you were a great teacher.

Lee Iacocca is peddling an electric bicycle that I’d love to own. (Sorry. The wording was hard to resist.) I saw some at my Saturn dealer last time I was in. I’m going back Friday for a service visit. Of course, I have no money for an e-bike… but maybe they’ll let me have one for free to ride around Athens on and drum up business for them. Yeah! I’ll ask them.

“That dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard has laid poor Jesse in his grave. " Or, maybe not. The body of J. Frank Dalton, who died in 1951 claiming to be Jesse James, is being exhumed for testing to see if it really was. Did he fake his death in 1882 and live to be 104? We’ll know in three months or so. One of the James’ Gang’s hideouts was Meramac Caverns, just a few miles down the interstate from my Missouri hometown. If you take the tour, they’ll show you “Loot Rock,” where they divvied up the gold. You know, the caverns has advertising painted on every other barn from Utah to Ohio, but I can’t find a single official website. Hrmph.

I spent the last two nights sitting in the director’s chair auditioning strangers. How strange it was, too. I’ve been to so many auditions now that getting up there and doing cold readings or prepared bits doesn’t even phase me anymore. Recite Mary Had a Little Lamb while pretending I’m a blizzard? No problem. It’s just not stressful or nerve-wracking like it used to be. But this, watching all these people go by, was something new. “Read this ,” I’d say, and they’d read it. “Try that ,” I’d say, and it was tried. I’ve never had to do this before. This’ll be the fourth play I’ve directed (not counting the years of radio drama), but I was able to hand cast the others. “I’m doing this play. You’d be great for one of the parts. What do you say? " And it was cast. Here, I was bound to have open auditions. Published in the papers and the whole bit. I didn’t know hardly anyone there. And I was nervous. Me! Here I was, giving people two minutes to show me if I could work with them for the next two months or not. Some of them needed more time to show me, so I called them back for more. “Thank you. Next! " A parade of hopefulls, showing me their best. Now it’s cast. The mold is set. Wonderful people were turned away out of necessity. We’ve all got a week and a half now to collect our thoughts, catch our breath, and then it’s seven weeks of rehearsals. Whew!

While flipping channels the other day (going from the Food Network to The Simpsons , no doubt), I ran across Donutman, Duncan, & the Donut Repair Club. Apparently, life without Jesus is like a doughtnut. Which means life with Jesus is like an apple fritter. Sweet, sweet apple fritter…

“She ruled with an iron fist and she was a cruel leader, to put it bluntly. She even kicked out her own mother. " And now she’s dead, killed by those she ruled: Mutiny in the Druid Peak Pack.

A three minute Real Video preview of the live action The Tick pilot episode is now online, courtesy of The Four Color Review. It’s looking good!