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.

Tragedy in the Desert

Here's the Czabe on what that Eagles +4 line is really saying:

Think about this: if a team had beaten another team by a 48-20 margin in the regular season, even if it was at home, how on earth would they only be 4 point road favorites? Makes no sense right? Unless it makes perfect sense. Arizona is one of those typical “front running” teams, just like their fans, who are SUDDENLY on the bandwagon. Now that the Cardinals have a chance to go to the Big Game, I think they’ll play like a house on fire. Plus, isn’t Philly’s move to CHOKE when everything is perfectly lined up for them? This is who they are. This is what they do. Westbrook, hurt. Boldin, back. Nah. Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb aren’t this lucky. PICK: Cardinals 38-21.

I have no retort.

Jim Johnson Puts You On Warning

KSK has Jim Johnson's Match.com blurb:

I coached the number three defense in the league and am really the only thing that’s kept Andy Reid employed the last few years. I’m four years younger than Old Man LeBeau up there and twice as dessicated. And I’ll send nine guys after your quarterback up 30 points in the 4th quarter on a 3rd and 20, ’cause I don’t fucking like your face.

Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.

Lereah Watch

Another hit-piece on David Lereah, this time courtesy of the WSJ. You should read, and savor, it all. But just to tantalize you:

* Lereah claiming that was only following orders!

* Lereah's wife lamenting that they have "an expensive lifestyle" and that her husband needs to make some more money so they can still afford the housekeeper, the country club, etc.

* Lereah explaining how great he is now as an analyst: "I feel I have such a refreshing view now because I'm not representing any interests."

(Is that even English? What is a "refreshing view"? Does Lereah actually have one, or does he just "feel" like he has one?)

The best part is the revelation that Lereah is now working for himself, advising "Japanese companies" (he's huge in Japan!) and churning out a weekly newsletter on the housing market, for which he charges $495 a year.

Lereah says he's got "under 50" subscribers now--which could also mean 2 subscribers--but expects to have 1,500 by the end of the year. The market for his refreshing views is red-hot!

And the Oscar Goes To . . .

Sean Penn, Milk!

Give Me Odds

Who will be the first to run this headline next week:

"And The Government Will Be Upon His Shoulders"

On vodka

I now know of three people who are involved in the ever-expanding luxury vodka industry. One works at Diageo, an empire of alcohol whose vodka products include Smirnoff and Ciroc. His house is never dry, though it comes close when I am there. Another is an old friend from New Jersey who invested in a fledgling company a few years back and from what he tells me, the numbers already look good. The brand is called Americana Vodka and if you consider yourself a patriot, you'll buy it! Not that it is available everywhere. Yet. But up in the tri-state area it is certainly in stock. Just look for the handsome angular bottle with hues of red and blue. The cap is actually a cork. And the flavor... well, it is vodka after all so there really shouldn't be a taste or smell. But it is extremely smooth and does have a clean finish. Try making a vodka martini with it or mix in some club soda and a twist of lime. No, I do not get any kickbacks for supporting Americana Vodka. I'm just doing my job. As a patriot.

If you cannot get a handle of Americana, be on the look out for another fine brand known as Koval. The website has not yet gone live but the distillery site is here. At the moment, Koval is a husband and wife team. Robert Birnecker left his job at the Austrian embassy and his wife left her tenured teaching position to move back to Chicago and devote themselves fully to the operation. Ultimately they plan on distilling not only vodka but fruit brandies and other liqueurs. Since the age of 16, Robert has been interested in distilling, watching his grandfather at work back in Austria. That sort of professional craftsmanship he is now carrying over to Chicago. The potstills are imported from Germany.

You're probably thinking there couldn't be a more perilous time for such ventures. After all, isn't there already a glut in this market (think Grey Goose, Ketel, Belvedere, Chopin, Imperia, Stoli, Absolut, Smirnoff, Van Gogh, Level One, Hanger, Effen--yes, Effen Vodka--Skyy...)? Robert would argue that with a wealth of expertise and knowledge and just the right amount of careful marketing, there is still room for good vodka. (We both agreed that Svedka has got to be the worst.) He also pointed out a few misnomers. For instance, just because a vodka is super-filtered (Absolut is more filtered than Ketel) does not make it better or more enjoyable.

Robert had recently done extensive taste tests on vodkas (not actually ingesting) and considers--next to Koval--a Polish vodka to be superior. Unfortunately he forgets the name. He used to enjoy Absolut but not as much these days. He is not a fan in the least of Grey Goose. If Koval is not on the shelf, what would he prefer? Ketel One.

They are living the American(a) dream. And I wish them all well. No, I do not expect a case of vodka to come my way. Maybe a bottle? In any event, they at least are doing something they love. Or at least I hope. I asked Robert if his wife (and business partner) likes vodka. He said, "She does now."

Superman Co-Creator Draws Fetish Art

He was young, he needed the money.

Brief Political Aside

News items:

"President-elect Barack Obama made an unannounced visit Saturday night with his family to see the Lincoln Memorial, paying tribute to a former president he frequently invokes as an inspiration. . . . After touring the memorial for about 20 minutes, including the lower part of the memorial that houses some exhibits, the Obamas walked out, facing the reflecting pool and Washington Monument. They waved to some onlookers standing around the memorial's lower steps. Obama frequently invokes the memory of Lincoln. He announced he was running for president in Springfield, Ill., at the steps of the Old Capitol, where Lincoln was a legislator."
-Washington Post

"President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office using the same Bible upon which President Lincoln was sworn in at his first inauguration."
-Politico

"President-elect Barack Obama will welcome Americans to his inauguration at the memorial to his political hero, Abraham Lincoln."
-Associated Press

"Obama's jampacked Abe-apalooza moved into high gear with an announcement from the Congressional Inaugural Committee that it will hold a luncheon next Tuesday following the swearing-in ceremony that's modeled after foods Lincoln enjoyed. . . .Part of the meal will even be served on replicas of the china picked out by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln at the beginning of her husband's first term in office in 1861. . . .

"The painting, which will hang behind Obama, is a landscape of Yosemite Valley at dawn - representing Lincoln's signing of the 1864 Yosemite Grant that set aside the land as a public reserve. . . .

"[T]he Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which handles much of the inaugural planning, has deemed that "A New Birth of Freedom" will be the official inaugural theme.

"The phrase, from the Gettysburg Address, expresses Lincoln's hope that the sacrifice of those who died to preserve the nation would lead to "a new birth of freedom" for our nation."
-New York Post

Yes, we fucking get the point.

Why Can't Us?

Philadelphia is now poised to take its rightful place among the great powers. We hereby announce our intention to formally annex the NFC West. We have suffered this pathetic division's insolence for nearly four months and will not tolerate further provocation.

Once we have consolidated our rightful dominion over the National Football Conference, we will determine our future demands.

Neocon exit question: Who would be more obnoxiously aggressive--a Philadelphia fan with a Super Bowl and World Series victories or a nuclear-armed Iran?

In Defense of Answer

Santino is goading me with a post in response to this Matt Yglesias post questioning the talents of Allen Iverson. Since I, too, aspire to hold my own, I must rise up in defense of Answer.

