Remains of the Day

What is the sound of one country screaming?

Not much happens in the video below, but it's the audio that matters. This is a shot of Vancouver during that moment when Canada won the Olympic men's hockey gold metal game in overtime.

[via Scrawled In Wax]

Though I work at Hulu, part of the vanguard in the transition from linear programming to a video on demand world, I'm not immune to the power of collective experience. Part of me misses those days before DVRs and PPV and HBO and VCRs, when you could only catch movies on network TV live. The other people around the country watching that exact moment with you were invisible but palpable, and every moment of the movie seemed more important because of that.

Thus the huge value that accrues to events that still demand live viewing in this world where synchronous viewing has become so unnecessary. Sports leagues are sitting pretty.

Have athletes peaked?

Some scientists and researchers who've studied the history of athletic achievement and biomechanics say yes. In today's environment, it's not surprising that the article wonders if this will lead to a rise in human enhancements, technological or chemical, legal or illegal.

The Olympics may seem particularly vulnerable to waning interest if records stop being broken given the omnipresent WR bogeys posted prominently next to on-screen timers, but it may not be the end of the world. If we think of sports as primarily an entertainment product, with user interest as the end goal, some strategies suggest themselves.

1. Sports that pit athletes against each other on the same course at the same time are inherently more interesting than those where athletes are by themselves. Short track speed skating is more interesting to me than long-distance speed skating because of this. Snowboard cross and it's new cousin ski cross are a lot of fun to watch for the same reason.

2. Almost any world-class level athlete is impressive, but it's not always easy to appreciate their talent on TV, so I suggest a revolution in helping people appreciate professional athleticism. The NIke commercial "The Michael Vick Experience" was obviously fictional (insert your animal brutality joke here), but the principle is sound. Why don't we have more camera angles to watch sports with as in videogames? Why can't you put a small lightweight camera on Drew Brees' helmet (and every other player's helmet) so you can see what it's like to play quarterback in the NFL? Why can't we broadcast baseball in 3-D with a special catcher helmet cam to help us appreciate what it's like to try and hit a Justin Verlander fastball? Why not more microphones at field level so we can get an enhanced audio experience during live broadcasts instead of being forced to listen to an often uninspiring play-by-play announcer? Hockey is so much more exciting to see live than on TV, but what if you could toggle into any player's helmet and hear 5.1 surround audio of what he's experiencing? What if, when you were at the gym, you could watch cycling on a TV but also dial in the pro's wattage and speed output to see if you could keep up? What if you could sprint on the treadmill as fast as you could go and see an avatar of your body on screen next to Usain Bolt, just to get a sense for how fast he really is? The Olympics showcased innovations like the dive cam at the last Summer Olympics, and they have cameras that move along side sprinters. I'm confident they can continue to innovate on this axis.

3. More human interest context. Some scoff at the edited puff pieces introducing athlete life stories during the Olympics, but a personal connection always helps to give you more rooting interests. What if more of these aired, not just during the Olympics, but during regular sporting events? It doesn't even have to be a tearjerker of a story. Would knowing what NYC night club Derek Jeter was out at the night before, and with whom, enhance your appreciation of his performance in that day's game? I'm being somewhat facetious, but the bland canned sports interview responses are doing no one any favors. I'll cap this point by saying that Tiger Woods just got a whole lot more interesting as a person given the events of the past few months, and that first appearance of his back on the golf course is going to do great ratings (if his exploits continued, the lift might not last, but for now it's big news). Back story and character development isn't any less effective in the sports world.

4. I wouldn't be surprised to see alternative sports leagues spawned that compete with established leagues like MLB, NBA, and the NFL by allowing any and all performance-enhancing drugs. In addition, excessive endzone celebrations, Twittering during games, taunting, all that would be fair game. Much like the UFC overtook boxing by going where boxing wasn't, it's more fruitful to compete with the big monopoly sports in the US by going where they won't.

I confess to having no solutions for enhancing the appeal of curling, though. Maybe release a Good Will Hunting variant in which Matt Damon is still that janitor at MIT, but it's his amazing floor sweeping skills that lead to him being discovered and becoming a world class curler? Or introduce drinking in some way. That's all I've got.

Fallout

James Surowiecki noted in his New Yorker column this week, probably turned in sometime before this past weekend, that Tiger Woods' recent troubles directly undermined exactly the appeal that sponsors saw in him, and that is his amazing control and focus.

Scandals that aren’t out of tune with a celebrity’s image are often surprisingly easy to bounce back from: after images of Kate Moss snorting coke surfaced, her bookings fell, but, over time, they went up. Revelations that Michael Jordan had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling barely dented his appeal, since the story reinforced the image of him as a fierce competitor. But scandals that conflict with a person’s public image can wreak havoc.

And then Woods was dropped by Accenture this weekend.

The interesting question is why all of these experts, whose careers depend on their supposed ability to analyze and understand the mood of the public (and of corporations), could have so completely misdiagnosed what was happening. Some of the reaction can be explained as simply assuming that Tiger was too big to be brought down by extramarital transgressions. And some of it probably derived from marketing consultants’ benighted faith that any problem can be solved if the marketing is good enough. But I also think there was a profound misunderstanding on the part of these experts of the nature of Tiger’s appeal, which from the start has been founded on an image of complete control and focus, an image that this scandal utterly wrecked. And the fact that most sports marketing professionals seem not to have understood just how this story would play out with the public and with sponsors, even though understanding these things is their core business, does make you question whether companies should be listening to marketing consultants at all.

I'd generalize to say that 9 times out of 10, if you're relying on consultants, you didn't hire the right person for the job in the first place. That 10th time is usually for some skill it isn't cost-effective to keep in-house full-time (for example, you may need to do some interior decorating in your office once in a while, but keeping an interior decorator on staff full-time is not cost-efficient).

Pacquiao

The Pacquiao-Cotto fight generated 1.25 million PPV purchases and $70 million in revenue, outdoing the Mayweather-Marquez fight which did a solid 1.05 million PPV buys.

The Pacquiao and Mayweather camps are negotiating the economics on a potential blockbuster fight, and the issue of how they should split the money is sure to be the biggest barrier to what promises to be a historic payday for all involved.

A 50/50 split may ultimately be the best compromise, but in terms of entertainment value, Pacquiao is far and away superior. I can't recall a single Mayweather fight I've ever paid for that didn't leave me feeling a bit robbed. To a greater extent than Roy Jones Jr., Mayweather is a technical fighter, a cautious one who gets in a few punches, then plays amazing defense. I'm not sure I've ever even seen Mayweather with a bruise on his face, perhaps justifying his nickname "Pretty Boy." You appreciate the skill, but it doesn't get the heart racing.

Pacquiao, on the other hand, has all the qualities to justify your PPV investment:

• He attacks. His instinct isn't to sneak in some flurries and then retreat. He isn't really a counterpuncher. Pacquiao's default mode is to move forward and attack, the way a car tends to pull hard to one side or the other if you let go of the steering wheel. Whatever the positive correlation between punch count (both thrown and landed) and victory, it's even stronger for punch count and entertainment value.
• He goes for the kill. A fighter like Mayweather can accumulate such a lead in rounds early on that the rest of the fight can be spent in defense. Pacquiao in his last several fights has sought the KO, and only Cotto's toughness and his switch to running around the ring kept him upright until the ref called it. Not since young Tyson have we had a fighter of such prominence who always smells blood in the water (go back and watch early Tyson; we may not ever see another fighter who was suited for only one style of boxing, the relentless max effort in pursuit of the round KO).
• He has a touch chin. Against Cotto, who matched him at weigh-in but probably outweighed him on fight night by at least 8 pounds, Pacquiao took some big left jabs and left hooks (the best punch for both fighters) and never seemed dazed. He didn't exactly exit the fight looking like he was going to do any magazine covers, but he didn't ever seem like he was at risk of going down. A boxer who takes some big punches adds to the drama of the fight.
• He has the power to do damage. Despite moving up 7 weight classes, Pacquiao was able to tenderize De La Hoya and Cotto's faces like Mario Batali working over a pork chop, and the only reason Hatton didn't look worse was that he got KO'd so early.

Here's my anecdotal evidence in support of Pacquiao's superiority over Mayweather in a purse split. I had lots of people over to my place to watch both Mayweather-Marquez and Pacquiao-Cotto. After the Mayweather fight, we were all so disappointed that I felt compelled to put on DVDs of fights from various martial arts movies to appease the bloodthirsty mob, so to speak. After the Pacquiao fight, the mob was satisfied, and we all drank wine and recounted the best moments from the fight.

I'm actually concerned that Pacquiao-Mayweather won't be as entertaining as Pacquiao's last several fights. I'd foresee Mayweather would be a slight favorite among experts given his unblemished track record and size advantage. You can see Mayweather tagging Pacquiao a few times, as fighters like Cotto have done, and then having the speed and elusiveness to just back off and win on points. The fight would go the distance, Pacquiao would be the crowd favorite, but Mayweather would win on points sending the crowd into outrage given Mayweather's tactics (I'd be at home trying to tear my plasma off the wall and throw it off my balcony).

In the post-fight interview, Larry Merchant would ask Mayweather point blank if he really deserved to win given his lack of aggression, followed by Mayweather punching Merchant out, grabbing the mike, and shouting to the crowd, "You all can kiss my ass!" Sugar Shane Mosely would then appear out of nowhere to clock Mayweather with a cheap shot, starting an all-out brawl in the ring, and Derek Jeter would spring out of his front row seat to enter the ring to play peacemaker.

Maybe I'm talking myself into the entertainment value of this fight after all.

Miscellany

Mira and I saw Dudamel conducting the LA Philharmonic in Verdi's Requiem last Thursday night. After the show, as we were walking out, two women approached and one of them asked if she could interview us. She was from the Christian Science Monitor.

I suspect we were picked out for being the only two people in the crowd who didn't appear old enough to collect social security checks. Apparently Verdi's Requiem just doesn't bring out the kids like it used to.

We ended up quoted at the end of this short online piece. Well, "quoted" should be qualified. Those weren't exactly our words, despite her use of a tape recorder. It's more like she took some of our thoughts and summarized them, then bracketed them with quotation marks.

A few bars into the opening of Verdi's Requiem, one of the more haunting openings in the canon, someone's cell phone went off. After it rang twice, Dudamel dropped his arms and brought the piece to a halt, and the crowd of septuagenarians let out a bile-filled hiss. I tried to see who it was but never identified the person.

Having my cell phone go off in the midst of a quiet performance--a play, a classical music performance, a book reading, to name a few--is one of my greatest fears. Even after I've turned off my phone I check it at least three or four times during a show. Someone just lived out my greatest fear that night.

