Skattershooting while wondering whatever became of film director John Hughes (you know, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Ferris Buller, She's Having a Baby):

• Shows like The Swan have to be a boom to plastic surgeons everywhere.
• Speaking of The Swan, the show final episode was a pageant of all of those that had a dramatic makeover. When they were about to announce the winner with the two finalist clutching hands, my wife said "And if in the following year the winner's chin should drop, the first runner up . . . ."
• This pic is of A-Rod on his return to Arlington. He caught the foul ball and did not fall down.
  
• How much is Mike Myers worth at the box office? Shrek 2 earns $102 million in its opening weekend and every Austin Power's movie makes a fortune. He, for whatever reason, is box office gold.
• Of all mortgages created during the week of May 16th, 25.2 % were adjustable rate instead of fixed rate. (Dallas Morning News 5/24/03 p. 4D)
• James Woods, the defense lawyer in Indictment: The McMartin Trial said at the very beginning of the movie as he watched the McMartins' arrest:  "I want that case". I feel that way all the time. And then sometimes I wish I hadn't got what I wished for.
• "I'm going to send you to bed without supper" seems like a very odd punishment.
• I'm currently watching a very old movie, The Lost Weekend. It won an academy award for best picture so I thought I would give it a shot. So far so good.
  
• I have never seen an episode of CSI.
  
• I'm becoming a documentary freak and a great one I just watched was One Day in September about the 1972 Olympic tragedy in Germany where 11 Israelis died in a terrorist/hostage takeover. I never knew much about it, and the documentary was fantastic. The most amazing aspect is that one of the actual terrorists (the only surviving one, provided some narration but we never got to see his face).  He is said to be living in an undisclosed location in Africa.
• That was the same Olympics where Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in swimming. He was rushed out of the country when the hostages were taken. Why? Because he was Jewish. I never knew that.
  
• Another interesting fact about the crisis was that there was basically no security in the Olympic village because the Germans were trying to live down World War II.  The remaining terrorist said that when they were scaling the fence to get into the village, they ran across some drunk American athletes that were sneaking in late. They then helped each other over the fence.
• If there were no photos of the Iraq prison scandal no one would care. Take a few digital pictures, and it might cost the president the election.
• One of Jerry Seinfeld's best lines concerned pro sports and how athletes jump from team to team every year. It has become so bad that you can't even keep up with who is playing for your favorite team.  "When it's all said and done, we're just cheering for laundry," he said.
  
• You can't show the Nick Berg video to a high school class but it's ok to show the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination?
• By the way, I put up a link to the Nick Berg video on Wise County on the Web and was bombarded with emails telling me to take it down. Hey, you don't have to click on the link.  And it was conservative Rush Limbaugh who told me "everyone should see it".
  
• When on the road, MLB players get $77.50 a day to eat
• The Secret Lives of Dentists was a strange movie. The middle 30 minutes of it was consumed by showing how a family copes when all of them catch the flu.
• Director M. Night Shyamalan has a cool name.
• I generally think Mark Cuban is a goofball, but his "blog" is pretty interesting.
• Ted Benavides, city manager of Dallas, announced his retirement at age 53. His pension will be $173,600 per year for the rest of his life.
• One out of every 75 men in U.S. living in prison or jail. (per The Drudge Report)
• How many times can a three year old say, "What you doin'?"
  
• I thought it was a sure thing that Firestone would go out of business after it recalled 65 million tires in 2000 and became the target of multiple lawsuits.
  
• Quick: what's the difference between the Taliban and Al Quida? I honestly don't know.
  
• The Virgin Suicides was great. (And not a bad cast: James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, and Josh Hartnett)
• Baby Jessica graduated from Greenwood High School near Midland this week
• A 2,182 square foot condo (that's a condo) across from the new Radio Shack building in downtown Fort Worth is going for $435,000
• One of the Yahoo co-founders, Jerry Yang, has announced he will sell 8 million shares of the stock this year. He dumped 3 million in 2002 and 3 million in 2003. His net worth is estimated at $2 billion.
• This is crazy: Last weekend Alberta Martin, the "oldest living widow of a Civil War soldier", passed away. Before you do the math and consider the Civil War ended in 1865, the lady actually married the soldier after the war ended. Much later. They were married in 1927 when he was 81 and she was 21! Get this: they also had a son so we still have a guy walking around that can say "my daddy fought in the Civil War." But get this: the marriage lasted only four years because the former soldier died of, ahem, old age. However, the widow then married the soldier's grandson and they continued to be married for 50 years!