The "spot" drawings in the New Yorker have been forming abtuse sequences in recent issues, the New York Times reported Wednesday. I noticed the sequence when reading the Anniversary Issue, but I didn't realize the trend until the newspaper story. Does that make me a worse New Yorker reader or a more sane one?

In high school, my freshman year science fair proposal was about maglev trains. There wasn't really a hypothesis, much less variables or controls, but I got to read a ton about maglev trains and that was awesome. I also tried to build a mini maglev train with Legos. And magnets. It didn't work, and I didn't make it into the science fair.

But the Chinese have spent billions of dollars and built a maglev train running from Shanghai's airport into the city (sort of). Writing for Slate this week, Henry Blodget has given me the most detailed idea yet of what the ride is like.

Emily considers the plan to create a Rush Street atmosphere in downtown Joliet. "Unless a Joliet monorail system is in the works, I don't feel this plan is feasible."

McSweeney's offers "Fragments from Steroids! The Musical."

The leftover cellophane noodles were going down the sink Saturday night when the garbage disposal stopped and the water began to rise. When it was half an inch deep and not dropping, I went to bed.

Midway through the next morning, I returned to the sink. The water was gone, but a quick run of the faucet had it rising again. The disposal didn't make a sound. I went beneath the sink and pressed the reset button, helpfully marked in red and the only button on the disposal's underside. When I flicked the switch on the wall, the machine hummed for a bit, still not spinning, and turned itself off again. The water didn't drop. I dug out the undisposed food with my hands and a set of tongs.

The Internet offered some advice on the issue, with sites like eHow and the Do It Yourself Network leading the way and often plagarized Lowe's instructions following up. All involved said I could probably do the job myself. All involved also said not to stick your hands in the machine and not to use tongs without first shutting off the circuit. Completely unchastened, I went back to the kitchen.

I cleared the sink of plates and pots, stacking them to the side and in the dish rack and on top of the refridgerator. The frying pan there nearly did in my eye the first I turned left, so I adjusted my arrangement — items now on the lowered dishwasher door and the kitchen table — and took the back end of a long spoon to the disposal. The spoon was plastic and not the sturdiest utensil, but the various instructions only called for minor stabbing. Just enough to clear the jam.

If there was a jam at all, of course. I had a certified clog, but a jam was questionable. The noodles were skinny and all silverware was accounted for. When the butt of the spoon did nothing, I went looking for the plunger. If the jam wasn't high, maybe it was low. The tightness of that pipe running from the disposal to the wall was surprising and suspicious. For all my kneeling to get the box of dishwashing detergent, I'd never realized what miracles of chopping the garbage disposal had performed. This pipe could've had a clog of Asian pasta anywhere in its length, all the way up to the Internet-famous (in do-it-yourself circles) "main drain," which my bathroom teeth-brushing earlier had confirmed as in working condition. None of this possibility explained why the disposal wouldn't spin, but I wasn't plumber enough to argue with myself.

The plunger was an exciting affair as plunger went, aside from its humble home between our bathroom sink and toilet. Putting up with none of the wood-handled, red-cupped traditionalness that your father and your motel maintenance supervisory see as necessities for success, our plunger had a see-through plastic handle — bead-like on top to presumably compete with The Sharper Image — and a blue-green cup that had to have been some working group's idea of how to make plunging more fun. As if it wasn't already. I pumped the plunger to the sink and promptly blew the lid off the overflow drain.

The lid flew a few inches into the air and water shot in a gush into the sink and around the edge. So, that was the overflow drain. All the instructions I had read had told me to cover the overflow drain, to stop it, block it, plug it, put some kind of pressure on it, or otherwise my plunging would be in vain. I doubted at the time that I had such a drain, but I learned my lesson and what that circular doohickey next to the faucet did. I put my right hand over that drain and resumed plunging with my left. Doing so gradually drained the water from the sink, but refilling recreated the problem. The disposal still hummed.