First, understand that I'm an Iverson partisan--I've got a signed edition of his Sixers jersey in a giant frame at home. So take this as you will, but I think Yglesias underestimates both Iverson's offensive and defensive skills.

Let's start with Answer's shortcomings: His big problem is that he shoots a relatively low percentage from the floor. There are all sorts of rational explanations for this: He's little, he's shooting under double-teams, he has only recently had a secondary scorer on his wing. That said, there's no way around it: Answer's game requires a lot of shots for him to get his points and a lot of touches for him to get his shots. This has traditionally caused rebounding and fast-break defense problems for his teams.

But in his defense, what choice has Answer ever had? During his tenure in Philadelphia, when he was at his physical peak, he was paired with a succession of "riding shotgun" players who turned out to be over-the-hill busts: Toni Kukoc, Derrick Coleman, Glenn Robinson, Keith Van Horn. Iverson never had the scoring help he needed.

It's no coincidence, then, that his biggest success as a Sixer came when GM Billy King and Traitor Larry Brown finally abandoned the attempt to give him a secondary scorer and instead surrounded him with low-cost, highly specialized role players. Aaron McKie and Eric Snow provided ball handling and spot-up shooting. Theo Rattliff provided rebounding and shot blocking. George Lynch provided more rebounding and defensive presence. And then a bunch of other role players came off the bench to handle very specific tasks: Tyrone Hill did low-block scoring, Raja Bell did defensive guard work, etc.

You could make the case that had Matt Geiger stayed healthy (and Brown not made the insane trade for Deke), the Sixers would have had (at least) one more year of title contention because they were finally a team built to allow Iverson to get his shots, efficiently distribute the other scoring duties among the rest of the roster, and take advantage of Answer's high attempt-per-point-ratio by getting offensive rebounds and being defensively tough, especially in transition.

(And let's not forget that the Sixers were *robbed* in Game 2 of the Finals. If they get that game, the series is very different. And that was the closest 4-1 series in the history of sports. Yes, I'm a homer, but it's also true.)

(Also, also, remember that The Traitor Larry Brown began blowing up this team even before the season was over, despite the fact that they had the best (or second-best, I forget) record in the NBA for most of the season.)

As for what Yglesias says about Deke being the heart of the Sixers defense during their Finals-run, he was a presence late in the season, but not particularly effective in the post-season. Most of the defensive intensity on that squad came from Lynch, McKie, and Iverson, who really did wreak havoc in the passing lanes. And from Ratliff, who, for one and a half seasons, looked like he might be one of the great shot blockers in NBA history. What happened to him, through injury and condemnation to Atlanta, was tragic.

I get that there's a lot of Iverson haters out there. In general, I think they hate him because they don't understand him. They see the tats and hear the "practice" clips, but don't understand that on the court, he's actually a throw-back player. He gives his body up every night, dives for every loose ball, plays every game like it's Game 7. He never takes a quarter off and rarely whines about calls. And to go into the lane like he does--I've walked past him and he's barely 6' in sneakers, maybe 180 pounds--takes real guts.

It strikes me that athletes have limited control over their own success. Or rather, no matter how great an athlete is, they can only do as much as the system they're in allows. You see this with NFL quarterbacks all the time. If Tom Brady had been a first-round pick to the Lions who started right away, I doubt he'd be Tom Brady today. Some athletes, like Jordan, or Peyton Manning, have skill sets which are conventional enough (and gargantuan enough) that it's easy to see what to do with them. Iverson's skill sets were so quirky that no one ever quite figured out how to build around him. Or perhaps, by the time King/Brown did figure it out, Answer only had a brief, one-season window and then things fell apart.

I'd put Answer in the category, with Marino and Barkley--guys who were truly great, but whose gifts were odd enough that the franchises around them weren't able to figure out how to win the big one with them.

To my mind, that's a very different issue than the players being over-rated or having chemistry problems.

Real Estate Rebound

The Pig sends along this link:

Goldman: "New York apartment prices are very high relative to the observable fundamentals. Using three alternative yardsticks—price/rent, price/income, and affordability—we find that prices would need to decline by 35%-44% to return to the valuation levels seen in the 1995-1999 period, before the start of the recent boom."

That is, unless things get really bad:

Goldman: "It is instructive to consider the potential implications of a return of relative Manhattan incomes toward the national norm prevailing before the Wall Street boom of the past two decades, either because of pay cuts in the financial industry or because of a possible out-migration of affluent individuals. From 1969 to 1986, Manhattan per-capita income averaged 2 times the national average, with no clear trend. Over the next two decades, however, it grew to 3 times the national average. If incomes fell back to the pre-1986 level of 2 times the national average—and if national per capita income remained unchanged—prices would need to fall as much as 58% to return to the 1995-1999 price/income ratio."

This Isn't a Brains Kind of Outfit

Mike Russell interviews the great Chris McQuarrie. Don't miss it. Just as a tease, McQuarrie reveals this very interesting note about Valkyrie's profusion of characters:

[I]n earlier cuts of the movie, when characters walked onscreen, their names appeared on the bottom of the screen that told you who they were. We did the full-on "Midway." And a contemporary audience, watching that, would respond, "There are too many characters to keep track of. I don't know who all the people are." And by the way, the script was written with those title cards in mind -- so we didn't put in dialogue that explained who they were. We let the title cards do it. And interestingly enough, when I took out the title cards, that note went away. Because they knew less about the characters, they felt they didn't have to keep track of them.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 1936 - 2009

The Gormogons had a lovely tribute to Fr. Neuhaus earlier this morning but now, sadly, he has been called home. For Catholics, losing Avery Dulles and Richard John Neuhaus in a span of weeks is almost too much to bear. We pray now for his soul.

Kaus = KSK?

Has Mickey Kaus always been using tags as bonus punchlines, a la Big Daddy Drew, et al? Either way, they're funny. He should do it more often.

The Gaming Lawyer

Galley Friend A.W. passes along this great interview with Shawn Foust, who does video game legal work. Some highlights:

How long have you been a gamer?

Since I was around six or seven. My friend attained “best friend forever” status when his parents gave him an Atari 2600, which introduced me to console play. I learned some of the most important life lessons from Joust: 1) Always take the high ground; 2) You never have enough time to do everything you want to do; and 3) No matter how tough you think you are, there is some giant invincible pterodactyl that is tougher. . . .

Favorite console? Grey box. Nintendo Entertainment System. You just don’t mess with your starter system. Also, I have immense respect for any piece of electronics that can be fixed by rapidly pressing the on/off button and blowing on the offending portion.

No Comment

In re: Samantha Ronson's next-gen tech:

If one day you're watching the news and the anchor says some dude in NYC was discovered with a whale dick that shoots out vodka and Red Bull, you can can go ahead and assume that a genie is telling Lindsay Lohan that she has two wishes left.

What Dies Next at Sony?

The Playstation 3 couldn't go the way of the Dreamcast, could it?

Almost certainly not. But this does sound ominous.