***

To those who wonder if the Madden Football video game teaches one anything about real life coaching, exhibit A is the New England Patriots. Their offense resembles the way I play offense in Madden. Spread the field with a lot of wideouts, put my QB in the shotgun, and put the defense under constant attack all over the field, perhaps tossing in a no-huddle for added duress. Look for Moss deep in single coverage, then check down to Watson on a deep in or hit Welker dragging shallow across the middle. The Colts and Cardinals are well-suited to that style of offense in Madden, also.

***

Eric and I planned to meet Bill Simmons last night at his LA book signing. We were up in Burbank beforehand for work and had to fight the usual horrific LA traffic to get to ESPN Zone across from Staples Center. The signing started at 5pm, and we got on the 101 at about 6:30. The same way a great quarterback has an internal clock that lets him know when he has to either commit to a pass or dump the ball or risk taking a sack, I had a sense we were pushing it, that he might be gone before we arrived.

As we approached Staples Center, we ran into another microclusterf*** of automobiles. It turns out there was a Clippers game at Staples Center and a So You Think You Can Dance concert that night at Nokia Live next door (in fairness to the Clippers, they probably didn't account for most of that traffic; I blame SYTYCD). As cheap about parking as Eric and I were, we weren't about to mess around with nearby lots to save a few dollars. We paid the $25 king's ransom to park under Nokia Live, then sprinted through the crowds of SYTYCD fans lined up outside Nokia Live to reach ESPN Zone.

Our hustle paid off. We walked in as Simmons was packing up his stuff. We introduced ourselves and he graciously signed our books. We told him we worked at Hulu and he said he was a big fan, that he had used the site to watch Miami Vice and White Shadow (which, being huge fans of his ESPN column, we knew).

We presented him with a Hulu hoodie and thanked him for mentioning Hulu in his column from time to time. He said it would've been the coolest gift he received that night if not for the fact that a porn actress had come in earlier, bought a few copies of his books, and dropped off some DVDs from her, uh, oeuvre. Yep, that's a tough comp.

If you're an NBA fan, Simmons' new book The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy is a must read (it made it to the top of the NYTimes Non-Fiction bestseller list, reflecting his massive fan base). His knowledge of NBA history is impressive (when he says he's one of the last few true NBA fans, he's not kidding), and his ranking of the top 96 players in NBA history is very fair despite his Celtics' loyalties.

In many ways, Simmons is one of the original bloggers, a guy who wrote about what he knew for AOL long before millions of bloggers were doing the same. He's not afraid to write about pop culture and television and sports and all the things he cares about, the same way Chuck Klosterman writes about music and sports and topics he cares about or the way economists like Tyler Cowen and Steven Levitt write columns and books about all sorts of topics that economics touch on.

I was so flustered and out-of-breath when I arrived that I forgot to pre-sign my book for him. He'd made a policy of just signing his name after some of his other book signings ran long, but I'm sure he would have signed his name below any made-up salutation.

"To Eugene, my reader with the greatest length and upside."

"May this 736 page behemoth of a book last you over 300 post-Mexican meal seatings on the toilet."

Serendipity

Interesting post by Ethan Zuckerman on the topic of serendipity and whether the rise of the internet and digital media has increased or decreased it.

I need to think about this issue more. With the rise of the internet, my exposure to ideas has increased, which is wonderful, but I consciously try to avoid limiting myself to the same several silos of thinking over and over. Adopting a naturally contrarian mindset helps, and every few months I tend to rotate the blogs or news outlets I read regularly, not just to avoid groupthink but because I find myself naturally tiring of the same schools of thought being pressed by the same authors again and again.

Clustering is a danger, though. The same set of blogs you follow in your newsreader, the same set of sites you visit regularly because they're bookmarked, the same core set of people you follow on Twitter, all of these are huge sources of selection bias.

Be curious and skeptical. That's all I can offer for now.

***

Old link from Wimbledon: amusing t-shirt worn by Serena Williams at the press conference after her Wimbledon victory.

Antichrist...Rated E for Egad

Hot rumor of the day is that Lars Von Trier's controversial movie Antichrist, which caused the biggest ripples at Cannes this year, will be made into a PC-only videogame. Yes, the same Antichrist which features onscreen genital mutilation, said genitals belonging to one Willem Dafoe, and aforementioned mutilation occurring courtesy of Charlotte Gainsbourg. The Wii jokes are so obvious that they were stale even before they wrote themselves.

I thought Von Trier didn't like animation. Do videogames not count?

I may need to reinstall VMWare Fusion just to give this a whirl.

***

Court jester of the art world Banksy gets a legal exhibit at a museum in Bristol. You can see peruse a few of the pics. Always amusing.

***

NYTimes Magazine profile of Rafael Nadal.

“Every tennis lover would like, someday, to play like Federer,” Philippe Bouin told me. “But every man wants to be Rafael Nadal. Which is different.”

This profile was written before Nadal officially withdrew from Wimbledon, but that fits with its thesis which wonders if Nadal's style of play will cause him to break down physically. Very sad for the sport that he won't be there. Tennis needs Federer to face his foil.

Sunday

I saw Up in 3-D at the El Capitan last night. It's the richest, most moving script from Pixar yet. Animation lovers will love the references to Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Sky.

I will be curious, when it comes out on Blu-Ray, to see it in 2-D also, but this is probably the most polished 3-D movie I've seen to date. There is a level of control with digital animation that allows the 3-D effects to be extremely precise, with much less of the distracting blurring that makes other 3-D movies feel like gimmicks.

***

So, did Susan Boyle win in the finals of Britain's Got Talent? Go see for yourself.

I keep forgetting you don't have to sing to be on that show. The finals are like America's Best Dance Crew vs. American Idol.

***

Last survivor of the Titanic dies. I knew she was ready to pass on after she dropped that blue jeweled necklace into the ocean.

***

Nadal loses at the French Open. Massive upset. This makes Robin Soderling the future answer to a trivia question. Djokovic is out, too. Federer, the door is open. This is your best, and maybe last chance, to walk down that red clay carpet and on through.

***

In the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert reports that we are likely in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history. By the end of this century, nearly half of Earth's species may be extinct. The suspected cause is the pace of human activity.

Frustrating but thrilling

The other night, I went to the gym next door to the office to watch the second half of game 5 of the Bulls-Celtics series. There is one bank of TVs hanging on the ceiling in the cardio section, so I climbed on an elliptical machine, which is all my physical therapist has cleared me for, and plugged my headphones into the TV audio jack. The display didn't light up, though, so I moved to another machine. Same result. I realized eventually that the audio jacks were powered by the machines, so I had to maintain a certain minimum speed on any machine to keep the audio running. Clever.

By the time I got going, I figured 45 minutes would be enough. As you know, I was wrong. The game went into overtime, and about an hour and 45 minutes later, having sweat about twelve gallons, my legs quivering, I staggered back to work.

Thank goodness I didn't try to watch tonight's game from the gym, they might have had to retire an elliptical machine in my honor after I died sometime in one of those three overtimes.

Not living in Chicago anymore, it's harder to follow my hometown teams, but I still follow them in the postseason when they make it onto national TV. Since the glory years of MJ, it's been grim. The Bulls had terrible seasons and high draft picks for many years, but they never seemed to land that one superstar you need to build around to win it all in the NBA.

1999 top pick overall Elton Brand was solid, not spectacular, but the Bulls traded him away essentially for Tyson Chandler, who was a solid shot blocker and rebounder but whose offensive repertoire never extended beyond the dunk. The other Chicago first rounder Ron Artest was a good pick but also got traded away in a deal for, essentially Jalen Rose.

In 2000 3 first round picks turned into Marcus Fizer, Jamal Crawford, and Dalibor Bagaric. Not a great draft overall, but no lasting pieces out of that group. I have to avoid using the word twin towers to refer to 2001, though that was the year we grabbed Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry with the second and fourth picks of the first round. One skinny, one fat, neither good enough in a draft that produced Pau Gasol, Jason Richardson, Shane Battier, Joe Johnson, Richard Jefferson, Zach Randolph, and Tony Parker, among others.

In 2002, Jay Williams. Seemed like a great talent when he pulled off an early triple-double against Jason Kidd, but then he got on a motorcycle, expressly forbidden by his contract, and crashed into a light pole.

2003, the Bulls really wanted Dwaye Wade, but they were two picks too late and obtained Kirk Hinrich. Solid, a player who plays tough defense, but limited offensively by an inability to finish around the basket and a solid but not spectacular jumpshot. 2004 brought Ben Gordon with the third pick, Luol Deng with the seventh. Gordon will always inspire a love/hate relationship. Beautiful jump shot, and when he's hot, he can carry the offense. He's always been one of the few pure scorers on Bulls teams that have struggled to do so over the years. But he's short and not particularly tenacious on defense, and to good opposing guards he gives away as many points as he scores. Deng seemed to be developing for a couple years in a row, and then he got the big contract and his development stalled with a series of injuries.

No pick in 2005. In 2006 the Bulls drafted LaMarcus Aldridge and traded him for the guy taken two picks later, Tyrus Thomas, a freakish athlete and shot blocking machine who seems destined to always be one of those players whom everyone thinks should be better than he is until the day we realize he is the sum of his parts and nothing more. In hindsight we'd rather have Aldridge who has developed a polished post game. Thomas needs to lock himself in a gym all summer and shoot five hundred 18 footers a day until he can be a threat running the pick and roll with Rose.

2007 brought Joakim Noah. At pick 9 in that draft, not a bad pick, though he seems more in the Tyson Chandler mold of high energy tall guys who can only be complements on offense because of a lack of any offensive moves or jump shot. He's the type of player you hate when playing pickup if he's on the other team, but if he's on your team you love him as he runs around, harassing opposing players on defense, snagging rebounds with hustle, getting it back for you to shoot.

And finally, in 2008, perhaps out of exasperation, the fates finally dropped the magic ping pong balls and gave the Bulls the top pick. They managed to avoid drafting Beasley and went with Derrick Rose, and suddenly hope returned to the United Center. Rose is still raw, still half coal, half diamond, but when he has his moments, he flashes the type of potential that projects to superstardom, something you can't say of the aforementioned players the Bulls have drafted. He still needs to solidify his jump shot, add a 3-point shot, cut down on the silly turnovers, and use his strength and speed better on defense. He doesn't seem assertive enough considering he is the centerpiece around which this team will be built--a more boring interviewee I have yet to see--but that may come in time.

On the positive side, his top speed on the dribble is world class, his finishing ability around the basket with either hand is fantastic, and he can covers as much ground with his strides as maybe Lebron. He'll blow by his defender above the free throw line, from just inside the 3-point line, and two strides later he's laying the ball in with one hand. It's videogame-level freakish.

