April First: when a young man's fancy turns to practical jokes. Yes, April Fool's Day debuts this week at #17 on the Lycos 50. And that's not all: a whopping 43% of all April Fools queries we counted included the words jokes, pranks, gags, or tricks. (Lucky for us the Web is here to expedite this kind of serious research.)
Other key points from this week's Lycos 50:
OSCAR ROCKS: The 72th Annual Academy Awards moved up smartly this week, rising nine places to #6. Best Picture winner American Beauty was easily the most popular in-release movie this week, garnering about a third more searches than Romeo Must Die and twice as many as Erin Brockovich.
Best Supporting Actress winner Angelina Jolie (#50) squeezed onto our list about the same way she squeezed into her Oscar dress. Odd fact: about 1% of Jolie searches mentioned her brother, apparently hunting details on her oddly effusive praise of him during her acceptance speech.
HELLO TO LOVE: Old-time Lycos 50 favorite Jennifer Love Hewitt returns this week on the strength of her performance in last Monday's ABC movie "The Audrey Hepburn Story." (Hewitt's last appearance on our list was two months ago.) Searches for Audrey Hepburn herself rose 500%.
HOT LAVA COMIN' THROUGH: Volcanoes make their first-ever appearance this week, apparently thanks to the eruption of Japan's Mount Usu. One site mentioned by name in some queries was the kid-oriented Volcano World, which calls itself "The Web's premier source of volcano info." (And which features a very strange volcano-with-a-suitcase mascot.)
WARHORSES RETURN: When will these movies fade away? Star Wars and Titanic both return to our list this week at #46 and #48, respectively. Titanic gets a boost, of course, from searches for the ship itself; if we could separate the ship Titanic from the movie Titanic, no doubt the rank would be much lower. Still, why the fascination? Meanwhile Star Wars Episode I is nearly a year post-release (and we're two years from Episode II) yet the searches just keep on coming.
SHORT SUBJECTS: For the first time in our history, spots #1-5 remained exactly the same from the previous week... Combine taxes (#11) with the IRS (#8) and they'd be at #4, just below Britney Spears... Easter actually dropped slightly as the holiday (April 23) approaches... Last week's mysterious risers, the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler, both drop off the list this week. They were at #52 and #53, respectively... nearly one-quarter of all baseball searches were for fantasy baseball.
NEW THIS WEEK: April Fool's Day, volcanoes, Star Wars, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Titanic, Angelina Jolie, hot computer game The Sims.
DROPOUTS: The Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, Mardi Gras, Sable, Madonna, DVD, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?
BIGGEST RISE: Baseball, up 17 places to #16.
BIGGEST DROP: March Madness, down 30 places to #44.
AND FINALLY: What's going on with the death penalty (#34)? We don't know why this topic is so hot. About 1% of all searches specify "anti" capital punishment, while nearly 6% specify "pro" capital punishment.
