Three things you can talk about this week:
- Brian Merlos
- Brian Merlos
- Brian Merlos
Talking Points
1. King Tut’s face
2. Musharraf’s martial law
3. An exploding comet visible to the naked eye
And three things you can’t:
1. Late-night show re-runs
2. Ugg boots
3. Pregnant pop stars
Quotes of the week
“He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education, but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”
-Jesse Benton, campaign spokesman for Ron Paul, on how Paul doesn’t advocate blowing up buildings even though he raised millions of dollars on Guy Fawkes day, a holiday commemorating a thwarted bombing attempt on the Houses of Parliament in 1605
“I would at this time venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, especially to all my listeners in the United States.”
-Pervez Musharraf in a statement about his decision to suspend Pakistan’s constitution.
YouTube Video of the Week
Rachael Ray doesn’t have anything on him
Who says the British don’t know how to cook?
UK beatboxing champion Darren “Beardyman” Foreman manages to serve up ingredients you’ll want to savor in a three-minute “cooking show.”
The bowls on his baker’s table contain not spices or flour but the essential components of an “eclectro-funk daddy superstar break.”
Deadpan in his blond wig and apron, Beardyman is more funny than instructional – but then, his series of kickdrum, snare and “white noise” imitations isn’t for armchair beatboxers. When he adds each component into his mixing bowl he makes a sound or what he calls an “effective break.”
Like a true professional, he has an already-made break at the ready, as Julia Childs could have the perfect soufflé materialize on command. Beardyman’s recipe may be hard to follow, but his tough-love instruction is golden.
-Abigail Colodner
See this and other YouTube videos of the week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily
Theme Party Suggestion
Get wrecked for the Edmund Fitzgerald
Toast in remembrance of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the ship that sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975 and thereafter shaped the November curriculums of elementary school music classes statewide. As for out-of-state friends unfamiliar with the history, educate them: “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down / Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee…”
Throwing this party? Let us know. TheStatement@umich.edu
Wikipedia article of the week
“Wikipedia”
Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, encyclopedia project operated by the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Many language versions of Wikipedia are free content, while others, such as the English version, include non-free material.
As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.41 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of November 3, 2007 it had over 2,075,000 articles consisting of over 902,000,000 words. Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Steadily rising in popularity since its inception,it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.
By the Numbers
23 -October’s death toll of U.S. service members killed in Iraq
120 -May’s death toll of U.S. service members killed in Iraq
170,000 -U.S. service members currently employed in Iraq
Source: The New York Times