What's the Dumbest Thing You Read on the Internet Today?

Because I doubt it could top this.

Is There a Sports Bubble?

Galley Hero Steve Czaban says yes! I think he may be right.

But the bubble isn't the classic one you might think--bubbles are, in the strictest economic sense, formed by speculators and pro-sports doesn't have a lot of those. There are a pretty small number of owners who are all in it for the relatively long-haul.

Instead Czabe thinks, and I agree, that the bubble may be on the demand side for both tickets and stadiums. If there is a bubble there, then the stadium-revenue model for pro-sports, which undergirds every league, could be in for a big correction.

Samantha on Style--Updated

Galley Friend Samantha Sault has launched what I suspect will become D.C.'s indispensable fashion blog: SamanthaOnStyle..

Sam should be the go-to alternative to the ridiculously overrated Robin Givhan because she (a) knows a truly insane amount about fashion; (b) has a sense of humor; and (c) knows how to write.

It's like Washington has gotten its very own Fug Girl.

Update: Why is Sam so money? Because of posts like this.

The A Team

So which will be worse? The Stephen Sommers G.I. Joe, or the Joe Carnahan A Team?

Santino Goes Global

Video, a link on Drudge, and a confrontation with Fenster.

A star is born.

PSA

Courtesy of Galley Friend P.G., it turns out that the Circuit City "liquidation sale" is a fraud.

Just one more example of why this chain deserved to die.

Bad Robot

Galley Wife S.L. sends along this link to J.J. Abrams's TED speech. It's a pretty good talk, and possibly worth your 18 minutes. But what's particularly interesting is the revelation that Kevin Weisman's "Marshall" character from Alias was basically a spot-on imitation of Abrams.

T.O. Gets His Own Reality Show

VH1 is to blame. But the really interesting bit in the story is that it seems Owens has replaced his old publicist Kim Etheridge--the gal who awkwardly boasted that Ownes had "25 million reasons to live" after he kind of/maybe attempted suicide.

Aussie Open Notes

How about Jelena Dokic? Her match to get into the quarters was one of the gutsiest things I've seen on the women's side in years. All of my memories of Dokic were of her as a hot-shot teen, storming Wimbledon--to see her making this run as a 25-year-old, in her adopted homeland, with all the things she's seen in recent years, is pretty wonderful.

Looking at her now I'm struck by how old her eyes look. It's rare to see someone finding redemption like this on a tennis court. Good for her.

In other notes, have you seen ESPN's addition to the telecast: the blonde, super-thin trainer/TV personality Tiffany Cherry? That's the most ready-made porn name I've ever heard.

Aussie Open Notes

How many times will Richard Gasquet break my heart? In tennis there are usually a handful of players with the skills and physical gifts to be champions. Non-physical factors separate these players from the champion: work-habits, circumstance, timing, luck. But the head counts for so much--I fear that by this point, Gasquet is so far gone that he'll never win a major. It's crazy: Gasquet has top-5 talent. He's a brilliant shot-maker, the best serve and volleyer left in the game, he has amazing feet.

And for my money, his game is, Federer excepted, more fun to watch than anyone on the tour. It's a thing of beauty.

But having match point in the third, going to a fifth, holding serve, but blowing 5 break points, and then losing 12-10? This is the type of loss that haunts you your entire career.

In fact, I suspect you can trace today's defeat to Gasquet's similar collapse at Wimbledon against Murray last year.

Screw the Dark Knight

Santino does the work for me.

BSG: Decline and Fall?

Ellen Tigh.

So what do we think about that? For my part, not very much. But after reflecting on the first episode of season 4.5 ("Sometimes a Great Notion," ep. 4.11) for a week, some thoughts occur to me:

* There was a lot to like in 4.11, first and foremost being the suicide of Dualla. Moore and writers David Weddle and Bradley Thompson needed to convince us of how severe a blow Earth's false paradise was. Dualla's suicide accomplishes that and fits within the arc of her character, which has been trending toward deep unhappiness since New Caprica.

But it does something more: It serves as a stunning indictment of Lee Adama. The young Adama has his father's ambition and sense of command but has always been corrupted by an enormous egotism. Remember the first moment we met him: He was being bitchy and condescending to the Galactica's deck crew because he wanted to be sure that these people, who he'd never met before, understood his displeasure with his father. Lee showed that kind of righteous self-absorption over and over again, but the writers never made him pay for it with the audience. They always left a way for people to overlook Lee's flaws and see him as the fair-haired boy that we want to see.

