Ancient Web: Bao Dai of Hollywood Left a Weekly 2000–2001 Rant Index

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

At tentacle.net, a personal homepage called Review of the Week still offers a remarkable menu of grievances, jokes, and topical essays. It belongs to a voice calling itself Bao Dai of Hollywood, and it appears to have stopped at the end of 2001.

Visit Bao Dai of Hollywood's surviving index.

The page opens with a link to the latest review and then works backward through dated weekly entries. The list begins in May 2000 and runs to December 2001, with 2000 and 2001 copyright claims attributed to Orange Mars Literary Talent. Some titles are deliberately vulgar, others sound like topical newspaper columns, and several riff on well-known songs and movies.

The headings themselves sketch the period. Entries include a December 2000 year-in-review, a January 2001 complaint about computer buying, a June essay on modern media, and September 2001 responses to the World Trade Center attacks and the Taliban. The site has no interest in neutral, professional branding.

A diary disguised as a broadcast

The review titles are a time capsule of the first internet era when a writer could make their own publication by giving each weekly essay a hyperlink. There is no newsletter subscription box or platform recommendation feed here. The author chose a cadence and used an index to let newcomers work backward.

One entry refers to a virtual opium den called Orange Mars; another jokes about investing; others use fictional names or outrageous sexual hyperbole. The label Review of the Week promises criticism, but the range suggests autobiographical and satirical writing as much as conventional reviews.

The exact contemporary claims in these pieces should be treated as one writer's opinions, not historical findings. In particular, provocative political titles reveal what the author chose to discuss, not whether their assertions were sound.

A limitation is significant: several linked essays no longer respond reliably, while the root index remains readable. The surviving dates and titles establish the project's existence and coverage, but they do not justify reconstructing individual arguments that could not be inspected.

The closing note says any other reviews have been lost in the vortex. That line may be intended as a joke. It now serves as an oddly accurate description of an old-web preservation problem: the navigation may survive long after the words behind it have gone missing.

Explore the original weekly-review index.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.