"Go, frightened bride of the South!" -- Salon's advice columnist, Cary Tennis, has some choice words of wisdom for Jennifer Wilbanks, last week's punchline, the would-be Runaway Bride. I'll be thinking of her as I check out Las Vegas this weekend...as my sister said last night, "Black 22, play it for me!"

DON'T PANIC! This weekend's Ticket Stub was happily torn at a matinee of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, alongside Nat, Jon, Kate & Barry, and a merry cross-section of Boston geek society, from ages 8 and up (it's PG!). When adapting a beloved, quirky, British space fantasy in which the hero wears a bathrobe, dry wordplay and gentle existentialism dominate the dialogue, and the Earth is destroyed in the first five minutes, things could go very, very wrong. But they don't -- how improbable! The film balanced cleverness with goofiness very well, capturing the everyday shlub Arthur (played by everyday shlub Martin Freeman, from The Office and Love, Actually) and his alien compadres with equal accuracy. It came off as a smart, diverting adventure, not a long, dull in-joke. Excellent casting is the key, as well as not overdoing the special effects. I had a different Trillian in mind (why pick an American?!), but Sam Rockwell as Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox went deliciously over the top with a sort of glam rock sendup of a certain fearless leader, hee hee. Mos Def and Alan Rickman need more scenes in the sequel -- please let there be a sequel...hey, how often do you say that? (A)

Males choose trucks, females choose dolls -- and this was an experiment with monkeys, not people. Scientific American roundup of the latest research into innate differences between male & female brains: some amazing stuff, some just plain obvious.

Spanish appliance designer ends the battle of the sexes -- over laundry, anyway. Behold the Your Turn feature: using fingertip scanning, this washing machine cannot be operated by the same person (i.e. the desperate housewife) every time. Uhh...OK.

"The culinary equivalent of an embalmed corpse" -- ah, my favorite, maraschino cherries!