I love Big Brother-not the show.

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM bends it into top 10!

"Gurinder Chadha's long-running hit comedy Bend It Like Beckham reached a major industry milestone over the weekend of May 2-4 by entering the North American Top 10 in its eighth frame of release. With an estimated $1.46 million in ticket sales, the Fox Searchlight film finished the weekend box office race in the number nine spot... While all other films in the Top 10 played in over one thousand theaters each, "Beckham" remained in limited release screening in only 484 locations. The distributor added 63 new theaters to the run over the weekend and will expand to more than 500 sites on Friday, May 9. Since its March 12 opening, the PG-13 film has played in a combination of arthouse cinemas and commercial multiplexes and has grossed $11 million making it the year's highest-grossing limited-release film." Yay! Any comments on the movie?

KICKING OUR OIL ADDICTION

In the 2002 model year, fuel economy averaged 20.4 miles a gallon, the lowest since the fleet averaged 19.2 miles a gallon in 1980. Fuel economy peaked at 22.1 miles a gallon in 1988 but has mostly fallen since. I'd say this is rather pathetic, given our technology. And the Bush administration, instead of supporting legislation to regulate fuel-efficiency in cars and SUVs, is in favor of hydrogen powered fuel-cells. Great idea, but strategic -- this technology can't be mass produced for a number of years. The president looks great, but doesn't have to do anything. Win-win solution.

"We have 30 models that get over 30 miles per gallon, but the top 10 most fuel-efficient vehicles are less than 2 percent of sales," [the VP for communications at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the auto industry's chief lobbying group] said. "I would call this report a consumer sales report. It shows what consumers are buying." (This logic doesn't make any sense to me. If most of your "cool" cars are gas-guzzlers, are consumers dictating sales of fuel-efficient cars or are you?)

But CHECK out this press release! The Detroit Project, founded by Arianna Huffington teamed up with NRDC's Break the Chain project and created TV ads highlighting our dependence on oil.

"America needs a line of cars that can get us to work in the morning without sending us to war in the afternoon," said Huffington. "If today's vehicles averaged 40 mpg, we would save more oil than we import each year from the Persian Gulf. We have the technology to start fixing the problem, but the Big Three in Detroit and their friends in Congress and the White House are blocking the road."

SPITTING ON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

This just in: A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq. 'Sometimes it's necessary to use a small and effective war to prevent a much more dangerous war in the future,' Jan Simonsen, a right-wing independent in Norway's parliament, told Reuters. 'If nobody acted then Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction and, in five or 10 years, could have used them against Israel,' he said. (shall we rename the award the Nobel Bomb-the-hell-outta-them-for-11-years-until-they-can't-even-eat-and-then-occupy-their-country-in-four-weeks Award?)

Top 10 President Bush Excuses for not finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq:

(from the David Letterman Show)
10. "We've only looked through 99% of the country"
9. "We spent entire budget making those playing cards"
8. "Containers are labeled in some crazy language"
7. "They must have been stolen by some of them evil X-Men mutants"
6. "Did I say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I meant they have goats"
5. "How are we supposed to find weapons of mass destruction when we can't even find Cheney?"
4. "Still screwed up because of Daylight Savings Time"
3. "When you're trying to find something, it's always in the last place you look, am I right, people?"
2. "Let's face it -- I ain't exactly a genius"
1. "Geraldo took them"

ANOTHER TREATY? BAH, WE DON'T SIGN THOSE!

Did you know that Philip Morris is the #1 corporate contributor to the Republican Party as well as the leading exporter of tobacco? No wonder the US is one of two countries that wants to make exceptions to an anti-tobacco treaty that was negotiated by 171 countries. "Several critics have accused the Bush administration of double standards on cigarettes, publicly identifying them as a major health risk at home while quietly working to ease restriction on US tobacco companies overseas." The Bush administration claims that it intends to sign the treaty, but in a letter to the World Health Organization said that it wanted "a clause allowing governments to opt out of any provision they found objectionable." So...umm...what's the point of a treaty? The US has spurned a few other pretty huge treaties in the past few years.

PATRIOT RAID

"The USA PATRIOT Act was passed into law on October 26, 2001 in order to facilitate the post 9/11 crackdown on terrorism (the name is actually an acronym: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.") Like most Americans, I did not recognize the extent to which this bill foregoes our civil liberties. Among the unprecedented rights it grants to the federal government are the right to wiretap without warrant, and the right to detain without warrant. As I quickly discovered, the right to an attorney has been seemingly fudged as well..."