LET THE WILD RUMPUS START: I'm sure Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are fine and talented people, but whose bright idea was it to make a big budget movie of Where the Wild Things Are:

Jonze's initial idea was to shoot the wild things in nine-foot suits with animatronic faces in the jungles of Australia and New Zealand. CG-faces would be required. After a disastrous December 2007 preview of Jonze's first cut, the studio shut down the project. The movie is "dark, adult and deep," wrote Cinemaniac1979 on aint-it-cool-news, "heart-wrenching and scary. This isn't a movie for children -- it's a movie about childhood."

AND INTRODUCING TORI SPELLING: In honor of the premiere of 90210, I give you some guy playing an acoustic guitar version of the theme, and some guy playing it on the piano, where it sounds oddly like a John Tesh composition. Also, try the Season 1 opening from the original version, which replaces the opening "clap clap" with a Miami Vice-esque intro.

CURRENT MADDEN IQ IN THE MID-500S: Professional football season is upon us again, and your predictions for the current season are welcome -- with a strong preference for anything phrased in the increasingly popular form of "Yeah, I said it."

As in: the Browns and Bengals will both be sub-.500 while the Ravens make the playoffs. Yeah, I said it.

Kurt Warner will start at least 12 games and lead the Cardinals to the playoffs. Yeah, I said it.

And a Florida team will be in the Super Bowl. Yeah, I said it.

I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE UNDER MY FEET: We had a little 4.0 here this evening, just about 5 miles from Casa Earthling. A good swift jolt followed by about 10 seconds of roll. The Little Earthling was a bit worried, but liked the idea better once realized he could play up his concern and parlay it into the right to fall asleep on the couch with me and the Mrs.

LOOKING TO THE SKY TO SAVE ME, LOOKING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE:Having spent time in six different airports during the course of this week, ranging from the "so tiny, there's no real need for any services" (Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids) to the "large enough to be a small city where I could live for several months if need be" (DFW, O'Hare) to the "under incredible amount of construction, making everything in the airport highly inconvenient" (San Jose), I think it's time for a thread for best and worst airports to go through, get to, and transfer through. Personally, I'm fond of DFW, which has an abundance of good services inside security, making it perfect for a layover, and dislike those airports that turn post-security into a wasteland (LGA, certain terminals at EWR and JFK) or those that have very nice services outside security but much less so inside (Washington National).

THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE WHEN THE DOVES APPLY...FOR SOCIAL SECURITY: Excuse my inner Weird Al, but in honor of Prince, Madonna, and Michael all turning the big 5-0 this summer, Hypeful has compiled 50 cover versions of the trio's hits. Highly recommended are The Chapin Sisters doing "Borderline," Lavender Diamond's "Like a Prayer," and Crooked Fingers' "When U Were Mine."

STAR WARS, NOTHING BUT STAR WARS: I note, via BoingBoing, a new anthology of MAD Magazine Star Wars parodies: Mr. Doctorow notes "The book is liberally sprinkled with sidebar anaecdotes telling stories of MAD and Lucas's relationship to each other (for example, the Lucasfilm legal department sent a threatening letter to MAD about one of their parodies; the same parody generated a personal fan-letter from George Lucas -- MAD simply sent copies of each letter to the other sender and the problem went away)."