Sunday Burst of Weirdness

A grab-bag this week:

:: OK, this really isn't weird at all, but it's interesting and I thought I'd plop the link here. Bill Altreuter has a link to the 25 best movies you've never seen. For me, it's the 23 best movies I've never seen, since I've actually seen two of the ones on this list. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension is in my opinion one of the touchstone flicks of geekdom, in that you can't claim to be an SF geek if you haven't seen it. I'll even use one of its lines ("Whoa, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to.") in everyday conversation in hopes that someone will recognize it, but so far, no dice. The other one that I've seen is the wonderful Time After Time, in which Jack the Ripper flees capture in 1890s London via a time machine that his friend, HG Wells (yes, that HG Wells) has built, and ends up in 1979 San Francisco. This film deserves classic status, in my opinion -- it's a smart, taut thriller.

:: Greg of Delenda Est Carthago links Strange Maps, which is a blog about exactly what it says: strange maps. I'd link a favorite, but they're all just so cool; I plan to some serious archive-digging over there in the next few days. If there's a surer way to make me think you're a complete weirdo than saying "I don't like maps", I haven't found it. (I could go off on a rant here about fantasy novels these days not including maps of their made-up worlds, but I won't. Nor will I rant about fantasy novels that include maps that don't have the locations of the novel indicated within them. Grrrr.)

(Obviously this blog is quite graphics-heavy.)

:: Tom the Dog chronicles the thespianic exploits of Neil Flynn, the Janitor from Scrubs, wherein it turns out that he's played a lot of cops. Curiously, he omits Flynn's appearance on That 70s Show as the disco bouncer who lets all of Eric's friends in, but keeps Eric outside because Eric's...Eric.

:: Via Warren Ellis: Apparently the Pentagon has confirmed that it spent $7.5 million trying to develop a chemical bomb that, when dropped on enemy soldiers, would make those soldiers...gay. And they did this in the 1990s. Seven point five million dollars. I just can't say anything more than that. How stupid are we, anyway?

:: Finally, in honor of the impending telecast of Bob Barker's departure from The Price is Right, here are the three of the luckiest people who have ever been on that show. First, check out this finish from a very old show (in the 1970s, probably), remembering that in the Showcase at the end, if you're the winning bidder and you're closer than $100 to the actual price without going over, you win both Showcases:



Then there's this guy, who decided to spice up the Showcase Showdown thing -- that's where you spin the big wheel -- with a marriage proposal. (No, not to Bob Barker.) They'll be telling this tale 'round the Thanksgiving dinner table for many years to come:



And finally, a longer segment that highlights the fact that sometimes pure guessing can actually triumph over complete cluelessness:



Wouldn't it suck if Barker's last show were to end in a double overbid?