***

This history of frustration mixed with excitement extends to this series. On the one hand, I want to tear my hair out.

• Vinny Del Negro is a terrible coach. Forget running out of time outs. When he does call time outs at key parts of games, he must be doing Sudoku on his clipboard because the plays coming out of those time outs are routinely terrible.
• Ben Gordon and John Salmons are just hard to watch at times. They regularly enter this zone where their teammates fade into the background, and they dribble and dribble and go one on one with their man, culminating in some crazy off-balance jump shot. When the Bulls have one chance to get a score for the win, coming out of a time out, I reflexively throw up in my mouth before the ball is even inbounded.
• On defense, Ben Gordon is terrible, easily picked off by screens. There are times when every one in the stadium knows the ball is going to Jesus Shuttleworth, and if Gordon is guarding him, I know Ray Ray will get a great look. Allen is no defender to write home about, but Gordon makes him look like Ron Artest.
• NBA officiating is horrendous. Still. Rajon Rondo has been amazing, unbelievable, a freakish talent, but he should be sitting out game 7 after the hit on Brad Miller's face and then the swinging elbow at Hinrich. I don't buy the excuse that you can't call that on a star player at the end of the game, but Rondo, a smart player, knows it's the case and knows to push the limits in key moments of the game, giving light shoves, grabbing jerseys, little things that he knows the officials won't call on him. NBA games in the playoffs feel "loosely scripted" because of the officiating, like an episode of The Hills. The poor base level of officiating has slowly sapped my interest in the NBA over the years.
• Every time the Bulls seem poised to steal the momentum, it seems like Rose drives into traffic and turns the ball over. He still has that rookie penchant for playing out of control at times.

On the other hand, how can I complain about what will be the longest 7-game playoff series in NBA history. The only suitable way this can end is with a 6 overtime thriller on Saturday, which will end with so many players fouling out that Vinny Del Negro and Doc Rivers will have to tear off their suits and engage in a game of Knockout to decide the series. Among the positives:

• Sometimes Gordon and Salmons get hot. They fall into that class of "No...no...no! NO! AHH! YES! Oh my god! YES! WHOOO!" players because they horrify you with some of the shots they take, but when they go in, you cheer almost out of disbelief. Doug Collins' reaction to the crazy one-handed lean-in jumpshot by Gordon shot at the end of Game 5 was a classic example of that. For all the reasons mentioned earlier, the two players are tough to watch, but when they're not on the floor, it's hard for the Bulls to score. When Gordon enters one of his zones, as in game 2, it's comically fun to watch; it's like he's a videogame character who's obtained enough points to activate some sort of indestructible frenzy mode.
• Kirk Hinrich coming off the bench is a real asset. As a starter his faults seemed too prominent, but off the bench his defense and ballhandling and leadership are far more than you'd expect from a sub.
• I like seeing KG's crazy intense pumped-up face when his teammates do something good. He lopes around, fists clenched, jaw clenched, like he's going to punch one of his teammates in the face. If, in the middle of game 7, he starts pacing the sidelines because his team is down, then suddenly tears off his Italian suit from the collar, revealing a Celtics jersey underneath, and subs into the game, even I will be off my sofa cheering.
• Having Brad Miller back is fun. I missed him when the Bulls traded him years back. He's as slow as a glacier, with the vertical leap you can measure with your thumb and index finger, but he passes well and can shoot. The Bulls don't have any player with real post moves, so good shooters are critical to help them score enough points to compete.
• Joakim is on our team, so I like him. I was sending text messages to my brothers and sisters all during game 6, usually to commiserate after one of Del Negro's terrible play calls coming out of a time out. After the game, Joannie mentioned that she really liked the guy with the long hair. It didn't surprise me. To someone who doesn't watch much basketball, his hustle and emotion are very visible. He wants to win, and you can't fault him for that.
• In this Bulls team, you can see a nucleus to build around.

I don't think the Bulls will win on Saturday, not on the road, but as long as it's not decided by the officials, I'll be happy.

Well, maybe I'd like one more overtime, too. At this point, it seems only appropriate.

Sheesh

Via Waxy links, this insane video of Danny MacAskill and his bike.

Are you going to do anything with this?

Sheesh. MVP.

Ekman on ARod

I mentioned Paul Ekman and FACS and microexpressions in the post before this, and last week I wrote a tweet wishing that Tim Roth's character from Lie to Me could interview ARod.

Curious, Paul Ekman decided to watch ARod's 2007 interview with Katie Couric, the one in which he denied using performance enhancing drugs, to see if he could detect signs of lying in ARod's face.

Ever modest, Ekman notes that his method is only directional, that absolute certainty is impossible. But he does find some signs of lying.

I suspect what Ekman sees evidence of is what many sports fans have come to dislike about ARod over the years, a sort of phoniness and artificiality that makes both him and Kobe Bryant the most talented but disliked players in sports.

I grew up in Chicago during the Bulls dynasty years, so I'm more than a little biased towards Michael Jordan. But I do wonder sometimes what it is about Jordan that left him more beloved by sports fans, despite various marital and gambling issues. I believe it's because he never came off as a normal person at all, even in his advertisements. He was affable but distant, more a distillation of pure basketball talent and fierce competitiveness. By not having some other human side to betray, he never came off as phony. He just was Michael Jordan, the most competitive man to ever, whether he was lacing up basketball sneakers or golf shoes or dealing a deck of cards.

This made me cry

From Sports Guy's running diary of the Super Bowl:

9:26 -- Neil Rackers' PAT makes it 20-14 with 7:33 remaining. So long, Steelers' cover. In other news, congrats to Hulu for landing a Super Bowl ad. My baby's all growns up! My baby's all growns up! I love Hulu. Any video channel that streams complete "White Shadow" and "Miami Vice" episodes is good by me.

Girls hoops team drups special school opponent 100-0

A Texas girls high school basketball team drubbed an opposing team from a school, Dallas Academy, that specializes in students dealing with learning differences (e.g. dyslexia, dysgraphia). Dallas Academy only has 20 girls total in their school, and some of the eight on the team had never played hoops before.

The Covenant School won 100 to 0. Dallas Academy hasn't won in four seasons.

"I think the bad judgment was in the full-court press and the 3-point shots," said Renee Peloza, whose daughter plays for Dallas Academy. "At some point, they should have backed off."

The Covenant School has apologized and is looking to forfeit the victory now, while Dallas Academy has withdrawn its team from the league for the rest of the season.

What's to say here that most reasonable people wouldn't? Both the apology and withdrawal seem sensible.

Onward into 2009

There's this shot in The Wrestler, a steadicam shot behind Mickey Rourke as he walks through the back offices of a grocery store out to the deli counter. It echoes many other shots in the movie, from better times for Randy "The Ram" Robinson, and the visual reference is unmistakeable and poignant.

But just in case you're oblivious, the sound designer slowly mixes in the sounds of a raucous wrestling crowd chanting his name, just as he hears it when he prepares to walk out through the curtains at a wrestling event. It rises to a crescendo just as he's about to walk through the hanging plastic flaps out to the deli counter.

I wish they'd had the restraint to leave the shot as is and leave out the audio clue. What was an understated and lyrical moment is transformed into something overly sentimental, and I felt that way about many instances of the score in the movie which is otherwise shot in an unfussy, documentary style.

Besides that, though, it's a very moving film. You don't just feel for Randy "The Ram" Robinson but for Mickey Rourke who is nearly unrecognizable, at least to me. This is the guy from Diner and 9 1/2 Weeks?

***

The Israel Consulate is using Twitter to manage their message during this military campaign against Hamas. It's a challenge, trying to communicate complex messages with a 140 character limit, as many organizations are learning while trying to use Twitter for unmediated communication with users. Lots of URL shorteners and common online abbreviations are used, lending an oddly casual air to what are serious messages.

Two perhaps adventitious consequences of this medium: the character limit forces a concise and often more forceful statement of a message, and users who write you are forced to adhere to the character limit also, so it's a level playing ground.

***

Jay-Z crossed with Radiohead = Jaydiohead (from DJ Minty Fresh Beats)

***

A movie trailer that is just one scene, perhaps not truncated or edited down from what appears in the movie itself? Effective.

***

Given NYC's economic dependence on the finance industry, you'd expect Manhattan real estate to have taken a disproportionate beating in this recession.

In fact, New York's real estate market is proving more resilient in this downturn than that of other U.S. cities.

Today’s Case-Shiller housing price figures indicate that New York City’s prices dropped 7.5 percent in the last year, while prices in Los Angeles declined 27.9 percent. Nationwide prices dropped 18 percent. New York is the only major metropolitan area with prices that are still 90 percent above prices in January 2000. According to National Association of Realtors data, New York is the only city in the continental United States, outside of San Francisco Bay, where median sales prices remain north of $500,000.

Despite Wall Street’s suffering, the New York area’s unemployment rate, 5.6 percent in the latest figures, is lower than that in many other major cities. The comparable unemployment rate for Los Angeles is 8.2 percent. The comparable number for Chicago is 6.4 percent.

What's going on? Economist Edward Glaeser attributes it to faith in the city's talented citizens and concentration of said people.

New York still has an amazing concentration of talent. That talent is more effective because all those smart people are connected because of the city’s extreme population density levels. Historically, human capital — the education and skills of a work force — predicts which cities are able to reinvent themselves and which ones are not. Those people who are continuing to pay high prices for Manhattan real estate are implicitly betting that New York’s human capital will continue to come up with new ways of reinventing the city.

***

The first album of 2009 that's gathering critical buzz and mp3 blog lust: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion

***

The statistics behind the B.C.S. are not just inscrutable but fundamentally flawed.

Statistically, the system is such an abomination that at least one expert — Hal S. Stern, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Irvine — advocated that no self-respecting statistician should have anything to do with it. In an article published in The Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports two years ago, he wrote that the B.C.S. computer rankings serve as little more than a confirmation of the results of the two opinion polls the system also uses to create its rankings. The people who run the computer rankings, he noted, have never been given any clear objective criteria to design their programs, and they are not allowed to use the score or site of a game in their calculations. Stern urged a boycott, a refusal by the community of statisticians to lend credibility to a system he regards as scientifically bankrupt.

In the end, it comes down to money.

“The six big conferences don’t want to share money with the smaller conferences,” Stern said. “That to me is the story that people don’t tell.”

I've never understood the fascination with college football. The quality of play is noticeably inferior to that in the NFL, the BCS system encourage Division I powerhouses to pad their non-conference schedules with patsies, most players on teams are complete unknowns so the individual storylines have no range, the concept of the student-athlete is a farce at many schools in football, and the B.C.S. system, as noted above, doesn't clarify anything at season's end.

