Don't where this came from, but it's a short behind-the-scene look at that Adidas series of commercials of the two kids picking teams of superstar footballers.

Here's the first version or the kick-off "episode" of the Adidas commercials showing star soccer players and two kids picking sides. The music, which many people have been asking about, is a tune by RJD2 called "D' Alouette." This is not to be confused with the another song called "Eanie Meanie" by Jim Noir that is used in the second episode of the commercial, the one in which the kids and their superstar teams play each other.

We love this Adidas commerical. Seriously, this is an instant classic as as we're concerned. The 30-second spot has been airing in the run-up to and during the 2006 World Cup this summer. It's amazing how many superstar soccer players they got to appear in this ad. Amazing too is the rotoscoping job done to weave in vintage footage of European football legends Platini and Beckenbauer. (Look for the commercial in the America on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC and Fox Soccer Channel during its World Cup coverage.) There are actually several versions of the ad. Embedded above for your viewing pleasure is "Version 3." We love the song used in the TV advert, too. Many people have been asking about it. The tune is called "Eanie Meany" and it's by the Manchester, England-based Jim Noir.

Flash animation is all over the Web in the form of banner ads, online cartoons, motion graphics and entire Web sites. It's called Flash because of the name of the Macromedia software program used to develop animation. The people who use the software for the Web are called Flash developers or simply animators. What happens when an animated creation takes on a life of it's own and does battle with its creator within the Flash program itself? One clever Flash developer named Alan Becker imagined just such a scenario and turned it into a clever little Flash-based cartoon titled "Animator vs. Animation". It's brilliant.

Oops, Paris did it again. "Did what?" you ask, mes amis? Why, diss a charity, that's what. This time it was an organization in Australia that helps seriously ill children, including cancer patients. According to the Aussie newspaper the Herald Sun, the Hilton hotel heiress made a promise to help raise money for Paradise Kids, a charitable organization, during a visit to the charity a couple of years ago. This happened while Paris was spending a lot of time on location Down Under for the filming of the horror flick "House of Wax." But since then, the charity's administrators have not heard from the blonde model-actress-pornstar. Paris was reported to have offered to arrange for a star-studded charity concert in L.A. in order to raise funds for Paradise Kids. Well, mes amis, this sounds like another one of those instances when a celeb's good intentions only went as far as their empty PR blather would allow. Sacre bleu!

The sale of this Gustav Klimt painting, titled "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," beats the record price paid for an art work at auction, which was $104 million for a Picasso in 2004.
Read the New York Times' report of the sale here.

A really snarky headline for a review of this movie, say, in an alternative weekly newspaper might be "Rumor has shit" to convery to the reader that the film was awful. We won't do that here because "Rumor Has It" isn't "shit" and isn't awful. In fact, the premise of the movie is pretty compelling and original -- a story built on the untold story of the people upon whom the film "The Graduate" was based.

And, actually, "Rumor Has It" is a well-made and entertaining movie in the way that lot of mainstream and mediocre broad comedies are. The star, Jennifer Aniston, is likable, attractive and funny. She acts well and is perfectly cast. Kevin Costner is Kevin Costner. It's basically a good flick that also happens to be a piece of moviemaking that is forgettable the instant the credits roll.

How is it that such a good idea, one that is competently made into a film --remember, this is not a "bad" movie -- be so damn bland and lacking cinematic and comedic juice? It's as if the director was intentionally trying not to make a great, memorable film. That is not to say that he was trying to make a bad film. Far from it. Rather, it was as if the creative foces behind "Rumor Has It" settled on just making as ordinary a comedy as possible.

And that's why "Rumor Has It" gets an Air Massive Rating of 2.75 stars out of 5

An editor of the advertising industry trade magazine Ad Age has conducted an audio interiew with the cockney-accented British reptile who is the Geico car insurance advertising icon, the Geico Gekko. It's all a bit too tongue in cheek for a serious publication, yet the interview questions are serious enough and the answers are suprisingly illuminating enough, too. Anyway, it's a terribly amusing and entertaining bit of journalism, especially for anyone who loves those brilliant Geico Gekko TV commercials.

Music journalist Chuck Klosterman does a thorough and illuminating (and, for Klosterman, relatively humorless) profile of Danger Mouse, a.k.a. Brian Burton, one-half of Gnarls Barkley in today's New York Times Magazine. The mystery behind the name Gnarls Barkley is explained in the storty, as is the genesis behind Danger Mouse's "Grey Album." An interesting, cheeky quirk of the Gnarls Barkley duo, which include singer Cee-Lo, is that they will only allow themselves to be photographed while dressed in costumers of characters from movies, such as the Pink Panther, Superman or the Wizard of Oz. That's a cool little branding gimmick..

