Voodoo People

Caught In The Net was deeply saddened to learn of the death last week of David Mills, a writer on The Wire and David Simon’s wingman on post-Katrina New Orleans drama Treme, which premieres Stateside on April 11.

Mills features in the 14-minute ‘Making of Treme’ featurette that HBO has just made available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLd__SO5WdY. Judging by that, the series will be a fitting tribute to his abundant talents.
A US smash that you don’t have to wait to see is Warehouse 13, which debuts on Thursday April 8 on Virgin 1.
“After saving the life of the President, two Secret Service agents find themselves abruptly transferred to Warehouse 13 – a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota that houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir ever collected by the US government,” reads the www.syfy.com/warehouse13 blurb.
Equal parts Roswell, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and the X-Files, it’s a wonderful bit of hokum that’s made huge American stars out of Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly who eagle-eyed viewers might recognise from the much-underrated Vanished.
CIN is indebted to the fabulous Miss Panti for pointing us in the direction of www.toptenz.net/top-10-weird-pageants.php, which lists the world’s oddest beauty contests.
While Miss Landmine Survivor, Miss Plastic Surgery, Miss Pregnant and Miss Atomic Worker all have their unique selling points, our favourite has to be Saudi Arabia’s Queen Of Beautiful Morals, which this year found 274 burqa-d babes battling it out for, ahem, a pearl necklace, diamond watch, $1,333 in cash and a free trip to Malaysia, which sadly turns out to be two-way.
In the absence of swimsuit and evening wear rounds, the ladies are subjected to three months of rigorous psychological and ideological testing to see if they’ve got the right Islamic stuff.
While Caught In The Net can just about get its head round that, we’re deeply concerned about the well-being of the competitors taking part in The Most Beautiful Goat – another Father Ted-esque Saudi pageant, which is profiled at www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/most-beautiful-goats-competition/offbeat-news. By the way, we did consider making some sort of horn-related quip, but considered it too juvenile even for us.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to music.aol.com/new-releases-full-cds/#/15 (stream of the upcoming Slash & Friends album); www.youtube.com/watch?v=uovMpapeCJQ (primary school kids remake Scarface); www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/timesnail (animated mollusc fun); www.hutaree.com (Michigan militia get ready to do battle with the Anti-Christ); and www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxcyAQ_BIqk (Goldfrapp suffer Italian TV meltdown).