It feels like college football fans watch in part to try to reclaim some bygone university solidarity.

***

According to CNET News, one of six sure things for 2009 is that Hulu will start its own porn site.

NYTimes shutters Play magazine

Too bad. Play had become one of my favorite quarterly publications in the NYTimes. I'd rather have Play than their quarterly Fashion or Travel magazines. That they couldn't round up enough advertisers to justify a quarterly publication is surprising to me.

Which is why it saddens me to tell you that Play is closing shop, a victim of the ailing economy crippling all businesses these days. We had such grand plans for Play in 2009, and the regret runs deep; Play has been the kind of publication one doesn't get to create much anymore. But we're grateful to have had the chance to make this magazine, and to have had such a rich relationship with so many devoted readers. Believe me, you'll be missed.

Misusage alert: "literally"

Jerry Jones said of Cowboys cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones, who got in a fight with a bodyguard despite already have been suspended by the NFL previously for misbehavior: "He’s literally on a high wire without a net."

Which sounds dangerous indeed, more so than tempting the NFL to slap him with a further penalty. Though perhaps suspension is a welcome thing, if he was indeed on that high wire without a net.

Read: "He's figuratively on a high wire without a net."

A quick trip through Buzzfeed

Is Obama announcing his running mate tomorrow morning? Drudge thinks yes.

Funny bust, err...bus stop ad.

Speaking of the Wonderbra, they came up with another clever billboard, a photomosaic made up of hundreds of photos of women in their bras.

If I work on the top floor of this building and they announce that they're doing a fire drill test some day, I'm calling in sick.

Backlashes seem to have been accelerated by the Internet, so it's surprising that it took so long for the Radiohead backlash. Me, I'm going to see Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday and I couldn't be more excited.

At this moment, there might not be a bigger way for a woman to summon a world of fame onto herself than by dating Michael Phelps. First contender: fashion model Lily Donaldson.

8 short notes on the day of Phelps' 8th gold medal

You wouldn't think a man would have much leisure time in a race in which he sets a new world record of 9.69 seconds, but Usain Bolt had enough of a lead at the end of the men's 100-meter dash to blow out finger pistols, flash Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella triangle hand sign, and check his watch.

If I were racing against him, I'd be intimidated just seeing "Bolt" on the back of his jersey.

***

I thought I saw Michael Phelps ride across the pool to his last medal ceremony standing on the backs of two dolphins, holding a trident.

***

I was wondering about something at dinner yesterday and saw that someone else had asked Marginal Revolution the same thing: for such a populous country, why has India won so few Olympic medals?

***

Visual evidence that Nikon has made a huge comeback against Canon in the professional sports photography market. Look at the lenses in this shot of the press photography area at the Olympics.

Black lenses are likely Nikon's mounted on D3's, while the light gray lenses are the Canons that used to dominate.

***

Is it worth carrying an airline-mile credit card? Probably not unless you are a big-spending, high-flying, elite status traveler. I ditched mine several years ago in favor of various cashback cards.

***

Is it really possible Anthony Lane didn't know right away which actor was playing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder? From his review:

He is a doughy, balding monster with big spectacles and even wider hand gestures, all his power distilled into profanity: a grotesque update, if you will, on the movie executive with the shock of white-hot hair, brought to life by Rod Steiger, in “The Big Knife,” more than fifty years ago. It took me half the running time to realize who was playing this new beast, and it was only his voice that triggered the recognition; I suspect that there will be gasps during the end credits, as people see his name and find themselves rethinking the whole movie, marvelling at what could have inspired so stiff an actor to unfurl and bounce around.

Roger Ebert also thinks some people will not recognize the actor behind this cameo:

The movie is a send-up of Hollywood, actors, acting, agents, directors, writers, rappers, trailers and egos, much enhanced by several cameo roles, the best of which I will not even mention. You’ll know the one, although you may have to wait for the credits to figure it out.

Really? I think most every person in the theater will know who it is right away.

***

As if it wasn't already hard enough to tell what people really look like from their carefully chosen and touched-up Facebook profile photos, soon we may all have access to software that can automatically enhance facial attractiveness. This SIGGRAPH paper discusses the technique and shows some results which were validated by independent ratings.

***

Ah, only in Texas.

Literally, a photo finish

Sports Illustrated has a series of photos showing just how close Milorad Cavic came to upsetting Michael Phelps in the 100-meter butterfly yesterday. It's easy to see why, to some outside the pool, it looked like some conspiracy that Phelps won. He was so far behind before that final half-stroke that chopped the wall that it looked like an error when they superimposed that #1 graphic in his lane on TV.

I don't understand the advantages of wearing the high neck Speedo LZR Racer suit versus just the legskin, but I wonder why Phelps only wore the legskin for this swim, and whether that would have made a difference. Cavic wore the high neck bodyskin.

Fail

When I saw this photo of Spain's Olympic basketball team making slanted eyes in an ad, I thought there couldn't be any possible way they could have known what that gesture meant. How could anyone be so blatantly racist? I haven't seen that gesture since the playground days in elementary school, and the feeling it evokes has evolved. Then, it stung. Now, it angers.

But the Spaniards have not apologized, and participants like Pau Gasol are quoted saying, "It was supposed to be a picture that inspired the Olympic spirit."

Huh?!?

Jason Kidd is right, if the U.S. team had done something like that, David Stern would have disciplined them. But no one, not even FIBA, has done anything, not even a public rebuke.

I'm rooting for the U.S. Olympic hoops team to remedy this by meeting Spain in the finals and kicking their asses up and down the floor.

Me Winner

That common victory pose, arms thrust high, chest stuck out -- think Michael Phelps -- may be innate to primates according to scientists. Their evidence is that chimps and monkeys do it also, and blind athletes who've never seen others do it also strike that pose.

What I want to know is what the root of the walk-off home run celebration is. If I spot a gorilla throwing off a half-coconut shell helmet and then jumping into a big group of gorillas, at which point they all start hopping up and down in a circle, I'm going to freak out.

Olympics humor

From Jessica Hagy's Indexed:

Someecard:

Giving Alain Bernard the finger (.08s worth)

The Olympics are a time for being part of the global community, for sportsmanship, for setting aside our differences and celebrating...

...yeeeaaahhhhh! Suck it France!

In the pool, Lezak had seen Bernard hit the far wall first.

"I'm not going to lie," Lezak said. "When I flipped at the 50 and I still saw how far ahead he was, and he was the world-record holder 'til about two minutes before that, when Sullivan led off with the world record, I thought, it really crossed my mind for a split second, there's no way.

"Then I changed. I said, you know what, that's ridiculous. This is the Olympics. I'm here for these guys. I'm here for the United States of America. It's more than -- I don't care how bad it hurts, or whatever, I'm just going to go out there and hit it.

"Honestly, in like 5 seconds, I was thinking all these things -- you know, just got like a super charge and took it from there. It was unreal."

...

With the pressure of all of it on him, Lezak threw down the fastest split of all time, 46.06.

Yoo hoo, Pretty Boy

After finally watching Margarito pound Cotto's face into a Margarito pizza on my friend's DVR, I am ready to pony up money to see Mayweather step into the ring with Margarito. Pretty Boy ducked Margarito once despite an $8MM guaranteed payout, but if he really wants to cement his legacy he should come out of retirement and face down the Tijuana Tornado.

Already, problems with Olympics broadcasting

I was so excited for this year's Olympics because for the first time, 2,200 hours were going to be put online at NBCOlympics.com. DirecTV has some 6 or 7 channels dedicated to the Olympics. It didn't seem possible that the problems with the last Olympics would recur, namely that anyone who is on the Internet would find out results before they were shown somewhere.

Alas, that idea of maximizing audience via an artificially enforced notion of primetime still haunts us. If you want to watch Michael Phelps compete in events, you don't get to see them live, at least not on the West Coast in any legal fashion. I logged into ESPN this morning and there on the front page were the results of Phelps' first heat of the 400 IM Medley (which I won't share here). In fact, the result is even listed on the homepage of NBCOlympics.com. But the network is trying to still aggregate an audience for TV, so marquee events like that are not shown online, they are only shown on TV on a delayed schedule. In this case, the heats are shown at 3:30 to 4:30pm PST.

The final is at 5pm PST, but on the west coast they are going to delay coverage until 8pm PST, so for three hours the East Coast and Midwest in the U.S. will know the results, while the PST folks will have to detach all electronic devices and live in willful ignorance of the sports world if they wish to have any suspense when watching the main events on TV.

The revolution will be tape-delayed. Sigh.

Opening Ceremony: The Big Picture

Was hoping The Big Picture would cover the Olympics Opening Ceremony, and they did.

Best. Opening. Ceremony. Ever.

Related: Some of these photos by Li Wei remind me of moments from the Opening Ceremony.

I'm a !@#$%*? You're a *&%$#@!

In a letter, Giles Coren excoriates the Times sub-editors for altering the last sentence of one his columns. The Sunday Times sub-editors respond to Giles with their own letter and wonder why he had to be so rude and profane.

Good points all around. Not quite a literary feud, but similar entertainment value.

On a related note, Chuck Klosterman is overjoyed by the Shaq-Kobe feud and mutual hatred.

How little we (They) know

Kobe vs. MJ

Bill Simmons, in his ESPN chat this week:

Grant (Chicago): Can someone put an end to all the "Kobe is as good as MJ talk." Kobe wins one championship (i'm assuming the Lakers win) without Shaq and he's all of a sudden as good as MJ? I don't get it, Kobe hasn't even had one season that would crack any of MJ's top 10. Not to mention that Kobe isn't mentally tough enough to have gotten through those physical eastern conference playoffs in the 90s.

Bill Simmons: It's such an absurd argument that it's not even worth writing about. Kobe has shown flashes of MJ-dom, and he definitely dipped into those waters in the playoffs, but Jordan played at that level for 10 solid years, and he was doing it during an era when players got pounded and they didn't have the hand-check rules. I have written this before but I honestly believe that, if the MJ from '87 to '93 played with the rules in place from '05 to '08, he would have averaged 45 a game

John Hollinger, in his ESPN chat today:

david I (manhattan): How many total titles with this current roster will it take to truly put Kobe in the same sentence with MJ and not get many arguments?

John Hollinger: At least three. Possibly more. I'm sorry, but I just want to puke anytime somebody compares a contemporary player to Jordan. There's no comparison at all. That's no disrespect to Kobe, who will likely go down as the second-best SG of all time. But MJ was absurdly good.

