Mmmm, spaghetti. The BBC looks back on its own greatest hoax, The Spaghetti Harvest, on April Fool's Day 1957. I'd like to think people are much less gullible these days, but sometimes I'm not so sure...

List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm: I think this will be my one and only post about this debacle. Her parents, through their new best friends in the pro-life industry, are selling the names and emails of people who sent them money for their "cause." Wow.

Do you have a cat? How 'bout a computer? Do either of these items amuse and entertain you? Then enjoy The Infinite Cat Project, you total, utter geek.

In other compu-feline news, over at The Amateur Gourmet it appears that Lolita is now running the show! "Can I get a wutwut for dead fish and mice?" Mon dieu! I'm sure it has nothing to do with today's date...tee hee.

Ticket Stub: Nat and I rounded out his week o' noir at the Brattle Theater with Collateral, Michael Mann's shiny, satisfying thriller of a hapless cabbie and sociopathic hitman rolling through a misty Los Angeles night. Mann's films are always delicious to look at, and here he makes digital video an art form instead of the usual pixellated lo-fi cop-out. Jamie Foxx is well-cast as the dreamy, timid Max; can't say the same for Mark Ruffalo, who looks like a kid in a Donnie Brasco Halloween costume, ugh. Tom Cruise is a bit of a cipher here: his usual clipped, focused, tightly-wound thing comes across more dangerous and menacing because his character is such a heartless psycho, who seductively charms and ruthlessly manipulates everyone around him by turns. On paper, this seems like a clone of his Vampire Lestat, but that character had an interior vulnerability, a needy streak -- here, Vincent is a soulless shark, unrepentant to the end. Of course, he does get a few chances to do the Patented Tom Cruise Run. The last 20 minutes start to drag like a bad TV movie, and there are a few moments of stale 80's machismo, but overall it's a thoughtfully gripping example of the genre. (A-)

In other pop culture news, I promise to post a full SXSW Stub this weekend -- I can't believe two weeks have blurred by since our awesome trip to Austin. Thank you, lingering winter viruses. And for those of you looking for a little good TV, I recommend the new adaptation of Little House on the Prairie -- don't laugh! OK, it's totally chicktastic, but it's nothing like the old Michael Landon show: it's all hand-held and gritty and Frontier House, without all the whining. You will want to avert your eyes from Michael Eisner's smarmy introductions, though -- it's part of The Wonderful World of Disney on ABC, unfortunately.

It's Sin City Fool's Day. Robert Rodriguez's long-lusted-after graphic noir-vel flick opens today, and for once NPR proved itself the hipster network, with a rambling interview of Rodriguez and co-director Frank Miller by none other than Kevin "Silent Bob" Smith. Yeeha!