Notables: Iron Man dominated the box office once again. In case you missed it, ChristianityTodayMovies.com ran an interesting article about the irony of Iron Man. It deals with some of the themes I wrote about last week in the Pop Culture column (the darker tone that's been applied to our superheroes over the last twenty years or so). Besides the stunning repeat business of Iron Man, there's one other notable this week: Speed Racer crashed and burned (yes, that's a pun). It appears it's well on its way to being the first blockbuster failure of the summer. Looking head, Prince Caspian opens today. I've read rumors that Disney isn't quite sure whether or not they want to turn all of Lewis's books into movies. I think they'll be a little more sure when they see the coin this one makes.

Top Five Books
1. Audition, by Barbara Walters
2. The Hollow, by Nora Roberts
3. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer
4. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow
5. Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4: The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan

Notables: Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth has dropped out of the top five (but not out of the top ten). The Last Lecture has also taken a tumble. It seems for now the world wants to know all about the life and times of Barbara Walters—her rough childhood, adventures with celebrities, and even the affair she had with U.S. Senator Edward Brooke. As for the rest of the list, summer fiction is officially upon us.

Top Five Albums
1. Home Before Dark, by Neil Diamond
2. 35 Biggest Hits, by Toby Keith
3. Hard Candy, by Madonna
4. On My Way Here, by Clay Aiken
5. E=MC2, by Mariah Carey

Notables: Last week I said the Billboard 200 looked like a chart from the eighties. With Neil Diamond claiming the top spot, the chart smacks of the sixties and seventies. I was shocked to learn that Home Before Dark marks the first chart-topping album of his career. But then again—as was aptly pointed out by Bill Murray in What About Bob?—"there are two kinds of people in the world: those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't."

Top Five Digital Downloads
1. "Take a Bow," by Rihanna
2. "Bleeding Love," by Leona Lewis
3. "Lollipop," by Lil Wayne (featuring Static Major)
4. "Pocketful of Sunshine," by Natasha Bedingfield
5. "4 Minutes," by Madonna (featuring Justin Timberlake)

Notables: The list is filled with a lot of the same songs. The notable difference is that Rihanna's single is snaking its way into a lot of iPods. "Take a Bow" is a pretty bitter break-up song. Google the lyrics, and you'll see what I'm talking about. "Pocketful of Sunshine"—the other new tune this week—seems like a happy-go-lucky tune about hope.

Top Five Web Searches (according to Google Trends)
1. blame it on the rain lyrics
2. copernicus
3. california gay marriage
4. john phillip law
5. california supreme court

*Exercise caution when searching; some topics may be inappropriate.

Notables: Google Trends changes every 15 minutes or so, so it's quite difficult for me to chart what the "up-to-the-minute" searches are. The list I've provided represents the top searches from yesterday. I'm not entirely sure why there was a sudden burst of interest in the lyrics to Milli Vanilli's "Blame It On The Rain." The Copernicus is a new GPS device that the company Trimble has designed. It's tiny so it can be embedded in lots of different products. John Phillip Law is an actor who recently died. As you can see from items 3 and 5, a lot of folks were interested to learn more about California's decision to legalize same-sex marriages. To read more about the court's decision, click here.

Share this: