One of the great traditions of Martin Luther King Day at Black Table world headquarters is of Black Table editors working all day while the rest of the planet is … well, sitting in their apartments and shivering, wishing the great civil rights leader had been born in July.

We've been sitting in the office all day, kind of bored, reading NFL recaps, hoping our boss has more work to do than we do. We've read about the 100-pound woman who ate a six-pound cheeseburger, about the No. 1 and undefeated Illinois men's basketball team and, most memorably, the 66-year-old woman who had kids. (And you late twentysomething ladies were worried about your biological clocks. Please!)

And we put the Black List together for you, because we love you more than we would ever feel comfortable admitting. We have 11 reviews this week, but oh how we desire more! Use the form on the right to be a card-carrying member.

-- BT

The Black Table needs your help! Every week, we need reviews of the latest media-related crud, new products from Capitalists and odd idea, concept or trend. All you need to have is a sharp opinion that you can distill down to one paragraph of 150 words and give a letter grade. To submit, please fill out the form below. Entries may edited for length, style and clarity. Hit us with your best shot. Fire away.

REGISTRATION FORMS FOR NEWSPAPER WEBSITES: Since when did the Web sites of every daily in the country become Checkpoint Charlie? Name, address, date of birth... shit, why don't you just go for the Soc while you're at it there, J. Jonah Jameson? I don't care if it's the New York Times, the St. Paul Pioneer Press or the International Falls Daily icicle -- YOU DON'T NEED THIS MUCH INFORMATION FROM ME. I'm supposed to be getting information from you, remember? You're the vendor in this little relationship. I'm not your demographic monkey to perform on your weekend numbers sheet to show the EIC so he can get all wet in the shorts over the SPIKE in the 18-34 readership. Christ, no wonder you people are drowning in the new information age. You keep handing yourself glasses of water. Oh by the way, St. Paul Pioneer Press, don't bother sending info to Dick Hertz at 133 Up Your Ass Road in Blowchunks, Minn., 13210 -- he's lost interest. F -- Jason Notte

SECRETLY WANTING SOMETHING JESSICA SIMPSON IS SELLING: I have reached a stage in my late twenties that I like to call a "second adolescence." I'm often cranky and have lots of zits. Usually I don't get too worked up over commercials, even for stuff I want, but the Jessica Simpson Proactive ads for special acne cleansers bring me to my weak and flabby consumer knees. It's bad enough to be a pizza-face 15 years too late, but I could do without gut-churning desire to emulate Jessica Simpson. For believing in the 60-day risk-free

guarantee: C- -- Amy S

RATEMYTEACHER.COM: RateMyTeacher.com allows today's kids, for whom Internet access is as much second-nature as Must See TV, to skewer or praise their teachers for the world to see. Is it me, or does this make you slightly nervous? I graduated from high school fiftee ... I mean, several years ago, and while I was growing up, you had no recourse against a dull or substandard teacher … but at least you couldn't excoriate them in cyberspace. On RateMyTeacher.com, a teacher at my old high school gets a rating from only one student, who gives her "1" on a scale of 1 to 5. Thus, on the list of instructors, there's a sad face beside her name. However, a former English teacher of mine gets high marks along with the comment: "easiest AP class ever. i literally handed in nothing and still got B's." Uh … congratulations. C -- Caren Lissner

NASA'S "DEEP IMPACT:" NASA, that loveable government project that only seems to make headlines when it screws up, still exists (who knew!) and has a new plan. After noticing that interest in your ordinary run-of-the-mill shuttle launches died out sometime around 1970, the big brains took pause from their evenings of Magic® The Gathering and decided that they needed a more aggressive approach that could both inspire new scientific achievement and appeal to that ever elusive male audience ages 13-20. Behold, Project "Deep Impact" (I didn't even have to make that name up)! The Plan: For just $328 million, NASA is going to blow a hole in a passing comet the size of a football stadium. Or if I may quote NASA.gov; the official mission is to "blast a hole in comet Tempel 1 in an effort to see what it's made of." Now that's what I call science! No more of this rover-landing, sample-taking, boring-ass crap! Blow the thing open! Can I
get a whoop-whoop?! Well, no one can argue that sheer destruction is an entirely new approach for less earthly inclined, and I have to say that I think even 50 Cent would be proud. I'm off to register the project name as a Web site so I can sell it to a porn ring for profit, cha-ching! A+ -- Liz Swedock

THE "MONEY ISN'T EVERYTHING" CITI ADS: They were tolerable at first: Money isn't everything, talk to your kids, act like them once in a while. But enough already. The last thing I want to see while I'm suck in L.A. freeway gridlock, biting my fingernails and smoking up a storm thinking about my mounds of debt and impending life of corporate slavery, is some moralizing ad telling me that "People with fat wallets are not necessarily more jolly." Go tell that to my bankruptcy lawyer. And while you're at it, stop charging me interest for everything. What's next? A McDonalds ad encouraging people to eat salads and fruit? Oh wait ... D -- Andy Shah

