Before looking at the questions I will open the bidding at four correct

Wherein dentist I should have known that


1. nickel
2. Star Trek
3. Lion
4. Hearst palm slapping forehead after looking up answer
5. Antarctica
6. Had no idea either were working on movies, so I'll take a peak -- The Last Airbender? No idea what's missing. I bet I could make 100 guesses and not come close.
7. No idea


100 guesses for the word did M. Night Shyamalan dropped from the title of his next movie (The Last Airbender) to avoid confusion with James Cameron's next movie:


1. The Last Airbender Unbends
2. The Last Airbender Dies
3. The Last Airbender Falls
4. The Last Airbender Lives
5. The Last Monkeyfighting Airbender
6. Wow, The Last Airbender
7. Jason: The Last Airbender
8. Jessica: The Last Airbender
9. Truly The Last Airbender
10. The Last Great Airbender
11. The Last New Airbender
12. The Last Old Airbender
13. The Last Airbender Reborn
14. Unbending The Last Airbender
15. Retelling The Last Airbender
16. Bitch-slapping The Last Airbender
17. Arresting The Last Airbender
18. Lecturing The Last Airbender
19. Ghostrider: The Last Airbender
20. The Last Ghostrider Airbender
21. The Last Airbender Ghostrides
22. The Last Airbender Rides
23. The Last Airbender
24. The Last Airbender Lectures
25. Riding The Last Airbender
26. Building The Last Airbender
27. Hunting The Last Airbender
28. Killing The Last Airbender
29. Kissing The Last Airbender
30. Healing The Last Airbender
31. Hugging The Last Airbender
32. Carrying The Last Airbender
33. Timeshifting The Last Airbender
34. The Last Timeshifting Airbender
35. The Last Airbender Timeshifts
36. The Last Jewish Airbender
37. The Last Catholic Airbender
38. The Last Euroasian Airbender
39. The Last Fat Airbender
40. The Last Skinny Airbender
41. The Last Flightless Airbender
42. The Last Headless Airbender
43. The Last Male Airbender
44. The Last Female Airbender
45. The Last Sexless Airbender
46. The Last Sexual Airbender
47. The Last Lonely Airbender
48. Lonely: The Last Airbender
49. Friendly: The Last Airbender
50. The Last Friendly Airbender
51. The Last Blue Airbender
52. The Last Red Airbender
53. The Last Green Airbender
54. The Last American Airbender
55. The Last Mars Airbender
56. The Last Spanish Airbender
57. The Last Russian Airbender
58. The Last Chinese Airbender
59. The Last Last Airbender
60. Fooling The Last Airbender
61. Hey! The Last Airbender
62. Look! The Last Airbender
63. Massaging The Last Airbender
64. The Last Pathogenic Airbender
65. The Last Carcinogenic Airbender
66. Smoking The Last Airbender
67. In The Last Airbender
68. Out The Last Airbender
69. Outting The Last Airbender
70. The Mostly Last Airbender
71. The Mystifyingly Last Airbender
72. The Satisfyingly Last Airbender
73. Descending The Last Airbender
74. The Last Airbender Descends
75. The Last Airborn Airbender
76. The Last Unborn Airbender
77. Dropkicking The Last Airbender
78. Leaving The Last Airbender
79. Blogging The Last Airbender
80. Twittering The Last Airbender
81. The Last Airbender Twitters
82. The Last Twittering Airbender
83. The Last Functioning Airbender
84. Galaxy: The Last Airbender
85. Sunrider: The Last Airbender
86. Suborning The Last Airbender
87. The Last Airbender Deposition
88. Krakotoa: The Last Airbender
89. Everest: The Last Airbender
90. Hitler: The Last Airbender
91. The Last Human Airbender
92. The Last Robot Airbender
93. The Last Android Airbender
94. The Last Airbender Story
95. The Last Airbender Wine
96. The Last Airbender Whine
97. The Last Airbender Whines
98. Drinking The Last Airbender
99. Clouds: The Last Airbender
100. Deflating The Last Airbender

Musical Rebus #5

Wherein three words and for the second word I was going to use a photo of a New York Giant Hall of Fame outfielder






At Mental Floss, search Sandy Wood's archive for "Really, Really Bad Rebuses." Bad, I don't know. Hard, definitely. I will study these for inspiration and images to steal.

CLVIII

Wherein claritin seems to have stopped working while the zyrtic is picking up the slack


1. Statue of Liberty
2. 3
3. Julius Caesar
4. France
5. Whatever the ultimate fighting thing is called
6. DK
7. Banjo players

Musical Rebus #4

Wherein from Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitar songs of all time

Short quote: saxier

Wherein yakkity yak


Nic Brown:

1) I Know What Boys Like, the Waitresses. For a while I didn’t realize how perverse it was of me to dance to this song with my daughter. “I know what boys like. Boys like me.” I felt like a cretin when I actually listened to the lyrics. But my daughter isn’t concerned. She’s only 10 months old. All she cares about is that, when the over-the-top sax solo nears, I say: “Who loves the sax solo? Who loves the sax solo?” Then it hits, and I say, “You do!” and she screams.

3) New Position, Prince. This is on the soundtrack for the film “Under the Cherry Moon,” one of the worst movies ever made. It’s amazing to me that it could generate this album. It came out soon after “Purple Rain,” and the songs on it are better, the arrangements are tighter, and the production is clean and utterly pared down (exactly the opposite of whatever Prince is putting out these days). “New Position” is so spare that, on the intro, the most explosive part is when a loud woodblock inexplicably comes in for one measure tapping straight robotic eighth notes. It’s like Prince saying, “Hi. I can do whatever I want, no matter how ridiculous, and this will still be funky.”

Bodyguard?