Tennis Porn

The latest issue of Tennis magazine is out with a little feature on the 10 most influential racquets of all time. If you've ever followed the sport, you can probably guess five of them off the top of your head. But buried in the entry on the Wilson Pro Staff 6.0 85 is this fascinating nugget:

Pete Sampras didn't merely play with the Pro Staff 6.0 85; he insisted on playing with those produced in a former Maidenform undergarment factory on the [Caribbean island of St. Vincent] (early Pro Staffs were made in Wilson's Chicago factory and later ones in China). When the St. Vincent factory closed in 1990, he stockpiled a bunch of the frames and got more from Wilson when he ran out. The St. Vincent Pro Staffs had a slightly wider beam due to older manufacturing techniques. According to Sampras' stringer, Nate Ferguson, the St. Vincent racquets are also slightly stiffer than those made elsewhere.

This sort of thing always amazes me. There's a story about Bill Bradley going to the opening of a YMCA or some such (maybe from A Sense of Where You Are?). Bradley was to dedicate the basketball court by taking a free throw. He missed the first free throw, clanging the ball off the rim. He took another one, with the same result. He grumbled that the rim was an inch off. Someone measured it and sure enough, it was.

I think we mortals often underestimate how different it is, as a simple physical proposition, to encounter the world as a professional athlete. It's not just what you can do--it's that you can actually see and feel things that normal people can't.

PS: Why wasn't the Wilson Profile included in the Tennis list? It totally revolutionized raquet design, even though it was more cricket bat than raquet.

Theater of the Absurd

Galley Brother B.J. sends along a link to the lobster knife fight. Which is kind of awesome.

Tentacle Grape?

What does this mean, exactly? I mean, on the one hand, it's kind of awesome. But on the other, isn't it wildly disturbing? Are we close to Cinnabon launching a Bukkake Blast flavor?

Why Can't Us?

On the pick that Samuel returned for a TD yesterday, did anyone notice the vicious block that got thrown on Tarvaris Jackson just before Samuel got into the endzone? Dear God, it was righteous.



(BTW, Jackson deserves a ton of credit for hustling back and whole-heartedly trying to make a play, knowing he had a giant bullseye on him. That's all heart.)

The Joker's Henchman Gets Work

Is anyone else disturbed to see this guy as the normal-guy office-worker star of a Wendy's commercial?

BSG Webisodes

A brief FAQ and ode to Jane Espenson, here.

Nerd Alert

I did a short review for the Wall Street Journal last week about The Race for the New Game Machine and now all my nerd dreams have come true! The piece was noticed by G4, joystiq, kotaku, and gizmono. It's like a white way of geek delight.

I mention this only because with mentions at AICN and TheForce.net already in the bag, I think this puts me just a LeakyCauldron away from hitting for the Nerd Cycle.

PS: If you're into flame war stuff, just check out the PS360 battle royals in the comments on those links.

Write Every Piece Three Times

I forget whose maxim that was, but it's a tried and true rule for journalists, which particularly holds for your bad pieces.

Last year I took after a writer named Lori Gottlieb for publishing this piece in the Atlantic about how women should settle and marry whichever schlub they can get their hands on because being a single mother is really hard. You can read my brief against the piece, and the editors at the Atlantic, here.

In any event, I was paging through Parents magazine today (no comment) when I stumbled over a piece entitled "I Heart Your Husband." The first three paragraphs sounded remarkably familiar--turns out it's Gottlieb, writing the same piece with different names and similar anecdotes.

I don't mention any of this to impugn Gottlieb--she's done nothing wrong and if she can get two high word-rate mags to buy essentially the same piece, good for her! And the second piece actually fits pretty well in Parents; it makes sense for them.

My point is that the Atlantic, which was once America's most important intellectual journal, is now running copy on par with Parents magazine.

Happy New Year to You

"But of course, most of those assumptions are ridiculous. Kolb is not a starting NFL quarterback. He's a young Doug Pederson. And the Eagles have no chance--zero--of making the playoffs this season."
--Doing your oppo research for you

But seriously, here's what I want to know: What is a team that's 2-4 in division (4-8 over the last two seasons) doing in the playoffs? It's not quite the travesty of San Diego getting in at 8-8, but it's not that far off.

All of that said, the Giants' Superbowl victory last year is proof that in today's NFL, any reasonably-decent team has a chance to win a championship, in a way that reasonably-decent teams in the NBA and MLB do not.

The Goddamned Spirit

Alexandra DuPont, who very probably is not Jane Espenson, has the most devastating movie review of 2008, about The Spirit:

There's this cute rookie cop (Stana Tatic) who goes on and on about Sand Serif's "Elektra complex." It's the sort of weirdly self-congratulatory joke -- a nod to Miller's past "Daredevil" glory that only comics insiders will get -- that turns up all over this movie.

In another scene, someone sees The Spirit hanging from a skyscraper and says, "You'll believe a man CAN'T fly!" Seriously? A pun based on the advertising tagline from a 1978 superhero movie? Who is that gag for, exactly? It's like you're watching a very expensive series of inside jokes, or reading a really bad webcomic with a vast continuity and its own tiny and deeply insular LiveJournal community.

This leads me to my larger rant: Watching the movie, I really started to wonder if Miller suffers from that artist's malady where he's been called a "genius" and a "maverick" so many times, he's settled into a nice comfy couch inside his own head and is now perfectly happy cycling through a tiny set of visual obsessions that only he finds funny or profound.

This isn't the Frank Miller who wrote and/or drew dense, scary, funny, moody, multilayered sci-fi satires -- classics like "Ronin" or "Give Me Liberty" or "The Dark Knight Returns" or his staggering takes on Elektra and Daredevil. That Frank Miller was like the James Cameron of comics, young and hungry and drunk on telling bad-ass popular stories full of strong women.

Maybe Hollywood thought it was hiring that Frank Miller to adapt "The Spirit." What Hollywood is about to learn -- in a very public and embarrassing way -- is that the "Frank Miller" comics fans once spoke of in hushed tones stopped making good stories about 10 years ago, if you count "300" as his last ambitious book. It's worth pointing out here that Rodriguez was skillfully remixing Miller's 10- and 15-year-old material for "Sin City" -- material that gets weaker and weaker as that series (and that movie) goes on.

That will leave a mark.

David Lereah Surfaces! Or, "They said he was some kind of scientist . . ."

Just in time for the New Year, the former NAR hack shows up to admit that he was "spinning" with his economic pronouncements in the run-up to the housing bubble.

No news there, of course, but what does seem newsworthy is Lereah's claim that, "I worked for an association promoting housing, and it was my job to represent their interests. . . . I would not have done anything different. But I was a public spokesman writing about housing having a good future. I was wrong."

Here's the important distinction: Lereah was never a "public spokesman"--at least that's not how I ever saw him ID'd. He was always and everywhere presented as the NAR's chief "economist".

If David Lereah had been just a "spokesman," there would have been nothing wrong with his misleading, stupifying, claims. But he wasn't being asked for comment all those years--he was being asked for actual economic analysis. He wasn't Baghdad Bob--he was the Big Tobacco "scientist" presenting data about how smoking isn't harmful for your health.

There's nothing wrong with prostituting yourself, however distasteful it may be. But when you prostitute your profession, there are supposed to be consequences.

Milestones

Today officially marks the end of VHS.

It will not be missed.

Matt Labash on Detroit

Labash's opus on Detroit is the best magazine piece I've read this year, and maybe the best thing he's written.

