Anyone into film knows the famed director Alan Smithee. Alan is the industry's scapegoat director, the only alias allowed by the Director's Guild of America, and is canonically reserved for projects stolen away from the director for whatever reason such that the director wishes to disown the thing. Smithee's 1997 film Burn, Hollywood, Burn (actually a film by former DGA president Arthur Hiller) has been nominated for a Razzie this year. The film has gotten so much press, the D GA has decided to retire the alias. This year's Supernova (which I believe I criticized here without having seen it) is the first film with a non-Smithee director's alias.

See Smithee's IMDb bio sheet. See also the Mr. Showbiz feature, and The Alan Smithee Home Page, w hich also lists his TV and music video credits.

Premier Online's Declaration of Independents first annual film festival is accepting submissions. Don't let the word "film" mislead you; they wa nt submissions on VHS tape. "The contest will be ongoing and film clips from two entrants will be added to the site each week. Viewers will vote on their favorite film and we will publish the contest results at the end of the competition." Deadline is O ctober 1, 2000.

Biking in the City is a new web journal about commuting in San Fransisco. I wonder how long Michael can keep this up. Biking to work, I mean.

So where do you get those little plastic credit card wallet inserts to replace them when they wear out? Try walletstore.com. They sent me mine in a fancy wallet box. (OK, so I could probably get them at any depa rtment store, but I don't go into department stores all that often.)

The Annotated American Pie. (Thanks Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Animated evolution of the Latin alphabet, as well as those of other alphabets. (Thanks GirlHacker, Yahoo's Weekly Picks.)