MY BOSS' WHINY HUSBAND: I understand that playing house-husband to my domineering, power-hungry boss must get old after a while. (God knows it's hard enough just being her secretary.) But I'm running out of patience for the whiny fool who married her. Every 10 minutes his number pops up on my telephone; that 914 area code that makes my skin crawl. "Is she theeere yet? Where iiiis she? When will she be iiiiin? I neeeed her." Baby, she left home at 9:00, it's a 45-minute train ride and it's now 9:30. I guess you should jump to the conclusion that SHE MUST BE HAVING AN AFFAIR. Listen buddy, I know you're lonely, I know you're sad. I know you're married to a ball-buster who earns seven figures and that you lost your job three years ago, right around the time you started losing your hair. She's thin, blond and successful, and you're aging badly. I know that calling her every 10 minutes somehow satisfies a pathetic need deep inside of you, but for God's sake, get it together. D -- Kate Andrews

PITCHFORK'S AD-FEST REDESIGN: Just because you're indie rock doesn't mean you can't be business savvy. Without Greg Ginn from Black Flag having some business acumen, there'd be no SST, and the same goes with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance from Superchunk over at Merge. Make a little money, release some records and bring some people the indie rock love. It's not a bad formula. What is a bad formula is redesigning a site with a fucking Suicide Girls ad square in the middle of the page and album reviews that condemn people who don't already like a band -- such as maybe The Fiery Furnaces -- as mouth-breathers, and then run banner ads for the album up for review. Sure, Pitchfork has never been afraid to piss anybody off, but if you're going to bloviate about how great a band is at the same time you're calling the people who don't have a taste for the band maroons, perhaps you shouldn't cover your ass with an ad for the fucking album your spooging all over. Personally, I think Pitchfork cares more about what is and what isn't indie rock than just about every other cellular lifeform on the planet, but being a shill certainly ain't it. D- -- Frank Smith

ESTELLE GETTY'S DEMENTIA: My boyfriend and I had just been discussing which Golden Girl would bite it first, when, the next morning, I read in a well-respected tabloid that Estelle Getty, better known as the sassy "Sophia," is suffering from dementia. Shocked and guilty, I thought back to my recent conversation. While I had called dibs on Estelle simply because she played the eldest gal, my boyfriend argued that the "mannish one" would be the first to keel over because ... well, just because. Sadly, my prediction for the lovely Ms. Getty is somewhat confirmed. She might not yet be lost to us all, but she is now lost to herself. "Sophia" was always the light of the geriatric sitcom. It was her spunk and exciting Sicilian anecdotes that gave the show its vitality, its spark. It just goes to show that truly nothing "gold" can stay. F -- Jillian

POOR BUSINESS CARD ETIQUETTE: Twice in the last week, a guy I've met at a comedy show has given me his business card. Even though I wasn't interested in either of them, I accepted their cards. I'm happy to collect as many business cards to fill up my Rolodex as I can carry; if I change my mind, I'll have their info. However ... there's a moment right after someone gives you their card where, if you're so inclined, you'll jump right in and give them yours too. But after that moment passes and no card has been proffered, it's time to call it a night. Apparently, these guys didn't realize that, because both of them, after an awkward pause, said "And do you have a card?" Now, I could have lied and said no, but I gave them each mine, grateful that I'd gotten my new Streetcards sans cell phone number. I hope it's not just me that thinks it's incredibly rude and offputting to basically demand you give someone their card or risk being impolite. Next time, I just may have to choose the latter. D -- Rachel Kramer Bussel

KNOWING THE OWNERS: Everyone has a local, but your local is not as cool as mine. And it's probably not a hundred and some odd blocks away from your apartment like mine is. Sure, the service sucks because the waitstaff are modern dancers with short attention spans, and it's filled with people who are more attractive than you or I. But double kissing the owners, I get to hear what I should really have for dinner or pawn on the person I'm interviewing. I've baby-sat their beautiful children, and they've given me the secret recipe for their mulled wine, and they've told me when Jill Hennessy was breast-feeding in the corner, and that's something even straight girls want to see. A -- Martha Burzynski

HARDBODIES: Whatever happened to those awful/awesome movies from the 80s that managed to have about a thousand pairs of pre-implant era breasts in the first 90 seconds? My personal favorite is 1984's Hardbodies. It's the tale of Scotty Palmer, a California surfer, ladies man and entrepreneur. Scotty loses his apartment, and to raise funds he agrees to teach a foursome of forty-somethings how to pick up the elusive hardbodies. Hijinks ensue, and at some point, a guy who looks like the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy but older and drunker is fellated while he sits on the beach playing increasingly fast music on an acoustic guitar, climaxing with broken guitar strings and a look of satisfaction. Beach fun aside, the best part of the film is the standard response Scotty gives when asked what a hardbody is. He always squares up to the camera and delivers the painfully amusing line "A hardbody is a little sexy fox you find down on the beach." A+ -- AF

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