FERRETS: Forced to watch The Matrix.

ON THE PITCHFORK: Lots of traffic! More than Ron Jeremy, even.

HELP TSUNAMI VICTIMS and get your buzz o­n.

LAURA BUSH: Rawkin' out, dude.

TERI HATCHER: Saving herself for me; very sweet.

KIRSTEN DUNST: Wardrobe Malfunction. NSFW, obviously.

ALL SONGS CONSIDERED: NPR's Best of 2004 lists.

MOVIE MISTAKES lists the Biggest of 2004.  The shocker is Shrek 2; an animated movie with continuity flaws?

TO KNOW ME is to know why.

THE NAVY has scads of photos of tsunami relief operations, like this and this.  And from those links, Craig could find a lot of cool photos of airplanes.

NASA has scads of cool photos from the Saturn probe.

ROGER DALTREY honored by the Queen.

MEDIA ROUNDUP: Blogs are taking o­n mainstream media, with videoblogs streaming tsunami footage  worldwide.  Newspapers face the impact of blogs.  Magazine readership has not increased in 15 years.

iFILM is starting a viral video channel.

STEREOGUM notes that Britney wants to direct.

THE NEW YORK POST has media predictions for 2005.

GOSSIP: Page Six and Jeannette Walls dish their winners and losers for 2004.

GOOGLE: If you missed the profile o­n "60 Minutes," you can read the transcript.  My favorite part was about the hiring process:
"Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems. Score well o­n the test, and you might get a job interview. And then another and another. o­ne recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department."

GUIDED BY VOICES: Mayor Daley formally declared Dec. 30 "Guided By Voices Day" in Chicago. My take is in the Reviews section in the left sidebar. The Chicago Sun-Times had a preview, as did Metromix, an offshoot of the Chicago Tribune.

THE VANDALS HIT BAGHDAD: Not looters, but the classic punk band, which served anarchy burgers as a tonic for the troops. Bass player Joe Escalante said, "Everyone's nice. Everyone has a better attitude than we thought they'd have when we first got here. Everyone's a lot smarter than most people think the military is."

SPIN reviews YoLaTengo's eighth night of Hanukkah show.

THE dBS have a website, complete with merch and multimedia. Check the mesaage boards to find a member named "Peter H."

WE CAN REBUILD HIM: We have the technology.

I AM LEARN likes bluegrass, but not U2, not so much. I'll bet I Am Learn knows a song... would you like him to sing it?

LOCAL BANDS MAKING GOOD: Seattle Weekly lists their Top 20 local releases. So does the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, including:

Willie Walker & the Butanes, "Right Where I Belong" (One on One) -- A singer for Memphis' Goldwax label in the days of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, Walker resurrected his recording career with the help of the Twin Cities' answer to the MGs and a British label owner who seeks out classic soul artists. Butanes frontman Curtis Obeda provided the joy-and-pain songs, and Walker sang them like he's still living them. (98 points); and

Olympic Hopefuls, "The Fuses Refuse to Burn" (2024) -- Local indie-rock stalwarts Darren Jackson (Kid Dakota) and Erik Appelwick (Vicious Vicious) put on matching track suits and similar pop sensibilities for this supposed side-project, whose Cars-like catchiness and ironic flavor quickly made it one of the most successful bands of the year. (72 points)

THE MONITOR lists 2004's overlooked pop.

STEP INTO LIQUID: Some nutball surfed the tsunami.

THE QUAD CITIES TIMES lists its Top 20 Albums. So does Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot. Music blogger Largehearted Boy's list goes to eleven.

BUBBLEGUM MACHINE serves up the downloads weekly under the following Manifesto:

If it's ever been on K-Tel or Ronco, it's in. If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.

I liked the pairing of Jellyfish and Nick Lowe, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, and Rick Nelson and the Rev. Louis Overstreet.

REP. BOB MATSUI (D-CA) is dead of a rare disease at 63. With Social Security reform on the table, his knowledge will be missed.

