In The Noise - January 26, 2010

A show of hands, please. How many feel frustration, disdain or a feeling of being ripped-off by Ticketmaster?

I see...

Well! Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been given the go-ahead by the Justice Department to marry their companies, creating the largest greedy giant, ever, with its hands in every pocket of the music business - booking concerts, selling tickets and merchandise, and managing artists all under one roof.

In theory, we're told, this is not what you call, "monopoly".

Well, whatever it is, it's sure not "Trivial Pursuit". Maybe it's more like "Balderdash".

Or, "Sorry!"

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Here's an update on that old food safety axiom, "The Five-Second Rule".

You know, the old-wives-tale about how - if you drop your ice cream cone on the floor, you have five seconds to pick it up and wipe it off before the bacteria sail over to the ice cream, jump on board and ride it into your mouth like Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Salmonella.

Well, the folks who write the food blog of the San Francisco Weekly have developed their own, unique flow chart based on experiments done by a couple of biology students from Connecticut College.

In these experiments, they dropped apple slices and Skittles candies on the ground and measured how long it took before the rapscallion bacteria pirates rendered it unsafe to eat. The students' conclusion was that the axiom could safely be renamed, "The 30-second Rule".

Another job for Viagra?

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So there was American Idol's newest judge, Ellen Degeneres, arriving for her first day of taping...feeling excited and nervous. She couldn't wait to get started. But wait she did...and wait...and wait. With no explanation, Simon Cowell was an hour and a half late!

Needless to say, Ellen was not a happy camper and the fur has begun to fly, yet again, on the American Idol set.

Well, maybe the rumors are only partly true...

...Daytime "soap operas" might be coming to an end...

...or they're just moving to primetime on FOX.

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Whoa! Things are getting messy North-of-the-Border.

The Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister, Gail Shea, was hit in the face with a pie by a seal hunt protester.

Apparently, the American animal-rights activist - a PETA member - who perpetrated the act, used tofu pie as his weapon. He was immediately arrested.

By the way, Minister Shea was not injured, and said she has not changed her support for the hunt.

But has acquired a taste for tofu.

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NASA's Martian rover, "Spirit" will rove no more. A space odyssey comes to an close. Or does it?

The little robot got its six wheels stuck in sand several months ago and two wheels no longer work at all.

But, wow, did Spirit live up to its name! It originally had a design life of three months - but ended up spending the past six years traveling nearly 12 miles across the barren surface of the Red Planet and finding strong evidence of water erosion on Mars.

However, although "Spirit" is stuck, NASA is not "pulling the plug". They plan to use "Rover" as a fixed, immobile scientific observatory.

"Sit, Rover. Stay. Good boy..."