IF THERE'S A PING-PONG SCENE, ALL BETS ARE OFF: Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells hails Tim Burton's upcoming holiday flick Big Fish today, calling Burton's appreciation of a tale-telling Alabaman "storybook surreal, magical and fantastical . . . Burton's most emotionally affecting work since EDWARD SCISSORHANDS." Even noted NYT/VF sourpuss Lynn Hirschberg wrote Sunday that its "extraordinary ending . . . is a perfect melding of the visual and the verbal: the words are bolstered, rather than overwhelmed, by Burton's artistry.

Yeah, okay, but a good friend of mine saw it in previews Monday night. His review: "I liked it better when it was called FORREST GUMP."

SURE, WHY THE HELL NOT: At some point in the next day or two, as our one-year anniversary approaches on Saturday, one lucky reader will be our 100,000th, according to a somewhat-arbitrary start number and the Sitemeter counter below. A celebration seems in order.

So: if you are that 100,000th visitor, you will win a free pizza, delivered to your home, courtesy of me.

Just email me when you see the five zeroes in a row, and I should be able to confirm (via the counter) that you were, in fact, the winner. Then, we'll pick a night, I'll call the deliveryman in your area, order the pie (with a reasonable number of toppings) and maybe, if you're really nice, throw in garlic bread or something.

No cheating.

WHERE'S STAT BOY? In a move its print competitors would do well to emulate, the Washington Post has been making its all-star lineup of columnists and reporters available for weekly online chat sessions that have been pretty darn entertaining.

Check out these recent chats with PTI's Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon on post-football Monday, media critic Howie Kurtz and Throwing Things fave tv critic Lisa de Moraes, and gear up for de Moraes' next chat tomorrow afternoon.

There are times and places where the use of the term "interactive" is not just a crude marketing ploy, but an actual method to make readers feel more invested in your product. This is one of them, and the WaPo has already lapped the field.

MOM, PULL OVER. TELL HIM THE TRUTH. TELL HIM HOW OLD HE IS: Does NYT film critic Elvis Mitchell, lover of obscure music and massive simile pileups, have a crush on eternally-emerging actress Zooey Deschanel of Almost Famous/The Good Girl fame?

Low Culture investigates.

(P.S. Is there an easy way to remember which one is Zooey Deschanel and which one is Maggie Gyllenhaal?)

WHERE'S DEBB? SurvivorNews.net believes it has the definitive list of the eighteen (!) castaways who are competing in Survivor 8: All Star Survivor, which just started filming in the Pearl Islands.

If you're ready to be spoiled, click here to see the three tribes of six. And then we can use the Comments section to discuss.

EITHER THAT, OR MAYBE THEY'LL BRING BACK ROY: MSNBC's Jon Bonné, who clearly has more time to focus on this than most of us, writes today that while The Simpsons may have recently "lost its soul and devolved into an uneven, slapsticky mess that needed to be put to a respectable death," now the show is on its way back to being good.

Bonné's main criticism of recent seasons? Too much "Jerkass Homer". He says that the new season will be much less Homer-centric.

I dunno. Last night's episode, with Homer's mom coming back, was decidedly meh, enlivened only by the Beautiful Mind reference and Homer's letter to "Die Hard". Just not that good.

Much funnier this weekend was watching (and re-watching) the Family Guy episode "Wasted Talent", where Peter Griffin finds the final "silver scroll" and gets to tour noted recluse Pawtucket Pete's magical brewery and meets the mysterious Chumba Wumbas who work there. Hysterical. God bless TiVo.

YES, BUT DID THEY HAVE SCHMALTZ AND GRIBENES? On the other hand, there's a really neat article in the Times today on Rabbi Yaakov Y. Horowitz and his American Jewish Legacy project, which has put together a hopefully-travelling exhibit on the history of kosher eating in America.

For example, read one Civil War veteran's description of how he and his fellow Jews in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment observed Passover in 1862:

One group built a log hut for the service, and another was sent off to forage for more supplies. They came back with cider instead of wine, a lamb, chickens and eggs, but none of the traditional horseradish or parsley. "In lieu we found a weed, whose bitterness, I apprehend, exceeded anything our forefathers 'enjoyed.' " They were unable to make charoses, the sweet mixture representing the mortar used by the Israelites to build the pyramids in Egypt. "So we got a brick which, rather hard to digest, reminded us, by looking at it, for what purpose it was intended."

Everything went well until it came time to eat the herb. "The herb was very bitter and very fiery like Cayenne pepper," he wrote. The celebrants gulped down the cider, which was apparently hard and had its effect. "One thought he was Moses, another Aaron, and one had the audacity to call himself Pharaoh. The consequence was a skirmish, with nobody hurt." Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh were carried back to camp to sleep it off.

You can see some of the turn-of-the-century advertisements Horowitz has compiled via this link.