This Month At Dontmindme.com — October 2002

Song of the Month: Ever hear a song briefly in a TV show or a commercial, and then you hear it maybe a year later on the radio, and low and behold it's a minor hit now? No? Well, that happened to me this week. The song is "Brother Down" by Sam Roberts, and I heard a snippet of it on Undergrads a while ago. A full year before the album the song is on was released, which is cool.

TV Show of the Month: There are some shows that I didn't watch when they were on originally, but thanks to syndication I can watch them now. NewsRadio is one of these shows. A&E runs two episodes every weekday (conveniently just before Magnum P.I.). When it first aired I really didn't get it. Now I do, and it's really quite funny. When you have a cast when every single person is (or was before) famous from something else, it should be. This famous cast includes people like Dave Foley (of Kids in the Hall fame), Maura Tierney (better known for being on E.R.), Andy Dick (best known for being, well, Andy Dick, and the late Phil Hartman, not to mention an impressive array of guest stars — James Cannes, Ben Stiller, Jon Lovitz, Jerry Seinfeld are a few examples. Like many other workplace comedies, it generally has little to do with the work, and is all about the people. Watch it.

Rerun of the Month: What is it with Vampires? Every time you turn around there's another movie or TV show about them. Of course, I've ranted about this before, almost a year and a half ago now, so why not go and read that rant now?

Fun Link of the Month: Sometimes when I'm surfing the net and I've hit all my usual sites, and I don't feel like updating this site, I find myself bored. What does one do on the net when one is bored? Well, the Internet is of course huge and there have to be thousands of non-boring sites out there you haven't seen yet, but where should you look? The answer is Bored.com. So obvious, but so handy. Now there's no excuse to be online and bored again.

Quote of the Month: "It's like we've released a panther." — Mike Wazowski in the animated short film "Mike's New Car."

Word of the Month: Zaftig. What exactly this word means is not entirely clear to me. So far as I can tell it's an old Yiddish word. I've heard it several times to mean fat, but the original meaning means, well, how do I put this politely, top heavy. But in a good way. So yes, I'm going to be using this word, like so many other words I use, when I want to say something but not have everyone understand it.

DVD of the Month: Monsters, Inc. is typical Pixar fare. So it's funny. Of course, with people like Billy Crystal and John Goodman, it should be. The animation is beautiful, the best Pixar has done to date, and there are two discs worth of content, including a hilarious short called "Mike's New Car." Monsters Inc. is well worth picking up, assuming you haven't bought it already.

Acronym of the Month: JTYSK. Just Thought You Should Know. Not a terribly complex, but one I tend to use from time to time in emails.

Mayhem of the Month: This isn't so much a prank as a project. I don't have the time or the willingness to do this, but I think it would be a fun project for anyone with slight antiestablishment tendencies. Build a short range FM transmitter in a vehicle. It's not hard to do, you can get good schematics for an FM transmitter easily enough on the web. A vehicle is the ideal site for this project, as you have a built in 12 volt power supply, the antenna could easily be concealed in the body of the car (someone ambitious could even use the car body itself as the antenna). Why built a short range FM transmitter in a vehicle? Well, if the radio is transmitting on a local radio frequency, you can overpower the local station over a small radius, and play whatever you want for the unsuspecting radio-listening public. Now, this happens to be somewhat illegal in most jurisdictions, and when I say jurisdictions, that includes the entire United States. So that's why you want this in a vehicle, it's a lot harder to trace, and you aren't going to leave it on all the time of course. So, while I encourage my readers to try this out, I also remind you that you could well be breaking local laws by actually using the transmitter. So if you do it, don't expect me to pay your bail.

Rumour of the Month: This one is from Variety, so it's not like I made this up (not that I ever make up my rumours of the month). If I did make rumours up, I'd make up stuff more believable than this. What's this rumour that's so out there? Well, apparently, Disney is looking at having Yuen Wo Ping, best known as the stunt coordinator on The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon helm a live-action take on the classic fairy tale Snow White. This could be either very, very cool, or completely preposterous. I look forward to finding out.