There are people who think Kobe is MJ's equal or superior. Those people don't know anything about basketball.

Christmas comes early to Chicago

The Bulls get their pick of Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley in the upcoming NBA draft. Maybe suffering through such an awful season wasn't all for naught.

I vote for Rose. Let the healing begin.

Steps

I love Lebron, but this clip Eric sent me is hilarious. Lebron takes about 15 steps on the way to the basket. It's great that it's then show in slow-mo so you can see just how egregious a travel this is. NBA refereeing is difficult, but traveling is an easy call that they just don't ever make, like the phantom tag of second base in baseball.

How it all went down

Everyone who hears about my basketball injury asks how it happened. There were no video cameras there, but imagine me as Chris Paul and this is an eerie video replay of the shot I hit just before my Achilles exploded.

T-minus one day until I go under the knife. I am ready to get it over with and start on the long rehab process. The thought of not being able to run or jump or exercise until sometime in February or March of 2009 is driving me crazy. No NY Marathon in November, no golf trip with the boys this summer, no snowboarding next winter, no running along the beach in Santa Monica, no hitting tennis balls with coworkers.

I need something, and I'm not sure what it is yet, to dissipate my agitation, or I'm going to lose my mind.

Margin of victory

From a chat with John Hollinger on ESPN today:

Will (NYC): I agree that some close games are 50/50 but those are in the minority. A big part of being a great team is the ability to show heart and win the close games. It's called performing under pressure and that is something that Boston showed they may be lacking greatly. That is why people are less confident in their chances.

SportsNation John Hollinger: (3:37 PM ET ) A lot of people believe that, but it isn't true is just overwhelming. Look at any team that was together for a number of years, even the great ones -- Jordan's Bulls, for instance -- and you'll find that the closer the score, the closer they are to .500. In other words, in games decided by two points or less they'd be almost exactly .500, even a team like the Bulls; in games decided by 15 points or more they'd be nearly 1.000. It's a fallacy that the good teams win the close games; the good teams win by 20. The lucky teams win the close games. There is no team in history that's been able to defy the correlation between scoring margin and wins over an extended period.

Statistical analysis has indicated the same relationship between luck and records in close games in baseball. It's a result that seems contrary to our intuition, which is that certain players, like the Jordans or Bryants, give some teams an edge in crunchtime. I believe in that idea generally, but still think that having Michael Jordan was that rare exception that did give the Bulls an edge in close games.

Fifa Street 3

Le foot.

Odds and Ends

Oh, I'll just set aside my $80 for this now.

Kevin Love, making like Lebron James in that Powerade commercial.

Friday Night Lights greenlit for Season 3, but only in a unique deal in which it airs on DirecTV first, starting in October, then moves over to NBC in 2009?

Howard Shore scoring, Guillermo del Toro directing...The Hobbit sounds promising.

The sometimes bizarre effects of scarcity: a used copy of the CD of the score to The Transformers is running, at a minimum, $89.99 on Amazon.com.

The bizarre

Floyd Mayweather knocks out The Big Show, but not before playing up the drama for the crowd.

Years later, the theatrics of wrestling and the popularity of said performances don't seem to have changed much.

***

The cast of the upcoming G.I. Joe movie includes:

Channing Tatum as Duke

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander

Sienna Miller as The Baroness

Ray Park as Snake Eyes

Dennis Quaid as General Hawk

Arnold Vosloo as Zartan

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty

Jonathan Pryce as the U.S. President

Marlon Wayans as Ripcord

Things I Like

* Modern Love, the weekly column in the Sunday Styles section of the NYTimes. I enjoy the introspective, confessional nature of each installment. This past week's column, "Mom, It’s Me, Your Son, Finally," was a good example of its tone. It's interesting to me how my tastes for various sections of newspapers and magazines has changed over time.

* New Balance 1220 running shoe series, of which the latest incarnation is the 1223. My flat, wide feet are thankful for shoes that, unlike Nikes, aren't made for people with perfect feet, narrow, high-arched. I guess that's to be expected from a shoe company named after a Greek goddess. The 1220's don't change too much from generation to generation, so when I walked into the store looking for a replacement for my 1221's, the saleswoman simply handed me the same size for the 1223s, and I walked out and was running in them fifteen minutes later. There's something to be said for product continuity in the shoe market.

I loved the Air Jordan VIII. It was the first pair I ever owned, and the day my mom bought it for me from a sports store in a mall is still a tactile memory. But subsequent models of the shoe changed so drastically that they just didn't fit my feet anymore.

* Runner's high (proof it exists?). I'd always thought runner's high was the occasional feeling that one could run forever without getting tired, but the definition in the article implies that it's something you always experience during running. Which may be why I have not experienced it in so long.

* Taco trucks. Seemingly an LA institution, the Hulu dev team seems to find a new one every week, each better than the next. I have yet to find one comprehensive listing of all taco trucks, though partial coverage can be found at The Great Taco Hunt and this Google Map.

Slaughter rule

March Madness is a great sporting event, but as I've said many times before, a good percentage of the excitement lies in the format of the event, 65 teams, single elimination, tournament style (its suitability as a large-scale gambling event doesn't hurt, either).

If I were to improve the tourney, I might try to improve the quality of the 16 seeds. No top seed has ever lost in the first round to the 16 seed (Number 1 seeds are now 94-0 versus 16 seeds). A little dose of competitiveness from time to time in that game wouldn't hurt. UCLA won its first round game today 70-29. 70-29!

In an understatement, coach Ben Howland said of his decision to not play Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who sprained his left ankle last week versus USC, "I thought about it and I felt comfortable we would be able to get this one without him."

The art of the outlet

I've seen freshman power forward/center Kevin Love of UCLA play three times in the span of a week and a half. For a big man, he's a phenomenal passer. It's pretty watching him pull the rebound and whip the outlet pass down court to start the break.

Technorati Tags: basketball, sports

Super Bowl ads

Wow, what an upset! Tom Brady can take solace in being one of the few people in the world for whom this ad is not aspirational.

We've posted all the ads from the Super Bowl at Hulu. If you have an invite, you can see them here. If you don't have a Hulu invite, you can see them here.

I also have some Hulu invites to give out, so leave a comment with your e-mail address if you're interested in one but haven't gotten in yet.

Sampras beats Federer in last of 3 exhibition matches

The old man can still play. Were these matches on TV? I wanted to see one of these exhibitions.

Highs and Lows

Ed had tix to the Stanford-USC game and asked if I wanted to go today. I had too much work to catch up on, and besides, Stanford was a 41 point underdog. What would be the fun of driving all that way to see a drubbing? Stanford was starting a QB who had thrown 3 passes in college because their starter had a seizure earlier this week.

Oops.

Meanwhile, I had the Cubs game on MLB Gameday in the corner of my screen, which was like having an IV drip in your arm, except instead of useful fluids, the drip contained liquid depression, spreading through my body drop by drop. If you can't get hits off of Livan Hernandez, who's about 87 years old, it's probably not meant to be.

Abracadabra...uh, open sesame...uh, hocus pocus

Last night, I got home from work around 1 in the morning and pulled up to the electronic gate to my parking garage and pressed my remote key fob button. Nothing happened. I waved it out the window, then got out of the car and walked up to the gate, pressing the key fob near any place I thought the sensor might reside. No luck.

One car pulled up behind me, then another, and soon a few others. We all stood outside our cars, pressing our key fobs. In our neighborhood, there wasn't any street parking, so we were stuck. It was 1 in the morning, I was dead tired, and I was not a happy camper (though if my key fob was out of order then I was on the verge of being literally an unhappy camper).

So I turned my attention to the exit gate, just next to the entrance. That was one of those gates that opened as soon as you pulled up to it. The sensor for that was a bit further inside the garage, but by sticking my tennis racket through the gate I could just reach far enough to trip it and open the gate. I managed to lean my tennis racket against the sensor and then directed traffic through the exit like John McClane waving the planes home at the end of Die Hard 2.

A different discontent plagued me in the nanosecond before I passed out. The security in our parking garage is not good, not good at all.

***

Kanye vs. 50 Cent, as judged by Amazon Sales Rank: Decision to Kanye. Critic's average judgment? The same. From guns to lyrics to now sales...hip-hop conflicts are progressing to more civilized playing fields.

***

Jon Stewart will host the Oscars in February. He seemed a bit nervous to start the last time (even the coolest customer can experience some jitters in the face of so much star power), but he loosened up by the end of the ceremony. I think the second time will be the charm.

***

My favorite Microsoft application was always Excel. I spent a good portion of my early career in that application building massive models, writing macros in VBA, pushing it to its limits. It didn't always keep up--I always had problems getting linked workbooks to update and calculate quickly, and sharing workbooks among my team never worked quite as we wanted to--but of the Office suite, it's always been king.

I hate Powerpoint, and Word's formatting quirks always drove me batty. So when Apple came out with Keynote, and then Pages, I was willing to switch over. I haven't yet, but only because I don't use Word or Powerpoint anymore. All my writing now is done in a plain text editor, e-mail client, script formatting software, or with an actual pen and notebook. As for Powerpoint, I haven't had to make one of those in years, hallelujah.

But I was curious about Numbers, the new spreadsheet app in iWork 08, so I fired it up, imported an Excel spreadsheet, and gave it a whirl. I attempted to update the spreadsheet

Though I like a lot of the interface decisions made in Numbers, I will remain, for the time being, an Excel guy. And it isn't because Number lacks advanced features like pivot tables. My main complaint with Numbers is that it's not keyboard friendly. You have to use the mouse to do so many things that Excel allows you to do without leaving the keyboard. Mousing around a spreadsheet is just counter to my working style.

Numbers might be the "spreadsheet for the rest of us," but I guess that makes me one of Them.

***

George Saunders appears on David Letterman.

***

Looks like I won't be seeing The White Stripes in concert after all. Disappointing.

***

Patriots fined and penalized for videotaping NY Jets defensive signals. Outside of the Bears, the Patriots were once one of the few teams I rooted for because they seemed to win by being smarter than their opponents. Outside of Tom Brady, they didn't have too many marquee names, and they didn't have a crazy financial advantage like teams like the Yankees or Red Sox because of the NFL salary cap. They were the Oakland A's of the NFL.

I suspect that the advantage they gathered from videotaping opponent signals is overstated (as is the case with many forms of cheating in sports), but what's disappointing is the hubris and stupidity/arrogance represented by the videotaping scheme. They were playing a team coached by one of their ex assistant coaches; how did they think they were going to get away with it?And anyone watching the two teams would think it ridiculous that the Patriots had to resort to such scheming to defeat the Jets.

