I finally started trying to plow through the two-feet-high stack of magazines that accumulated while I was in E. Europe. One of the first things I noticed was that Esquire was running its annual Sexiest Woman Alive mystery feature. That has to be Scarlett Johansson, though I don't mean to imply that I recognized her solely from that photo. Ahem. The current poll to guess the mystery woman shows Renee Zellweger in the lead with 60% of the vote, ScarJo in second at 28%. Without even looking at the photo you'd think the average Esquire reader could see how absurd those figures are.

Rumors have Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt selling the rights to their new baby Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt (which, by the way, sounds like a champagne I paired with oysters at dinner last week) to People magazine for $4.1 million and to Hello! magazine in Britain for $3.5 million. The Jolie-Pitts plan to donate the money to various charities. What's intriguing about the selling price is how it compares to the selling price of other pieces of art. You couldn't have purchased Roy Lichtenstein's Sinking Sun for that price, but you could have snagged Mark Rothko's White, Orange and Yellow. It says something about the world we live in when a celebrity couple can raise $7.6 million merely by selling off their baby photos. Not necessarily something bad or good, but something interesting about our culture. If only Andy Warhol were still alive. In the meantime, the social imperative for Brad and Angelina is clear. They must procreate like rabbits; with the funds their baby pics would generate, they'll cure world hunger within a decade, and in the meantime, they'd be raising the world's sexiness quotient.

Good overview on how to deal with mosquitos. I am one of those people that mosquitos love, and their bites leave huge, swollen welts on my skin. The sound of a mosquito buzzing near my ear late at night will rouse me from the deepest sleep, sending huge pulses of adrenaline through my system. At that point, I can't sleep until I've crushed the damn bugger with my palm.