Everyone's been to the fair, right? The state fair? The county fair? A travelling carnival? Chuck E. Cheese's? If so, you've more than likely seen (if not played) some variant of the popular game colloquially known to me as "Whack-a-Mole" or by its more obscure moniker "Mole Whack-Em".

For those who haven't enjoyed this passtime, the rules are simple: artificial mole-shaped puppets pop randomly out of roughly mole-sized holes cut into a game board. The player, holding a mallet, tries to strike (or "whack") the artificial moles as quickly as possible since their appearance is timed and, if left unwhacked, they will disappear into the dark belly of the game board whence they came.

A simple game concept, and great fun for all.

Now, consider a version of "Whack-a-Mole" in which the mole-shaped puppets pop up, but do not recede if they are not struck.
Additionally, consider that our hypothetical version of this game has an infinitely large (or at least some very large) domain of potential mole-shaped puppets.
Finally, assume that the game board is free to grow as you play, allowing for an indefinite number of visible mole-shaped puppets at any given time, all waiting for you to clobber them with your mallet. More...

Dismayed at low recruiting numbers in the Army and Marine Corps, U.S. officials have decided the best way to cope is to simply change their criteria for entry into those armed forces to allow more convicts into service.

I found this partial breakdown of the waiver grantees interesting: More...

...and no, I'm not referring to the recent changes in U.S. military recruiting thresholds (more on that later).

I am, of course, referring to Warner Bros. studio's recent vague threats against Helmer John Buechler when he mentioned a remake to his movie "Troll".

You remember "Troll", don't you?  It's that honeysuckle 80's blend of fantasy and excrement featuring a boy, his possessed sister, a geriatric sorceress, her pet mushroom and (spoiler alert) a nasty troll with extremely limited facial expressions and no intelligible dialog.  Oh, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the hot single babe who is unwittingly drawn into the troll's hellish fantasy realm, where she scampers, semi-nude, as a wood nymph.

The catch? Simple.  The lead character (the boy, not the troll) is named Harry Potter, and the film was developed about ten years before JK Rowling's famous boy wizard hit bookstores. 

Avada kedavra, beeyach!

It might be said that lately I have been ill.

I've had (as Christopher Walken put in during his infamous Blue Oyster Cult skit on SNL) a "fever". 

Unlike Mr. Walken's compulsion for cowbell, however, my penchant has been for pasta.  I should point out, though, that cowbell is a close second, even so many years past BOC's glory days.

It all started a little more than a week ago while I was watching reruns of Molto Mario, Mario Batali's short-lived cooking show for the Food Network, recently revived in syndication by the Fine Living channel. 

More...