If Mangini was part of such a practice when he was with the Patriots, and if he was indeed the one who snitched his ex-team out, then there's a beautiful tragic resonance to the sequence of events. Every one involved with the scheme is getting what they deserve: Mangini is seen as a rat, Belichick (never a warm fuzzy personality to begin with) is seen as a win at all costs Nixon of the NFL, and the Patriots now will never get the full credit they deserve for their accomplishments.

People are always going to be jealous of and resent perennial winners, but it certainly helps the cause to have ammunition. Brady fathering children out of wedlock and dating supermodels, Harrison using HGH, Belichick and staff using videotape surveillance...it's more than enough.

As a sidenote, a cyclist caught using HGH nowadays is looking at a minimum of a year's suspension and a lifetime of disgrace. A pro football player caught using steroids or HGH gets a four game suspension and then is back on the field, or in the case of Shawn Merriman, on to the Pro Bowl or Nike television commercials.

The NFL has been rocked by all sorts of scandal for a year straight now, from Michael Vick to HGH to PatriotsGate to the revolving convict lineup on the Bengals to who knows what else, and you know what? The league is as popular as ever. The NFL is so popular that it doesn't seem to absorb any economic penalty from scandal. Perhaps because of the violent nature of the game, fans seem far more tolerant of steroid use in the NFL than in other sports.

Astute

I find most ex-pro athletes to be poor color commentators on their own sports, but tennis seems to be an exception. Agassi was in the booth providing commentary on the Roddick-Federer quarterfinal match and damn if he wasn't a really fantastic analyst who provided some unique insight into what it was like to play Federer.

Unfortunately, CBS still insists on having Dick Enberg do a lot of big matches, like today's men's final. He stumbled over Djokovic's name in the trophy presentation, one night after having referred to Justine Henin by her married name of Henin-Hardenne just a short while after her divorce. Which would all be fine, but Enberg knows about as much about tennis as your average Joe, so why not put someone like Cliff Dryesdale in the booth with McEnroe and Carillo?

Watching Djokovic and Federer trading nuclear forehands, I tried to think of another sport that had changed as much in my lifetime. The combination of racket technology, grip changes, and the rising popularity of the two-handed backhand have transformed tennis at the pro level into a power baseline game. Players can hit groundstrokes with so much pace and spin that you can hit outright winners from the back court with unprecedented frequency. The foot speed of the average human just hasn't been able to keep pace.

Except perhaps for players like Federer and Nadal, who seem to be able to get to everything. One of the joys of watching Federer is that he seems to have fused the past and the present. He uses the classic Eastern forehand grip unlike so many modern players, and yet his forehand shares the spin and pace of a Western grip forehand. It's a modernized Eastern forehand, hit from an open stance with a loose wrist that lags until just before impact, generating crazy pace and spin. Go to YouTube and you'll find dozens of slow-motion videos of the Federer forehand. Bill Viola should do a high-def exhibition with dozens of plasma TV's displaying various Federer strokes playing on loop.

Federer also hits a classic one-handed backhand, but again, it has the spin of a two-handed backhand, allowing him to hit some shots I thought could only be hit with two hands, like that crazy dipping cross-court pass. I have no idea how he does it.

I downloaded a demo of Virtua Tennis 3 for the PS3 and found Federer in that game to be ridiculously good. You can literally hit a winner on every shot with Federer. But is his videogame doppelganger really so different from the real thing? Maybe not.

As for Djokovic, at least he had both Sharapova and Robert De Niro in his box. And for tennis fans, he looks like someone besides Nadal who can push Federer which is good for the game.

Sports Sunday

Djokovic-Federer and Chargers-Bears overlap tomorrow. That's not to mention DirecTV's crazy fantasy football optimized channels. Time to clear some space off of the DVR.

I need to find a way to get streaming TV onto my laptop at the office, where I've been living for a week now.

Technorati Tags: Bears, sports, tennis

Oddly worded insult

Finally, Marco Materazi reveals what he said to Zidane to provoke the most famous head-butt in sports history: "I prefer the whore that is your sister."

Is that a translation of what Materazzi said on television in Italian or is that what he actually said in English? If he said that to me in English I'd have to pause for a second to contemplate the bizarre syntax before head-butting him in the face.

Technorati Tags: football, soccer, sports

Live from the Emerald City

This post broadcast from the Emerald City, where yours truly attended Audrey and Matt's lovely wedding this weekend (some pics here). Seattle's gorgeous summer weather arrived early (for the Pacific Northwest) this year; it's actually warmer here than in Los Angeles. The only problem is that I have one of the worst summer colds I've ever experienced and have been hacking myself awake every night for a few hours. I'm popping decongestants like they're SweeTarts. If this is my last post ever, know that I probably choked to death on my own phlegm in the middle of the night.

***

Telekinesis is an iPhone Remote application that allows you to access files on your computer via your iPhone.

Red is a popular brand name for high end products. Besides the camera, we now have SRAM working on a sub 2000g component group called Red (for those of you who are non-cyclists, a component group is all the stuff that goes on your bike frame (outside of your wheels and pedals and handlebars; components include your cranks and derailleurs and brake levers, stuff like that). Always good to have a bit of competition for the two market leaders, Shimano and Campagnolo.

The rumors are confirmed: Dan Patrick is leaving ESPN. The peak of ESPN's quality was when Patrick and Keith Olbermann hosted The Big Show. He faded from view for me in recent years as he moved over to the radio. I didn't even own a radio in NYC.

Dress like Roger Federer at Wimbledon. You're sure to impress in your all-white blazer and warm-up trousers when you show up for local club match, at least until you pull your hamstring in the third game. That was some final between Federer and Nadal, by the way. Those two epitomize the peak of the modern tennis game now; compare that to, say, footage of an Edberg-Becker final from back in the day and it's a totally different game.

You think you're always waiting a long time for the woman in your life to get ready? Lián Amaris Sifuentes took it to another level. She went through the usual preparations for a date but slowed them down to fill 72 hours, and she performed it in Union Square this weekend (so close to my old apartment!). NYU professor R. Luke Dubois shot the performance on three high-def camcorders and will compress it into a 72 minute video. Dubois has used this technique before, compressing previous Academy Award Best Picture winners into one minute. Some examples are posted here (Amadeus or Titanic, e.g.). That's what it must be like to have one's life flash before one's eyes. Trippy.

Technorati Tags: apple, art, cycling, ESPN, gadgets, iPhone, tennis, software, sports, tech

iNotes

Very little evidence supporting theory that poverty breeds terrorism. I find that reassuring.

In a Q&A about some device called the iPhone, Walt Mossberg says Apple will add Flash support to the iPhone browser through an early software update.

Alessandro Petacchi out of the Tour de France after doping charge. His urine sample after the third of his five stage wins at this year's Giro d'Italia showed an unusually high level of albutamol, an asthma treatment. He holds a therapeutic use exemption for its use, but he exceeded the permitted level of 1,000 nanograms/millileter. Well, there goes the top sprinter in the Tour. I'll still watch, though. I just got back on my bike the other day for the first time in ages, and on the 4th I went with Tory for a climb up Malibu Canyon Road. That climb kicked my butt all over the road but I survived to summit.

Crazy battle at Kruger National Park in Africa, caught on video. Some unlikely twists and turns. I think I caught Jeff Van Gundy in there, hanging onto the leg of a Cape Buffalo. I've seen enough specials to know that Cape Buffalo never leave a man behind (thx to Mark for the referral).

Verizon COO Jack Plating sends internal memo titled iWhatever, throws out some brave talk in the face of the iPhone. He is true in that the network is Verizon's first and most powerful advantage. But Verizon handsets are not impressive at all.

I had lunch with Robert today, and the cafe was broadcasting highlights from Wimbledon. We were talking about Federer's loss in the French Open final to Nadal, and Robert thought that a big problem is that Federer was not extending on his first serve. He was keeping his first serve motion in too close, resulting in his ghastly first serve percentage. You wouldn't be able to tell from the final score, but based on the % of points Federer won on his first serve, he would have won that much had his first serve gone in more. One of these years, Federer will break through against Nadal at the French. He's played well enough to do so in the past, but it just hasn't happened there at Philippe Chatrier.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cycling, economics, gadgets, iPhone, nature, politics, sociology, tech, tennis, terrorism, video, web, youtube

A "reversal"

Joey Chestnut unseated six-time winner and reigning champion of the Nathan's hot dog champion Takeru Kobayashi by eating 66 hot dogs to Kobayashi's 63 in 12 minutes. Judges deducted from Kobayashi's final count because he suffered a "reversal"--a euphemism for vomiting--after the 12 minutes were up. 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes works out to 1 hot dog consumed every 10.9 seconds, a rate which has me contemplating a reversal just thinking about it.

No one, even Chestnut or Kobayashi, had cracked 60 hot dogs in 12 minutes before, so clearly they're pushing each other, and the grand sport of competitive eating, to new heights.

Joey Chestnut is a great name. If he weren't a competitive eater he could be an adult film star.

Technorati Tags: food, eating

Le foot

Freddy Adu's first of his three goals against Poland is pretty damn sweet.

Technorati Tags: soccer, sports, video, youtube

Your newest Chicago Bull

This is the child of a former Miss Sweden and Yannick Noah (not, not David Stern, but the tall guy on the right in the photo). I can't find the words...

For what it's worth, which is probably very little considering how much uninformed banter sports drafts inspire, I think it was a solid pick. People keep saying the Bulls need a low post scorer but who was going to be that at No. 9? The Bulls are going to be a pain in the ass to play against next year with all their long-armed freaks and shot blockers in the frontcourt.

Plus, just look at that guy? He may be equal parts exuberant and irksome, but the Bulls wholesome punch needed some spiking, no?

UPDATE: According to one man's metaphoric imagination, we've drafted...Shakira?!

Technorati Tags: basketball, bulls, chicago, NBA, sports

Hollinger ranks this year's NBA draft prospects

John Hollinger unveils his new system for evaluating the pro potential of college basketball players. His system would have corrected for Carlos Boozer having been picked 26th in the 2002 draft (Hollinger's system had him ranked #1 in that draft), and would've suggested a pass on Adam Morrison and J.J. Redick in the 2006 draft. Of course, if you develop a system based on the past several years of draft data, then the system should do well by those measures, so we'll have to wait a few years to see how the system holds up. Still, the thinking behind the system seems solid, and I'm a big Hollinger fan so I'm giving the system the benefit of the doubt.

The big news, of course, is what the system says about this year's draft, and it gives Kevin Durant a big edge over Greg Oden (Bill Simmons will be pleased). In fact, Durant ranks as the top NBA prospect in the last half decade, besting Carmelo Anthony's raw score in 2003. Other findings: Conley ranks third, just behind teammate Oden, and Corey Brewer, Acie Law, and Spencer Hawes are quite overrated. Fascinating stuff, and it's available as a free preview from ESPN Insider.

