Almost famous

Search terms: building + hall + fame

Last week, Building followed the trail blazed by country music and baseball, and founded its own Hall of Fame. Bloggers love halls of fame, as they give them licence to draw up lists and endlessly debate their merits. It also helps that a lot of them seem to be based on science fiction.

Last week, Slice of Sci-Fi (www.sliceofscifi.com) was excited by the news that William Shatner had been inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame - "the first Star Trek-related personality chosen for this honor", it noted, with a hint that a grave injustice had been rectified.

Over at Silicon Valley's Carnegie Mellon University, meanwhile, there were three new inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame (keynote speaker: Daniel H Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising).

Robots.net (robots.net/article/1952.html) reports that the inductees included "Maria, the art deco star of the 1927 silent film classic Metropolis; Gort (pictured), the metallic giant sent to Earth to establish peace in the 1951 thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still; and David, the boy-like android in Steven Spielberg's AI".

Kimberley Blessing (www.kimberleyblessing.com) was incensed that Elektro, the star of "both the 1939 and 1940 world fairs", hadn't made the cut. I wonder if the Building Hall of Fame judges had similar debates about the relative merits of Cedric Price and Nick Raynsford?

Closer to home, blogsearch.google.com directs me to www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net, where the talk is of big-haired, leggings-sporting Yorkshire rockers Def Leppard being inducted into the Sheffield Hall of Fame, an honour that involves having a bronze plaque screwed to Sheffield town hall.

"They've come a long way since their first rehearsal in a spoon factory in Bramall Lane in November 1977," notes Blabbermouth. Ministry of Anarchy was less than impressed: "Not bashing them, but just wondering who else is in the Sheffield Hall of Fame?" Well, since you ask, Joe Cocker, Gordon Banks, Michael Palin and, of course, Sean Bean.

This seamlessly pulse-related segue takes us to perhaps the most illustrious list of them all: the Hummus Hall of Fame. Located at 28cooks.blogspot.com, a blog of "the culinary talents of a 28-year-old vegaquarian", this honours the likes of Moroccan Carrot Hummus, Lemon Ginger Hummus and, I'm pleased to say, Cilantro Jalapeño Hummus. However, even this hall flirts with controversy. A blogger called Jae responds: "Just yesterday I was sitting on the subway wondering what the actual defining components of hummus are. Do you have to have chickpeas? If I made something of a similar consistency with white beans could I call that hummus too?"

I hope Building knows what it's getting itself into - these halls of fame seem to be nothing but trouble ...