Not to brag or anything, but ... I SAW THE "PHANTOM MENACE" LAST NIGHT! YEAH! I'M A DARK LORD OF THE SITH! I'M ... I'm a little overwhelmed right now. It's all right. I'm okay. I'm breathing in. I'm breathing out. I am one with the force. I am ... I AM DARTH FREAKING MAUL! Fear me, suckers! Fear attracts the fearful!

Look for a special "Phantom Menace"-style Passenger next Wednesday, the day the movie comes out for the rest of you humanoids. Ask me no questions, my young Padawans - I'm no Harry Knowles, and will reveal no plot points (Boy, if I had a lightsaber that worked ... "Ain't I Decapitated News"). Suffice to say that I am the new face of evil, and will talk down any pissy critic or fanboy who dares to besmirch my movie. Me and Lucas, we're like that, y'all. And if you don't like it, talk to the blaster, 'cause the evil black helmet ain't listening.
 

Saw Tenacious D last week at the Tropicana, opening for Beck, and let me tell you ... they're not just b-boys, they're real rock stars. Dyed in the wool, self-obsessed and sexee, original hardcore, found-dead-in-pool-of-their-own-sick rock stars of the first freaking water. Comprised of character actors Jack Black and Kyle Gass, Tenacious D is the rock band we've been waiting for - they're post-post-ironic, sing songs about oral sex, rock music, themselves and oral sex, and are so thoroughly rockin' that electric guitars would just slow them down, man. Seriously, you haven't heard an acoustic duo this funny, fresh and subversive since the heyday of the Smothers Brothers. Out Of The Sidehatch, an "Unofficial Official" Tenacious D site, has all the tools you need to become a disciple of JB and KG - live MP3 files, lyrics, bios, the whole exultant works. If for no other reason, you must love the boys for creating a medley of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and Queen's "Flash Gordon" theme. It's just the kind of thing Pearl Jam would have done after their early success, if they'd had the guts.
 

Welcome to the party, Oliver Reed. Step into our parlor, Dana Plato. Have a seat over there with Raul Julia; you can dish over the fun and foibles of working in musical theater. More than the Cocktail Mixer of the Beyond, the Dead People Server is an invaluable tool, one that will win or lose most any celebrity mortality-related bet. Webmistress of the Dead Laurie D.T. Mann has assembled an exhaustive list of every "whatever happened to" and "didn't that guy croak?" of the last 10 years or so and arranged them in a quickly referenced index. Not everyone here is dead - some, like John Davidson, are merely sleeping, while others have been blotted from memory (Jill St. John, you live on in our hearts, bella donna). A rumored-dead-but-not page celebrates the living, and offers a few surprises - Victor Mature, who knew? Each entry in the dead letter office offers a cause and date of death, and a search option will take you directly to the memento mori you seek. There's even a mention of the celebs who chose to have their mortal remains blasted into orbit - Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary, among others. Yeah, like they would know. I tell you, Gomez, it creeps me right the hell out.
 

I'm not ready to see it go. The short-lived Exotica revival (the so-called "Cocktail Nation") of a few years back may be all but dead - stomped flat by a bunch of cigar-smoking doodyheads that drove up the prices of leopard-print everything and really believed it was all about the furniture - but I can't let go of my Mai Tais, my Martin Denny vinyl. In short, I can't relinquish my grip on Tiki - Exotica's savage heart, the star on which all those planets hung, rapt. Tiki News, a 'zine created by Tiki aficionado Otto von Stroheim, celebrates the towering swank of the Polynesian Pop era - every Tiki lounge, every conga-driven version of "Baia," every cocktail with a pineapple treated as a pillar of Western Civilization, which they are, baby. The site's a little thin on the content side, but what's there is beyond hep. I don't blame the cats with the cigars for loving this stuff too much, but I do wish they'd stop crowding the flame pit.
 

Lord knows The Passenger wanted to hate the first "Austin Powers" movie. A parody of "Casino Royale," "Thunderball" and the "Flint" movies? To paraphrase writer and star Mike Myers, "As if." Those films were already keenly aware of their camp value; sending them up seemed too much like putting frosting on the frosting. And sure enough, when I took in the first on a matinee, I was lightly charmed - hard not to be - but unimpressed. But something funny happened on my second viewing, on video: I went nuts for it. I stuck my pinky in my mouth. I cried to the heavens, "Yeah, baby! Yeah!" This delayed reaction seems to have been a common one among the legions of Austinphiles, and now, just as the brilliance of the first film fully sinks in, Myers presents a sequel, "The Spy Who Shagged Me." Genius, that boy. Of course, it won't be the same - or worse, it might be exactly the same - but with the original crew on board, plus the luscious Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell, I see no reason why I shouldn't see this new film a few times. Let it sneak up on me, you know, like its predecessor did. Yeah, baby.

I'm sorry I came off so strong about the "Phantom Menace" thing. That was unnecessary. Obnoxious. But still ... IT ROCKED MY LAME ASS! YEAH! MAY THE FREAKIN' FORCE BE WIT' CHOO! YEAH!