That’s the prediction of our faithful Onion correspondent, on the scene of a mountain rescue that has all the ingredients for a “thrilling, made-for-TV movie”:

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Remember that papier-mache volcano that some kid (or, more accurately, his parents) built every year for the junior high science fair? It never did manage to teach me how volcanoes work—later, I’d only recall the bubble and hiss of the Sprite mixture foaming out the top. But recently, while trying to get a handle on the local music scene in Barbados, I came across something similar: this educational volcano video, set to a hit soca track by Barbadian calypso legend Red Plastic Bag. Maybe something like this would have helped me pay closer attention in science class. Then again, maybe I would have only remembered the song. It’s plenty catchy.

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A YouTube video of them dancing to Thriller (see below) made them famous. Now the inmates of the provincial prison on the island of Cebu in the Philippines are greeting audiences for a two-hour program on the last Saturday of every month. “Visitors can have their pictures taken with the prisoners,” Reuters reports. “They can also buy souvenir prison shirts.”

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I just stumbled across this recent interview the travel writer and novelist gave in Bangkok on YouTube:

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The prominent travel writer—not an annoying fake one—appears on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” program this morning to discuss China issues. 

Related on World Hum:
* Peter Hessler Nominated For National Magazine Award

Just kidding. No we’re not.

If our interview with him only whetted your appetite for Pico, listen to him speak with Terry Gross today on “Fresh Air.” They’ll be talking about his new book, “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” and “how the Dalai Lama is responding to the current uprising against Chinese rule.”

Related on World Hum:
* Pico Iyer: On ‘The Open Road’ and 30 Years With the Dalai Lama

Sad few days for Cuban music fans. Israel “Cachao” López died over the weekend at 89. He was a giant of Cuban music widely known as the creator of the mambo. “The springy mambo bass lines Cachao created in the late 1930’s—simultaneously driving and playful—became a foundation of modern Cuban music, of the salsa that grew out of it, and also of Latin-influenced rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues,” the New York Times notes. “For much of the 20th century, Cachao’s innovations set the world dancing.” Here’s a video snippet from YouTube. If this doesn’t get you moving, nothing will:

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Hurricane-force winds battered the Lufthansa flight as it attempted to land during in Hamburg, Germany this weekend, causing one wing of the Airbus A320 to scrape the runway. The pilot pulled up and eventually landed on his second effort, providing relief to the 137 people on board and an amazing and scary piece of video: 

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Congratulations to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, winners of the Oscar for best original song earlier this week for Falling Slowly from Once. It’s an excellent song from an excellent movie, but for me, the best performance comes toward the beginning, when Hansard, playing a busker, belts out “Say It To Me Now” on a near-empty Grafton Street in Dublin:

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At least that’s my take on the 90-second commercial popping up on TV these days celebrating travel—and, yes, at the very end, designer handbags (the company got its start making travel trunks more than a century ago). The haunting music is by composer Gustavo Santaolalla, who’s behind the soundtracks for “Amores Perros,” “Babel,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Motorcycle Diaries.” (I confess to having a “Gustavo” playlist on my iPod; I love his stuff.) According to The New York Times, the spot was shot in Japan, France, Spain and India. It’s not exactly “Babel,” which I loved, but it’s pretty mesmerizing. Here it is:

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A Chicago-based judge declared Steve Fossett legally dead Friday, five months after the adventurer and his single-engine Bellanca disappeared during a flight from a private airstrip in Western Nevada.

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