While I’ve never had any real interest in riding a motorcycle (I feel a heck of a lot safer in my van!), all the recent press over George Clooney’s accident made me wonder how many celebs have experienced motorbike crashes. The results were kind of astounding. Be sure to grab your helmets before you read on:

:: Ann-Margret <<<: An accomplished rider, she nonetheless was thrown from her bike in Brainerd, Minnesota in 2000. She received a broken arm and four broken ribs.

:: Gary Busey: An avid motorcyclist who was vocally anti-helmet, he nearly succumbed to head injuries in a violent crash in 1988 after picking up his Harley from a repair shop. Luckily, he landed at the feet of a police officer who took care of his wound until medical help arrived. Not surprisingly, he’s now a supporter of motorcycle helmets.

:: Gérard Depardieu: In an interview, the actor admitted to having been involved in more than a dozen motorcycle crashes. One of them broke his leg in five places. He still rides, however, claiming that the “feeling of freedom” is something he’ll never be able to give up.

:: Peter Fonda: Lost a half-inch of his height due to surgeries required after breaking his back and neck in a 1985 motorcycle wreck. He still prefers riding a bike to a horse, however, revealing that he’d “never been bitten by a motorcycle.”

:: Billy Idol: Was bedridden for several months in 1990 after his motorcycle was struck by a car when he accidentally ran a stop sign in Los Angeles. His leg was mangled and nearly had to be amputated. A photographer who saw the electrodes and IVs attached to Idol in the hospital jokingly referred to him as a “Cyberpunk,” which Idol used as the title of his next album.
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I’m learning how to cook, which has been an adventure. The other night, after an encounter with some particularly spicy Italian sausage combined with even spicier barbecue sauce, my roommates and I found ourselves wondering if eating spicy foods could kill you. I mean, it can certainly cause intense pain and chest tightness; so can too much spicy food kill you?
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Sometimes it’s hard to come up something to write about. But when you stare at the wall to think of a subject, it seems natural to write about walls. Here are six of the most notable.

Jericho

The Walls of Jericho were made famous by tumbling down. The city of Jericho, on the West Bank near the Jordan River, has been occupied in one form or another since 9,000 BC. The Book of Joshua in the Bible describes the Battle of Jericho, where the Hebrews circled the town seven times and the defensive walls of the city collapsed. It was the Israelites’ first victory in the conquest of Canaan. Archaeology at the site shows the city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times.

Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian’s Wall was built in England by the Roman army in 122-130 AD. Of several defensive walls they constructed, Hadrian’s Wall is the most famous, because parts of it still survive today. It originally extended from Segedunum to the shore of the Solway Firth, a distance of 117 kilometers. The official purpose of the wall was to defend against the Picts of the north, although there is some speculation that it was also to give the Roman legions something to do while occupying England.

More walls, after the jump.
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Ten Tips for a Slightly Less Awful Resume. These are not the tips you’ve heard so many times -I had never considered that a digital resume would be converted to another file format.

Top Ten Bizarre Disasters. A snake invasion, a molasses flood, the firefighting demonstration that killed 15 people, and more.

Flow chart of how a dog thinks. If you’ve ever had a dog, you’ll know this is true.

Improve your vocabulary with these 20 weird English words. However, if you use them, people will look at you funny.

The One Semester of Spanish Love Song. You probably know just enough Spanish to find this hilarious.

PS: Today is also my birthday!

Something else to file under garage sales: the woman who accidentally sold the ashes of her husband’s first wife. The turtle jar that housed the remains was purchased for fifty cents by a woman who thought it would make an excellent cookie container. The woman who sold it claimed that its urn status was obscured by the fact that they collected many turtle-themed objects. The ashes were eventually retrieved.

Overall, I think that makes a pretty sad garage sale. Objects that are ripped from their context have always struck me as sad, but I think I know where I learned to have this kind of anthropomorphic empathy: Owl at Home, by Arnold Lobel. Have any of you read this book? Lobel is the creator of the Frog and Toad series, which readied me for devouring Edward Gorey in my double digits. In Owl at Home, Owl sets out to brew a pot of “tear-water tea”–and, naturally, in order to do so he must imagine and then dwell upon the saddest objects possible. Thankfully (to a young psyche), they’re not really that sad–mainly in that they don’t involve tragedies befalling humans–but they are pretty pathetic: a spoon that has fallen behind a stove and will never be found, pencils that are too short to use, a page of music no one can read, etc. So my question to you (be it indulgent, perhaps juvenile) is this: let’s say you were given the task of making such a tea; what would be the saddest object you could conjure?

