A Year-End Grab Bag of Bizarre Links

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007 | 9:41 a.m.

In the space of this column, we like to make room for any manner of Internet bizarre, from allegedly sexually deviant operatic R&B singers to chipmunks with gifts for the dramatic arts.

But even dancing Wonder Women and Tetris-shaped Japanese game show contestants can be left out in the cold. To give them their due, here's a grab bag of Internet oddities that deserve notice before the year is out.

NOW THAT'S AN ENTRANCE: Contemplating the greatest entrances of all time, your mind might drift to James Brown or Kramer. Pish. The title, by unanimous decision, goes to Tandi Iman Dupree. Either search her name on YouTube or click on this link, http://tinyurl.com/2gvjf7, to watch Dupree enter the stage for the 2001 Miss Black America drag pageant. While Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" plays, Dupree, dressed as Wonder Woman, drops from above the stage (and out of view), landing in a perfect leg split.

ANYTHING TO EAT? Even though we all usually know the contents of our refrigerators (we bought the groceries, after all), we can't help but stare inside, searching for something - anything decent - to eat. We're like moths drawn to that bright, white glow. Weirdly enough, there's a Web site devoted to this practice: http://www.fridgewatcher.com. The site is simply photos submitted from all over the world showing the interiors of people's fridges. One is reminded how every "Cribs" host is sure to exhibit his or her icebox. There must be some anthropologic reason behind this odd tradition. Perhaps it dates back to cavemen showing off their hunted meals - a slaughtered elk or something. Centuries later, though, this means bragging about how much Yoo-Hoo you've got stashed.

JAPAN IS ANOTHER WORLD: At the risk of sounding ethnocentric, Japanese pop culture is the craziest thing in the world. YouTube and the cable channel Spike TV have greatly increased the distribution for peculiar Japanese game shows. In particular, YouTube is a giant repository of clips from these shows, the king of which is "Human Tetris." Millions have watched clips of this show, where contestants attempt to contort themselves into Tetris-like shapes, or be pushed into a tepid pool: http://tinyurl.com/yq4mv9. They even play Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in the background. Judging a foreign society by its game shows probably isn't fair; after all, the United States doesn't come off too great in how its citizens react to the words "... a new car!"

SOUND OF SPUTNIK: The site http://www.spacesounds.com has been around for several years, but its out-of-this-world audio is, by nature, timeless. It hosts audio tracks of things like what the Russian satellite Sputnik sounds like, what you would hear if you passed through the rings of Saturn, and the "heartbeat" of the Sun - which sounds kinda like a Radiohead tune.

COMPUTER CARTOON: The notion of fictional characters coming alive and causing their creator headaches dates back, at least, to author Luigi Pirandello. But it hadn't properly been transplanted to computer animation until 18-year-old Ohio native Alan Becker drew a stick figure who refused to die. At his site, http://alanbecker.deviantart.com, you can find his flash creation: "Animator vs. Animation." The stick figure, named "victim," resolutely refuses destruction from his animator and uses everything at his disposal - Windows tools, the cloning feature - to save himself. In miniature form, he's Frankenstein 2.0.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - What's your favorite Web site? E-mail AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle at fcoyle(at)ap.org