In episode 4.11, Lee is standing in front of his ex-wife, a woman whose heart he treated very shabbily, and she is clearly in distress. Yet he's so blind to the world that he keeps talking about himself and his own troubles that he can't see that she needs saving. And so Lee walks away, still thinking of himself, while Dualla puts a gun to her head.

* Meanwhile, what's up with Lee's father? The admiral hasn't been himself for a few episodes now--crying and wallowing and, in 4.11, trying to goad Tigh into killing him. If you go back in time, you'll note that this unraveling of the great admiral began when he admitted that he had fallen in love with Laura Roslyn.

I think there's something going on here about romantic love being incompatible with command. And I like it all the more because it's being explored purely with subtext.

* As for the big reveal, I really don't know what to make of Ellen Tigh being the fifth cylon. Maybe it will make sense after some explanation. (I think it's now clear that when Deanna told one of the final five "I'm sorry, I had no idea" back on Kobol that she was speaking to Tigh, not the obscured "final Cylon.")

But my real fear all along has been that Moore is creating the show's mythology on the fly and not according to a long developed, pre-conceived plan. As with any show that has a deep mythology to it, that's a path to narrative chaos.

This interview is particularly unsettling because Moore says that he decided Ellen would be the final Cylon during the third season. Two problems here: (1) The importance of the final five seems to have occurred to Moore as the series was progressing; and (2) So did their identities.

We've seen this kind of unraveling before with very good shows--Alias, Lost, X-Files, etc. A great concept is sustained for a few seasons but then peters out because the showrunner didn't know ahead of time what the final act would be. It's fine to freelance your mythology during production so long as you know where you'll eventually end up.

I maintain that BSG will successfully conclude if it can coherently answer two questions:

(1) What happens to the humans?

(2) What was the Cylons' plan?

If Moore can get those two answers right, then nothing else really needs to be explained. We don't need to know who was on earth or what the 13th tribe was. We don't even need to know what happens to the mass of cylons presumably still hanging around Caprica and points West. (Remember, throughout the series, we've been watching a conflict between a small band of humans and, one assumes, a reasonably small group of Cylon chase ships. The main body of the Cylon civilization and navy is most likely still back around the colonies doing whatever it is they do. In that way, the series is a lot like Master & Commander: We're at the far edge of the earth watching a struggle that's really only important to the two players involved in it.)

In any event, if Moore loses sight of those two big questions, or garbles them with other questions, the chances of BSG holding together in the final reckoning decrease. He's done so much right that I'm happy to follow him to the end; I just hope his conclusion is worthy of his beginning.

The Penn Family

The Oscar nominations are out and, of course, Sean Penn got a Best Actor nod for Milk. I haven't seen the movie--maybe it's great--but I did get a funny email over the weekend from Galley Brother B.J., who exited the theater wondering whether or not Harvey Milk was mentally handicapped. I assured him that the real Milk was not.

His reply:

So why does Penn have his Magic Retard Face^TM on the whole movie? Was he just trying to stack the deck for the Academy, worried that playing gay and martyred wasn't enough?

Maybe. Sean Penn seems to get a lot more credit than he deserves as an actor. How many good performances has he given over the last decade? But sadly, his brother Michael Penn seems to get almost no credit at all for being one of the better singer/songwriters of his generation.

I'll grant that Penn's stuff (Michael, I mean) isn't designed to be hugely commercial. But, to my ears it's incredibly catchy and smart; pop music for people who read. And I'd argue that what he does--finding new and clever and beautiful ways of saying things which have been said millions of times--is harder than putting on a Magic Retard Face^TM by an order of magnitude.

But to restore your faith in the Academy, how great is it that Melissa Leo got a nomination? She's a total stud.

The Eye Is Watching

I noted elsewhere Venus Williams's refreshingly non-worshipful shrug at the Australian Open when asked by reporters about the magnificence of President Obama. If you haven't seen it, it's worth following the link and reading the exchange just for the sheer novelty of seeing a celebrity say that they don't really know anything about politics and aren't too excited by it. Sample awesome:

Q. Politics aside, does it inspire you with the inauguration and with president‑elect Barack Obama?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Can you be more specific, please?

Twenty-four hours later, Venus was bounced in three by the unseeded Carla Suarez Navarro. Punishment for her deviationist views?

No Escape From D.C.

Even the Australian Open broadcast won't stop talking about the Obama inauguration, in the most reflexively slobbering tones imaginable.

It's all kind of confusing: 46 percent of the country voted against Obama. You would think that people in business might want to avoid potentially antagonizing such a big chunk of consumers.

Apparently not.

