Cult pinup queen Bettie Page debuts at #48 on this week's Lycos 50 -- the first model ever to make our list based on work she did 45 years ago.
Page posed for a variety of racy pinup photos from 1950-57, often wearing provocative outfits of lingerie, leather, or nothing at all. At the time the photos were considered terribly racy, though now they may seem fairly tame. (There's an element of kitsch to modern Page fandom, though just how much is hard to gauge.) Page abruptly quit posing in 1957, but the miracle of Web nostalgia has somehow raised her from underground obsession to mainstream matron.
The E! cable network has been riding the wave with a TV biography titled "Bettie Page: From Pinup to Sex Queen." Those broadcasts are what seem to be driving this week's boom in user queries.
Other key points from this week's Lycos 50:
NON-SURVIVOR: CBS is working hard to make its "reality" show Survivor into the lastest cult TV sensation, a la ABC's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. But so far Web users aren't biting. Survivor got a respectable number of user queries last week, slightly less than horses and slightly more than Sears. But it still fell about 25% short of reaching the Lycos 50. (Millionaire opened at #44 on our list during its run last November.)
THE BIG THREE: Pokemon, Britney Spears and Dragonball are 1-2-3 this week -- and in fact they've been the top three for six of the ten weeks since April 1. Pokemon has been #1 for a staggering 36 of the 41 weeks the Lycos 50 has been in existence. The rest of the top 10 remains the same with slight shuffling, except for Gundam Wing (#11), which changes places with last week's #11 topic Final Fantasy.
ANNA'S BACK: Speaking of pinups, tennis beauty Anna Kournikova is back on our list at #13, her highest rank ever. Kournikova returned to action in the French Open after a few weeks tending an ankle injury, but the reason for her sudden popularity is her sultry appearance on the cover of last week's Sports Illustrated.
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR: While pinups are rising, war queries are falling. Last week we had five war-related queries in our list, including Memorial Day, three wars -- Vietnam, Civil, and Second World -- and the Holocaust. This week only the Civil War (#42) remains, with the others dropping far off the list. We think this is partly due to the end of Memorial Day weekend, but also due to the end of the schoolyear and related homework research. (Incidentally, today is the 56th anniversary of D-Day -- tip of the cap to our veterans.)
SHORT SUBJECTS: Mission: Impossible 2 co-star Thandie Newton is burning up the Web wires, rising from #49 to #20 this week... meanwhile Gladiator star Russell Crowe, featured yesterday, rebounds to #39... Father's Day is showing decent strength, getting about as many searches last week as Madonna, but is getting nowhere near the interest we saw for Mother's Day... as the NBA (#24) playoffs head to the championships, Laker star Kobe Bryant has replaced Vince Carter as the NBA's most-searched player... Another sign of summer: searches for poison ivy have tripled in the last five weeks.
NEW THIS WEEK: Tennis star Anna Kournikova, actresses Alyssa Milano and Carmen Electra, games Diablo and Perfect Dark, pinup Betty Page, rapper Kid Rock.
DROPOUTS: Rap lyrics, rapper Sisqo, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, the IRS.
BIGGEST RISE: Thandie Newton, up 29 to #20.
BIGGEST DROP: Skateboarding, down 21 to #43.
LYCOS 50 CROSSWORD! Thanks to the creative efforts of Lycos 50 brainiac Doug Beeferman and idea-meister Lincoln Jackson, this week we're proud to launch the Lycos 50 crossword puzzle!
Test your knowledge of the Web's hottest topics and practice your linguistic versatility all at once. To play, just visit our new puzzle page at:
http://www.rhymezone.com/crosswords/
