Welcome to this week's selection of Picks, where we have a little piece of wisdom we'd like to share with you. A while ago (say for argument's sake 1983, when the movie Arthur was a big hit) this gem may have been like music to your ears. But we figured we'd remind you anyway. See, it turns out that if you get caught between the moon and New York City, there's nothing that you can do, really nothing that you can do. The best that you can do, as it happens, is fall in love. We know it's crazy, but it's true. This, according to Christopher Cross. If you follow.
The above mentioned is such a truism we've heard that in the next couple of weeks Geraldo Rivera will be dedicating several shows to the topic. We believe the series will be called, "Lunatics in Love: Is My Husband the Man in the Moon?" Or something like that. We also heard that his producers proposed a few others. Here they are: "Moon over Manhattan: Is There No Escape?", "My Lover is Cheesey But That's Amore" and "Mary Jo and Joey Buttafuoco: It's Just a Phase." Or something like that.
You're skeptical. Of course! Who wouldn't be? But we know what we're talking about. Afterall, we read it in line at the grocery store. Geez, it's all over the National Enquirer. We wanted to know!
We're making up stories here, but that's just because we want to be featured in StoryWeb, the "gateway to original entertainment content on the internet." StoryWeb reviews, rates and collects online narratives. They're presented nicely by genre, which includes Horror, Adventure, Romance, Real World and Sci-fi. Whether you're interested in the ratings or not, it's the place to visit if you're in the mood for online "Once upon a time..." Alas, we saw no place for totally cheesey.
Don't like online stories? You'd rather make your own Homemade Casket? Fine. Go ahead. Sure, it "doubles as fine furniture until needed." No doubt. And it is certainly a way to "simplify with dignity and economy." But remember: you dig your own grave. End of sermon.
More on digging graves: a group of archaeologists are on an expedition in the high Andes attempting to find and unearth frozen Inca mummies sacrificed more than 500 years ago. You can follow the group at Ice Mummies of the Inca, which includes frequent news updates, photographs, mummy backgrounders, reports on the history and culture of the Inca people and more. Recently the crew discovered female shawl pins that appear to be linked to sacrificial mummies. The site accompanies a current NOVA/PBS television special on the expedition.
We hope that whatever artifacts the crew of archaeologists finds don't make their way into the oh so very unofficial Los Angeles County Coroner's Gift Shop. That would be wrong.
The other PBS television show everyone is talking about also has a web site. THE WEST, an eight-part documentary series by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives (of Civil War fame), tells an epic tale of the American West. Ergo the name. This site complements the show and includes an interactive timeline of events in The West, an impressive clickable map, a guide to the series, links and more. More indeed; perhaps one of the greatest features here is that you can search the site for documents used in the show. Documentary documents, so to speak. A number of our searches returned fascinating and worthwhile results. We never thought we'd be saying it, but we're saying it: go West, etc. etc. (If you're interested, Gary Kamiya's Shame and Glory, a review of THE WEST series, appears in Salon Magazine.)
Finally, a few words (from the newest frontier) about Web Pages That Suck. Conventional wisdom has it that one way to learn how to do something well is to study what is done badly. If you agree, go here. Vincent Flanders has put together a series of, uhm, examples of what doesn't work with the purpose of helping "people design effective and aesthetically pleasing web pages." His philosophy: "if a person is exposed to bad web page design they'll be less likely to use these techniques in the pages they create." Which leaves us hesitantly suggesting only this: it's time to take your pick(s).
(Our contest: We have one hundred Yahoo! t-shirts to be given away in some kind of Picks contest. These last two weeks we asked you to email us your ideas. You did. They're great. We'd love to see more. Again, if we use your idea, you'll get the first shirt. Email dumb-contest@yahoo.com. Thanks! This will probably be the last week of idea taking.)