This Month At Dontmindme.com — August 2002

Book of the Month: A lot of people have seen Fight Club, and with good reason. The movie features big name stars and a red hot director, and it stirred up a fair amount of controversy. Like the New York Yankees or anchovies on pizza, it's the sort of thing that people either love or hate. Well, if you liked the movie, you owe it to yourself to read the book. Fight Club is Chuck Palanhiuk's first novel, and it's brilliant. Dark, yes, all kinds of dark, and more than mildly disturbing in places. It's also wildly clever and I highly recommend it to brave readers.

TV Show of the Month: One thing about having cable is the availability of shows you just couldn't watch when you didn't have cable, especially ones in reruns five nights a week. One such show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Considering it's been on for six full seasons I feel like I've arrived just as the party is starting to wind down. On the one level I can't believe this show actually was produced, considering it's about a petite blonde who kills vampires. The overall cleverness of the series almost restores one's faith in network executives. Almost.

Game of the Month: Okay, I'm not sure this really counts as a game as such, but my roommate called me down to watch it on TNN a few hours ago, and lo, I was entertained. It's Slamball. Take basketball and extreme it up a little. And when I say a little, I mean a lot. It's full contact basketball with protective gear and trampolines. In short, everything that basketball really needs to entertaining for those of us that don't watch basketball. I so want to play it. Soon.

Rumour of the Month: Here's a completely unsubstantiated rumour that probably isn't true but I'm going to post anyway, as it did appear in an actual newspaper (The Jakarta Times, actually). The rumour goes thusly — David Bowie wants to play the villain in the 21st Bond movie.

Useful Link of the Month: You know those hidden features on DVDs I talk about from time to time? Want to know how I know how to find them? I'm going to let my secret out of the bag, but just this once. The site is DVD Review and they have a huge easter egg department which I have provided a direct link to. Want to access the "Klown Auditions" on Killer Klowns From Outer Space? This site will tell you how. Now why you want to I can't explain, but that's up to you.

Word of the Month: You know the cell phone and pager and PDA and maglite whatnot that you see hanging from people's belts? Now there is a collective term for all of that. Beltware. I can't claim credit for making it up, but I'm going to start using it.

Quote of the Month: "I am the bastard son of Claire Huxtable" Chip Douglas in The Cable Guy. Yes, it's a rather odd quote, but I couldn't resist putting it up for this month.

Fun Site of the Month: Do you like shoes? Do you have trouble finding shoes you really like. Not anymore. Now you can make custom shoes on the 'Net. That's right, your own custom shoes. A friend pointed Cmax.com out to me as the coolest thing she's seen in ages, and it's every bit as cool as described. You can completely customize a pair of shoes from soul to tongue and if you come up with a design that you love, you can order the shoes. On a scale of one to ten, that's very cool.

Prank of the Month: This one is inspired by a Saturday Night Live sketch. When you're at someone's place (or even if you aren't if you know their voicemail password/answering machine code) change the voicemail/answering machine greeting. Don't change it very much, in fact say the exact same words that they do, but use as effeminate/swishy a voice as possible. If it's a female voice on the machine, use a gruff masculine voice. Don't change the content of the message, just the voice. This prank is easy enough to pull off, since most voicemail systems don't require a password to access the admin functions, and you just need the host/victim out of the room for two or three minutes. Try it out.

DVD of the Month: It actually came out in June, but I only managed to pick it up two weeks ago due to it being a really entirely too popular. I speak of course of UHF. It's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and finally it's on DVD. The transfer is nice and clean, the menus are funny, and the deleted scene montage makes a complete mockery of deleted scenes in general and manages to be hilarious while doing it. Plus there are not one, not two, not even three, but actually five different hidden items. How cool is that?