Print it and read it now, before Christmas. You'll see what I mean.

The New, New, New, New, New Bailout

Hugh Hewitt isn't happy with the Obama bailout program. Instead, Hewitt wants to see a giant housing bailout that includes:

Fund 4%, 40 year mortgages for people making less than $100k.

Buy up foreclosed properties and turn them into quasi-public housing via transfer to not-for-profits like Habitat for Humanity that qualify tenants/owners on the basis of long experience with the working poor.

Aggressively purchase at fair market value property deemed crucial to species protection to both conserve the property and release the value of it into productive enterprise while honoring the 5th Amendment.

Oh yes, by all means. Let's punish good credit-risk buyers by pushing a ton of people into the marketplace who can bid on property they can't really afford because the government is giving them a 4 percent sweetheart mortgage.

You will perhaps remember that the recently-popped bubble was caused in part by lending which pushed lots of people who couldn't really afford mortgages into the market, thus driving up prices for everyone else. In 2000, if you could reasonably afford, say, a 2,000 square foot home, by 2005 you could only reasonably afford a much smaller home because bad-credit risks (along with speculators and other factors, of course) had entered the market and bid prices up to (obviously) unsustainable levels. So your choice was to buy a crappier house and live within your means, sit out of the market betting that there would be a readjustment, or say, "What the hell" and get in over your head like everyone else.

The only saving grace to responsible people was the prospect that the bubble's unsustainability would eventually punish the risky and create lower prices you could, someday, take advantage of. Hewitt's "plan" would simply push more underqualified buyers into the market by giving them an advantage that responsible, qualified buyers won't get because they're responsible and qualified. In other words, after being punished for being responsible once, they'd be punished for being responsible again.

To top it all off, Hewitt wants to buy up foreclosed properties and turn them into public housing. That's right. Keep punishing the responsible people who have been able to hold onto their properties by creating public housing in the middle of their neighborhoods where none existed before. And just what do you think turning the mass of foreclosures into public housing would do to the long-term property values of suburban and exurban neighborhoods? My guess: Cripple them for a generation. Or more.

Maybe Hewitt was just being ironic and I'm just missing the joke. If not, then with conservatism like this why worry about Obamanomics?

NORAD Santa

Aside from bringing about the destruction of the godless Soviet empire, the Cold War also gave us the amazing constellation of technology mastered by NORAD. Today that technology is put to good use every year tracking Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Don't forget to check your NORAD Santa Tracker frequently on Wednesday night.

And if you want to be really fancy, you can track Santa in 3-D using NORAD's specially adapted overlay for Google Earth.

"I'm leaving to tear Dallas a new party hole."

"But don't worry, that Tiger Woods guy will be taking over."

A Message from George W Bush by Will Ferrell

The Spoken Word Majesty of James Tiberius Kirk

Courtesy of Valeria D'Orazio.

Watchmen Watch

I'm not exactly anti-Watchman, only vaguely so. But this report has to be disturbing even to the faithful:

Despite getting 22 minutes in (of what I keep hearing will end up a 150-some odd minute theatrical release) we got exactly 13 pages into the first issue of the comic.

Hurm.

Slate Justifies Its Existence

By having Mick Foley write about The Wrestler.

Blockbuster Does It Again!

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece elsewhere about how Blockbuster mismanaged itself into a death spiral. Today comes the not-astonishing news that, surveying the wreckage of its business model, Blockbuster has decided to raise the price of rentals instead of chasing digital downloads.

Remember, this is a company that was worth $8.4 billion dollars in 1994 (which is just about $12 billion in 2008 dollars) and now has a total market capitalization of $227 million.

Go ahead and read that again.

Is it any wonder this company is dying?

Newsweek and Fundamentalism

Without getting caught up in the substance of Newsweek's "religious case" for gay marriage, there's a side note which caught my eye. In an intro to the piece, editor Jon Meacham writes that, "This conservative resort to biblical authority [to oppose gay marriage] is the worst kind of fundamentalism."

Which is funny. I might have thought that the "worst sort of fundamentalism" would be the kind of fundamentalism that called for the execution of homosexuals.

Or, I don't know, maybe the kind of fundamentalism that routinely kills homosexuals as a matter of religious law.

This guy gets to run a giant national magazine? Seriously?

Drum Porn

Galley Friend L.B. and I were talking about Primus, Les Claypool, and other mad scientist-type musicians and he sent me this video of Joe Morello, from back in the day. If you're a drum-line junkie, this is absolute pornography. His solo begins around the 2:05 mark and then goes insane around the 3:30 mark.



Note also the points at which Morello switches to snare rolls with one hand so that he can use his free hand to (1) push up his glasses and then (2) pull the bass drum back toward him because it's started to walk away.

Morello is just sick.

The Top Grossing Films of 2009

Dustin has an inspired look-ahead.

Idle Political Speculation

If Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic nominee, would Colin Powell have endorsed her?

Just wondering.

News

Evidently, Box Office Mojo has been acquired by IMDB/Amazon. Let's hope Bezos & Co. don't muck up Mojo the way they have IMDB.

Eddie Murphy Is the Riddler!

This obviously can't be true.

Redskins Hate

The Czabe sends us to this amazing item about Redskins head of football operations, Vinny Cerrato.

First, some background: In addition to being Redskins head of football operations, Vinny Cerrato was given a radio show on WTEM 980 when Redskins owner Dan Snyder bought the station. Actually, Cerrato was only given the show when the Redskins started winning earlier this season. As a radio host, Cerrato accomplished something like Pravda Radio. He managed to be uninteresting, cliched, insipid, and high-handed--all at once.

But a funny thing happened once the Redskins saw their season start to implode--Cerrato stopped showing up to do his show. The station kept advertising it. Cerrato just stopped going. Remember, it's not like he had to face tough questions or anything. He wasn't a guest--he was the host of the fucking show.

Anyway, after Sunday's loss to the 1-11-1 Bengals, Cerrato skipped his show, again, prompting Dan Steinberg to go through Cerrato's TV archives. Here's what he found:

With Inside the Red Zone off today, leaving fans without a crack at Vinny Cerrato, I thought I'd go back to the executive VP's appearance last week on Redskins Nation with Larry Michael. In addition to discussing the Portis-Zorn incident, Cerrato spoke at length on the draft, and why the Redskins went in the unusual direction they did with their second-round picks.

Here's the key point: Cerrato said drafting according to need can be a way to sink your team. "You can't just go take a need," was the exact quote. "The way that you can screw up your team is if you go draft a need, you're gonna get a bunch of guys at those positions but you're not gonna be happy with the results."

And as an example, he pointed to the poor rookie seasons of two defensive ends who some Skins fans wanted: Miami's Phillip Merling, and Arizona's Calais Campbell.

"I mean, it came down to Phillip Merling, people say that we maybe should have taken," Cerrato said. "He has seven tackles right now for Miami."

Damning. Except it's not even close to accurate.

When Cerrato said this, Merling actually had 23 tackles (17 solo) and a sack, according to NFL.com. For a defensive end who has started just two games, that's actually not too shabby.

