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Dec 29th 2009 By Nicholas Nadel

Eminem's 'Relapse -- Refill,' 'London Calling' 30th Anniversary and More in New Music

Required listening from the week in music.

"Relapse: Refill" adds five new tracks to Eminem's hit 2008 album. Did you know Em has the fourth and fifth best-selling albums of the decade? And that 'N Sync's "No Strings Attached," released in 2000, is the decade's best-selling non-reissue album? Yep, the record industry peaked 10 years ago.

Also in stores this week:
-- "London Calling: 30th Anniversary Edition" celebrates The Clash's beloved LP, which is currently spinning on pretty much every dive bar jukebox around the world.
-- Today marks the re-release of Tangerine Dream's eerie score for "Legend." Yes, the movie where Tom Cruise hangs out with unicorns and dwarves.
-- Remember Samantha Fox, of "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" fame? Well, apparently she has enough songs to warrant a "Greatest Hits" compilation.

Dec 29th 2009 By Brian Childs

Hot Fresh Links -- Served When We Feel Like It

Rachelle Leah
UFC hottie answers the dirty questions you always wanted to ask. (Maxim)

6 Obnoxious Innovations That Will Be in Your New Car (Cracked)

The 20 Most Anticipated Movies of 2010 (COED)

"Up" Meets "Gran Torino" (The Bachelor Guy)
Literal Photo of the Day
Can you figure it out? (I-Am-Bored)
15 Most Epic Trolls of 2009
On the 'Net. (Buzzfeed)
Not a Plane, a Flying Castle
Amazing pictures from the inside of a military plane. (The Chive)

Dec 29th 2009 By Ian Fortey

Xtra Stupid Xbox Thief Gets Busted

There's a cottage industry in making fun of dumb criminals, but every day someone else steps up with a brand new foolish way of making an ass of himself while committing a crime. In this case, a Bronx man did himself in by logging into a stolen Xbox.

Jeremiah Gilliam was apparently pretty good at breaking into homes and cars and making off with electronics. But the mistake that led to his arrest was logging in to the Xbox he had just stolen and deciding to play some online games.

As it happens, the boy he stole the Xbox from was playing on a different Xbox and saw that his own account was activated. So he told his parents. And they told the cops. And the cops tracked the IP address back to Gilliam's grandmother's house.

In the house cops found GPS units, laptops, Xboxes, Playstations and stolen credit cards. Presumably, they also found Gilliam in the midst of a round of "Halo" with no idea what the hell had just happened.

Dec 29th 2009 By Jeremy Taylor

Tiger Woods Cost His Sponsors $12 Billion

Our happy hour fact to amaze you drinking buddies with.

Tiger Woods' corporate sponsors have lost about $12 billion in stock value in the wake of the golfer's scandal.

Collecting data over the two weeks following Woods' suspicious SUV crash, two economics professors at University of California, Davis, determined the financial damage to the brands in bed with Tiger by comparing the stock price of the nine publicly traded companies that Woods endorses to both their competitors and the market as a whole.

"Our analysis makes clear that while having a celebrity of Tiger Woods' stature as an endorser has undeniable upside, the downside risk is substantial, too," said the economists. Accenture, the management consulting firm that dropped Woods soon after the scandal broke, suffered no loss in valuation.

We can already see big business flocking to Washington in early-2010 and lobbying Congress for a "Tiger bailout."

Dec 29th 2009 By G. Xavier Robillard

Speaker Offers a Musical Three-Way for $20K

Got a lot of money to spend on speakers, but not a lot of square-footage to unfurl a full surround-sound setup? Pass Labs' SR-2 solves your quandary with this three-way speaker. They'll give you a home theater sound without taking over all of your wall and floor space.

Built into the speaker are three high-performance drivers: a tweeter, a mid-range and a woofer. The combination provides a shockingly solid blend of sound, offering incredibly high fidelity in a small package. You can get a wall of sound without, you know, a wall of sound (or a convicted felon-cum-record producer). And here's another bonus: In front of the speaker is wood paneling that effectively camouflages it in your living room -- you know if yours walls are similar to a sauna's.

