Sunday, October 5, 2003 - A man drowned in Fox Lake after he and a friend inadvertently blasted a hole in the bottom of their rowboat with a quarter stick of dynamite. They had thrown an M-250 explosive into the water, intending to kill fish, when a sudden gust of wind pushed their boat over the firecracker, and the boat sank about a hundred yards from shore. In a related story, a marital quarrel ended when a 25-year-old man picked up his 20-year-old wife and threw her off their eighth-floor apartment balcony. When she became tangled in the power lines below, he immediately leapt from the balcony, missing the power lines completely, and plunged to his death. The woman swung over to a nearby balcony in safety.
Monday, October 6, 2003 - DVDs. They cost more. You already own the video. You buy it anyway. Explain to me, then, why are there specks of dirt on the film print? Especially when the film in question is Taxi Driver. It’s bad enough that the DVD encoding algorithm loses its mind, trying to resolve any blackness with dancing pixel fuzz. But I did learn that De Niro’s shaved head and mohawk was a bald cap and makeup! I figured for sure Mr. Method had shaved his head. The biggest challenge, said make-up legend Dick Smith, was developing a paste that would plaster his real hair as flat as possible so the bald cap wouldn’t bulge. He explained with equal zeal how he rigged the gunshot to blow the guy’s hand apart.

Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - The actor refused to talk about the sex charges, insisting with his trademark grin, “I’m having a great time with this campaign. I’m having so much fun.” From Reuters, “Battling perceived villains in the media and the Democratic Party with characteristic testosterone, Arnold Schwarzenegger brushed aside allegations as he began the last stretch of his quest for California’s governor’s mansion on Monday. In today’s vote, Californians will decide whether to oust Gov. Gray Davis, an unpopular Democrat famous for his lack of charisma, then choose among a wild and woolly assortment of 135 replacement candidates.” Late Night’s Conan O’Brien is hoping and praying as are all comedians everywhere.
Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - My buddy who types with all ten fingers looks at my computer keyboard and says “What happened to your CAPS LOCK key?” I say “I pulled it off.” He says “Why?” I say “sO I DON’T HIT IT BY ACCIDENT AND TYPE WHOLE SENTENCES IN CAPS.” He says “Why did you pull off the INSERT key?” I say “I kept hitting it all the time. I couldn’t figure out what the devil was happening.” He says “Why pull off both Windows keys?” I say “The Start Menu kept popping up. Made me crazy.” He says “Dare I ask what these keys were?” I say “Sure, those were the SLEEP key, the WAKE UP key, and the POWER key.” He nods silently.
Thursday, October 9, 2003 - While flipping through Newsweek, I chuckled as they referred to Arianna Huffington as “My Big Fat Greek Headache.” Me, whenever she talked, I was reminded of Eddie Albert and “Green Acres.” But she gets the last laugh. Before you watch “The Special Interest Brothel,” realize that this Flash film is on her political website billed as “Watch Arianna clean up the slimiest bordello in the West in our new animated movie!” Ronald Reagan agrees “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” And also “Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”

Friday, October 10, 2003 - From Chris Rock, “Minimum wage means, if we could pay you less, we would.” - “America is the only country in the world where the poor people are fat.” - “Women are like the police. They could have all the evidence in the world but they still want the confession.” - “MTV is 20 years old, so you know what that means? In a couple years MTV is going to start watching VH-1.” - “You know the world has changed when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to go to war, and the 3 most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colin.”

Saturday, October 11, 2003 - From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Who would’ve ever guessed that Quentin Tarantino, director of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, two of the hippest, sharpest movies of the past decade, would ever be so five years ago. The great disappointment of Kill Bill - Vol. 1 isn’t that the movie is a virtuoso display of cinematic cleverness that adds up to zero. Or that you don’t care a whit about anyone in it. Or even that the cartoonish violence strives too desperately to up the ante on hipness. No, the great disappointment of Kill Bill is that so much of it is so unsurprising. In the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, Tarantino’s movie comes off as been there, kicked that.