Our own Pete Vonder Haar checks out the other end of things with Pop Rocks today.

The Avengers has already racked up in excess of $218 million in ticket sales globally and it hasn't even hit American theaters. Early estimates say that it could top $500 million by Sunday night. It opens wide at midnight on Thursday.

Of course it's going to be hard for a movie featuring Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and The Hulk to do awful at the box office, especially in director Joss Whedon's hands. The film could just be an hour and a half of random explosions and the heroes drooling on each other and it would at least recoup its budget.

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And check out the attractive people we found working for tips at SXSW as well as our slideshow.

Photo By Craig Hlavaty

Aside from all the musical mayhem, lasers and massive crowds descending on Austin this week, I found porn star Lisa Ann and a walking Fleshlight roaming the city's main party artery of Sixth Street.

What's a Fleshlight (NSFW) and who is Lisa Ann, you ask? A Fleshlight is a flashlight-styled, um, male sex toy that you, a man, puts his, you know, inside. And Lisa Ann is a highly successful and popular porn star who got mainstream notice for playing "Serra Paylin" in six porn films spoofing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. When she wears glasses and those trademark power suits, she looks incredibly like Palin. She's been in the porn biz since 1993.

Fleshlight makes molds of the naughty bits of porn stars and uses them as templates for signature toys. The company is actually based in Austin, making the city a frequent haunt for stars like Lisa Ann, Jesse Jane and others.

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You know it's just a matter of time before someone tries a remake.

Since Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel Fight Club was made into one of the most controversial and most talked about films of the late '90s, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, every work since has been bandied about as a possible film in one way or another.

Producers wait with bated breath for the galleys to see if they could replicate the backdoor success of Fight Club, which has grown to become a sort of 21st century Clockwork Orange for some. Feature film rights to Palahniuk properties became hot commodities.

The last Palahniuk to make it onto the big screen was 2001's Choke, which was made with Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston in 2008.

According to IMDb Pro, there are four Palahniuk books in development in Hollywood, including Invisible Monsters, Snuff, Rant and Survivor. Plenty of movies, though, languish in development hell, right, Jim Carrey?

Snuff was rumored to star Daryl Hannah as Cassie Wright, a retiring porn actress, but Hannah denied climbing on board due to the novel's ties to sex trafficking.

Palahniuk, who turned 50 years old Tuesday, has never been one to balk at his books being made into films. Some novelists fight adaptations at every turn, or blackball the final product. He had a small cameo in Choke, and he applauded Fight Club director David Fincher for even attempting to make some of his more base imagery in that novel come to life.

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So Bane, whaddya bench?

Today the official trailer for next July's The Dark Knight Rises dropped online, revealing way more about the film than the shoddy bootleg video we saw last week of the few minutes of footage shown in IMAX theaters this week. Today's trailer reveals more about the storyline, including a pronounced rich-versus-poor slant, and what seems to be a way more emotionally aggressive film to come next summer. The ghost of Heath Ledger isn't lingering around this one, just the demise of all that Gotham City elite finds holy, and their masked, flawed crime-fighter.

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Not quite Depp and Deluise but we'll take it...

Call us crazy but the big screen 21 Jump Street remake looks decent, or maybe that's just because we have a soft spot for star Jonah Hill, and will watch anything with Nick Offerman and Rob Riggle who both make appearances in the trailer, released yesterday. Channing Tatum seems to be moving into comedic territiry we welcome, away from his "huh-huh" bro-ho business that puts women in the seats at the theater.

The language in this red band trailer bodes well for the R-rated action-comedy that Hill was promising as he was developing the film. It was his baby and is the reason, partly, why he started freaking people out with his dramatic weight loss.

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Earlier this year, Beavis & Butt-head creator Mike Judge and MTV announced that the animated pair of metal-loving, non-scoring, fire-obsessed teens was returning to the cable channel to take aim at the second decade of the 21st century.

An appearance at San Diego Comic-Con this summer delighted those of us who grew up with the show, and the sound of the boys sends us into giggle fits that sound eerily like their own. Not too long ago I changed my ringtone to the show's jammy theme song, much to the chagrin of those around me.

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This week actress Suzanne Somers turns 64 years old. The former Three's Company dingbat and Step By Step MILF is one of the most youthful looking sexagenarians on the planet, aside from Susan Sarandon, of course. We all remember what she looked like, right?

Aside from the acting work -- she was also a naked chick in Magnum Force -- Somers is best-known for her Thighmaster commercials and her views on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which we know nothing about because we review music and look up barely-safe-for-work pictures of Hollywood actresses for a living. We do know that people do not like this therapy, and that Oprah Winfrey is somehow involved. Was it turned into a Broadway play? Maybe.

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Photo By Craig Hlavaty

This magically pulled up behind the banquet hall...

This past weekend was my ten-year high school reunion. In the weeks leading up to the events -- the high school football game, the mixer, the family picnic and the actual reunion event -- I started asking people around me what to expect. All I knew about these things was what I had seen on movies and television, and my own parents' experiences.

The advent of Facebook for the past decade has made reunions not so much obsolete but just a little less of an event. You can catch up online, message back and forth, and look at each other's lives, significant others, spouses, pets, houses and children.

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The folks at Playboy are looking for new talent in Houston next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. The magazine, now in it's 58th year of shaping the lives and minds of men - and women - of all ages hosts casting calls around the world looking for the next Claire Sinclair or Sara Jean Underwood. Go ahead and use that Google tool now; we'll wait.

The mag put out a press release last week ahead of next week's Houston hunt, imploring our city's sexiest candidates to show themselves at the upcoming two-day event. You must set an appointment time to come by the hotel location to audition. The "upcoming modeling opportunities" noted in the release could mean anything, from centerfolds to appearances in the Playboy Cyber Club and the special edition issues.

2010 Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk and Miss May 2011, Sasha Bonilova, both came from casting calls like the one coming to Houston next week. Dworaczyk was discovered at a Dallas call a few years back.

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Vintage Schwing

Today is French bombshell and noted racial shit-stirrer Brigitte Bardot's 77th birthday. The model, actress and sometime singer still makes lists of the most-desirable women of all time, and her press photos and modeling snaps are still drooled over by men of all ages. Hell, my own grandfather probably had some of her pics in his Air Force foot locker for decades before I was even born.

Along with Ann-Margret, Twiggy and Sophia Loren, Bardot made up this menacing pack of '50s and '60s sex kittens that were almost cruel in their rampant sexuality, and they all listened to rock music, smoked marijuana cigarettes and had affairs with the kind of rich men who signed the checks that made the world go 'round.

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