An article at Yahoo! Sports blames the slow economy for NASCAR events drawing 100,000 fans instead of 130,000 fans. (I'll give everyone a moment to dry their tears.) The best part is a quote from stock car legend Richard Petty:

“Fuel, that’s the reason,” seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty said last weekend at MIS. To illustrate his point, Petty bent down, picked up a five-gallon fuel container, hoisted it into the air and pointed at it. “No matter whether you have a car or not, the gas prices are hurting you; the diesel prices are hurting you,” Petty said. “Everything (costs) is being passed on. It’s inflating everything by the one thing, which is the fuel. Sure it bothers me, but more on an everyday deal, where they’re doing things like running the food prices up because the fuel prices are up, too.”

Who this 'they' might be -- accomplishing the dastardly task of raising food prices just 'cause gas costs twice as much as it did two years ago -- is left to the imagination. (Maybe the current administration can track them down and surge them?)

The article ends with a note that in the 1970s, during the OPEC embargo, NASCAR shortened some of its races by ten percent, so that the stock cars that only get 4.5 miles per gallon drove around in circles for just 450 miles instead of 500. No word on if 'they' also lowered the ticket prices accordingly.

On July 29, the world will get a gander at the sequel to The Lost Boys, subtitled "The Tribe." Yes, both Coreys are in it. And no, it obviously didn't film in Santa Cruz again. (Malibu? How could they?)

I'm just hoping to see what sweaty saxophone guy looks like after all these years.

Here's a four-minute short film about a little-known farming practice that makes the world what it is today. Can you imagine if this crop disappeared, what our day-to-day life would be like? Better? Worse?

The Thinking Machine, version four, is a chess-playing javascript that shows you all the moves the computer is considering, often several steps ahead, with colored lines that represent each player and the perceived outcome of each line of play (darker is better for black, the computer, and lighter is better for white, the human). It's not Big Blue -- the programming is such that experts will easily whallop the machine and beginners will be smacked down hard -- but it's an interesting look into the thought process involved in becoming adequate at chess. Plus, it's darn pretty, with all those radiating waves of influence coming off each piece, the simplified use of shapes to denote the pieces, and the light saber color scheme.

Here's a fantastic animated short film in which national culinary specialties re-enact every major war since World War II. It can be confusing at times to figure out what's happening, but part of the fun is when it dawns on you which country is being represented by which pile of food. Plus, the burgers that shoot their own fixings at stuff are just rad.

It's called "Food Fight ." 

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I'm smitten with these wineglasses from Hamilton Design that represent each of the seven deadly sins. What would you drink from them? Here are my choices:

Wrath

Ah, the grapes of wrath. With that hard spear on its edge, the glass could only be filled by Devil's Corner pinot noir from Tasmania. 

Greed

The multiple horny pockets of the greed glass just beg for the fake 1787 Chateau Lafitte (purportedly from Thomas Jefferson's wine collection) that went for $156,000.

Pride

How about a 1999 Pride Mountains Vineyard Cabernet Reserve (95 points!) to fill that tall stem? 

Gluttony

The giant belly on this bulbous glass could only be filled by Fat Bastard .

Lust

I'm not even sure how this glass works, but I'd fill it with a Dominatrix Pinot Noir from the Naked Winery in Oregon. 

Envy

The holes in the side of the glass made me laugh out loud. And isn't there a winery in Napa called Envy? Why yes, there is! 

Sloth

My favorite sin ... probably shouldn't go too far out of my way to fill this glass (which requires a second person to do the pouring) with Sleepy Creek Vineyards' (in Illinois??) Little Woody ... oops, too late, sold out. Oh well. Maybe some other time. Can I nap now? 

Raise your hand if you've heard the lament that today's kids don't have any mass culture touchstones. You know, "People don't all grow up with the same TV shows and same hit songs anymore. Everything is so fragmented."

Weezer's new video for "Pork & Beans" (which may or may not get airplay on MTV, one of those channels that mass culture no longer watches for shared musical touchstones) obliterates that notion by combining a roster of YouTube superstars that's instantly recongizable for anyone who spends a few hours every day with the 21st century's version of a remote control (or radio dial, to go back another generation or two).

If you're going to whitewash a graffiti wall, why not turn it into a long stop-motion animation that meditates on the notion of corporeality and the way people interact with their environment?

The artist Blu does just that with this intense and amazing graffiti project in Brazil, combining George Plimpton with the urban setting in a way that's simply astounding at first, but as the technique becomes "normal" looking and you accept his metamorphosing creature as alive, the sequence tells a tale of the suits we wear, the skin we put on, and the pressure we feel from the things that we build around us.

Also, it's really really cool.

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