HALL OF FAVES: As Adam mentioned below, Michael Wilbon's election to "ALOTT5MA fave" status went down yesterday, marking the first time in history a person, thing, or abstraction was nominated but failed to take the honor (though it's going to be touch-and-go when "ennui" comes up later this year). This is largely because until Adam thought to ask the staff about Wilbon yesterday, the enshrinement process went: (1) fiat; (2) buyer's remorse. Let's face it, "ALOTT5MA Fave" status is a dubious honor bestowed, with rare exceptions, upon people or things that aren't really anybody's favorite anything. I dare you to come up with a less-impressive or more haphazard Hall of Fame than this roster of everyone that any of us has ever called an "ALOTT5MA fave":

Filmed Entertainment:
JJ Abrams
Amy Adams
Naveen Andrews
Kristen Chenoweth
Cruel Intentions
Anna Faris
Will Ferrell
Victor Garber
Jennifer Garner
Neil Patrick Harris
Shonda Rhimes
Aaron Sorkin
James Spader
Aimee Teegarden

Haberdashery:
Tim Gunn
Kara Saun

Games of Skill or Chance:
Bobby Abreu
Pat Burrell
Shaquille O'Neal
Stephanie Rosenthal

Ingestion:
Mark Bittman
Anthony Bourdain
Chik-Fil-A

Commentariat:
Jim DeRogatis
Roger Ebert
Tony Kornheiser
Elvis Mitchell
Kelefeh Sanneh

Childhood:
Kavya Shivashankar

Tonal Pleasantry:
Frenchie Davis
Kathleen Edwards
Verdine "Sexual Chocolate" White

And while we're clearing up administrative matters, you have probably heard us refer to this department or that bureau, and wondered, "where can I get an ALOTT5MA internal directory?" The answer is here, right now, with the following list of organizational responsibilities or expertises adopted, appropriated, or assigned:

Chicago Bureau Chief: Alex
Pre-1990s Heavy Metal Bureau Chief: Isaac
Japanese Monomania Desk: The Pathetic Earthling
Personal Health/Exotic Disease Desk: Isaac
Repressive Regimes Desk: All
Urophilia Desk: Adam
Dead Wrestler Series Editor: Adam
Halls of Fame Series Editor: Alex
Muktuk Series Editor: Adam
Things that Are Not Suitable for TV Expert: The Pathetic Earthling
19 Entertainment Modus Operandi Expert: KCosmo
Astronomy Bug: The Pathetic Earthling

ETA: Just to be clear, all faves and titles are culled from our recorded archives. Not making any editorial decisions here; just collating pre-existing data.

Book World Live - washingtonpost.com

WARTHOG POOP SHOOT: ALOTT5MA fave Anthony Bourdain did a live chat with WaPo readers yesterday. It's a fun one:

Washington, D.C.: Would you ever consider challenging Chef Flay or Batali on Iron Chef? Would the Travel Channel even allow this?

Anthony Bourdain: No way. I'd get my ass kicked. And with my luck, the secret ingredient would probably be Tofu.

Alexandria, Va.: What do you like so much about Japanese cuisine? (I'm totally falling for it myself, but I can't figure out why. It's weird. )

Anthony Bourdain: Fresh, clean, refined--it removes all but the necessary. And because it's the end product of centuries of thinking very seriously about food and pleasure. And because the Japanese can and will pay 300 dollars a POUND--wholesale--for the best fish.

Yes, there may be an ALOTT5MA Award in his future.

"MAYBE I HAVE TO STEP IT UP A BIT": There are plenty of folks who we call ALOTT5MA Faves (plus a certain poultry-centric fast food chain closed on Sundays), but precious few who get the "Longtime ALOTT5MA Fave" appellation.

The Phillies' Pat Burrell is one of them, largely due to interviews he gave Philadelphia Weekly and Penthouse in 2002-03 (text NSFW). So I will implore you to use this handy widget and cast your vote today for Pat to join the National League All-Star Team -- #4 in the NL with a .995 OPS, .278/.411/.585 with 21 HR. He deserves your Final Vote, cast as frequently as the MLB will allow:


In other All Star news, something I've long called for is that the Commissioner -- yes, even Selig -- should have the right to name a player to each squad who may not necessarily deserve the honor for this year, but who ought to be honored by Baseball Nation as a whole in this marquee event during the twilight of his career. Regardless of how they're doing this season, Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas ought to be playing in Yankee Stadium next week. Who's with me?