Wherein glad I'm not the only incoherent one around here


I'd love to hear how Google News matched up this picture with this story. From July 8:

WEEK'S QUESTIONS THIS

Wherein a practitioner of Bozoan known as a Bozoite must journey to Chicago at least on
ce in their life

1. a bee
2. 300
3. Bozoans, as led by Bozo the Clown
4. Sponge Bob
5. Tour Day France
6. oxyclean
7. All have Operas based on them

Short quote:verbifying

Wherein what else can I say / all journalists are


Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage:

downplay
Copperud 1980 terms this verb "journalese," and William Safire publicly apologized in his New York Times column of 24 July 1983 for using it. New York journalists seem a bit diffident about using compound words of which adverbs form the first part (see, for instance, UPCOMING).

Downplay is a relatively new verb, evidently going back no farther than 1954. It's main use does seem to be in jounalism: almost all of our evidence comes from newspapers and magazines. Thirty years in the business seems to have established it for genereal use. Here is a cross-section of our evidence [omitted].

Musical Rebus #3

Wherein rap

A list of hard to find movies I enjoyed and want to see again

Wherein ordered by year

1. The Stunt Man (1980)
   
2. Comfort and Joy (1984)
   
3. Bliss (1985)
   
4. The Pope Must Die (1991)
   
5. The Music of Chance (1993); This had one screening in Atlanta and isn't available on DVD.
   

So close

Wherein love the chases in the mountains


Stage 6, the first mountain stage from Girona to Barcelona with five climbs. David Millar, from Great Britain and riding for Slipstream, starts the day in 10th, 1:07 back. He makes a break during the first climb, with 149km left to go. He's joined by Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step) and Stéphane Augé (Cofidis) and with 116km to go, they have a lead of 3:30 minutes. After the third climb the lead is down to two minutes. With 74km to go, Amets Txurruka (Euskaltel-Euskadi) sprints from the peloton to bridge the gap and catches them after 3km.

Let's go to bullets: Kilometers left and time over the peloton

• 58km remaining, gap = 1:12: David Millar (Garmin-Slipstream), Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step), Stéphane Augé (Cofidis) and Amets Txurruka (Euskaltel-Euskadi)
  
  
• 42km remaining, gap = 1:31
  
  
• 28.7km remaining: David Millar (Garmin-Slipstream) attacks. Chavanel, Txurruka and Augé chase. The other three really look to be suffering and are not able to pull back Millar. It was a smart move by Garmin's Millar. He has 54" over the main group and 15" on the trio.
  
  
• 23.5km: final climb, Chavanel and Augé are back in the main group.
  
  
• 20km remaining: Rémi Pauriol (Cofidis) is chasing solo, off the front of the group. Txurruka still chases solo, behind Millar and in front of the main group. Millar has 32" with 20km. It is not much and he will be caught.
  
  
• 16.4km remaining, Txurruka at 0:31, Pauriol at 0:40, peloton at 1:00
  
  
• 12.7km remaining, gap = 1:09: Millar is in full time trial mode, he has his arms on the tops of the bars and is gaining time. He now has 1:09 over the chase. His concern will be those final five kilometres, it rises up to 96m.
  
  
• 10km remaining, gap = 1:05: Amets Txurruka (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Rémi Pauriol (Cofidis) are caught.
  
  
• 7.6km remaining, gap = 0:53
  
  
• 6.8km remaining, gap = 0:45
  
  
• 5.5km remaining, gap = 0:41
  
  
• 4km remaining, gap = 0:31
  
  
• 3km remaining, gap = 0:23
  
  
• 2km remaining, gap = 0:18
  
  
• 1.6km remaining, gap = 0:08
  
  
• Millar is caught, right near the 1km banner.

David Millar must have flamed out on that last tiny climb to the finish. In that last kilometer, he lost 1:21. On the positive side, he picked up points on all three sprints and on 4/5 mountain climbs. He also gets the jersey for "most combative." The day's effort moves him 2:32 back and to 20th place.

Short quote: reminiscing

Wherein I don't remember this but it must have happened since I wrote it


From 2/7/2001:

Did you know that if you boil a kettle of water and forget about it until the smoke detector goes off and when you grab it with a pot holder but it's stuck to the burner so the burner comes with and then you place it on the deck and then dump a large glass of water on it you get a huge plume of steam at least 30 feet high? I didn't, but it was kinda cool.

THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS

Wherein cough cough cough cough



1. He's also the founding father of the quesadilla. But that has nothing to do with the Philippines.

2. vowel. Oops, overshot a bit.

3. Sounds familiar, pretty sure I read an article about him in the New York Times and the answer is David Bowie. Article

4. No idea. But it is becoming annoyingly difficult to find manual drive cars. Looking for a specific model the dealer said (rolls eyes) there were only two in the state. It would take a couple days to get one here, but but but there's an automatic on the lot for just $700 more. No thanks, I said. The Wife had stepped away with The Child, so when she came back he repeated the story; for some reason thinking *I* was the dumbass for wanting a stick shift and *she* would override my skinflint ways and jump at the bargain. Instead, she laughed in and at his face. Good times. We left and two hours later got a call that instead of two days the car would be there in an hour (rolls eyes).

5. The nonpregnant Manny Ramirez?

6. Polar bear. Heh, feel free to imagine along as I think of possible rebuses for a Klondike bar.

7. Like the Wicked Witch of the East, the villains are not only merely dead, they're really most sincerely dead.

Musical Rebus #2

Wherein the category is patriotic songs


Click to view full size.

Musical Rebus #1

Wherein possibly first in an occasional series


Some will be more conceptual than others. This song, specifically the lyrics depicted in the first rebus, is what gave me the idea for this.

Can you guess the song from the following lyrics:




How about if I give you the song title?



Would the artist help?