By way of comparison, Jason Taylor, who's banking $8 million and cost the team two draft picks, had 22 tackles (15 solo) and 1 sack at the time Cerrato offered this explanation, although Taylor did get three tackles and another half-sack yesterday. Andre Carter, the team's most productive end, had 30 tackles (18 solo) and 3 sacks at the time Cerrato was knocking Merling's production.

"I think Calais has like 11 tackles," Cerrato said last week about another DE possibility. Not so. At the time, Calais Campbell had 19 tackles and a forced fumble. He added four more tackles yesterday, giving him 23 for the season, two fewer than Taylor. His one forced fumble is more than the entire Skins defensive line has contributed.

I'm not saying whom Cerrato should have drafted, and I'm not saying Merling or Campbell are, or will be, stars. But if you're speaking directly to your fans, providing them with "inside information" while justifying your past decisions, and you falsify facts to this incredible a degree....well, even if you don't like drafting according to need, you might want to pick up a fact-checker next season.

That's right, the guy running the Redskins organization knows about as much about football stats at a mid-level fantasy player.

Steinberg has the whole transcript if you want it.

Brief Political Aside

It seems a lot of Republicans are griping about Caroline Kennedy's desire to be named Senator from the State of New York.

Has it occurred to anyone that Senator C. Kennedy would be the GOP's best chance to pick up Senate seat in New York for a very long time?

Plus, if the Republicans are going to eventually make the case that Democrats are a bunch of entitled and/or corrupt elites, Princess Caroline makes a nice entry on the list of supporting evidence.

Plus, plus, does anyone think she'd be a particularly effective senator?

In other words, from the Republican standpoint, isn't Caroline Kennedy an unmitigated blessing?

PS: Sure, maybe Republicans want to complain just enough to get noticed, but not so much as to derail Caroline's coronation. But they should be careful, no?

Hating Will Smith

Is this the meanest thing Todd McCarthy has ever written?

Nor can it be said that Smith, whose most recent box office barn-burners, "I Am Legend" and "Hancock," seemed consciously designed to set the star apart from the rest of humanity, shies away from the saintlike status conferred upon his character. Indeed, he embraces it in a way so convincing that it proves disturbing as an indication of how highly this or any momentarily anointed superstar may regard himself.

Ouch.

Obama as Starbucks?

I've been going back and forth with several friends over whether or not the left will (or could) ever become disenchanted with President Obama. The general consensus from my conservative friends is that the left almost certainly will turn on Obama because he's a closet centrist and blah-blah-blah.

Leaving aside Obama's political leanings, or even his eventual political practices, I continue to believe that there is nothing President Obama could do to cause the left (as a whole) to abandon him. If, on January 23rd, he decided to unilaterally invade Iran, install a nascent democracy, and personally torture Muqtada al Sadr while cutting taxes for ExxonMobil and advocating school voucher programs, I suspect the left would stick with him, whole-heartedly.

I may be wrong--we'll see soon enough--but all of that is just wind up to say that if the left did turn on Obama, it might look a lot like this open letter to Starbucks from a former barista and the comment thread which follows it. You can't believe that mushy-headedness on display.

* "You are indeed correct, and echoing a sad sentiment from all of us who ever dared to believe, believe that passion, and knowledge, and hard work, and talent, could in some way make a difference. I joined Starbucks 4 years ago, cynical from a lifetime spent in an industry where respect, integrity, creativity, and dignity were often foreign concepts. . . . Gone is the passion which lead to the talent, and the connection, and the credibility. Leaving those of us who loved our community, our partners, our guests, and our company, manipulated, lied to, disrespected, and most of all devalued. Thus, valued, respected, talented, enthusiastic partners are now crushed, faithless in our leadership, and dejected."

* "Well, it's nice to see that people are finally waking up and realizing this isn't the company they signed on for 2, 4 or more years ago. And if you think for a moment that your DM or even SM feel the slightest bit of remorse for what they are putting you through, I have a bridge to sell you. Don't even think for a second that anyone above the DM level cares one whit what your life is like."

* "I have been here for 3 years (granted, not 10) and i used to LOVE everything we stood for. Making the WHOLE experience. . . . I'm all about thoughtful feedback, but i would like my company to be honest with me for once."

* "A-fricking-men! I used to love it here, but not so much right now.
There's still time to turn around, Howard! Please do it!"

So if you were thinking of naming your son "Adolf Hitler" . . .

it turns out that the name's taken already.

NJ represent!

Tron 2, in 3-D!

If that sort of thing excites you, then good news.

I was kind of underwhelmed by Tron, probably through no fault of the movie itself. I was just a kid when I saw it on VHS after about two years of wasted quarters on the really cool looking, but ultimately insipid, arcade Tron.

The Spirit

It may be even worse than it looks. From a very funny AICN review:

(Costumer Designer: Hi Mr. Jackson, it’s Susie over at Lionsgate. Listen, we’re wondering if you have anything you’d be willing to bring in for the shoot tomorrow. Do you have any old costumes from movies you’ve done in the past? Mr. Miller wants to blow the whole budget on “the look,” as he calls it.

Sam Jackson: Well...let. Me. See, little lady. I do still have my mutton chops from when I played Vincent in Pulp Fiction. Will that work?

C.D: Perfect. What else you got?

S.J.: I’ve got some old mothafuckin’ samurai robes from a chewing gum commercial I did in mothafuckin’ Japan. Don’t MAKE me smell yo’ bad breath! That was the tag line.

C.D.: Fantastic. Anything else?

S.J.: Well, I really wanted to be in Valkyrie, so I bought an authentic Nazi uniform. A hat and everything. But that SONOFABITCH Toooom Cruuuuise said there WERE no Black Nazis. I said, “There weren’t no mothafuckin’ black Jedis either, bitch, but that didn’t stop George Lucas from putting me in there.” Oh, that reminds me, I have my purple light saber. Will that help?

C.D.: Yes to the Nazi uniform, hold off on the light saber. Aww, hell, bring it all! I don’t know how, but we’ll shoehorn all this stuff into something. Thanks!

A Remake of Robocop?

Why not.

Criterion and Blu-ray

Santino looks into the Criterion Collection's move into Blu-ray.

Which probably means he's on their comp list for forever. Damn him.

Sack of the Huns

If you've ever hated Baltimore, this is pure gold.

Dark Knight, Blu-ray, and the Liberal Order

Finally fired up the Playstation machine last night to watch The Dark Knight in Blu-ray for the first time. Several observations on the tech and further thoughts on the movie:

* The PS3 menus are poorly designed. It's an OS which has to do relatively little, yet the long horizontal menu list with obscured pull-downs requires a lot of work to navigate. The entire user interface should be overhauled. So it probably won't be.

* The Blu-ray picture was stunningly good. In particular, the giant, Imaxed scenes blew me (away) and what drove me especially nuts was the use of the IMAX frame for all of the big, outdoor establishing shots. The slow glide in to the Hong Kong skyline, in particular, was just unreal. I'd buy a $25 BR disc of just those.

* I noticed only two aliasing problems with the picture: (1) In the underground Bat Lair, there was a moment when the grid of white lights in the ceiling produced almost imperceptible jaggies; (2) In a scene with a silver flat-panel TV in the background, the speaker on the bottom of the TV in the picture had some aliasing issues with the little holes in the grill.

