[Add your own entries in the comments! I'm an ignorant agnostic.]


1. The Beastie Boys' Sabotage video


2/ John Goodman in The Big Lebowski


3. Exodus, Leon Uris


4. Uprising, the movie


5. Munich, the movie


6. Those Inglourious Basterds


7. Adam Sandler as Zohan


8. And then: "A terrorist could put a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." Not if these guys have anything to say about it. Anything involving somersaults, that is.

[via Adfreak]

The 92 year-old Cronkite, whose signature sign-off, "And that's the way it is," rang through the living rooms of millions of American homes on a nightly basis from 1962 to 1981, grew up in Missouri and Texas before dropping out of college to take a job covering sports at a newspaper. He went on to work in radio and was eventually discovered by Edward R. Murrow, who brought him on at CBS.

Perhaps Cronkite's most memorable moment at CBS was his on-air reporting of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, a moment that perfectly encapsulated the unshakable gravitas that is sure to be his lasting legacy for years to come.

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Walter Cronkite Gravely Ill [TVNewser]

Professional accomplishments aside, Newman was also one half of one of Hollywood's greatest love stories. He married his Long Hot Summer co-star Joanne Woodward in 1958, and they stayed married for the rest of his life. Asked about adultery, he once remarked, "Why would I go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?"

As a humanitarian, he stumped for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and called it "the single highest honor I've ever received" when he landed on Nixon's Enemies List. In 1982, he founded the Newman's Own brand with writer and Hemingway biographer A.E. Hotchner, selling everything from salad dressing to a really fine limeaid, with all profits going to charity. To date, the company has given away more than $200 million. [CNN]

"It was very tricky," Abrams told the L.A. Times. "We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves."

The director was responding to an earlier comment Shatner had made about the newest Star Trek offering: "There is no need for me to know anything because I'm not a part of it." [UPI]

[SIGH]

"People ask him to autograph rifles, but Eastwood is no Charlton Heston. A vegan, he was distressed to hear Hillary Rodham Clinton boast recently about bagging a bird. 'I was thinking: The poor duck, what the hell did she do that for? I don't go for hunting. I just don't like killing creatures. Unless they're trying to kill me. Then that would be fine.'"

He also envisions a Dirty Harry VI: "Harry is retired. He's standing in a stream, fly-fishing. He gets tired of using the pole — and BA-BOOM! Or Harry is retired and he chases bad guys with his walker? Maybe he owns a tavern. These guys come in and they won't pay their tab, so Harry reaches below the bar. Hey, guys, the next shot's on me . . ." [LAT]

Example A: Nicole Congleton, who says that she was discriminated against, and eventually fired, for being black. She says she was repeatedly written up for lateness, while other, whiter, employees who did the same thing were not.

Example B: An anonymous young pregnant employee:

She needed to leave her post in the rare books department more often than usual, to visit the doctor more for pre-natal care. But according to employee warning records provided to the Press, Strand management continued to cite her for missing work regardless of the need for medical appointments...Management threatened to terminate her for "not keeping her full time employment obligations," in reference to the days she'd taken off.

And the scariest of all:

Saundra Buchanan started in the third-floor Internet department at the Strand in 2000, before it had been remodeled. "There was mice running around the table," she remembered in a recent interview. "I got some kind of fungus from rats who were on the paper."

Any problems with Nancy the boss, Saundra?

"[Nancy] would actually come into the bathroom and we'd be washing our hands," Buchanan recalled. "And she would say, 'You should be using the bathroom on your break time!'"