I DON'T THINK THIS IS FOR WRITING 'BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS': Congratulations to ALOTT5MA fave Roger Ebert, who today received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In his honor, and with the warning that all the internal links are broken but you can still find the reviews referenced therein easily on his website, this ALOTT5MA Classic post from February 21, 2003, noting Ebert's addition of a new film to the Zero-Star Club after a year of kindness. To find out what film -- starring a two-time Oscar winner, a four-time Oscar nominee and another two-time Oscar nominee, directed by a two-time Oscar nominee . . . follow that link, or, okay, the review's right here.

SET PHASERS TO LOVE ME: If Adam is going to claim ALOTT5MA Fave status by fiat for Cameron Diaz, I think we need to take a cue from the good folks of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and ask: Isn't there a better way? So let's convene a convention, put the parliament to parlaying, and duma this up for Mister Donald Glover. His resume:

• Took his miscast role as stunted jock Troy Barnes and steered it right into absurd enthusiastically nerdy man-child-man Troy Barnes
• Wrote for 30 Rock's great first season, where Wiki tells us he came up with most of Tracy Jordan's lines ("That's racist. I'm not on crack. I'm straight up mentally ill"). (Caveat: Wiki also used to say repeatedly that Glover's dad was Danny Glover, so it may be lying to us.)
• Mounted a campaign to be the new Spider-Man that was both funny and intriguing without ever being annoying
• Raps under the name Childish Gambino, which is funny no matter how good or bad the rapping is
• Last night held an impromptu open bar for his Twitter followers while trying to get one of them a date
• Is the first auto-complete option Google gives you when you type "Donald," meaning that the Internets love him more than they love Trump, Sutherland, Sterling, and Driver

Look, I think we use the word "fave" far too often, and perhaps the bar is set too low. I don't really need your validation to love Donald Glover. I'm just curious, though -- isn't he among that small group of people (NPH, Heather Morris, James Franco) who lack detractors in these parts?

ROUND THREE: We're up and running with Round 3 of the Bee. Only 24 hours until the Canadian bloodbath!

10:34/1:34: Laura Newcombe is two-for-two in the oral rounds, with the relatively easy "efficacy." But how would she have done with her predecessor's name, "Anoufrieva"? (Isaac)

11:00/2:00: Poor Skye Merriam. The unbearable pressure of that last name. I would have checked in under a pseudonym, like Christopher Combee. (Isaac)

11:25/2:25: It is possible to misspell lagniappe by more letters than what a speller just did, but you'd have to get the l-a wrong too. I'm not watching the video feed right now, but that just hurt to read, and makes me sad. (Adam)



11:28/2:28: I have to say, it still just looks weird when Olathe, Kansas spells a word incorrectly. (Isaac)

12:18/3:18: I feel terribly for the kids who've erred twice before the microphone. It's a new form of embarrassment which didn't exist before this iteration of the Bee format. I think I'd rather they have a longer written exam, one guaranteed preliminary round before the microphone in the morning, and then start the next round after lunch with the top hundred spellers. Hmm. (Adam)



1:02/4:02: Ah, "kuru" makes an appearance, knocking "sabermetric" out of first on my list of my favorite Bee words of all time. Neither is difficult to spell, and I love my baseball statistics, but the Madagascan spongiform encephalopic disease that became Mad Cow to the rest of us has a special place in my heart. (Isaac)

1:51/4:51: And on the day of ALOTT5MA Fave Shaquille O'Neal's retirement announcement, someone with the first name of "O'Neal" gets braggadocio wrong. We live in an ironic and unkind universe. (Adam)

1:58/4:58: Saboteur, ipecac, pantomime, all in a row. Has Dr. Jacque Bailly gone soft? (Adam)

BEE INFORMED:  With three-plus weeks to go, it's time to turn our attention to the field for the 2014 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the twelfth to be live-blogged here. (Yes, we're now at the point where some of the competitors weren't born yet at the time I first started doing this.)

There's only one five-timer in the field, two-time prime-timer Sriram Hathwar; and five four-year repeaters including long-time ALOTT5MA fave Vanyya Shivashankar, the keystone to many a pool entry over the years and one of two siblings of past winners in the field. There are two Canadians.

The rules appear to be the same as last year, with its artificial cutoff Thursday afternoon of kids who've spelled all their words correctly onstage but erred in the computerized rounds, and my objection still stands:

Are we okay with a Bee in which many kids will be eliminated not be spelling a word wrong on stage, but by performance in a private, computerized competition? Clear pros and cons -- it spares these young people that public moment of failure, which can be both scarring and motivating -- but it also deprives the audience of the full drama. I have long noted that the Bee is, in essence, a long process by which we see every kid (but one) misspell a word, which is ironic and more than a little sad, but putting myself back in my early adolescent hypercompetitive brain, I think that's what the kids want -- win or lose (and likely lose), to have it happen on the stage, in that moment of spotlight and pressure.

