Web Monitor
17:24 UK time, Wednesday, 11 November 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: joking aside, last requests and more noughties nostalgia.
• Johnny Vegas is joining a long line of comics complaining about the problems of gag-snatching. In that if a joke has been stolen, but it's difficult to prove, it all comes down to how guilty the thief feels about taking it:
"The saddest thing is though; little is ever said to the perpetrators themselves. Their shameless audacity often leaves its victims dumbstruck, almost fearful to protest. I myself have sat in dressing rooms, feeling like a pensioner asked to point out a mugger from a police line-up, but without the security of a one-way mirror (although I'd best point out first, before every other comic does, that the contents of my comedic purse were wholly sentimental and worth nothing of any real critical value)."
• what prisoners on death row ask for as their last meal. Although the a cheeseburger is the most popular, he finds the requests are often memorable:
"Karla Faye Tucker requested a fruit plate but didn't eat it. John Wayne Gacy asked for shrimp, fried chicken, French fries, and a pound of strawberries. Timothy McVeigh ate two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Instead of a last meal, Tennessee convict Philip Workman requested that pizza be distributed to the homeless in Nashville. (Prison officials denied his request, but local groups passed out pizza in his honor.) Before his execution in 2000, convicted rapist and murderer Odell Barnes requested a last meal of 'Justice, Equality, World Peace.' In 1992, Arkansas convict Ricky Ray Rector, who had brain damage from shooting himself in the head after killing a police officer, ate a final meal of steak, fried chicken, and cherry Kool-Aid, but famously said he wanted to save his pecan pie for later."
• Noughties nostalgia continues (see Monday's Web Monitor) with . His notable bit of the noughties is the growth of the beard. Reynolds observes that the beard isn't just there to keep you warm:
"The beard has become one of the crucial, era-defining signifiers for non-mainstream rock in the noughties.
That's particularly the case in the United States, where whiskers have an obvious fit with Americana genres like alt-country and free folk. But things have also taken a hirsute turn in the UK this past decade... beardedness is tantamount to a visual rhetoric, almost a form of authentication, as though the band are wearing their music on their faces."
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