I’m about to rip off two of David Israel’s popular running features, On Music and Tuesday Turnip. Apologies in advance.

Some friends of mine are working with internet radio station LuxuriaMusic to compile a list of the best songs for getting you “in the mood.” This started a discussion about lists ranking the best songs of all-time, which I’m going to carry over to the blog (dancing into David’s “On Music” territory).

Rolling Stone came out with The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time issue in 2004. Here’s their Top Ten:

1. “Like a Rolling Stone,” Bob Dylan
2. “Satisfaction,” The Rolling Stones
3. “Imagine,” John Lennon
4. “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye
5. “Respect,” Aretha Franklin
6. “Good Vibrations,” The Beach Boys
7. “Johnny B. Goode,” Chuck Berry
8. “Hey Jude,” The Beatles
9. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana
10. “What’d I Say,” Ray Charles

But you don’t need to publish a rock magazine to make your own list. By typing “greatest songs of all time” into Google – part two of this two-part homage to David Israel – I found plenty more.
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David Israel’s got a brand new audio quiz for all you college football fanatics: “Can you match the tunes with the schools that made ‘em famous? Turn up those speakers and fight, fight, fight!”

Just for clarification, we don’t really want you to fight… just show off your school spirit (and knowledge!) by taking the quiz here. Then come back and report your score below.

At this time, we’d like to introduce you to the other new member of this ensemble, InternStacy Conradt, who’s currently a graduate student at Iowa State University. Please give her a warm welcome. – Mangesh & Jason

I was driving to Sioux Falls, S.D. the other day and let me tell you, the drive from Des Moines to Sioux Falls is not particularly thrilling. It’s so dull, in fact, that I found myself consulting the atlas just for fun (disclaimer: I do not endorse the act of map reading while driving). I discovered one of those “places of interest” printed in red, fairly close to my destination: The Corn Palace. The Corn Palace?! How could I stay within an hour of a place called The Corn Palace and not check it out?
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Following up on yesterday’s post about how you learned to type, I stumbled across a Slate article called My Favorite Font, which surveys various authors about what font they use to compose new works. According to this article, font preference seems very tied to how the author learned to write — those who started on typewriters seem to prefer Courier fonts (which I abhor), and those who started on computers seem to prefer Times or various other serif fonts (now that’s more like it).

We’ve covered your favorite fonts before. But I have to admit, I don’t think I have a favorite font. I like Futura just fine, but that may just be Kubrick/Wes Anderson fanboyism (or moon plaque worship). I’m partial to Gill Sans lately, which is used in a lot of my company’s promotional literature. And looking at the Slate article, I think Hoefler Text is pretty nice. So while I have vaguely warm feelings for many fonts, I can definitely tell you some fonts I hate: Courier (sorry, everybody who seems to love it), Comic Sans, Impact, and Skia.

Read Slate’s My Favorite Font for more on writers’ favorite fonts. Also check out this bonus link from the newly-free New York Times: Douglas Coupland Luvs Helvetica. And if you have a least-favorite font, don’t give in to hate (because that leads to the Dark Side)…but please do share in the comments.

If Elvis’ infamous air-conditioned doghouse was considered the height of excess in the 1960s, the insane luxuries we have at our fingertips today make Elvis look like nothin’ but a hound dog. Case in point: personal submarines. I only recently discovered their existence, after two friends returned from their Bahamas honeymoon with pictures and stories of such craft (pictured). I was instantly both appalled and jealous — who ever heard of such a thing? Wait, I wanna do that! Turns out that their “submarines” are actually known as “breathing observation bubbles,” and are rather limited compared to full-on submarines, which, yes, you can buy — or build — yourself. To wit:

DIY sub
This Russian man built his own submarine, registered it as a boat with the Russian boat registry, and regularly pilots it back and forth between Helsinki and St. Petersburg at speeds up to four knots. If that sounds like fun to any of you, consider for a moment how many bathrooms, burger joints and Motel 6s are between Finland and Russia underwater. (Uh, let’s see … carry the two … oh, none.) Luckily, this man strong like bear. Link.

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