The Wages of Wins journal has posted its evaluation of NBA prospects, and it has Nick Fazekas at the top of the heap based on Position Adjusted Win score per 40 minutes (which, notably, does not adjust for strength of competition). Durant ranks second, Horford third, and Oden fourth. Oden was hurt for much of the year so perhaps his score understates his ability. The PAWS/40 minute ranking also predicts Corey Brewer, Acie Law, and Spencer Hawes to be busts.

P.S.: I'm a Durant guy--I've seen him play, and to be that skilled at that age on the offensive end is special.

Technorati Tags: basketball, NBA, sports

Showdown Sunday

Federer vs. Nadal on the terre battu. Tony Soprano vs. Phil Leotardo on the New Jersey soil.

It's also the day I have to face down my movie and wrangle it into a screenable form for the last week of school, but for the two showdowns noted above, I'll be glued to the screen.

Technorati Tags: sopranos, tennis, tv

Da Bulls

John Hollinger ranks the top NBA Finals teams of all-time, and the Bulls took 1st place (96 team), 4th place (91 team), 5th (97 team), 7th (92 Bulls), 12th (98 Bulls), and 15th (93 team). Lists like these are lightning rods for debate, but it's nice to be reminded of how spoiled we were as Chicagoans (and it almost makes up for a lifetime of misery as a Cubs fan).

Technorati Tags: basketball, bestof, bulls, chicago, cubs, list, NBA, sports

1 on 5

I was fortunate to be watching the second half of the Cavs-Pistons game the other day, the one in which Lebron went off for 25 points in a row. I feel obligated to pay tribute.

What was unbelievable was that on some of those drives to the basket in the fourth quarter, he didn't even put a move on his guy. He simply put his head down and accelerated past his defender towards the basket (often it was Tayshaun Prince, no slouch). The help defenders were always late to get over, either because James was too quick or because they didn't have the heart to step in front of a 6'8" 240 lb freight train (on the first drive and dunk, he crossed over Jason Maxiell, and you can see the help defender Prince running for his life out of the waybecause he was already too late and was inside the circle where you can't take a charge). it reminded me of playing NBA Live, when you just take an explosive player and press turbo and run straight to the basket and press shoot close to the basket for a dunk. I think it's safe to say the NBA has never seen a physical specimen like James, someone of his size and explosiveness going to the basket.

There were times when the rest of James teammates just basically stood at the sides of the court with their hands in their shorts, eyes averted, and Detroit still couldn't stop James. The variety of ways he scored was just plain fun to watch. I liked the behind the back dribble to shake Billups at the top of the circle for a 3-pointer; it reminded me of Jordan shaking Cliff Robinson with a behind the back dribble for a jump shot in the NBA finals.

My favorite Lebron move, one I haven't seen him execute in a while, is when he drives to the basket and then suddenly spins the opposite direction in a 360 degree pirouette while maintaining his movement towards the hoop. He does that better than anyone I've ever seen.

You can rewatch video of Lebron's final 29 points of that game at NBA.com. James may not have the most likeable attitude, and he has a certain certain amount of narcissism that seems to cause him to coast at times, but when he plays with a chip on his shoulder he can take over a game like only Kobe can in today's NBA. If only we cold implant Iverson's attack-dog spirit in Lebron, he'd be unstoppable attacking the basket.

Me, I'm looking forward to Lebron James vs. Bruce Bowen in the NBA Finals. Let's start beating up on Lebron now so he'll enter that series sufficiently peeved.

Technorati Tags: basketball, nba

The magic lasso

I've long thought that pickup basketball provided the ultimate insight into a man's soul. What can we tell about Barack Obama by his pickup ball demeanor?

On the court, Mr. Obama is confident, even a bit boastful.

“If he would hit a couple buckets, he would let you know about it,” said Alexi Giannoulias, who played in the late 1990s with Mr. Obama at the East Bank Club, a luxurious spot in downtown Chicago.

He is gentleman enough to call fouls on himself: Steven Donziger, a law school classmate, has heard Mr. Obama mutter, “my bad,” tossing the other team the ball.

But “he knew how to get in the mix when he needed to,” Mr. Giannoulias said. “There are always elbows, there’s always a little bit of jersey tucking and tugging,” he said, continuing, “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to win.”

“Most of the guys who played in our little circle are former players in college or pros,” said Mr. Robinson, who is still Princeton’s fourth-leading scorer of all time. “They’re real high level.”

Mr. Obama cannot match their technical prowess, say those who played regularly with him. But he is fiercely competitive, and makes up for his deficits with collaboration and strategy. “He’s very good at finding a way to win when he’s playing with people who are supposedly stronger,” Mr. Nesbitt said.

The trope for assessing your sister's potential husband is to take him out for a drink, but far better, I think, to take him to a competitive pickup basketball game and see how he reacts. I suspect the disarming quality of pickup hoops has to do with the pace of the game and the instinctive behavior of people when their competitive juices are flowing (which is why board games are often a decent proxy). Obama's wife also believed in the power to discern a man's personality on the court:

Cut to the future Mrs. Obama asking her brother to take her new boyfriend out on the court, to make sure he was not the type to hog the ball or call constant fouls.

Technorati Tags: basketball, politics, obama

Iron Fist

Unfortunately it's restricted to ESPN Insiders, but Dan Patrick's radio interview with David Stern today about the Amare Stoudemire/Boris Diaw/Robert Horry suspensions was chilling and awe-inspiring. If Dan Patrick, Charles Barkley, Steve Kerr, and anyone else who has spoken out against the NBA suspensions turn up floating down the Hudson River, you can be sure that somewhere, David Stern is in a box watching Enrico Caruso singing an aria, an aide whispers in his ear, and a smile breaks through his tears a la Robert De Niro in The Untouchables.

Stern, clearly not happy with all the negative reaction to the ruling, employed condescension, sarcasm, exasperation, and intimidation in equal measures in bullying Patrick. Stern has always been, for better or worse, the Don Corleone of sports commissioners, both impressive and alarming in the ruthlessness of his reign.

The NBA has all but conceded that their ruling was not about doing what was right but what was "correct." As Stu Jackson, NBA EVP of basketball operations, said, "It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of correctness."

When you hear Stern's tone of voice to Patrick and read the Stu Jackson quotes, you can feel them digging in, the veins on their necks bulging. It's as if the more outraged commentators and fans become, the more obdurate the league becomes in its stance. They've chosen to stand firm despite losing the goodwill of fans, despite the fact that probably both the Spurs and Suns would be happy to continue that series without any suspensions, despite the fact that NBA fans would come see games even if an occasional fight broke out.

They wanted to prove a point, and now they have. Now a promising NBA playoffs have taken a back seat to the suspension story and David Stern. I think it's a terrible decision, for the same reason so many other people have (Sports Guy always does a good job speaking for the people). The NBA is an entertainment organization, this isn't a court of law, and I think a pragmatic ruling of "nothing to see, let's move on" would have maximized value for every one all around. But there's enough discussion of that. What's more fascinating to me is David Stern's personality. Someone should do an investigative bio of the man.

Thankfully, even if he can railroad Dan Patrick, he doesn't control the airwaves and Internet (though the way Hootie Johnson and Augusta control what's said during CBS's broadcast of the Masters is an example of how it can be done). I'm certain the rule will be changed this off-season, but that's little consolation to the Suns this series.

There may yet be karmic retribution for the league's stubborness. We seem to be headed towards another San Antonio/Detroit finals that no one watches.

Technorati Tags: basketball, NBA

Little bit of that

Seeing beyond sight: photos by blind teenagers.

It's been apparent to everyone that this season of 24 has been the worst yet. I gave up on it a few episodes in. The good thing is that low ratings have forced the show producers to take notice.

The Golden Ratio for making your butt look great is being employed by a jeans mfr called The Proportion of Blu:

I used to think those commercials by Citicard about credit card theft, where a criminal's voice would play over the lip movements of an old lady or other credit fraud victim were quite remarkable, the lip matching was so perfect. Then I used VocAlign with Pro Tools at school and realized it wasn't that technically difficult to pull off after all.

Now that the whole HD-DVD code story is a day old, the hot blogosphere story of the day seems to be this article in the NYTimes which cites an economic study (PDF) by Justin Wolfers and Joseph Price finding evidence of racial bias among NBA refs, namely that white refs call fouls at a higher rate against black players than against white players. The NBA did their own study that they claim shows that refs are not biased, but their refusal to release the underlying data from their study really weakens their position. Steven Levitt looked over the Wolfers/Price paper and found it sound. I suspect that if you'd asked a bunch of NBA fans and observers beforehand if they'd expect the study to find bias, and if so, how much bias they'd expect, they'd come up with numbers higher than Wolfers and Price found in their study. In other words, the study isn't that shocking.

Technorati Tags: book, economics, fashion, math, NBA, photography, race, software, tv, video, youtube

A green and tan

Rafael Nadal beats Roger Federer 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (10) in an exhibition match held on a half grass, half clay court. I'm not sure you can conclude much from an exhibition--what a wacky stunt. Next we just need them to play a match where Federer plays left-handed and Nadal right-handed.

Technorati Tags: photo, tennis, sports

All you can eat

After the production madness of winter quarter, I thought the spring quarter might be a more relaxing one, but it's turning out to be just as, if not more, busy.

Part of that is my own choosing. We're assigned to take 22 units of class this quarter as 1st years, and they recommend though do not require 1 elective. But I discovered that we're allowed to take as many electives as we want, and there's no difference in your tuition if you take no electives or a hundred.

I'm interested enough in all sorts of subjects related to film that this was like being set loose in an all-you-can-eat buffet. So I signed myself up for four electives for a total of 34 units of class. I also have to edit my 6-minute film from last quarter for screening during finals week, and I have given up three Saturdays to all-day workshops led by Stephen Burum, this year's Kodak cinematographer in residence (legendary for his longtime collaboration with Brian De Palma, his work heading up 2nd unit on Apocalypse Now, and his contributions to the American Cinematographer Manual).

I had one day in April which was open, last Sunday, and I spent it doing homework and laundry. In May, I also have one day that isn't already booked by class, weddings, or workshops. It's amazing how quickly all my plans for going out and working out and trying out some restaurants and watching movies all just evaporated.

