Hey Peter! The Breast Exam Girl is On Channel 7 Again!

She kind of reminds me of Beth.

The Fightin' Phils Polka

It's fun for the whole family!

The Book David Stern Doesn't Want You to Read

Deadspin has excerpts of the spiked Tim Donaghy book up, and it's damning stuff. Doubly so because (true or not) it fits the narrative of the single most damaging critique made of the NBA. Like "see Russia from my house," this will stay with the league for a long time, even if only 2 percent of it is true

What's going to happen to this league? It's on a downward trajectory to begin with. My guess is that the Donaghy allegations are going to hurt most with marginal fans (like me), who catch the occasional regular season game and then try to tune in for the playoffs and Finals.

Galley Brother B.J. notes that the NBA might be able to save themselves by rebranding as "sports entertainment" . . .

Hey, New York, we got just two words for you:

Suck it.

Letterman Update

From the beginning I thought it was possible (though certainly not likely) that Letterman's serial-sex-with-younger-employees could cause him real trouble. If his alleged blackmailer actually goes to trial and gets discovery, and more former employees like this woman come forward, those odds are going to start to tilt.

CBS has a big potential downside here. As things stand now, they get a lot more from Letterman than they stand to lose. But that could change. Also, it's entirely possible that some other experienced late-night host might be available in the medium-term future to pick up as a replacement.

All of that, however, is just wind-up for this: When are we going to get a NY Post Letterman-Steve Phillips crossover? It has to happen . . .

Josh Friedman on Loss

His description of what it's like to have your show cancelled:

Everyone says having your show cancelled is like a death but I've been dead before and at least when you're dead you don't get thrown off the Warner Bros. lot for haunting your old parking space. They probably mean it's like the death of a friend or a family member but that shit only hurts when it's YOUR friend or family member and even then it's mitigated by age, lifestyle and whether that person was a Hollywood friend or a real one and whether that family member left you money.

Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday.

Right in the fella's.

PSA

Hugh Hewitt on David Frum: "[I]t is the worst kind of drive-by punditry that I have seen in a long time from you."

Courtesy Slack

Galley Friend R.M. sends along a link to this old Mark Jenkins piece about a life well-lived:

Mike and I gravitated to each other as teenagers. We both lived on the edge of Laramie, the boundless prairie our backyard. We were predetermined to be wild and became perfectly matched partners in misadventure. Climbing came naturally to us, and we scaled everything in sight. University buildings, boulders, smokestacks, mountain walls—our adolescent enthusiasm and daring far exceeding our ability. Soon enough even wide-open Wyoming started feeling small. We lied about our ages, got jobs on the railroad, lived in a tent behind the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, banked the cash, then left high school to spend half a year hitchhiking through Europe, Africa, and Russia, climbing and chasing girls. We got arrested in Tunisia, Luxembourg, and Leningrad. We got robbed. We slept in the dirt.

Adventure sounds so innocent to our ears today. It's good to remember that it isn't.

Terrific, heart-breaking stuff. Treat yourself.

Herc Has Details on The Plan!

Don't miss it.

Streaming News

The big news yesterday was that Netflix is coming to the Playstation 3. But Joystiq noted that the manner in which Netflix is arriving (a Blu-ray disc, not a firmware update), may be the result of Netflix making an end-run around its exclusivity agreement with Microsoft:

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities noted that the Blu-ray disc required for Netflix playback on the PS3 may circumvent exclusivity clauses instituted by Microsoft. "We believe that the exclusive arrangement limits Netflix's ability to appear on the 'dashboard' for the PS3 or the Wii."

**

The other interesting news comes from this release: You can now purchase HD streams of London theater productions for your PC. It's a little pricey ($15), and it's a pain to get onto your real TV screen. But it is kind of nifty.

Paging Christine Rosen

Extolling the virtues of the internet, Tyler Cowen writes:

The arrival of virtually every new cultural medium has been greeted with the charge that it truncates attention spans and represents the beginning of cultural collapse—the novel (in the 18th century), the comic book, rock ‘n’ roll, television, and now the Web.

It's unclear to me how this disproves the base charge. Imagine, for instance, putting forth this argument:

The arrival of virtually every social development since the 1960s--the rise of no-fault divorce, the birth-control pill, the spread of legalized abortion, the delay of first marriage--has been greeted with the charge that it depresses fertility rates.

Every one of those developments in fact was greeted with the argument that they would depress fertility. And sure enough, the American fertility rate has fallen steadily. Just because people keep lamenting new factors contributing to a phenomenon, doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist. Pace Cowen, is there anyone who thinks television hasn't corrupted intellectual life?

If Cowen wants to argue that the internet is a net good for cultural life, that's fine. People on the internet love to hear that! And best of all, it's a non-falsifiable proposition.

I'd just ask this: We're almost two decades into the internet now. What towering works has it produced that will be read in 20 years? What intellects has it pushed forward that were hitherto ignored? Where is the web's Irving Kristol or Isaiah Berlin or Richard Neuhaus? Or even William Buckley?

The answer, of course, is that there isn't one. The web gives us Glenn Reynolds and Matt Yglesias and Kathryn Jean Lopez and Andrew Sullivan. I suspect that this is not an accident.

Update: Damon Linker takes another shot at the kind of intellectual rigor which the internet fosters.

Your Lucky Day

Ever wanted to see an anvil shot 200 feet into the air? Stupid question. Who hasn't?



Link courtesy Galley Friend B.W.

Babe Watch

Hey Matus, I'll see your Betty Draper and raise you a Cylon.

Whedon To Direct Glee

Young writers take note: That's how you write self-promotion without sounding like an ass. That probably took him, what, an hour? And it's so self-hating and funny! If you're going to pimp your work, you ought to be entertaining when you do it.

But does it get you a Betty Draper?

We all knew this was inevitable. But does it signify a Jump the Shark? Brooks Brothers is now selling the Don Draper suit, and for only $998. The question is, will they be selling the outfit Betty Draper wore on her night out in Rome anytime soon? (I know, I know, she looks good in anything she wears. Or nothing for that matter.)

Brief Political Aside

Garrison Keilor, who may be the most over-rated commodity in American public life, criticizes conservative critics of President Obama by writing "Petulant fury isn't a winning hand in politics. Get over it."

That is, unless it's 2006, right?

Three Parts Cronenberg, Two Parts Lynch, One Part Björk . . .

So evidently, this is the denouement of Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ. It's a spoiler!

Demography, Destiny, cont.

Gunnar Heinsohn has an excellent piece from a few days ago on Afghanistan's disposable sons.

If some academic press wanted to do a real public service, they'd publish a translation of Heinsohn's stuff, particularly his Sons and World Power.

Goodnight, Sweet Captain

Captain Lou Albano, dead at 76. Football player, professional wrestler, pop icon--all in all, a life well lived.

It's striking looking at the contrast between some wrestlers, such as Albano or Andre the Giant or Ted Dibiase--who really do use the sport to live big, wonderful, only-in-America kind of lives--and others, like Jake Roberts or the Von Erichs, who just get used up by it. What's sad is how much the latter category outnumbers the former.

The New Republic Is Against Transparency!

Can you imagine TNR running this cover in, say, 2001? Or 2003? Or 2006? If nothing else, it probably would have cut their subscriber base in half. But today it's just pleasantly counter-intuitive. Almost Kinsley-esque!