I don't know about you, but I think that sounds like a perfectly capital idea...

So, what do you think?

Here's a little something to ponder on this festive Gallic holiday:  what does it mean, you suppose, that so many of my favorite French people - these two, the Austrian Woman - aren't even French?  Even their empresses were imports - Joséphine from Martinique and Eugénie from Granada.  Still - Bernhardt, Piaf, or Mistinguett aside - who are more French than they?

Well, who knew?  Turns out some people - even serious researchers - really do Ask the Oracle.

I was interested to see today that the UN has picked up on on one of my own little obsessions...

An odd set of questions, to be sure.

A fairly predictable set of queries, on the whole, although I have to own up to a wholly spontaneous (and entirely uncharitable) snort at the thought that anyone could even have wondered about that third-from-last one.

For the record: yes, at least occasionally, not yet, very likely, oh yeah, not yet, see above, [SNORT], a debatable and by now both pointless and tragic question, and, finally, not if there's anything like a loving god in the universe.

On this day in 1997, internationally renowned boxer Oscar de la Hoya ate a hotdog at a Superbowl party.

Question:  How is it even vaguely possible that, despite the widespread circulation of this striking image, it took more than a decade for word to get out that he was something of a major freak?  Hiding in plain sight if you ask me, and a picture that ranks right up there with the quadrennial images of people like Rick Perry and Marcus Bachmann having to deepthroat corndogs at various state fairs...

Okay, most of these I can see.  Sadly, the question of her continued existence is all too germane (and it's not unkind, I think, at this point to wish her godspeed to a better place, however glamour-diminished a world she'll leave behind).  Of course, she is, in fact related, if only by marriage, to the tawdry sisters who wear a pale imitation of her crown of celebritude (she's their step great-grandmother, as nearly as I can make out).  And she is, at least in part on her mother's side, what dear Dame Edna calls a "Red Sea pedestrian."

But, really - pregnant?  The poor woman was born, even if we credit the latest possible date, in the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Spare her something, for heaven's sake, in what the Enquirer would once have called her "sad last days."

People can be so cruel, and some gossip just never seems to go away.  What does it matter?  Why the endless fuss?  Who cares if the poor man can't stand Debra Winger?  It's not like he's the only one - I hear Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors both hated her!

Hmmm... Mostly not terrribly surprising, but I have to admit that last one threw me for a loop.

Guess what - she is!  And so was the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.  It really is a small world after all.

...Hollywood's most fabled feud was nothing more than a PR stunt? I've never seen these two broads look more relaxed and at ease than here. And isn't it kind of fun thinking that maybe all those years they actually got together once in a while for a couple of vodka-Pepsis and a whole lot of laughing at their enemies?

Here, for no particular reason, we have Egyptian pocket heartthrob Tamer Hosny.

Arabic pop stars all too frequently have mystifying taste in sportswear. I have to wonder: if love is his MSG, does it leave him with a numb jaw, roaring headache, and hungry an hour later?

I'm going through a bookish phase - what else is there to do in Ramadan, really? - and have been having a wonderful time. Diaries, mostly, but also dipping into favorite books of essays (it strikes me that there's not nearly enough shouting about Sarah Vowell, for example, let alone David Rakoff, who appears to be that rare creature, someone who doesn't write enough).

Our Sultanate got its first really good bookstore (a Borders, quite incongruous in these parts) a year or so ago, and as a result my reliance on Amazon has declined (it's cheaper, yes, but I'm all about the instant gratification). Nonetheless, when I linked to the site earlier this month it made me feel good to know it's still there.

Also gratifying: when I did add the link to Mr. Lerman's The Grand Surprise, it was loitering somewhere in Amazon rankings below 500,000. Since then, I've seen it as high as 125,000 or so, although it's as of right now down a shade. Now, I'm not claiming to have sold all that many copies, but it's nice to feel I've played a part.

So what are you reading?

Lately, I've been having recurring dreams in which Ann Sothern is my next-door neighbor. Should I be concerned?

I'm currently pitching a script to star the really rather fetching Mr. Upen Patel (I'm hoping it will distract him from his ceaseless supplicating telegrams). It's a sequel to this year's Best Picture winner, and I'm calling it Horndog Millionaire.

Not to stereotype the pretty, vapid, and stupidly tattooed (I just keep thinking of ranks and ranks of 70 year-olds with drooping barbed-wire garlands around their withered biceps) but:

Doesn't it seem awfully likely that, in this case, Santa's familiar greeting is as much a job description as anything?