Extreme skiing looks cool at Skiing Motion, which is supposed to be about teaching you ski tricks, but is really about watching film clips of extreme skiers doing cool tricks. This site is very well designed. You'll need a media player on your machine, but you probably have one.
Snowboarding:
A little bit of history and information on Snowboarding.
The Macromedia Flash version of the Beginner's Resource for Martial Arts is quite cool. Not sure whether you're interested in Karate, Taekwondo, or something else? Stop here first.
Americans call this football, and the official NFL page has just about all the information you'd want.
Scroll down Yahoo's football players page to find your favorite.
Football For Dummies is probably the only sexist page I have listed, since it assumes it's girls and wives who don't know the game. But a lot of people can learn something here.
Water Fights:
Gee, when I was a kid, squirt gun fights were easy. Now, the Water Warriors "would like to contribute to the Super Soaker community by assisting in establishing water combat standards with a focus on safety, the environment, game and product development, international competition, and most importantly--FUN." As they say on the site, Saturate That Sponge.
Television & Movies:
The reason to go to Teen People, instead of its parent site People, is that it leaves out the celebrity stuff for your parents.
Who has time to see movies? It takes hours. Except at Movie-a-Minute, where you can take in a movie in even less than a minute, with their funny slices of dialogue.
How are Hollywood Films made? Find out about screenwriting, directing, acting, editing, and the rest, at the Cinema exhibit.
Anything Can Happen, announces this page, which teaches about the world of movie special effects
.
Music & Musicians:
A good, solid page for the latest music, groups, videos, and what's cool is Yahoo's music page, called LAUNCH.
Papa Roach? Phish? Blink 182? What kind of names ARE they, anyway? An entertaining web page, Origins of Band Names, tells you the stories behind the names of hundreds of bands, past and present.
From wax (yes, wax) cylinders to MP3 players, the history of music technology is presented on a single, long scrolling web page.
A starting point for information on Rap and Hip-Hop music on the Internet is About.com's Rap & Hip-Hop page, hosted by Ife Oshun.
The Official Hip-Hop Hall of Fame currently exists only online, where you can vote for artists, and participate in what they call the fight for respect for Hip-Hop as a musical form.
For those (and I hope you exist) with a different taste, I present the Jazz Files, biographies of dozens of jazz greats, broken down in instrument categories.
And please tell me there are some blues fans out there who will appreciate Blue Highway, and the excellent biographical site, the Blue Flame Cafe, Encyclopedia of the Blues.
If it's that pop music you'll find on the radio that you're after, you could do worse than SonicNet, with news, interviews, quizzes, etc.
For information and background, the easy-to-use Rockmine calls itself The Ultimate Rock Cyclopedia.
Although there are too many advertisements, Artist Direct is another source of information about your favorite bands, singers, and performers.
Interested in DJ's, DJ pictures, DJ interviews, etc.? So is Pieter Tytgat, an 18-year-old from Belgium, who created Drum and Bass for DJ fans.
The flashy layout and information about top music stars at Get Music is just the beginning. The unique thing here is the Videolab, where you can make your own music videos and send them to the site (and watch other people's videos, too). It will help (a lot) if you have a quick Internet connection, but it's cool. You do have to register (free) to use the lab, though. [For Parents: This student-suggested site makes the Directory because it deals with explicit content--whenever it occurs on the site--with a Content Rating Policy and labeling system, a step very few music sites bother to take.]
Video Games & Cheats:
Cheat Code Central says they are "the largest and most comprehensive video and computer game site in the world," and it sure looks that way. (Choose the Frames version, if your browser supports frames.)
Magic: The Gathering, and Other Card Games:
Magic cards, Harry Potter cards, Star Wars cards, Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms...all explained, discussed, and written about by the Wizards of the Coast, the fantasy game creators, at Wizards.com. You can also just go straight to their Magic: The Gathering page.
The TallMania Web Directory isn't really for sales sites, and I admit The Card Kingdom and the Collectible Card Game Warehouse are mainly places to buy cards. However, I suppose real fans go just to browse and think about all those cards they wish they had.
Celebrities:
Stretched out Britney Spears, elongated George W. Bush, freaky Jennifer Lopez--all digitally manipulated at the Celebrity Distortions page of the web site Quirked, where they have too much time on their hands. But some of them are pretty funny.
Absolutely have to keep up with all the latest celebrity gossip? Try AbsoluteNow.
So, smart guy, you know that Eminem is really Marshall Mathers. But did you know that Jennifer Aniston was Jennifer Anistonapoulas? Find out the original names of singers, actors, politicians, and others at Famous Name Changes.
Which celebrity would be best for you to go on a date with? Celebrity scratch-off quizzes. Song Lyrics. Celebrity birthdays. It's junk, but it's entertaining junk, at Entertainment World.
A Little Magic:
For beginners, and those who just want to impress their friends with a little coin or card trick or two, there's The Conjuring Cabaret.
For some more advanced trickery, there's AllMagic.com.
Highly recommended, if you're into magic.
Shoes:
I didn't know where to put this, so here it is under Entertainment. You want to gaze at shoes? They're here at Famous Footwear.
Online Games:
Rajiv Krishnakumar calls 2DPlay.com the best place to play games online, by yourself or with other people.
Games & Puzzles:
Word Games:
I bet you'll find even the third grade words tough here at Fake Out, where you have to pick the right definition for the word. You can also write some fake definitions, and then check back later and see how many people were fooled and chose your fake one.
An unusual collection of games and strange lists and facts is to be found at the English Zone.
The Wacky World of Words is just what you'd think--challenges and games all dealing with the way words work.
Warm up with some Vocabulary Stretchers. Beware--These aren't easy. NOTE: This site was down the last I checked: it may be out of service.
What's an anagram? a spoonerism? a palindrome? If you want to have fun with words, well then I suggest Fun-With-Words.Com, where you'll find puzzles, but also learn different odd and interesting things about words, like some tongue twisters and other tricks.
Enter the hallway at Word Central, and click around the schoolhouse to discover some interesting things about words, and even write a song in the Music Room.
Math Games:
Try Spike's Game Zone at Coolmath.com for some math-oriented strategy games.
Don't be ashamed if you can't answer the brain teaser for fifth and sixth graders at the Education Place. Be proud if the teasers for grades 7 and 8 are easy for you.
Games & Puzzles of All Sorts:
Yowza! Spend about a thousand hours with the Brain Boosters--logic, math, reasoning, word games, and riddles--at DiscoverySchool.com.
Look at all the quizzes, tests, puzzles, and other things at this site with the ugly name of Puzz.com.
This one is NOT games you play on the Internet; it's full of games you play with paper and pencil, coins, or other items. You can learn the games by reading the page, and then play them later (not in class!). Clever Games For Clever People
Choose from brain teasers, games, and optical illusions at Brain Bashers.
The games at Fun Brain are often a bit easy, but sometimes it's nice to get all the answers right.
Entertainment @ Random:
There are lots of sites with optical illusions on the Internet. This one claims modestly, "I have one of the best collections of optical illusions I've seen on the net!"
Boy crazy? Then I guess the magazine Boy Crazy has the site for you--including the Zodiac Matchmaker, where you can match yourself to one of the many boys they have on file. (It's all for fun; they don't actually set up dates.) (Submitted by Amber Woodward.)
Haven't found what you're looking for? Try the Open Directory Project: