The constant rain and flooding in the Passenger's home town of Las Vegas this past week, the so-called "100 year storm" ... the death of jazz vocalist Helen Forrest at age 82 ... the appearance of the Innocence Mission's wistful new album on my desk. I swear all these events and milestones are related, somehow. Finding the link between them is only half the challenge, and not the half that matters. Sigh.

I have made toast, and will do it again. The procedure is simple enough: take two slices of bread - white, wheat, rye, raisin, the possibilities are endless - placed them gingerly into a kitchen appliance called (appropriately enough) a toaster, depress the toaster's spring-tension handle and wait. A minute later, you, too, will have toast. But what is toast, really? What makes stiff bread so irresistible to the palate? The answers you seek, kitchen disciple, are at Our Lady of Toast, Mother of Toasters, an online church devoted to the more crunchy of breads. Here, and probably only here, the toast lover can get the latest toast news, thrill to enduring toast folklore, identify with the crispy delicacy in feature films. There is no better way to pass a lazy summer day than with this site and a nice, tall plate of toast. After all, what is toast, really, but bread with a tan?
 

"Velvet Goldmine" director Todd Haynes' 1987 short film, the currently illegal "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," used what, at the time, was a narrative device so innovative, so thoroughly brilliant that it's little wonder Richard Carpenter sought to ban it: all the "actors" were Barbie and Ken dolls. The creators of "The Barbie and Ken Show" are no doubt completely unaware of Haynes' short - the site describes the authors of these molded plastic tableaus as being between the ages of 10 and 14 - but nevertheless, they share the artistry and post-ironic nature with which Haynes invested "Superstar." Nine words: "The Passion of Jesus Christ, the true Easter story." Look, enjoy, and anticipate a time when silver screen idols can be bought and sold over E-Bay.
 

Stretching from its Saturday night spot on Minneapolis-based public radio station KBEM to a global concern, Gregg Wolfe's Swanktown Radio may be some of the coolest streaming music on the web. Most of it is recent jump swing, true - too much Royal Crown revue, much too much - but jump swing is something you can enjoy even when not jumping, and there's enough Sinatra, Torme, Goodman and Dino snaking through Wolfe's sets to make them golden. And I could ogle the pin-up on the main page all day. Fire up your RealAudio player and go, cat, go.
 

Goddamn it, I know who that guy is! He was in "Fargo," he was a Russian guy in "Armageddon," and I think he was in "The Lost World" ... For those (admittedly rare) occasions when the IMDB just doesn't make the nut, Who Is That?, a site devoted to Hollywood's current bumper-crop of talented character actors, stands ready to fill in the blanks. There's Keith David, late of "Armageddon" and "There's Something About Mary"; over yonder is Bob Gunton, Warden Samuel Norton from "The Shawshank Redemption"; a welcome party is James Cameron favorite Jenette Goldstein, whose appearance has and range varies so - from "Titanic" to "Aliens" - that the Passenger found it hard to believe the same actor played the roles, even faced with photographic evidence. The site is fairly new, so I'll forgive the omission of Swoosie Kurtz, Vincent D'Onofrio and Peter Stormare - the aforementioned guy from "Fargo." All told, it's a promising beginning for a really cool site.

Helen Forrest sang my favorite version of "Up A Lazy River," with Benny Goodman's band. I saw the Innocence Mission perform "That Was Another Country" in my friend Josh's Hollywood cafe. And I've always had an affinity with the deluge - comes from my religious upbringing. But the rest ... the rest doesn't come easy. Cheers until next week.