But on the other hand, as I noted after last year's Bee: "The Bee doesn't exist for our enjoyment: it exists for the kids who are competing in it, so as I've said before the question of whether these computer-based cutoffs are appropriate is really one for them as competitors more than for us as observers. From this outsider's perspective, it does seem more fair to have evaluations based on 24 (and 24 more) common words rather than the luck of the draw at the microphone, and more compassionate to not have every eliminated speller have to suffer that fate in front of a camera—but that also renders the Bee a test of slightly different skills than the traditional oral-only evaluation."

THE EVIL INSIDE OF ME IS ON THE RISE A nice profile of ALOTT5MA fave Neil Patrick Harris in New York Magazine.

EVEN THE BEST SPELLER NEEDS GOOD LUCK: As you're preparing your entries for our annual National Spelling Bee pool, here's a few more to consider:

• ALOTT5MA fave Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe (KS), the lone rookie to make it to prime time last year, is back for seconds.
  
• Second-timer Isabel Jacobsen of Madison, Wisconsin, whose coach (who himself competed in nationals decades ago) has drilled her in the fact that "more than 10 percent of contestants are eliminated by misspelling a word with a French origin."
  
• Eleven-year-old Jonathan Schut of P.E.I., who's spending an hour a day studying with his mom.
• Paige Tang of Jackson, Tenn., who's gone from misspelling "vigilante" last year to the Nationals, though she hopes "they don't ask many words from other languages" because "words from Latin, Greek and German have a lot of letters and can be hard to spell."
• Brownsville (TX)'s Blessing Taclobao, finally free from the local immovable object that was four-timer Nidharshan Anandasivam.
• West Virginia's Sam Matherly, who says "I just got braces this year, and glasses, and then I won the spelling bee. Now, I’m officially a nerd," with a goal of winning the Bee now, the Nextel Cup next.
  
• Saskatchewan's Anqi Dong says he doesn't care about the cameras in his third attempt; he just wants to win.
• DC's Olivia Laesch explains the importance of all those etymology questions.
• Did you know that the favorite word of four-timer Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan of Colorado was pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis? That's hardcore.
  

Wednesday, live coverage begins. Oh, and Samir Patel is now saying that "I'm not doing it for the prize alone, but if it wasn't for the prize, I probably wouldn't be doing it."

A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

CHEF, HOW DO YOU MAKE A WOMAN LIKE YOU MORE THAN ANY OTHER GUY? We discussed the James Beard Foundation Award nominees; tonight, the winners were named. Chicago's Grant Achatz of Alinea is, quite understandably, your Chef of the Year, with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich your outstanding Restaurateurs. NYC's Gramercy Tavern is Restaurant of the Year, and Anchor Brewery Company owner (and Maytag Dairy Farms chairman) Fritz Maytagthe lifetime award for outstanding achievements in fermentation.

Philadelphia's chefs were shut out, as was ALOTT5MA Fave Mark Bittman. The remaining cook/restaurant/book and newspaper/radio/tv/etc (PDF) awards are linked, including one for Barbara Kingsolver for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

I HEAR HIT LIST HAS AN AMAZING A CAPELLA NUMBER IN THE SHOW:The Tony Awards, hosted for the third consecutive year by ALOTT5MA Fave NPH, return to Radio City tonight after two years in exile on the Upper West Side.  Debate how Kinky Boots, Matilda, and Pippin will split the spoils (my guess--Kinky gets score, making Cyndi Lauper just an Oscar short of EGOT, and actor for Billy Porter, Matilda gets book and Best Musical, while Pippin runs the table, getting Featured Actor, Featured Actress, Actress, Director, and Revival, plus a bunch of tech stuff), and whether Tom Hanks' starpower and the warm reception of Lucky Guy are enough to beat back the rapturous reviews (but limited box office success and long-ago closing) of Virginia Woolf.  Talk amongst yourselves here--show starts at 8.

PRAY, WHO BE THIS 'TRACY JORDAN' THOU SPEAKEST OF? Where does ("ALOTT5MA fave?" -- we need to vote) Tracy Morgan end and "Tracy Jordan" begin? Both the New York Times (with audio clips) and New York magazine try to figure it out.

A-N-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-E: Well, it sorta crept up on us this time, but Memorial Day falling so early this year means that the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee indeed begins next Tuesday, with televised rounds on Wednesday and Thursday.

For the seventh straight year, we'll be giving full court press coverage to all the spellers and their exploits. Not much will change this year -- we will probably employ CoverItLive for the final televised rounds, but probably not for the day competition, and will be popularizing the #bee09 hashtag to draw folks here.