The Debacle

A few thoughts:

* Objectively speaking, these Cardinals are surely the worst Super Bowl team in the modern era, no? Who are the other contenders? The Stan Humphries-led Chargers? The '86 Pats? The Grossman Bears? At least those teams had impressive regular season records padded from being in a weak conference. This Arizona team doesn't even have that.

And for the record, if the Eagles had won, I think they would have been the worst Super Bowl team ever.

* Did you like that pass interference no-call on the final drive? Kind of beyond comprehension. I choose to blame George W. Bush. It seems incontrovertible that President Bush is the one who picked up the red phone and told The Commish that the Eagles' 4th quarter drive better not end in anything crazy.

Look, you can say what you want about Bush, but on his watch, he did what he had to do to keep America safe. And you and I both know that the consequences of a World Series/Super Bowl double for Philly would have been terrifying.

* Where does this rank in the Pantheon of Philly losses? I'd say it's up there. Way up there. The only loss I can think of that comes close is the NFC championship choke against Tampa Bay.

That Tampa Bay loss was hideous. First, it was against Tampa Bay, an expansion franchise which had been hapless for it's entire existence. Second, Philly was home, and favored. And finally, Tampa had some ridiculous streak--something like 0-54--in games where the temperature was below freezing. That streak ended in Philly.

On the other hand, Tampa actually won the Super Bowl. Arizona is going to get crushed.

* On the bright side, only 111 seasons of Philly sports left until our next championship. Rock on.

Updated Final Thought: How many QB's have taken two different teams to a Super Bowl? How many have won with two different teams? I'm not a football stat-head, but those must be very short lists. So you would think that between this accomplishment and his insane career numbers that Kurt Warner would be regarded as one of the great quarterbacks of all-time--at least in the top 20.

Yet he was buried on the depth chart under Matt Leinart after being kicked to the curb for Marc Bolger. Neither of whom, I'm guessing, will make the Hall of Fame.

Which just goes to show that true meritocracy doesn't really exist anywhere, even in the NFL, which is about as much of a pure capitalist, results-oriented marketplace there is. Situations matter. Personalities matter. Non-talent, non-results-based decisions get made all the time because the people charged with making the decisions have other agendas.

Eagles Stag Film

Philly Love and Baltimore Hate, Together At Last

KSK:

I was at a game at an interleague game at Camden Yards in the spring of 2004 (this being still when the Or-ee-oos were the closest available MLB team to me) during the brief period when the Ravens were trying to orchestrate a trade for Terrell Owens which he nixed in favor of going to Philly (even T.O. isn’t dumb enough to want to play for the Ravens). The game was between the Giants and the Orioles, yet an entire section of Eagles fans had gotten tickets for the express purpose of chanting “WE GOT T.O.! WE GOT T.O.!”

Yes, at a game between the San Francisco Giants and the Baltimore Orioles, a group of Eagles fans had bought up an entire section at a baseball game and driven in just to taunt people from Baltimore about a football transaction that had taken place in the off-season. And this wasn’t a quick little chant. It went on FOR FOUR FULL FUCKING INNINGS! And nobody tried to stop them, save shooting them the occasional ugly look.

It's funny on so very many levels.

Headline of the Day

"Extensive reshoots for WOLVERINE... Is Fox financing it with some new glowy blue money?"

BSG Tonight

I confess to being somewhat worried that BSG has placed so much store on the reveal of the final Cylon. To my mind, the most crucial questions of the series--by which I mean, the questions that, if answered in a satisfying way, would make the series a final success--were:

(1) Where do the humans go?

(2) What was the original Cylon plan?

(3) Is there a reconciling between human and Cylon cultures?

(4) Whose theistic views are correct? The pagan humans or the monotheistic Cylons?

I've always thought that if Ron Moore et al could answer those questions is a satisfying way, then the series would have an enormously successful conclusion. Instead, we seem to have reached a place where series turns on a twist reveal, like an M. Knight Shyamalamalaman movie. Narratively speaking, I think that's dangerous ground on which to make your final stand.

All of that said, I'm not as down in the mouth as Gregg Easterbrook, who says that nothing about the Cylons makes any sense.

Instead, I'd posit that everything about the Cylons makes sense, if and only if the Cylons are right about there being one god. If the Cylons are right, then we can view the series as grounded in a sort of Old Testament ethos--a universe where there are prophets and visions and the hand of god actively moves among the earthly. If that's what's going on, then we can explain and believe the Starbuck's visions, Leoben's prophecies, etc.

Also, if I were a betting man, my guess would be that Adama is the final Cylon. He's the only character who makes sense narratively, logically, and theistically.