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September Features
City Profiles Entertainment Spirit’s guide to What’s New! Spirit's Travel Wizard Spirit's guide to the best Travel! Win Prizes Send Letters, Pictures or Advice. The best ones win prizes!  Advertisement
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Spirit's guide to what's new in books, television, movies, and the Web. Website: Dogster.comSocial networking expands to the pet population with dogster.com, a site that welcomes dogs of all breeds and typing abilities. Sign up your pooch for a webpage and link to more than 450,000 dog lovers around the world. Dogster.com allows owners to set up profiles for their dogs, upload photos, add online friends, message owners of similar breeds in their area, and critique a park or pet-sitter in the online reviews. Not a dog lover? Try Dogster’s sister site, catster.com.FIND IT: dogster.com Blog: Download SquadTHE SETUP: App-obsessed geeks scour the Internet for the coolest stuff to put on your (virtual) desktop.WEB CRAWLERS: A full staff of writers and editors keeps this blog—part of the AOL Weblogs empire—humming with tech news, including links to new (and often free) software. Posts get separated into dozens of useful categories ranging from “Browsers” to “Blackberry” to “Time Wasters.” CLICK AND SAVE: Some
of the most helpful finds include Wix,
a simple drag-and-drop utility for making webpages. Klok
helps boost productivity by tracking how much time you spend on various tasks
every day. And our favorite, Mario
Paint Composer, lets you create music by using sounds from Nintendo games.
OK, so that gets filed under Time Wasters, but we still enjoy it.
DVD: The OmenIf you love being scared out of your wits, you can’t go wrong with an angel-faced Antichrist. This month, get a four-disc box set of the 1976 suspense flick The Omen on Blu-ray Disc that includes its two sequels and the 2006 remake. In the movie, a couple discovers that their adopted son is actually the child of the devil. The $104 set includes deleted scenes and an interview with director Wes Craven about The Omen’s effect on the horror genre.GET IT: Sept. 9, foxstore.com Hardback: The Heretic’s DaughterIN A NUTSHELL: Novelist Kathleen Kent re-imagines the true story of her ancestor, one of the first women to be hanged in Salem as a witch.WEAVING THE SPELL: When the Carrier family moves to Andover, Massachusetts, in 1690, townspeople immediately distrust them because their son has smallpox. Several subsequent incidents, such as a fire that mysteriously changes direction and burns a neighboring farm instead of the Carriers’, cause residents to suspect sharp-tongued Martha and convict her as a witch. FAMILY AFFAIR: Using contemporary accounts and stories passed down from her relatives, Kent gives her 10th-generation ancestor, Martha Carrier, a new life. GET IT: Sept. 3, amazon.com Move: Burn After ReadingHow do you know you’re about to see a Coen brothers movie? When even George Clooney admits he has no idea what to expect, and he’s the star. Here’s what we’ve sniffed out about Burn After Reading, the duo’s latest quirky, indie offering: An ex-CIA agent (John Malkovich) writes a tell-all memoir that winds up in the hands of a dimwit personal trainer (Brad Pitt) who intends to sell it for a tidy profit. Clooney plays an equally witless philanderer who gets caught in the middle. Expect hijinks and even an Oscar nomination to follow.SEE IT: Sept. 12 Podcast: The Sound of Young AmericaTHE CONCEPT: Whippersnappers take over public radio. FRESH AIR: Hosted by 26-year-old Jesse Thorne, the weekly program features interviews with both celebs and relative unknowns from music, TV, and Hollywood. Previous guests include ESPN’s Kenny Mayne and former Colbert Report producer Ben Karlin. The crew also produces several other downloadable podcasts, such as a weekly sketch comedy routine. NEW THING: Now carried on a dozen public radio stations around the country, The Sound of Young America was the first public radio program west of the Mississippi to podcast. Salon.com declared it “the greatest radio show you’ve never heard” and last year iTunes ranked it a “classic.” GET IT: maximumfun.org TV: Knight RiderWelcome back, KITT: Once NBC producers got a look at the ratings generated by the recent Knight Rider TV movie, they decided to resurrect the iconic 1980s classic as a full-fledged series. The show picks up 25 years after Michael Knight’s (David Hasselhoff) last ride, with rising star Justin Bruening as Knight’s son and the new crime-fighter behind KITT’s wheel. Expect to see: KITT and Knight dealing with more dangerous situations than his dad; a possible cameo from the Hoff; and updated AI features for the redesigned Ford Mustang, such as transformation, turbo boosts, and the ability to create holographic images that throw off the bad guys. As a character in the first episode puts it, “This ain’t your daddy’s Knight Rider.”
WATCH IT: Paperback: The Party of the First PartOPENING STATEMENT: In this practical guide to legalese, writer and former lawyer Adam Freedman decodes the confusing legal jargon found on websites, on medical forms, and in the fine print you normally ignore.WHAT’D YOU SAY? Freedman argues that a contract’s boilerplate language can bind you whether you understand it or not. So he devotes chapters to situations where you might encounter baffling legal prose, such as attending jury duty, reading a will, or filing for bankruptcy. He explains both contemporary and antiquated terms with amusing real-life examples. THE EVIDENCE: Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien reportedly named Mordor, the dark land in The Lord of the Rings, after the Old English word mordor, the basis for murder? We can only guess where he got “Nulukkhizdīn.”
GET IT: Sept. 2
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