This just in, via All Things Considered on NPR: Rapper Sir Mix-a-lot and the former members of Presidents of the United States of America have joined together to form Subset, and are now playing in clubs around Seattle. The bits on the radio sounded pretty swell. You can find a few blurbs about this here and here.

It’s been a while since the Brunching Shuttlecocks have made me laugh out loud, but they did great today with Lou Bega: A Career Retrospective (3:39 of fame). It’s the complete timeline of his career, from “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Mambo #5” (at 0:05, Lou Bega burst onto the music scene with little fanfare…) all the way past the final “A little bit of Monica in my life a little bit of Erica by my side, etc.” (at 2:43, left to a life of local fairs, mall openings and class reunions, Lou Bega was a sad man…). Huzzah, Brunching Shuttlecocks, huzzah!

Troma studios has a new film coming out, and Salon is there to cover it. The film’s called Terror Firmer , and has been described as Day For Night meets Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer through the eyes of Frank Capra. The article does a good job of covering the Troma mindset. A good friend of mine (hi Kim!) recently introduced me to Tromeo and Juliet , which was the first Troma film I’d seen since early college. Though it was no Toxic Avenger, I still enjoyed it.

Sleeping with the fishes: a CNN story about the “liveaboard” community – those people who live on their boats. I’ve often thought this would be a nice thing to do. Besides a houseboat, I’d need a plot of land for a garden. If I found one waterside, I wouldn’t need to pay a marina for a slip. And with broadband satellite connections becoming available, I could “telecommute” from just about anywhere.

The BBC has two stories up about Nick Park: Aardman Animations - the creators of hit clay characters Wallace and Gromit - has signed up to a five-film deal with Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and With three Oscars, four Baftas, a CBE and a Steven Spielberg deal under his belt, there’s no doubting Nick Park is a man of talent. Of the five upcoming films,no mention is made of a Wallace and Gromit full-length movie, but Chicken Run sounds wonderful nonetheless.

I went grocery shopping with Kim Basinger on Saturday. Athens has a new natural food store (named EarthFare) that is fantastic. When I was there this weekend, Ms. Basinger (born and raised here in Athens) was doing some shopping herself. Then we checked out side by side. Ooh, the excitement! For all you guys who got here by searching for “shopping with Kim Bassinger”, welcome to Kestrel’s Nest! Sorry, no prOn.

Happy Day-after-Halloween, everyone! Today’s the day to go buy lots of candy at low, low discount prices. If you like candy corn, anyway.

The Semantic Rhyming Dictionary: you want rhyming words? They’ve got you’re rhyming words right there! I had to write a series of limmericks for a board meeting presentation tonight (sometimes it’s fun to be on a board of directors), and this tool helped me tremendously. Like when I needed several rhyming words for “questions”.

Steven over at Ethyl the Blog wrote a bit about Harpo Marx on Tuesday. The play I’m directing next summer, The Man Who Came to Dinner, has a character based on Harpo and many others based on his social circle. The show’s not until July, but I’m really starting to get into it.

Lunch has been over for three hours now, but I can’t stop thinking about how good that fresh bananna pudding was. Still warm, it was the perfect companion for the bar-b-que sandwich I had.