Who knew?

So, I watched a chunk of Words and Music by Jerry Herman on PBS last night, and it turns out that the original name of Hello, Dolly was Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman, and the producers only changed the name after Louis Armstrong covered what would become the title song, and it became a huge hit.

Wikipedia backs this up (with sources).

Damned fine choice there.

Question of the day

Do cannibalistic goblin-like creatures eat Long Ork?

Amazon: Blu Ray and Asian Cinema

Three quick Amazon deals on DVDs:

1. There's yet another Buy One Get One Free deal on Blu-Ray DVDs, with assorted Harry Potter flicks, The Departed, Die Hard, and other good stuff.

2. There's also another Blu-Ray sale, with 40% off and more on assorted movies and TV series, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Lost, Chicago, Bridge to Terabithia, and various Pixar properties.

3. Finally, for those of us stuck with older DVD players, there's a sale on Asian Cinema, with 40-50% off a bunch of films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2046, Shanghai Triad, and Warriors of Heaven and Earth.

Wednesday links

Feels like a Monday, since this is my first day back at work.

1. Los Angeles residents! There's a Takashi Miike Retrospective FIlm Fest over the course of the next month. I've only seen about half of these movies, and would love the chance to see 'em on the big screen. If you live there, you need to check some of these movies out (particularly The Happiness of the Katakuris and Ichi the Killer, my two favorites).

2. Justine Larbalestier writes a wonderful post (as always) on how to rewrite.

3. Gawker now has a Sci-fi blog, io9. And charliegrrrl is one of the folks in charge of it!

4. The latest service pack for Office 2003 disables older file formats. Be careful.

5. Yendiopolis has a mild (2%) unemployment problem that can be cleaned up by clicking here. After that's taken care of, clicking here will add more residents (I'm hoping that 300 will get me to the next link).

6. Our long municipal nightmare is over! The Big Dig is complete!

7. The Modbook is finally shipping! Not that I'll be spending money to get one, but if I win the lottery, I'm so grabbing one.

8. A study has confirmed that looking down skews our distance perception more than looking up or straight ahead (although they still misestimate when looking up).

9. Tamora Pierce and Julie Holderman are attempting to organize a YA Fantasy and Sci-Fi convention.

10. Finally, another self-serving reminder: I've kind of relaunched 261 Days of Horror, only without the 261 commitment. Explanation here. First review here.