Pandora

TRAVELLING LIGHT - a Pandoraphile who works with the digerati's conference circuit swears this is true. The CEO of an I-net start-up travels with only one item: his lap-top. Once checked in, he dials up an online clothes store (usually Gap) and orders the kit he needs for his trip to be delivered to his destination hotel. On departure, he skips the scariest bit of the flight (waiting by the baggage carousel) by donating the clothes to charity. Pandorable!

u

KEANU REEVES (pictured) faces a torrid summer. The main man in The Matrix is bringing his band, Dogstar, to play the Glastonbury festival. Did someone say brave? The grungy trio's triumphs to date include being pelted with rancid fruit on their home turf, and playing a civic centre in Aylesbury. Reeves, the bassist, insists the trio have improved. Oh, and Terence Trent D'Arby, the eccentric vocalist, has replaced INXS's Michael Hutchence.

u

THE NUMBERS say that a million new pages are added to the Web every day. (Scientific American).

u

ONLY BUGGING? The Financial Services Agency, tasked with regulating money markets here, has reportedly forbidden banks to install any new live code on their systems between 3 September and March next year. Why? Y2K phobia. Does this mean there'll be a pool of high-calibre anoraks available to deal with bug-related civic emergencies?

u

"PEOPLE FROM Liverpool don't own anything except their own bodies, so it makes them very sexy and very funny." - Mike Myers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, talking about his father's birthplace.

u

NAUGHTY NAUGHTY! When Pandora set up an e-mail casting call for the forthcoming Julie Burchill biopic, she meant boys and girls - not pigs and cows. ("A Gloucester Old Spot - then they'd need neither dialogue coach nor costume.") And the rest of you... well, wash those mouths out with soap and water. Calista Flockhart to play Julie (before) and Roseanne Barr (now)? Or Pauline Quirke "although she'll have to pile on a few pounds for the role"? Julie was a close personal friend of Pandora's (last time we looked) so this one is going back in the box.

u

SMART LONDONERS currently offer tea in two varieties: "Builders' or lesbian?"

u

CRAP PICK-UP lines: the hits just keep on coming from long-suffering laydeez. There's the one where the guy licks his finger, dabs it against the femme's dress and says, "Let me take you home so we can get you out of those wet clothes." The truly cringe-making: "If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?" The deeply peculiar : "You look like my mum". For sheer finesse: "Fancy a shag? OK, do you mind lying down while I have one?" And finally: "I know something that would look good on you - me."

u

GOODBYE HELLO!... are we edging closer to the day when we write the obituary of the magazine of celebrity misery? Maybe baby. VIP, a new Irish mag launching later this year, looks as if it could take the wind out of Spanish sales in the Emerald Isle. And Press Gazette, the journalists' trade paper, reports this week that the BBC's magazine division is pondering a celebrity- driven launch, targeting women. Uh oh...

u

WHODATHUNKIT? There's more iron in steel than in cast iron.

u

PROZAC MOMENTS may last for some 30 minutes. The mood-adjusting drug's manufacturers, Pfizer, have made half-hour infomercials that will roll out over the Atlantic later this year. Given Frank Dobson's departmental synapse path, enquiring minds have been wondering how Pfizer will push the antidepressant here. I take Prozac... because I'm worth it? The new issue of The Baffler suggests another way forward. It has a pastiche of Christopher Robin and his pals forming a therapy group to help the Hundred Acre Wood gang's most miserable member buck himself up by popping Prozac. It's called "I'm OK, Eeyore OK."

Contact Pandora by e-mail: pandora@ independent .co.uk