"You would think now hope would be tired, but it's all right." Uh-oh. You know when I've put the Innocence Mission in the CD changer that The Passenger's feeling, well, a little mopey. Don't worry about me - a little Chai Tea, some Mary Fahl and at least 48 hours of harsh, unsparing introspection and I'll be right as the weather. By the by: The Passenger sends a shout-out to former Smiths vocalist Stephen Morrissey, who turns 41 this week. That rotten bitch.
 

Whenever Tim Burton makes a film - Oh, Lord. I mean just what you think I mean - it can either be an awestruck Oh, Lord ("Ed Wood," "Beetlejuice") or an aww, crap kind of Oh, Lord ("Mars Attacks," "Batman"). His fall project, "Sleepy Hollow," looks to be an Oh, Lord of the former variety. All the elements are in place: A time-honed American tale of terror, reshaped as a pre-Manifest Destiny gothic cop story by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker ("Seven"), a star-studded cast (Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, Miranda Richardson) and best of all, a man without a head. Everything above that - the Danny Elfman score, the fight direction of Ray "Darth Maul" Park - will be but frosting on a very big, very black cake. This unofficial site gathers every resource on the production into a handsome, well-executed package; it's a credit to fandom. The "Phantom Menace" has passed - get ready for the menacing phantom. Lord, yes.
 

To hell with it. I'm leaving. I'm going to get myself into one of the fabulous vintage trailers at Vintage Vacations and drive off to - Temecula? Bisbee? Goldfield? It doesn't matter, as long as I have a 1951 Spartanette to call home. Assembled (or should I say re-assembled) by trailer aficionado Chris Dorsey after hours spent trying to find information on pre-1960 non-Airstream trailers on the internet, only to find one Airstream site after another. "I have nothing against Airstreams," he insists. "It is just not my trailer of choice." After eyeballing the snazzy trailers Dorsey has restored - the aforementioned Spartanette being one - I can honestly say that I'm developing similar preferences. Dorsey isn't so much endorsing a hobby as a lifestyle; like the folks in his archive of period advertising, he'd bring a full tea set and family dog to Death Valley, if the roads allowed it. The images load slowly, but they're worth waiting for if you have an interest in daytripping or wood finishing. Get one of these trailers, and you'll be doing plenty of both.
 

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence muddles on. The big radio telescope at Arecibo still searches the skies for an answer; our government still consider the searchers a bunch of crackpots; Jodie Foster has moved on to other projects. Not much has changed in The Great Game in the Sky, save one thing - you can now be part of it. Download the SETI at Home screensaver and your machine can start analyzing blocks of data from the Arecibo telescope - your box working for the common good of mankind in the same capacity it once used to render that stupid dancing baby. Every night, as you sleep, your machine will generate cool-looking three-dimensional graphs and "Star Trek"-styled readouts, and more importantly, it will crunch the numbers that the woefully underfunded SETI program just can't afford to figure. "There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth," the introductory text teases. Hey, that's enough for me. Wake me when the space monkeys get here.
 

Boom Boom Satellites: they rule all ass. Make a messy sandwich of Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack and you're still nowhere close. You would need to spread the bread with Loop Guru and the Chemical Brothers, maybe pile "Akira" and "The Matrix" on for added kick. Fact is, the team of Michiyuki Kawashima (guitars, vocals, programming) and Masayuki Nakano (bass, programming) cannot easily be referenced within the current tastes - just as you would expect from a band whose hometown (Tokyo) has elevated pop culture to a faith. Taking their name from mid-80's Brit outfit Sigue Sigue Sputnik (the rough English translation of the Russian phrase is "burn, burn satellite") and nothing from anybody else, these boys are going to beat the hype; one listen to their US debut "Out Loud" and you'll forget I even said anything. Their music is passionate yet alien, engaging yet distant - hell, I might as well try to explain blue to you. The record comes out June 1. If you have even the slightest love of electronic music - it's still the future, baby, and the future is now - get it. When your head's not banging, it'll be swimming - and that's a fine combination.

HA! You thought I was depressed? Sucker! I'm the Passenger, baby! I use Prozac for packing material! Now send the address of your favorite website to the address below, and I will grow more powerful! Double HA!

No, seriously, send me a letter. It gets lonely here in the crawlspace. Knock, knock.