B-List

1. "Basil Fawlty-style hotel owner 'locked up guests'"
   <http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_787546.html>
"Manager Anello Aiello, 68, faces possible kidnapping charges after locking in
 guests who complained about poor service including unchanged sheets and poor
 quality meals"

2. "'Thelma and Louise' copycats to face court"
   <http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1047684.htm>
"Two women who allegedly dressed up as Hollywood movie characters and drove
 through south-west Western Australia pointing a toy gun at motorists are due
 to face court today"

3. "Liberian stuck in real-life Terminal"
   <http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2004/09/15/630412-ap.html>
"A man who identified himself as a Liberian national has been stuck at South
 Korea's main international airport for four months without a passport"

4. "Casablanca gets real Rick's Cafe"
   <http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_947303.html>
"The restaurant is named after the cafe from the 1942 classic film Casablanca
 which starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman"

5. "Pentagon to pay millions for Scots' robot soldiers"
   <http://www.sundayherald.com/36926>
"Chief executive Simon Hardy said the technology had its nearest equivalent in
 the Star Wars movie Attack Of The Clones"
George Lucas would be impressed, again:
   <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120915/trivia>
"Lucas never liked the fact that the Reagan administration used the title 'Star
 Wars' as a shorthand for their Strategic Defense Initiative. As a result, he
 named a character after Ronald Reagan. The last name is Reagan is inverted,
 and becomes Nute Gunray."

6. "Worst-kept secret revealed: It's the Isotopes"
   <http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/sports02/090402_sports_isotopes.shtml>
"The Isotopes name comes from a March 2001 episode of 'The Simpsons,' the long-
 running Fox cartoon series. In the episode, titled 'Hungry, Hungry Homer,'
 Homer Simpson thwarts a plan to move his favorite baseball team, the
 Springfield Isotopes, to Albuquerque"

7. "Simpsons plant seeds of invention"
   <http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61091,00.html>
"Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, dreamed of bringing to life his favorite The
 Simpsons episode, one from 1999 in which Homer grows 'tomacco,' a combination
 tomato-tobacco plant"

8. "Venice opera house rises from ashes"
   <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3317053.stm>
"Venice's much-loved Fenice ['The Pheonix'] Opera House, completely destroyed
 in a fire eight years ago, reopened on Sunday with a gala concert"