Joke for you:
Two elephants are standing in a jungle clearing, both wearing party hats. Around them is strewn the remnants of birthday party decorations – horns, banners, confetti, etc.

ELEPHANT #1: “Wow, that was great. I can’t remember when I had a better time. Of course, that’s just a figure of speech.”

In surfing around among the sites in the “A.I.” online game (see yesterday’s entry), I’ve become fascinated with the idea of androids. There have been a lot of predictions of future societies and what they would look like, and most of the time we laugh at the “Logan’s Run” vision of the future. But just imagine if you could buy an android, outwardly indistinguishable from a human being, for, say, the price of a Lexus? It could be any race, sex, size, etc. that you wanted, and it would behave in exactly the way you specified to the manufacturer. The societal, ethical, legal and economic implications would be truly mindboggling. You would own a thing, an object, a possession that could look, act and feel just like a human being. Since it’s technically an object, you could use it for any purpose you wanted. No one would have to know that this was an android – even maybe the android itself. This stuff makes cloning seem easy and clearcut.

I can only hope that the movie deals with at least a few of these concepts. We’ll see.

Kevin should submit his new word to the pseudodictionary.

Well, it appears that my prediction from a month ago most likely won’t come true. If Colby wins the final immunity, he will most likely pick Keith for the final two, as he’s an easier win than Tina. If Tina wins the immunity (unlikely), she will probably pick Keith as well. And if Keith wins, well, my prediction is shot definitely. Still, I was pretty damn close.

Things are pretty clear-cut for the Colbster. Win the immunity, and he wins the million. Lose, and he comes in third.

If only Michael hadn’t fallen in that fire… I miss Alicia.

“The Blair Witch Project” had an innovative online advertising campaign that spun out the film’s mythology into a web site filled with fake backstory details. Now, Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” has an even more immersive online game component, with faxes, phone numbers, emails and interrelated web sites about the mysterious death of Evan Chan. Write the Web has an interesting article about it. If you want to play the game yourself, start by searching for “Jeanine Salla” on Google – she’s listed as “Sentient Machine Therapist” on the film’s posters.

“Touched by an Angel” has truly reached epic proportions of stupidity. Tonight’s morality play from Hell had Anabella Sciorra as a scientist who hatches a plan to clone Albert Einstein and implant the embryo in her very own uterus. Of course, anyone who follows “Touched” should know by now that if someone is a scientist, they must be stopped from whatever hellish Godless pursuit they are embroiled in. Along the way, we are treated to comparing cloning to the atomic bomb, blaming Einstein himself for Hiroshima, Harold Gould in an Einstein fright wig, and the creation of new angel Valerie Bertinelli (!) from cherry blossoms.

It’s the pop culture equivalent of a massive car crash – I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself. Where did I leave that Tarot deck?

I’ve been endlessly amused by all the “reporting” being done recently about GWB’s “First 100 Days.” Come on, people. FDR had a first 100 days; JFK had a first 100 days. Even using the same term is an insult. Watching him mug on the morning shows this week gave me chills – he looked like Jethro Bodine doin’ some cipherin’.

What’s scary is that our president is an idiot. What’s even scarier is that apparently, it doesn’t matter.

Rented Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” on DVD last night, mainly because the aforementioned Joe Dirt et al. didn’t seem to warrant plunking down the money in the multiplex, even if they do have stadium seating. I didn’t like the movie much when it was over, but since then I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I like it a lot more now. I just wish for once Spike Lee would make a movie without a MESSAGE. It’s sort of like how I wish Christopher Walken would try playing a normal, non-scary guy once in his life.

I always spend a lot of the time watching a Spike Lee movie trying to decipher all the MESSAGES he is trying to get across, and not enough time just enjoying the experience. I really don’t think Spike necessarily wants us to “enjoy” ourselves anyway, but rather contemplate and ruminate and discuss. That can get tiring sometimes.

So Colby “Mr. Unstoppable” Donaldson had his mom visit the Outback last night on Survivor:DV, in an exact replica of Sean “Dr. Stoopid” Kenniff’s dad’s visit last time. Except this time, Colby’s mom watched him shower; slept beside him in Colby’s new Pontiac Aztec; and prompted him to say as she left, “It was like a conjugal visit when you’re a prisoner.”

I hope to god Colby doesn’t know what “conjugal” means.