Your three-way musical experience won't come cheap, however. The speaker's starting price is $18,000 for cherry wood front plate (or $21,000 if it's made in madrone or ash). It's available in January if Santa didn't bring you everything you wanted.

Dec 29th 2009 By Jeremy Taylor

Who Is the Hottest Geek of 2009?

David Anderegg, a psychology professor from the always interesting Bennington College, recently argued the term "geek" should be banned. (He also compared it to a racial epithet.)

Maybe Anderegg would have had a semblance of a point five years ago. But not today. Not when there are now women considered to be extremely aesthetically pleasing under any standard of beauty who openly promote themselves as geeks.

Wired magazine, which has been covering the geek beat since before it was chic, holds an annual sexiest-geek competition. It gets hotter and hotter every year. We snagged some our favorite nominees from its 2009 survey in order to conduct our own internal poll.

Read on to check them out.

Who is the finest-looking geek in the land?

Dec 29th 2009 By Ian Fortey

Replica 'Back to the Future' DeLorean Can Be Yours on eBay

In the history of awesomest cars ever, a few will always stand out -- the Batmobile, Speed Racer, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. These are the cars dreams are made of. And right alongside them is Doc Brown's 1981 DeLorean time machine from the "Back to the Future" franchise.


For the low Buy It Now price of $89,000, you can now get your very own replica DeLorean on eBay.

According to the seller it's the most screen-accurate version ever to appear on the site. It took two years to construct, plus six years' worth of research.

Built by Gary Weaver, an expert in DeLorean time machines (who knew?), the car is pretty much perfect to every detail, featuring everything the car had in the movies including working digital readouts, lights, switches, sound effects and a flux capacitor.

The icing on the cake? The car even has custom "OUTATIME" plates.

Dec 29th 2009 By Jeremy Taylor

The 28 Most Underrated Persons, Places and Things of the Decade

We'll start this list with a disclaimer: The concept of "underrated" is very hard to quantify and often disintegrates under the weight of its own definition. (If something truly lacked recognition, it wouldn't mean anything to a mass audience.) Nevertheless, Asylum and our contributors have bravely attempted to put together a list of the most underrated persons places and things of the decade most commonly known as the "aughts."

If you agree, disagree, or think you can draw up a better list, have a go at it in the comment section.

28. Plus-size models
Have you noticed that many runway models are shaped like underfed boys? On the other hand, most plus-size models look like something a heterosexual male would have sex with. Maybe the fashion industry will split the difference in the decade to come, but we're not holding our breath.

27. The "Open Source" revolution

Open source is more than just Wikipedia and Firefox -- there's a free version of almost every online tool, and the quality of open source is quickly approaching that of the brand names.

26. Ford Motor Company
Lost in the recent failure of the American auto industry -- and American big business in general -- is the success of the Ford Motor Company, which posted a profit of a billion dollars last quarter after refusing to take government money when it was being offered out like Halloween candy. (Now about those Lions ...)

Dec 29th 2009 By Scott Indrisek

How to Role-Play With the Author of 'Scripts 4 Play'

If you want to spice up your sex life, but aren't actually all that creative, professional "seductress" T.M. Lee has got a solution.

The saucy Canadian has penned four detailed role-playing scripts to help couples live out sexy fantasies from deflowered Mormons to inter-office fellatio. (The moving saga of "Sophia" and "Antoine," a hard-working male escort and his appreciative customer, is a personal favorite.)

"A lot of people want to try things sexually, but they're afraid of what their partner might think," Lee says. "This is a great way to get to know your partner."

Read on to find out more about the art of role-playing, and then unleash your inner thespian in the "fantasy playground" of the bedroom.

Dec 29th 2009 By Jeremy Taylor

Who Owns the Worst Gaffe of 2009?

When gaffe-machine Joe Biden was elected vice president of the United States, the smart money was on him taking the title for "dumbest quote of the year" every year until at least 2012.

Looks like Biden has already defied those odds. Sure, the Delawarean shared more than a few boneheaded thoughts 2009, but least seven other prominent Americans -- including the only man in the nation whom Biden answers to -- bested his knack for speaking first and thinking later.

Read on for the specific quote from each nominee.

Who Said the Dumbest Thing in 2009?