Yeah, it's always good to consult the experts

Beckham baffled by son's homework

LONDON: Superstar David Beckham, whose mental agility has been questioned before in the media, has said his six-year-old son's maths homework leaves him baffled.

The England captain and Real Madrid midfielder was forced to call on his wife Victoria, a former member of the Spice Girls pop group, to help their son Brooklyn with a school assignment because the footballer found the sums too difficult.

"Their homework is so hard these days," Beckham, 30, said in an interview with the Mail on Sunday.

"It's totally done differently to what I was teached when I was at school, and you know I was like 'Oh my God, I can't do this'."

Multi-millionaire Beckham, who has become regular tabloid fare because of his dress sense and hairstyles, said after failing in mathematics he offered to read a book with Brooklyn instead.

- Reuters, 1 March 2006

A lesson in cohabitation

Owen and Mzee are a couple of pals who flat together: a hippo and tortoise who live in Mombasa, Kenya. Cute.

Owen and Mzee

How to meet people on the Metro

'When I boarded Metro one afternoon, a woman about 35 was turned in her seat talking to an older man about three empty rows down from her. Across from the woman was a boy, about 18, wearing a Georgetown University sweat shirt. The older man and woman were talking about sex. As she gathered her luggage to leave the train, she jotted something down on a notepad. She folded it, and held it in her hand and stood by her seat as the train slowed on its approach into the station.

"Metro Center. Doors opening on the right."

"Listen," she said loudly, turning to face the man directly. "I know about these things. I helped compile research on men's and women's orgasms. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."

"Okay, okay, okay," the man said.

"Doors opening."

She walked toward the door to leave the train, casually handed the folded note to the startled boy and continued out the train door. He unfolded the note and read it. Refolding it, he looked straight ahead for a second or two before he bolted from his seat and ran out the door behind her.

"Doors closing."'

- A Washington Post reader recalls an episode from commuter-land, 26 February 2006

There is something beautiful about Paris Hilton shouting the words "American idiot"

Read Dorian Lynskey's entertaining blog of the Brit Awards, which were held on 15 February in London.

'James Blunt plays ... wait for it! ... You're Beautiful. I don't have a view on this song any more. It just is, like the weather. Or flu'

Culture vulture

Age and guile beats youth and inexperience, again

From an article about telegrams:

'Western Union charged by the word, turning the loquacious terse, and sometimes ambiguous. A reporter asked the actor Cary Grant about his age:

HOW OLD CARY GRANT?

The actor supposedly replied:

OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?'

- New York Times, 12 February 2006

News: phones 500 times dirtier than toilet seats

'A University of Arizona microbiology team tested a dozen office surfaces including the bathroom. The scientists found that phone receivers had 25,000 bacteria per square inch, while toilet seats had only 49 bacteria per square inch'

Ask Yahoo

How to make Garfield actually funny

It appears the only way is to remove his thought bubbles. Have a look at these attempts from back in 2003. Much more like a real cat now, isn't he.

Garfield sans thought bubbles

Someone should undercut him: £20 a word is a much better deal

Psst, wanna buy a word of art?
by Dalya Alberge

HERE’S the deal: a man will whisper a word in your ear and you will become the proud owner of a work of art; a limited edition at that. This is the art of Tino Sehgal. You buy a single word for £25, selected by the artist, which the manager of the shop at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London conveys to you in a whisper. As always, collectors are advised to beware of forgeries — about which there has been more than a whisper in art circles — but such is this artist’s following that five people have parted with £25 since the show opened this month.

Word is that the Tate has also bought one of his works, This is Propaganda, which will be performed next month.

When a visitor walks into the room, a woman dressed as a gallery assistant will turn to the wall and sing, “this is propaganda, you know, you know” twice. The Tate declined to reveal what it paid, but it is believed to be a five-figure sum.

Sehgal, 30, a Londoner who lives in Berlin, does not create tangible objects. At the Venice Biennale last year, a group of gallery assistants surrounded each visitor and chanted, “this is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary”, in an otherwise empty room.

The artist works with “interpreters”, including museum guards, to create art that challenges “traditional museological contexts”. Last year, he put on a show at the ICA — once described as one of the greatest ideas laboratories in London — which involved an “interpreter” writhing on the floor every day for six weeks.

His latest exhibition at the ICA, which runs until March 19, explores the “progression of life”. Each visitor is met by a child, who guides them into an empty room before asking, “what is progress?”. The visitor is then handed over to a teenager, who takes them through the non-public areas of the building into another empty exhibition space. They are met by a middle-aged interpreter, who passes them on to an elderly interpreter, who leads them back to where they started.

The artist said: “I am interested in creating products, but by rethinking the notion of a product as a transformation of actions, rather than as a transformation of material.”

This was not “performance art”, he said, but “constructive situations that happen to you”.

The Times, 15 February 2006

He must've had a lot to drink beforehand

"Joe Cole had a slash on the edge of the box and it actually found its way back to the corner flag. "

COLIN COOPER, Radio Five Live

Music Videos of the 80s

Captain Video remembers a time when major music consortia permitted people as untelegenic as Kenny Loggins and Peter Cetera to appear in music videos. And Survivor! Ye gods. Take a look at the Captain's frame-by-frame analysis - for shame, Bobby Brown!

CAPTAIN VIDEO!: Music Videos of the 1980s