The White House makes the grade, veterans whup South Park, and James Bond returns -- all this and more on this week's Lycos 50.
The week's new rankings are on your left. Some notes on the movers and shakers:
OH MY GOSH, THEY SAVED KENNY: Score one for the older generation. Veterans Day (#14) and its Canadian cousin Remembrance Day got a big salute from surfers last week. The vets collected more searches than modern-day fad faves South Park and tattoos... and even more than Y2K.
HERE COMES 007: James Bond (#30) has arrived. The newest 007 flick, The World Is Not Enough, hits theaters November 19 and online interest is suddenly heavy.
BAD NEWS FOR BROSNAN: Pierce Brosnan may be the latest Bond, but Web users don't seem to care. "Pierce Brosnan" searches were a tiny fraction of the searches for "James Bond" and "007." New Bond girl Denise Richards was twenty times more popular than Brosnan with users. (Richards, in fact, nearly cracked the Lycos 50.)
Adding insult to injury: Sean Connery got more searches last week than Brosnan. Ouch!
OVAL OFFICE INTEREST: The White House (#50) is another first-timer on the Lycos 50. In a Brosnan-like twist, searches for Bill Clinton (which weren't included in the White House total) amounted to only about a third of searches for the executive mansion itself. We suspect students are behind most of the queries.
GOOD NEWS FOR ABC: Even more people want to be rich than want to visit the White House: game show hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire debuts at #44.
GARLAND? Christmas queries continue to rise, pushing the holiday up to #4. Some of the search terms paired with Christmas: cookies, skits, outdoor decorations, song lyrics, garland, crafts for kids and luminaries.
POKEMON RULES AGAIN: The U.S. release of Pokemon: the First Movie kept the popular little monsters in the #1 spot once again. Pokemon has been #1 on the Lycos 50 for 10 of the past 13 weeks; only Halloween and Hurricane Floyd pushed it out of the top spot.
NEW THIS WEEK: Veteran's Day, James Bond, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the NBA, the White House, Carmen Electra, Shakespeare.
DROPOUTS: Halloween, baseball, late racer Greg Moore, late football star Walter Payton, Encyclopedia Britannica, the IRS, Day of the Dead.
BIGGEST RISE: Nascar is up 10. Rock group Korn is up 8 notches to #21, bypassing boy band 'N Sync for the first time. Korn's album Issues is due out later in November.
BIGGEST DROP: DVD copy utility DeCSS, all the rage last week, drops 15 places this week to #41. The Blair Witch Project and witchcraft both fall 11 spots in post-Halloween slumps.
MOVEMENT: 28 terms move up, 12 move down, and 10 are unchanged.