NORM GERAS is seeking your Top 10 greatest rock and pop songs for his poll. The deadline is January 16th.

STEREOGUM lists tracks that influenced Dylan, with a link to streaming audio.

TSUNAMI RELIEF: British International Development Secretary Claire Short is upset that the U.S. is delivering tsunami relief outside the U.N. structure. Jan Egeland, the U.N. official who called Western countries "stingy" a while back, is busy taking credit for what USAID is doing in places like Aceh. U.S. military efforts to provide relief are massive and welcomed in Aceh, providing the military logistics that Mr. Egeland called "as valuable as cash or gold."

PODCASTING: Downloadable audio streams may be the Next Big Thing. The basics are discussed here. The impact it could have, and the role former MTV VJ Adam Curry in promoting it can be found here.

THE SHADOW INTERNET: Wired looks at the pirate networks.

THE SEATTLE TIMES had a cute piece on collecting vinyl.

IT'S NEW YEAR'S ROCKIN' EVE: Thanks to everyone for stopping by! In particular, thanks to Sylvia Hauser, for sharing her engagement with us and boosting the site's traffic considerably. No thanks to the Sanity Worm, which apparently tried to attack the site last week. Thanks to our site admin Lance, for keeping us secure (and for adding the new weather module to the right). However, the attacks probably inflated our traffic stats for this month. If the traffic drops next month, I may have to bug Sylvia to move up her wedding.

CHAMPAGNE: a guide to the real stuff and other sparkling wines.

BLOGGER RODNEY BALKO rounds up the good news of 2004.

HANK "SUGARFOOT" GARLAND, who played guitar on the Everly Borthers' "Bye Bye Love," Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and "I Fall To Pieces," Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" and "Only The Lonely," and Elvis Presley's "Little Sister" and "It's Now or Never," and many, many more, dies at 74.

FILMOCULOUS lists his Blogs of the Year. If you've ever wondered where I find this endless stream of trivia, the sites he lists this year are a pretty good answer.

TSUNAMI: The internet and cellphones aid the seach for the missing.

STINGY AMERICANS: Daniel Drezner -- an expert on the subject --returns from a sabbatical to provide a balanced look, with a little for each side of the argument.

RIDE THE SNAKE: Or at least follow it to safety in a tsunami.

THE DOORS take on a slumlord at a familiar locale.

DONALD TRUMP launches a line of hair care products. No, really. Anyone who can sell that should be his next Apprentice.

CLONED CATS: finding a market in Hollywood.

SPACE STATION ASTRONAUTS lose weight on a diet of candy, after the prior crew ate too much.

SHARON OSBOURNE wants to manage Liza Minelli. I thought it was Liza who was just hospitalized for the head injury.

JANE GALT asks: "Who knows what the word for a group of ferrets is?"

YOU CALL IT VIDEOGAMING, I call it pre-med.

EINSTEIN: We all know he was important; The Economist explains why, in language people other than Jon Pratt can understand.

JOHNNY DEPP tops the Internet Movie Database's STARMeter celebrity ranking for 2004. Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Angelina Jolie round out the top five.

NYDN DAILY DISH: Vanessa Williams delusional; Patti Hansen speaks ill of the late Linda McCartney; Debbie Gibson upset with Lohan, Spears, Simpson, etc.

MOVE ON: About a half dozen supporters of John Kerry are holding vigil in front of his house, still hoping for a Kerry presidency.

FIRST THE TSUNAMI, now this.

DER SPIEGEL: Bloggers at Front Line of Relief Efforts.

A CANDLE GOES OUT: Jerry Orbach, dead at 69. Prostate cancer is generally treatble if caught early; if only this technology had been around sooner...

THE ECONOMIST has a survey of nanotechnology that helps explain what Jon Pratt does for a living without a lot of jargon.

OSCAR HANDICAPPING: You can get the odds for some catagories at Intrade, which was a pretty good indicator for the 2004 election.

A USED BRITNEY SPEARS on eBay. Still cheap, just like the "real" one.