At this point, I was losing patience, so I took the process with me. I set two pots of water to boil on the stove and continued plunging. When the pots boiled, I dumped them both down the sink. The steam flew up and I attacked with the plunger. I got all the water down the drain, but the humming continued. I got a third pot boiling and took it to the sink. Splashing sounds turned to steaming and as I resumed plunging there was sudden woosh of incredible, beautiful draining.

I ran the tap and it drained too. When I flicked the switch on the wall, a hum kicked into a buzz and water shot upward momentarily, out of the disposal before falling back in, never to be seen again. I raised my arms above my head in exultation before lowering them to finish doing the dishes.

In last week's New Yorker, David Denby says director Danny Boyle falls short in his new movie, Millions. "He changes camera speeds, zips through sequences, sends things flying through the air. We're supposed to be overwhelmed by magic, but what we see is fancy film technique and a lot of strained whimsy."

After seeing the movie Saturday, and as someone who spent much of his childhood playing in various cardboard boxes, I disagree. One introductory sequence lays a computer backing too bare, but the rest of the film captures a child's imagination as well as any film I've seen. Millions takes its young minds and allows in what most tellings ignore — sadness and faith.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a song's resemblance to Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger, the title track to the James Bond movie. I would like to clarify that statement. I've never liked Goldfinger — the song — one bit. Perhaps appropriate for an Adam-West-as-Batman seduction scene, the lyrics and style give bombast a worse name. "Songs of Shirley Bassey" has lengthy details about the song's creation. The lyrics are at the bottom of that page, where they belong.

The title song to Diamonds Are Forever is much better use of Bassey's talents. The title song to Moonraker, not so much.

You probably don't remember Amanda Latona, but you might remember the article.

It ran in the New York Times Magazine in August 2002, an extended profile much publicized and enjoyed among music fans as formally acknowledging the demise of Orlando pop. The article was "Who's that girl? Building a Post-Britney," and Latona was the subject. Signed to be a Britney clone, already abandoning a girl-group career to go solo, already through a more popular, boy-band boyfriend, she found herself stuck in the aftermath and seemingly clueless.

A year later, I came across the story again in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003. It occured to me that I had heard nothing of Latona between my first read and the book. Going searching online, I found I hadn't missed much. There was a single, but the album was delayed. Repeatedly. Public appearances were minimum, and fan sites were lagging. Things weren't looking good.

Then I forgot about her again.

And then I remembered, and here we were today, two and a half years after the article's initial publication. I just spent a while looking up the latest on Latona, and the nature of her decline — and she has indeed declined — was exactly what you might have expected.

Her official site was still on the Web, but the content was circa early 2003 and in uncompleted state. That album of hers never got made. On the unofficial side, the Latona Fans blog wasn't doing much better. There was album talk last spring, but by fall we had: "I hate that I neglect this community but it's hard not to when Amanda doesn't give much news out. Nonetheless my unhealthy obsession with her continues." Then the poster offered quick pieces of info about Latona's ongoing fitness/bikini/model competions and her father's death (see note at bottom).

Also surviving but struggling for content were Amanda Latona Online and Amazingly Amanda. The number of Yahoo groups was surprisingly large, but all were down to sporadic posts or none or were overtaken by spam. More hopeful than most, one fan started an Orkut group on Jan. 4, 2005. Six other members had joined since.

And that was all I could find of Post-Britney.

This post originally stated that her half-brother died; that statement was incorrect. Just as sadly, it was her father who died. Her half-brother was the source of the news for the LiveJournal blog.

With your NCAA bracket already in tatters, the time has come for you to play the Ultimate Chicagoan tournament. Brought to you by Chicago Tribune's Redeye, the four regions are Screen Stars, Politicians, Athletes and Musicians. The first round is Screen Stars is already over, but the rest of the bracket is still open.

I've mixed feelings on the early results. Bill Murray is going on after defeating Bill Rancic, but Jeremy Piven is headed home, falling to William Petersen of CSI. If the rest of the world had some Noyes Street pride, the world's sandwiches and cookies would taste a lot better.

From Oakland Coach Greg Kampe, after losing badly in the first round, "If you saw that movie Airplane, we just picked a bad day to play Carolina."