It begins, of course, by seeing who we've got, and these bullet points should whet your appetite:

• Unlike most years, there are no members of the five-timers club. The 4 four-timers, however, include ALOTT5MA fave Kavya Shivashankar, who's made it to primetime in each of her three previous years and is returning despite a missed word in her regional bee. Also returning from last year's primetime is 2008 runner-up Sidharth Chand, who is, indeed, sporting the 'stache this year, and Peoria's Kyle Mou.
• Other returners of note include four-timer Keiko Bridwell, once described by Shonda as a "super cute spelling hottie" who has "Cover Girl written all over her"; Long Island's Zachary Zagorski; and three-timer Morgan Gilliam, who we loved when she was the competition's youngest speller at 9 in 2005, who then returned in 2007 and is back for her third and final try at age 13.
• The Mattsassin is not returning, having lost in his county bee.
• One of the first-timers is Albuquerque's Hannah Evans, younger sister of now-retired five-timer Matthew Evans.
  

But let's crowdsource this mofo. Look at the roster of spellers, including all our Neighbors to the North, google some of the names to see what their local newspapers are saying about them, and tell us what you find.** The more we get to know these kids before it starts, the more fun it'll be.

Finally, this housekeeping note: because she has finally decided to take a long-overdue vacation -- her first since Grey's Anatomy began -- our friend Shonda Rhimes will not be joining us for this year's coverage. Since 2005, we've been fortunate to have her join us here to supply her insight, her enthusiasm, and her voluminous crush on a certain diminutive South Asian speller from Texas, and we will all miss her this year.

We do look forward to the return of our regular crew of former National Spelling Bee finalists, and are always looking for other insightful voices. So if you've competed in the National Bee before, are a parent of someone who has or otherwise believe you should be involved in our team coverage (have you created a hit tv drama?) or just want to contribute a single essay, shoot me an email at throwingthingsblog@hotmail.com.

** Edited for clarification. We're only interested in public accounts like newspaper articles; please don't be hunting down these kids' MySpace/Facebook pages or other personal sites which were not intended for our eyes.

TRAMPOLINE PANDA BEAR: In his weekly WaPo chat today, ALOTT5MA Fave and** "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" murderer Michael Wilbon was asked (ahem) about the coverage of the Games:

Philadelphia: Michael, you're a sports writer who has always been sensitive to the political and social ramifications of the athletes and events you cover. Are the print media doing a sufficient job of reminding readers of the brutally repressive Chinese regime? Is NBC sugarcoating things too much?

Michael Wilbon: If you want information and insight about serious news issues as they relate to China, read The Post and The New York Times and others responsible newspapers with reporters and columnists who are unafraid. If you want to cheer on the U.S. athletes, watch TV. It's always been this way. The networks, and that now includes ESPN, an entity whose generous checks I cash monthly, are partners with the leagues and the events. They're not going to view them at a distance. The NBA Finals on ABC, which is the way the event is billed and sold, isn't going to lead with the Tim Donaghey news the way The Washington Post or The New York Times would lead its sports section. Not going to happen. So, you know that going on and consume your information accordingly. That doesn't mean the networks don't investigate and do tough reporting...just not with those they're partnered with...

As I mentioned in the Comments last night, I was particularly disturbed by a cutesy piece by Mary Carillo on the "new China" that was all golly jeepers that's big! about the Three Gorges Dam construction, with no mention at all of the ~1.2 million people forcibly displaced or the environmental damage caused.

In other news, the WaPo's Jill Drew reports today on China's whitewashing of the Tiananmen Square massacre. "The forced amnesia is perpetuated in Chinese schools, where the lessons of the Tiananmen massacre are not taught in history class. If it is mentioned at all, students are instructed that some soldiers lost their lives putting down an unruly anti-government mob."

** We had a staff vote. I lost.

PUT YOUR MAKEUP ON, FIX YOUR HAIR REAL PRETTY: The next wave of entertainment has hit Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City, as their current events schedule reveals -- amid the Donna Summers and Jimmy Buffets of the world -- paid events with Paula Deen, Tom Colicchio and ALOTT5MA Fave Anthony Bourdain? Basically, it's $25 to see 'em lecture, or for a $150 VIP Package (no doubt, to be heavily comped) in which up to 100 guests "will have the ability to 'cook along with Tom and our team'." Or Paula Deen. But not Bourdain, who doesn't want to cook with you. He'll only let you watch him cook, and let you eat it.

I buried the lede, however. You can also pay $30, $40 or $50 to watch Kevin Costner talk. No, he doesn't cook. Instead, Caesar's explains ...