I'm not enough of a tech-head to know whether these issues were the fault of the BD player or my TV. Since the PS3 seems to be the reference BD machine, I'd suspect that it's my TV's fault. But I have a pretty high-end Pioneer and never so any artifacting like that watching HD-DVDs. Just saying.

* The Dark Knight came with three discs in the package, even though the case only lists the contents for two of them. The third disc is labeled, I think, "digital copy" or some such. I have no idea what it's for.

But wasn't one of the selling points of Blu-ray that it's storage capacity was so gargantuan that you could put entire seasons of a TV series on one disc? Can't they pack all of the extras and the feature onto a single BR disc?

* I've seen fewer movies this year than at any point in my life since I was 5-years-old, so I really can't speak to matters of awards. But if The Dark Knight isn't one of the five best pictures of 2008, then this was one of the best years in modern cinema. It should get, at minimum, five nominations: picture, script, director, score, supporting actor.

* Just one example of the unexpected, really interesting directorial choices Nolan makes comes in the final exchange between the Joker and Batman. The Joker is hanging off the building, upside down. Nolan does not shoot the conversation in full-frame: he uses coverage between the two characters. What's really interesting is that he decides to show us an upside-down image of the Joker--that is, the Joker appears onscreen upright, but with his jacket and hair and arms all pointing to the top of the frame. It gives him an eerie, not quite right, affect. Everything about him in that scene feels wrong and I think it's in part because our eyes are perceiving him as being upright, but he's dangling and dancing like someone who's upside down.

* The writing choices are equally interesting. Upon third viewing, I'm totally convinced that Harvey Dent's transformation is earned. From the scene in the restaurant where he talks about Caesar to his attempted interrogation of the Joker's goon, Dent is much closer to the edge than either Batman or Gordon (or, for that matter Rachel) realize the whole time.

* But more than anything else, what makes The Dark Knight so interesting is that Nolan has something to say the nature of our liberal order. Despite what he says to Dent in the hospital, the Joker is not an agent of chaos. He's an enemy of the liberal order.

Start by understanding that everything the Joker tells people in The Dark Knight is a lie. He lies about his scars. He lies about the locations of Harvey and Rachel. He lies to the mobsters. He lies about wanting the Batman unmasked, and then masked. He lies about having mined the bridges and tunnels.

But most of all, he lies to Harvey about not being a schemer. The Joker manifestly does have plans--lots of them. This little speech is designed to corrupt Dent, pushing him over the edge to make him an agent of chaos. And the reason the Joker wants to do this is because he knows that publicly corrupting Dent will destroy the will of the people just as surely as his terrorism. That's why he remarks to Batman at the end, "You didn't think I'd risk the battle for Gotham's soul in a fistfight with you?"

(I think it's pretty safe to assume he has also lied about the ferry detonators. Nolan doesn't show us, but it seems probable that the detonators were actually linked to the ship they were on, not each other.)

The Joker thinks the mores of Western civilization are a luxury which people will abandon in dire times. And he hates these mores--hates the entire edifice of the modern liberal order--so much that his entire rise is directed toward pushing Gotham to abandon them.

But here's where Nolan gets interesting: Batman (and, I suspect, Nolan) essentially agrees with the Joker that the liberal order is a luxury. But he thinks it's a very, very important luxury. So important to preserve, in fact, that sometimes illiberal things must be done in the service of its maintenance.

CNN has an interesting report on Spencer Elden, the baby on the cover of the Nirvana album Nevermind. Now 17, Spencer still gets a fair amount of attention for his famous swim: "'Stuff happens like random cool situations where I get paid $500 just to go hang out,' Elden said. 'People just call me up and they're like, "Hey you're the Nirvana baby, right? Well just come and swim in my pool and we'll give you some money."'" Which is all well and good. But I still want to know what happened to the woman on the Ohio Players' album Honey. (That is, other than the fact that she was burned horribly by the heated honey and scarred for life when the glass was ripped off her honeyed legs and besides the fact she stormed into the studio screaming during the opening of "Love Rollercoaster" and ultimately was stabbed to death.)

Do Newspapers Deserve to Die?

Maybe. I mean, look what the NYT is doing to market NYT.com.

Because self-important testimonials from Manhattan celebrities worked so well for the Gap.

Whatever was spent on this "Conversations" project might as well have been flushed down a drain. Just ridiculous.

Dept. of Huh?

Remember how NBC was shoving aside Jay Leno to make room for Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon? Leno was sore about it and all?

Well, now NBC is bringing Leno back into the fold (which he never actually left) and giving him essentially the same show he does now, but at 10:00 p.m., five nights a week.

I wonder if this is a recessionary move:

Though Mr. Leno will command an enormous salary, probably more than $30 million a year, the cost of his show will be a fraction of what a network pays for dramas at 10 p.m. Those average about $3 million an episode. That adds up to $15 million a week to fill the 10 p.m. hour. Mr. Leno’s show is expected to cost less than $2 million a week.

In addition, NBC will get more weeks of original programming. Network dramas typically make 22 to 24 episodes a year. Under this deal, the executives involved in the discussions said, Mr. Leno will perform 46 weeks a year.

So Leno will give them so much bang for their buck that NBC should be able to accept pretty meager ratings with his show and still be able to justify it on a cost-per-viewer basis.

But the biggest impact of putting Leno in prime-time is that it drastically reduces the available space for scripted prime-time shows. A network only has 15 hours of prime-time a week; this move devotes 33 percent of that space to one show leaving only 10 hours to run existing programs and try out new pick-ups. I don't know how much time reality programming takes up on NBC each week--I think it's four hours--and suddenly you have very little space to work in scripted programming.

If you look at the NBC program list, I can't see how you fit those shows (minus the coming cancellations, even) into the remaining six hours. I suspect that this may mean that NBC will look to run new programming year-round, instead of just during sweeps. It's the only way I can see them getting it all out with the addition of Leno's show.

'90s Music Potpouri

Whatever happened to Primus? If the grunge movement of the '90s was ultimately bad for pop-rock--and I think it was--there's something kind of glorious about Primus in their distillation of the the grunge ethos. (Even if, strictly speaking, they're less true grunge than bands like Pearl Jam.) If grunge was about a wholesale rejection of '80s pop-rock, I'd submit that a track such as "Tommy the Cat" is about as pure a rejection as you'll find.

Plus, it's kind of awesome and Les Claypool was a mad genius.

Anyway, I was just wondering what had become of Primus on the cultural landscape. The wikimachine says they were touring as recently as 2006, but I'm wondering more about whether or not they still register in the culture. You'd think that, at the very least, some enterprising rappers would have made hay by sampling some of their bass lines.

P.S.: Is there a defense to be mounted on behalf of Counting Crows? A few weeks ago I confessed my severe weakness for them to the Pig. He was horrified. Is it possible to count the Crows as anything more than a guilty pleasure?

Soccer

Everyone has a friend who's a kind of soccer scold. They lecture us about how amazing the beautiful game is. How exciting nil-nil ties are. How soccer players are the greatest athletes in the world. How soccer is the most popular sport on the globe. And, when all else fails, how really, tough soccer players are. Hey, they don't wear pads like your wussy "football" guys do.