PARIS HILTON vows to be more annoying in 2005, in hopes of topping the aforementioned Britney.

TWIN CITIES, TWO SITES: Given the contingent of Blockheads clustered in Minnesota, I thought it worth linking to Slanderous Minneapolis, a local gossip blog, and Crap From the Past, the site for a St. Paul radio show featuring...

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S Best of 2004, fwiw.

TERRY HEATON sees "A Year of Trouble for Broadcasters," especially local broadcasters.

QATAR bans child jockeys in camel races, a big step forward for human rights in the oil-rich Gulf state. The children are to be replaced by robots. No, really.

NIKKI FINKE has her favorite showbiz quotes of 2004, including one from director Cameron Crowe.

ONE MAN LORD OF THE RINGS: 40 characters. 3 masterworks. 3600 seconds.

BUSINESS WEEK looks at video blogs.

SIZE MATTERS IN REPRODUCTION, according to this excerpt from Carl Zimmer's article for The New York Times.

FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL RAMSEY CLARK will help defend Saddam Hussein. I guess the bang-up job he did for Slobodan Milosevic sealed the deal.

PORN is no longer the top spam category, though the way a particular type of junk e-mail was classified may be debatable.

TSUNAMI: Okay, I'm giving in to my better nature. If you're feeling like Lennon at the end of Sgt. Pepper's, there are many groups to which you might donate a few bucks. USAID lists a bunch of them. The Command Post has even more. You can even give to the Red Cross at Amazon. If you want more info -- including amateur video -- on the story, you can look here, here, and here. BuzzMachine has a quick hit on the blogging of the tsunami. For my part, I intend to console injured supermodel Petra Nemcova over the loss of her boyfriend. After all, if Indian sex workers can pitch in, it's the least I can do.

BTW, if you check out those lists of groups providing aid, it may occur to you that Americans provide a lot of help to people around the world through non-governmental organizations. So when some U.N. stooge implies that we're stingy (and has to backpedal), it should be noted that the number he's using for foreign aid represents cash payments to other governments, which is a fraction of what Americans give. It also excludes aid given in the form of food; for example, the U.S. gives 57 percent to the budget of the World Food Program to help feed 104 million people in 81 countries. So the next time someone making a tax-free, six-figure salary from an organization that let Saddam Hussein skim some 21 Billion dollars in food aid into arms and bribes wants to deliver a lecture on foreign aid, he might want to remember the old saying about attracting more flies with honey than vinegar.

HOW 'BOUT THEM CLONES?

CATS AND DOGS: get armor.

HAD I RECEIVED MONEY for Christmas, I might have gotten this before the tsunami hit.

THE NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY recognizes an eclectic group of movies, from Schindler's List (full disclosure: a family friend adapted the screenplay) to Jailhouse Rock, from Unforgiven to Eraserhead. Ann Althouse covers the inclusion of the classic 1951 civil defense film, Duck and Cover.

SUSAN SONTAG, dead at 71.

STEAM-POWERED CAR: It looks cool and goes pretty fast, but is impractical for regular travel, sadly.

OSCAR HANDICAPPING: The Hot Blog notes that the likely Best picture nominees have not had such low box office since 1989. I don't know whether that's a bad thing, however.

THE INVENTOR OF CDs AND DVDs made very little money. Neither did Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world-wide web, but some group just wrote him a big check to say thanks, iirc, so this other guy can hope his story gets wide circulation.

LOW CULTURE notices an odd pattern at The New York Times.

KATE BOSWORTH: Gawker excerpts some of her wit and wisdom from a GQ interview.

THE NEW YORKER notes the impact of the murders of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn on the Netherlands. Which is more than can be said for most of the big media outlets in the U.S.

I'M A COKE ADDICT. Okay, a Diet Coke addict. Imagine my glee in seeing an op-ed defending soft drinks in the Boston Globe.

ELVIS PRESLEY, wherever he is, would enjoy this approach to computers.

PSYCHIC PREDICTIONS FOR 2004: Not so psychic. Who'da thunk it?