Listening to Van Morrison. He sounds drunk, as always, but there's always been a soulful quality to his disorientation: getting lost was the aim, not an accident. I can only listen to Morrison in the fall and winter, when the crispness of the air seems to sober him up; lend coherence to his meditations on the compromised soul. In summer, listening to Morrison feels akin to drinking a bottle of merlot and trying to run a mile. You trip over your own feet on the third step and give yourself over to the idiot laughter, drunk on your own sense of wonder. Beside, everyone knows that summertime belongs to Tom Waits.

Have some questions about PEZ, but were heretofore unable to ask them? Rest easy! PEZ Central stands at the ready to answer any and all of your PEZ-related queries. Here are a few freebies: Austrian Edward Haas first confected PEZ -the candy -- in 1927; the distinctive dispenser was created in 1948. The name is drawn from the German word for peppermint: pfefferminz. PEZ has appeared in motion pictures and television shows, such as "Toy Story" and "Seinfeld." Chocolate PEZ is only available in Hungary and Thailand. The Japanese enjoy the taste of new Cola PEZ. Amazing, no? A big tip o' the head to webmaster Benjamin Scanlon, for creating one of the tastiest - yet functional - websites out there. Swivelnecks of the world, unite and take over.
 

We give them "Pulp Fiction;" they give us "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." We give them David Cassidy; they give us the Bay City Rollers. We give them Stanley Kubrick; they slap a ban on "A Clockwork Orange" that lasts some 30 years. Not to sound like an alarmist, but am I the only bloke around here who's scared shitless of what the British may do next? Well, mater, if you're not scared yet, you will be, after viewing the contents of Phonebashing. Again, the Brits take a good idea too far: inspired by the anti-cellular phone sentiment of Solid Gold Chart Busters' annoying dance hit "I Wanna 1-2-1 With You," a group of zealots pilfered the wacky cellular phone suits used in the song's video clip, and went about town smashing people's phones purely at random. Well ... to be honest, some of the footage of these two oversized phones running amok is kind of funny. Hilarious, actually. But I'm still mighty scared.
 

Edward Hopper's visual gift did not begin and end with "Nighthawks," though it would have been fine if it had. Nearly 60 years after it was painted, it still sings like a diva; there's a good reason that artists and filmmakers quote from it over and over again. But there's more to this seminal American artist than whatever time he spent lurking outside the diner, and this online scrapbook, created with love by the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, covers virtually the entire story, from birth to his transcendence in 1967 (good artists never die). It's a good story, with stops from Paris to Mexico, and needless to say, it's beautifully illustrated. An absolute must-see.
 

Meet Bunny and Minky Wiener, better known as the Wiener Girls. No, let me start over ... Once upon a time, there were these two girls, and they liked hot dogs. A lot. A whole hell of a lot. So much so, that they made it their life's endeavor to spread the processed meat gospel ... No, that sounds pious. How's about this: my baloney has a first name ... Ahh, to hell with it. Just visit the damn site, but consider yourself warned - if you have anything whatsoever against the America's best-known indigenous dish, go make apple strudel with Martha Stewart. And oh yes, don't comment on the Girls' incredible resemblance to the Dixie Chicks, unless you want a nice, plump Hebrew National shoved up your frontal lobe.

Boy, not even Van Morrison could make this one easy. Please send me your site suggestions, friends and neighbors, so that The Passenger may have time to enjoy the finest art of wasting hours. The address is below, moondoggie. See you in a week.