Yeah, so here's some video of Vinnie Jones, who I'm pretty sure was supposed to be the baddest dude in the history of soccer, getting dropped by some guy in a bar in South Dakota.

Awesome.

You don't like Family Guy much, do you?

No, I don't.

Do you really want to hurt me?

I'm sure someone already used the headline, but so it goes for Boy George, who, according to the London Times, "is facing jail after being convicted today of handcuffing a male escort to his bed and beating him with a metal chain as he tried to flee after a naked photo shoot." Which sort of reminds me of Culture Club's other hit, "Karma Chameleon":

I'm a man without conviction
I'm a man who doesn't know
How to sell a contradiction
You come and go
You come and go...

Did I just go too far?

War Child News

Santino reviews War Child.

The Lamest Superheroes of All Time

The title says it all.

But where's T.C.?

I wanted to directly post this video here but my computer won't do it. So click on the link and enjoy. It is an ad for Monk and a homage to Magnum P.I., right down to the Higgins karate pose.

Brief Political Aside

My friend Mike Goldfarb dresses down Marc Ambinder and the Atlantic, which is kind of great. But in the course of it, Goldfarb says that Ambinder is "well respected by Republicans and Democrats."

Is that really true? Maybe it is. Heck, it probably is. I don't know Ambinder and am not overly familiar with his work, but I do have a distinct memory of being in Nevada the week before the Nevada caucus and reading this post from him:

Why, precisely, do we, the media, not believe that John Edwards could win Nevada?

Because I think he could win Nevada...

Incidentally: my guess, based on what I've seen, heard and read, is that the results will bebunchedtogether and that no one will be able to declare victory.

The final results in Nevada were Clinton +5 with Edwards at 3 percent.

3 percent.

Having been around the state all that week, it was pretty obvious that there was no enthusiasm for Edwards anywhere, from anyone.

BSG Theories

Is the fifth cylon? Clues here.

Craziest theory I've heard yet: The Galactica herself. So crazy it just might be true!

I have no idea who it is, but my suspicion is that the key to understanding the final five is figuring out what the cylon's plan was. I've always believed that the most important phrase in the BSG universe if "And they have a plan."

So why did the cylons return after 40 years? Was it to merge the species, sweep away the old pagan rituals, and establish the kingdom of the one God? Was it to simply exterminate humanity. (I've never thought this was plausible.) Was it to fulfill the prophesies and return to Earth?

Understanding the cylons' plan should help bring the final five into better focus.

Got Milk?

Sitting on my desk is the Nov. 24-30 edition of Variety with a giant, wrap-around ad for Milk. The ad pictures Sean Penn's smiling, slightly addled mug and a long, laudatory quote from Peter Travers, who calls Milk "a total triumph, brimming with humor and heart." "An American classic." And, "If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure haven't seen it."

Which has to be the most unsurprising review ever. Maybe Milk really is the best movie of 2008. I haven't seen it, so I don't know. What I do know is that Milk will be the best-reviewed movie of 2008, no matter what. It's from indie darling Gus Van Sant. It's a true story. It's about a gay-rights pioneer. A gay-rights pioneer who was assassianted! It deals prominently and happily with homosexuality. And it stars Sean Penn. The only way this picture could be more critic-friendly is if Harvey Milk had been an alcoholic and/or physically disabled.

Seriously, who in the world would have the stones to pan this movie? I was sort of amazed to see that it had only a 94 percent rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

Who are the 7 critics who dared to say Milk didn't do a body good?

Marvel Floats Throughout the Ages

Courtesy of Valerie D'Orazio:



That's right. Check out the Emma Frost. And the exceptionally gay Magneto. Also, around the 2:40 mark, you can see Doctor Doom rocking out.

The next one is more of a battle spectacular.

Heat II

Just sign me up already.

What I really want to do is direct . . .

The dream, of course, is to own a comic shop. The problem, or rather the main problem, is that there isn't a ton of money in owning a comic shop.

But Newsarama has a piece by the owner of A Comic Shop in Orlando explaining some of the things he's done right in making his business a success. He does some gonzo marketing and whatnot. But his stroke of genius is so obvious I can't believe no one else ever thought of it:



That's right: Pretty girls. In costumes. In the comic book shop.

It's like printing money.

Dark Knight Day

Today is the day Batman dies. Go buy a bunch of copies and then burn them while cursing Dan DiDio.

Update: Well, that was ridiculous. I picked up a copy (or two) of the final "Batman R.I.P." chapter and I have no idea what happens. It's unintelligible, like watching a movie with a couple reels missing.

There's an impulse to blame DiDio for this--rumors were that he had Morrison re-write the end. But I find nearly all of Morrison's writing disconnected and lazy to the point of meaninglessness. Final Crisis, his old New X-Men--even All-Star Superman gets jumpy and discombobulated towards the end, like Morrison couldn't be bothered to fill in the plot-points needed to get from Point A to Point D.

So is Batman dead? Who knows. The entire episode is so ambiguous--and not in the artly way--that DC can go any way they want with it. Which ultimately makes it meaningless. It's bad enough when a publisher lurches from event to event without ever pausing to simply tell good stores. It's worse when the events no longer hold any meaning.

Fracking Gints

For the Giants hater in all of us.

Oh, and read the comments.

Michael Lewis on the Financial Meltdown

I've always been of two minds on Michael Lewis. On the one hand, he's a great writer. A really great writer. And to make it even better, he's a great writer who's also a good reporter. You can't ask for more than that, really.

On the other hand, there's something a little infuriating about someone who willingly takes advantage of a situation which he knows full well is crazy. Liar's Poker was a great book, but there's a weird smugness about someone trying to tell people how stupid and corrupt the financial brokerage system is after he takes several hundred thousand dollars from that system.

But ultimately, this seems a small quibble. Lewis is the real deal. And here he is revisiting Wall Street at the end times. It's pretty great.

Frack Me

The trailer for the final BSG season is here.

And About that Blu-ray . . .

Galley Friend S.B. sends in this update on Sony's attempt to kill the PS3 just in time for me to buy one:

So here we are, sitting smack dab in the middle of the worst economy since Jimmy Carter; salaries are cratering, unemployment is spiking, deflation plagues the land, business are worried that a poor Christmas is going to sink them. . . so what does Sony do?

Check out your Best Buy circular (you can find it on the Best Buy website). They unveil a new version of the PS3 . . . that's $100 more expensive! Oh sure, it comes with "Uncharted: Drake's Magically Gay Adventure" or whatever that game is called, and 80 GB more hard drive space. Because I'm pretty sure that's what's keeping people away from the PS3: "Not enough hard drive space!" I hear the masses cry.

Seriously: I'm halfway convinced that Sony wants Blu-ray to fail at this point. XBox 360 drops their price by $100, the Nintendo Wii remains the most popular system in the land, and PS3 jacks up their price for the holidays? Jesus Christ.

Dark Knight Blu-ray Watch

A reliable source tells me that the Imax sequences on the Blu-ray edition are presented in 1.78:1 and the rest of the film is presented in 2.4:1.

Just in case you were curious.