This is a non-televised event. This is a lecture, question and answer event. Kevin will discuss movies, antidotes, etc.

Hey, Kevin, I just got bitten by a Chilean recluse spider. What should I do?

e.t.a. But that's not all! The night before, Kevin Costner Sings! Heartbeat, I'm looking for a heartbeat ...

TONY WHO? What if I told you that there was a guy who was the lead singer on 5 Top 10 hits and that you had probably never heard of him?

Tony Burrows never had a hit record under his own name, but he managed the feat of having four records in the British Top Ten at the same time, all under different names. The British session vocalist was the lead singer of:

• Edison Lighthouse's Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), which hit # 5 on the American pop charts in February of 1970,

• White Plains' My Baby Loves Lovin' (someone has set this song to a "Lost" theme), which peaked at #13 on the US Top 40 in May of the same year,

• The Pipkins' preposterous Gimme Dat Ding, which reached #9 in June of 1970, and

• The Brotherhood of Man's United We Stand, which hit #13 in May of the same year.

Burrows had another Top Ten hit in 1974 with the song Beach Baby, credited to First Class.

He also sang background on many of Elton John's early-'70s albums (especially Madman Across the Water). In fact, he sings background on ALOTT5MA fave Tiny Dancer (this clip taken from the memorable scene in "Almost Famous").

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT, WE'VE SEEN HIS GIANT HANDS: We probably need a thread for spoiler discussion of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I highly recommend. In a lot of ways, it's more human than Knocked Up and Superbad, particularly on the female side. Sarah Marshall is a fully formed character rather than just being either an unattainable beauty (Superbad), or a shrill nagging harpy (Knocked Up). Lots of very funny people doing very funny bit moments (Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Jack McBrayer, whose story doesn't really connect into the rest of the film, and an ALOTT5MA fave who shows up during the credits in a preview for Sarah Marshall's next project), and Billy Baldwin doing a priceless goof on David Caruso as the lead of Crime Scene: Scene Of The Crime. Jason Segel also proves that yes, he can carry a movie on his broad shoulders and you don't think of him as Marshall even once (and yes, as is obligatory to mention in all writing about the film, we do see all of him--no reciprocation from the female characters, though).

One thing that does bug--Mila Kunis doesn't really work. She looks kind of like a plastic anime doll, and has a weird inflection in her voice that bugs. More significantly, while she's pretty, she doesn't bring any spark or interest to the character, who just winds up flat and not really a match for Bell's smart-ass attitude. I wonder what a sharper actress could have done with the part who could have brought some snark to it--say Amber Tamblyn, Rachel Bilson, or Emily Blunt--could have elevated what's already a very good movie to a great one.

I ONLY WANTED, ONE TIME, TO SEE YOU LAUGHING: In what's undoubtedly going to be the funniest thing to emerge from the filming of Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 2, Shaquille O'Neal, who has a supporting role in the film, yet again justifies his ALOTT5MA Fave status with this lip-synced lament regarding his hair-growing capacity.

GEORGE? I WAS A STAND-UP TOMATO: A JUICY, SEXY, BEEFSTEAK TOMATO. NOBODY DOES VEGETABLES LIKE ME. I DID AN EVENING OF VEGETABLES OFF-BROADWAY. I DID THE BEST TOMATO, THE BEST CUCUMBER... I DID AN ENDIVE SALAD THAT KNOCKED THE CRITICS ON THEIR ASS: Following up on their women's list we covered earlier this year, PopMatters presents a quirky, provocative, self-consciously nerdy and comment-worthy list of the 100 Essential Male Film Performances.

One sample, from its entry on someone who I believe is going to be voted on for ALOTT5MA Fave Status later this year: "Rickman brings order to the chaotic settings, seemingly anticipating all of the angles and never seeming to be anything less than fully in control. The actor sets the tone for the movie, replacing what could have been brutish and gruff with something that strives for the sleek and smart. Rickman’s triumph is also in how skillfully he lets us slowly watch Hans’ cool slide off into the sadism that he had hoped to mask. ... [H]e’s a cold killer that had hoped to put that all behind him and win the day with his brains and plotting. When that fails, he wastes no time embracing his roots."

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, BIG ARISTOTLE, YOUR NEW CONGRESSWOMAN IS MARCIA FUDGE: ALOTT5MA Fave Shaquille O'Neal bet one of his handlers that he could just show up at the front gate of the White House today and gain admission to visit the President. Loser had to do 1,000 push-ups. Was he rejected like what Jamario Moon did to him? Our Friend Dan Steinberg tells the tale, and has Shaq's thoughts on Skipgate.