From the Global Graphica file this week, lots of a pictures of a cool NIke vending machine that sells soccer balls in New York City. The vending machine is designed with images of the Brazilian superstar soccer player Ronaldinho and is part of the "joga bonito" (which means "beautiful game" in Portugeuse soccer-themed ad campaign Nike has been running in the lead-up to and during the World Cup in Germany. The vending machine is located in front of Pier 40, a recreational facility in downtown Manhattan, where the far West Village meets the Hudson River. Profits from the sales of the balls go to buying new nets for the soccer fields on Pier 40. (Photo courtesy Global Graphica / Ivan Corsa)

In time for the FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany comes our latest blog production, a Web site devoted to soccer called Soccer Massive. Though we tend not to be sports fans in general here at the Massive, there is one athletic passion that unites us and that is soccer, or "football," especially European soccer and, naturally, the World Cup. Check it out.

The World Cup is the largest single global sports event. It starts tomorrow, June 9th, and lasts a full month. The Olympic Games, though a much bigger event, involves dozens of sports, including soccer, though many of them are usually of little relevance or too obscure or too marginal to most viewers except every four years when for a few hours they tune in to watch, say, ice curling or synchronized swimming or discus-throwing and root for their countries. But the World Cup is different. It is about soccer and only soccer, or "football," as it is known on most of the planet (though naturally politics, culture, controversy, fashion, tourism and marketing are intertwined with the event in a major way).

In many ways, the tournament is more important than the Olympics and certainly more relevant to most viewers. Many of the billions of viewers tuning in to watch the World Cup are avid fans who week in and week out closely follow the professional clubs in their own country, as well as those of the most famous leagues, where the level of play is highest -- the English Premier League, the Italian Serie "A," the German Bundesliga, the Spanish La Liga and the French Ligue 1, as well as teams in Brazil and Argentina, arguably two of the greatest sources of soccer talent on Earth.

Soccer is global and massively popular. Sport is a part of culture -- pop culture -- and no sport bettter serves as an international pop cultural symbol than soccer. Needless to say, we here at the Massive are big football fans, albeit of varying degrees. We follow several European Leagues each season, especially the English Premier League and European Champions League, and we have a few favorite clubs that we support.

The World Cup, like the Olympics, happens every four years and is held in a different country each time. The 2006 tournament is being held in Germany. For us, the competition is not so much about supporting a particular country as it is about following the progress and performance of a few of them and watching the competition between nations -- some of which are soccer Goliaths among many Davids -- unfold in dramatic and spectacular fashion, with equal parts desperation, glory and passion.

The national teams we will be watching most closely are England, France, Japan, Brazil, Czech Republic and, of course, the U.S.A., that strangely most-soccer and yet un-soccer of countries. With the start of competition in Germany tomorrow, we will be blogging the World Cup with a new Web site devoted to soccer. The site is aptly called Soccer Football Massive, and while there are some small technical kinks we'll need to work out, we're fit for kick-off and fit to start posting.

In this week's Global Graphica street art file is a series of images documenting an awesome fresh paste-up by the artist Bäst in New York City. (Photo courtesy Global Graphica / Ivan Corsa Photo).

According to director Kevin Smith's blog, Silent Bob Speaks (a.k.a., My Boring-Ass Life), the sequel to his groundbreaking indie film "Clerks" received an eight-minute standing ovation when it screened at the annual Cannes film festival last week. Dude, that is amazing. We loved "Clerks" and recognize Smith as a filmmaking talent, but we're scratching our heads a bit on this one. Smith and his friends captured the ovation on video, yet we still can't help but wonder if this was some sort of publicity stunt to generate some buzz. We've seen the trailer for "Clerks II" and it looks funny as hell. We imagine it is probably even much better that the original, but eight-minute-standing-ovation better? That we want to see. The movie hits U.S. screens July 21. We're there.

iVillage has posed a question to its readers as to whether Paris Hilton is still hot. The very question itself suggests that the hotel heiress' presence in the mediascape is getting long in the tooth, that her Paris Hilton-ness, if you will, is nearing the end of its shelf life. Or to put in Wired magazine kind of terms, Paris is not "wired," she's not even just "tired," but she's definitely "expired." iVillage readers put in no uncertain terms, with one person posting: "No talent, no brains ... a spoiled, self-centered, little rich bitch!" Another writes, " Ridiculously wealthy white trash does exist." But not so fast. It's important to put things in perspective. One reader makes an interesting point about those who dump hate on Paris, writing "I think it is hilarious how she drives total losers nuts.....She doesn't have to do anything if she doesn't want. She's just having fun. Something the LOSERS should try and do." One of all of the above may be true. Or not. Remember kids, it's just entertainment.

Leave it to the Onion's pop-literate entertainment guide, the A.V. Club, for a meaty listing and assessment of crappy or insipid (or both) band names to emerge this year. The free weekly humor tab has even narrowed the field into two sub-categories of "Worst" and "Best-Worst," that is, the crappiest of crappy or the least crappy of the crappy, depending on your interpretation. We'll just think of "Best-Worst" names as those so bad they're ... er, well, um ... interesting. Among the names that really put smiles on our faces when we read them were Arsonists Get All The Girls and 16 Bitch Pile-Up. But our favorite bad band name is (drumroll, please) ... Mariospeedwagon. Now that's something we'd like to see on a tee shirt.