Andy Reid, Franchise Killer--or, How I learned to get over the World Series and be a Philly fan again.

So Andy Reid benched Donovan McNabb at half today against Baltimore. After the game, he refused to name the next game's starter. These are acts of coaching malpractice and Reid should lose his job--perhaps tomorrow, but certainly at the end of the season. Let's give a quick rundown:

* McNabb was having a hideous game. He threw 2 int's and coughed up a fumble. Yet the Eagles trailed only 10-7. McNabb's replacement, Kevin Kolb, threw a couple picks of his own and didn't add any points to the scoreboard.

* Let's grant some premises that I don't think are necessarily true, but we'll do them just for argument's sake. Let's say that McNabb is done, that he either can't play anymore or can't play effectively as an Eagle. Let's say that Kolb is a promising young QB. Let's say that the Eagles are scrapping to get a playoff spot.

Even if you grant all of that, the decision to bench McNabb is still insane. You don't destroy the value of a franchise player by publicly benching him in the middle of a game. You don't start a new young quarterback in the middle of a game against a defense as vicious as the Ravens. And you don't switch horses on a four-day week--the Eagles have to play Arizona on Thursday.

* But of course, most of those assumptions are ridiculous. Kolb is not a starting NFL quarterback. He's a young Doug Pederson. And the Eagles have no chance--zero--of making the playoffs this season.

* Which leaves McNabb. Is he no longer able to be effective? I don't know. I suspect that no matter what, he'd be more effective than Kolb. What I do know is that by benching McNabb you assure that he can't come back as a permanent fixture on the team and that he'll have no value whatsoever on the trading block at the end of the season.

* So why in the world would Reid bench McNabb? Simple: Because it's now clear that Reid desperately wants to keep his job. If he's going to convince Jeff Lurie to keep him despite the team's recent poor campaigns, he has to have a scapegoat. And that's what today's benching of McNabb was, pure and simple: A blatant, pathetic attempt to blame a player for the team's failure in order to hold on to his own job. It would be bad enough, except that in so doing, Reid also showed that he's willing to hurt the medium-term future of the franchise in order to cling to his post.

Reid, it's now clear, is a cancer. The Eagles will never win a championship with him at the helm. He must go.

PS: For whatever it's worth, the great Phil Sheridan makes a persuasive case that whatever is wrong with McNabb is Reid's fault to begin with:

Anyone could see McNabb played poorly in this game. What is debatable is how this very talented, very successful quarterback got to this point. The short answer from here: He has been ground down by a coach who refuses to run the ball, who seldom keeps extra blockers in to protect him the way other elite quarterbacks are protected and who, with one notable exception, has insisted upon stocking his team with the most mediocre receivers available.

The offensive line is in marked decline. Brian Westbrook is at half speed due to injury. The play calling is hilariously bad. The tight end situation is incomprehensible.

It seems the Guns n' Roses album Chinese Democracy is finally going to come out, first on myspace, then at Best Buy on November 23. But if none of the musicians, other than Axl Rose, are in the band, can it still really be Guns n' Roses? When the remnants of Talking Heads reformed without David Byrne, they could not call themselves Talking Heads. When Robert Plant and Jimmy Page performed, weren't they the Honeydrippers (2 out of 4)? Yet INXS and Van Halen went on (though not successfully) without their lead singers and they didn't change their names. So how is it that GNR is still GNR?

Sony = Slightly Evil

So the xBox 360 unveils its new OS, which includes Netflix streaming HD movies. And suddenly Sony films are no longer available for streaming on Netflix--at least to the xBox.

Feed Rinse

Galley Friend A.W. just turned me on to a pretty neat new site called Feed Rinse. If you're into RSS feeds, Feed Rinse allows you to filter your feeds out, by keyword or author. It would allow you, for instance, to get only Jenny posts from IDLYTW. Perhaps there are other group blogs you might want to filter.

I'll just leave it at that. Enjoy.

X-Men First Class

So Fox is going to do another X-Men installment, but not with the mutants we know and love. They've hired Josh Schwartz of Gossip Girl to write X-Men First Class.

All the kids love Gossip Girl, but I'm afraid I've never caught the show. Is it Dawson's or The OC or Veronica Mars, or something else altogether?

Automatic Baby Walker

From Galley Friend B.W. How much would you pay for one of these?

Star Trek, JJ Abrams, etc.

So here's the link to the first full trailer of the JJ Abrams Star Trek. There's also some talk over at AICN about some scenes which were recently screened in full.

Some thoughts: Frankly, I don't know that the world needed another Star Trek movie. For my money, Undiscovered Country stands as the perfect capstone to the franchise. (In my mind, First Contact, Nemesis, and Insurrection never really happened.) I can't find it online for free, but Paul Cantor's "Shakespeare in the Original Klingon" is a cogent exploration of how Star Trek was grounded in Cold War Kennedy-era Democratic principles. (You can also find the essay in Cantor's seriously wonderful Gilligan Unbound. With the Cold War over and the Big-D Democratic consensus about American exceptionalism now a thing of the past, I'm not sure that Star Trek has anything meaningful to say to us today.

Of course, we aren't quite at the end of history yet. And it's possible that Star Trek could be adapted as a vehicle for talking about our latest twilight struggle. But somehow I doubt that anyone outside of Chris Nolan has the stomach to take part in that conversation.

All of that said, the new trailer looks vaguely promising as an earthy space opera. The shot I find most compelling is actually the opening with the kid. There's dust and dirt and the world is not totally unrecognizable from ours. And the defiant way the kid says "James Tiberius Kirk" is kind of perfectly in character.

And truth be told, maybe the world needs well-made space opera even more than it needs a Star Trek commentary for the 21st century.

Update: I don't mean to say that all of the Trek movies before Undiscovered Country were better than all of the ones which came after. It is, objectively true, that First Contact is a better movie than San Fran Whale Watch. Or Search for Spock. Or even Original Motion Picture, for that matter.

What I mean is that Undiscovered Country is such a perfect endpoint that for me, the series ends there.

War Child News

Galley Friend and movie producer U.G. is involved with a really interesting documentary called War Child. It's a film about the life of Emanuel Jai, a Sudanese child soldier turned rapper. After doing very well on the festival circuit, War Child is nearly a theatrical release and has a new website up now.

Keep your eyes peeled for it at your local art house in the next couple months.

Dollhouse--Updated

The first look at the new Whedon series is here.



Update: Never mind.

Geek Alert

So Battlestar Galactica is auctioning off all the props from the show.

Do with that what you will.

A Dark Knight Production

Not since the amazing first reading of New Warden have young actors been so moving:

In Other News

The conclusion of Batman R.I.P. comes out today, and the general consensus seems to be that one way or another, Bruce Wayne is going to be retired as Batman in the DC universe.

More later.

More Election Day Thoughts

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Election Day Thoughts

MacBook Notes

I got the new, terrifyingly fast MacBrook Pro yesterday and have three thoughts:

(1) There is a toggle function embedded in the F5 and F6 keys which I can't actually figure out what it does.

(2) The trackpad gestures really are quite nice.

(3) In a sop to PC converts, Jobs has removed the Apple from the Command key. It's a shattering loss.