But for the most part, I'm digging all my electives, and I'm learning tons. The craft of filmmaking just requires a life-consuming commitment. Sleep is scarce these days, and I've found myself dozing off Grandpa Simpson style

Being a student has one great advantage, and that's access to student-discounted software. I've finally got Pro Tools installed on my desktop and I'm learning my way around it. You can do some amazing things with the software--it's like Photoshop for sound. Add the Pitch N' Time plugin and you can turn your out-of-tune karaoke rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle" into something Simon Cowell would be proud of.

One of the most enjoyable classes I'm taking is Music in Film, and our first exercise was to go through North By Northwest and log all the musical cues, when they began, when they faded out. When a director sits down with a composer for a "spotting session," the director will collaborate with the composer to select when music should come in and go out. What's fascinating about Bernard Herrmann's score for North by Northwest is how Hitchcock had Herrmann hold back on bringing in the musical cues until the last possible moment. In places you'd expect a swelling musical cue to come bursting through the speakers, there's nothing (the famous farm field scene is a great example).

Our professor talked about why that might be, and that restraint is really striking given how liberally modern movies use score to cue the audience on how to react emotionally to scenes. Most viewers never stop to think about why music comes in at a particularly point in the movie, and it's a useful exercise to do with one of your favorite movie scores. Our exercise for next week's class is to spot Monsoon Wedding, a really enjoyable movie, and not just because of its score. Listen to just the title credit score, and without having seen a single frame of the movie, you should be able to predict the theme of the movie.

Our professor took us on a field trip last Friday to the famous scoring stage on the Sony Studios lot. Named after Barbara Streisand, it's the scoring stage of choice for John Williams, and so many famous scores have been recorded there. On this afternoon, we had the opportunity to listen to a scoring session for an upcoming episode of The Simpsons by renowned composer Alf Clausen. While Alf conducted an orchestra in short cues to match the Simpsons footage projected on a large screen (some of the animation hadn't been finished and consisted of sketches), we sat in the control room and watched through the glass, listening to the music on one of the most sublime sound systems imaginable. It was inspiring to see how much work goes into a 7 second musical cue for a half hour episode of The Simpsons. Very few TV shows score with an actual orchestra. Lost, for one, and Desperate Housewives, though on a much smaller scale. That might be it. Who would've guessed The Simpsons would be among that elite group (I say that not to disparage the show, one of my favorite TV shows ever, but to express surprise that a half-hour animated satire would spend more on its score than most hour-long dramas).

Listening to the music in the control room elevated the familiar Simpsons musical cues to a sublime place. I refuse to believe people who say they can't hear the difference between an MP3 played off of their iPod and a well-recorded CD played over a good pair of speakers. From the live performance of music to your ears, much of the magic can be lost. To hear Clausen's score live was like setting foot on a place I'd only seen in postcards before.

I love hearing behind-the-scenes stories about film shoots from a wide variety of guest speakers and professors. Not surprisingly, in an industry full of storytellers and mercurial personalities, the stories that are passed around have the finely honed quality of mythology. I can't really share the stories here, but suffice it to say that events like the David O. Russell tantrum aren't new to folks in the biz.

The only downside of my crazy schedule this quarter, besides lack of time for sleep and exercise, is that I've been having a series of disturbing dreams, all linked. Last night was the most disconcerting episode yet. In this dream, I've shot and killed someone, and though no one knows I'm the killer, many people are suspicious and closing in on me. Feeling the net encircling me, I spend the entire dream in a sweat, with a sense of doom and guilt crushing all the hope out of me. By the time I wake up I can't remember who it is I'm meant to have killed, but for the duration of the dream, I feel the guilt of a murderer, and it's unsettling beyond belief. In that elusive way that dreams slip through your fingers like water, I can't recall the details anymore, but I'm certain I've had this dream more than once this quarter.

I realize that Freud's theories on dreams have been discredited, but I'd love to know what the current state of thinking is in the field of dream interpretation.

This, thankfully, is not a dream. ESPN Experts? More like ESPN Expert:

Technorati Tags: basketball, bulls, filmschool, movies, music, dream, sports

Trying to laugh through the tears

Next year, I'm mailing my taxes via UPS or Fedex. Still fuming and on hold waiting for various financial institutions to answer their customer service lines and resend my 1099's. Argh. But through the tears, perhaps a few nuggets of laughter...

The Apple iRack.

Google Maps directions for New York, NY to Paris, France...skip ahead to step 23 (via a Sports Guy reader)

Also funny, from the same Sports Guy column, this box score from the San Antonio-Phoenix NBA game. Skip down to Robert Horry's line for the Spurs.

Ryanair CEO vows to offer flights from the U.S. to the UK for less than $10.30. You'd probably pay more because Ryanair charges for all sorts of basics a la carte, but still.

Some progress today in the fight against global warming.

Jackie and Jet team up (with an assist from Yuen Woo Ping). It would have been a dream of a pairing if they two of them were about 10 to 15 years younger, but we'll take what we can get. Meanwhile, the Weinstein Co. could use some wire work.

Tiger Woods Reveals He Is Zach Johnson.

Technorati Tags: Apple, basketball, google, humor, movies, NBA, golf, sports, theonion, travel

Spring break's over

Auto porn: a part by part look at the new BMW M3 V8 engine. Featuring brake energy regeneration (reminds of of the old Tiger Woods/BMW joke). Hear the sound of the new V-8 during acceleration. Check out these headers, and imagine them glowing bright red. If Paris were an auto-snob, she'd say, "That's hot."

As one article noted, these images of the BMW engine headers recall Edward Weston's photo of a pepper. Compare:

Arnold Kling on the single-payer health care:

1. People are forced to buy something that they don't seem to want
2. Provided by a monopoly
3. Paid for by higher taxes

Three funny Onion sports headlines:

• Greg Oden On Final Four Appearance: 'I'm Happier Than I've Been In 30 Years'
• Confident Phil Mickelson Guarantees Tiger Woods Will Win Masters
• Tiger Woods Signs $15 Million Deal To Endorse Alex Rodriguez

TigerCinema.com seeks to be a Netflix for Asian DVDs. They state that 95% of their titles have English subtitles and that most are Region 1. Sadly, the search and browse functions are somewhat crude. No browse by country? director? actor? The browse tree for Martial Arts is only one level deep! Good luck delving through 23 pages of results. The selection is decent but not as complete as I'd expect for such a niche-focused site. It's probably not entirely their fault as there are so many editions of many Asian movies, and many editions are out of print or hard to find. They probably can't stock enough copies of certain titles. For now, there's still eBay and HKFlix and YesAsia and sites like that for those willing to buy. Many eBay DVDs are simply burned copies and will not last very long; I treat most of those as disposable copies.

One of the best channels for showing off your high definition TV is Discovery HD Theater. Perhaps the best program to air on that channel yet is Planet Earth which debuted last Sunday. Apparently viewers agreed as the show snared 12 million viewers total over 3 hours and had a 3.6 HH rating, Discovery's third highest ever. I've only watched the first episode, "Pole to Pole," and it was spectacular, all of the footage having been shot in high definition. They say porn is the killer application for any new video technology, but IMHO sports and nature shows are the most desirable types of programming for HD.

Technorati Tags: autos, bmw, cars, economics, hd, healthcare, humor, dvd, sports, theonion

If you like 6'5" 230lb quarterbacks with a laser rocket arm

Word is that Peyton Manning impressed in his SNL workout Saturday. Granted, the SNL bar couldn't be set any lower these days, but this clip is worth a few chuckles.

Manning's appearance could have been funnier if this bit hadn't been tossed onto the cutting room floor.

Technorati Tags: humor, SNL, tv, video, youtube

The Big Red One

The Nike+iPod is a fun running accessory, but exercise caution before using it as a serious training tool.

David Pogue offers an overview of Grandcentral, a site that offers to consolidate all your phone numbers under one phone number which will ring all your phones simultaneously when dialed. I signed up during the beta a couple months ago and got a number but never used it. Pogue notes a number of nifty features that have been added since their launch, so perhaps it's time for me to dig that number out.

Neal Gabler recently wrote an op-ed in the LATimes titled "The Movie Magic is Gone." Kristin Thompson finds seven points in Gabler's article and states her case against each.

Another film shot mostly digitally: Zodiac was shot uncompressed with the Viper FilmStream camera in 4:4:4 1920x1080/24p. Here's a thread on cinematography.com discussing the look of the film. Here's the product page for the Viper, and here's an American Cinematographer article in which Paul Cameron discusses his experimentation with the Viper in shooting Collateral.

Right now, the HD video camera receiving the most use at our school is the Panasonic HVX200. The unreleased HD video camera with the most buzz right now is the Red One. Side project of Oakley founder Jim Jannard, the Red One looks more like some powerful weapon from some first person shooter than a video camera. Here's a gallery of video footage shot with the Red One, and here's one massive 4K frame capture down-converted to 8-bit JPG. The big buzz around this camera is its sensor size: 24.4mm x 13.7mm (Super35mm). The camera is intended to offer the same depth of field as 35mm Cine Lenses instead of the higher depth of field that characterizes most video. The Red One will retail for $17,500.

A working editor weighs in on Avid vs. Apple, having recently switched from Avid Media Composer to Apple's Final Cut Pro. I've tinkered with Media Composer but am more familiar with Final Cut Pro. I like some things about Media Composer better, and it is still more the industry standard for big motion pictures, but Final Cut Pro just has more momentum and resources behind it. Most film students can't afford an Avid system and are taught to edit on Final Cut Pro systems. I think Avid needs to make a stronger push to make inroads with the next generation of film editors.

Technorati Tags: Apple, business, camcorder, editing, film, filmmaking, finalcutpro, fitness, gadgets, hd, ipod, movies, phone, avid, running, sports, tech, video

The sound of one hand shooting

Seeing highlights of Gilbert Arenas shooting 3-pointers one-handed in the 3-point competition reminded me that he recently won $20,000 from teammate Deshawn Stevenson in practice doing something similar. Arenas shot 100 one-handed college 3-pointers, and Stevenson shot 100 NBA 3-pointers using both hands. Arenas made 73 out of 100, Stevenson made 68 with 5 balls left, then missed and left the court, $20K lighter. What's fun is watching Arenas trying to distract Stevenson while he shoots, then watching Arenas roll around in joy after Stevenson's last miss.

Shooting college 3-pointers with one hand is pretty impressive. Shooting NBA 3-pointers one-handed is sick. Arenas also has two sweet nicknames, Agent Zero and The Hibachi.

For more material that's more impressive than what was actually seen NBA All-Star weekend, here's footage of Dwight Howard prepping for the Slam Dunk contest. If he'd made round 2, he would have performed a kiss the rim dunk. Instead we got to see Nate Robinson miss five hundred dunks in a row for two minutes again.

Technorati Tags: nba, basketball, sports, video

2-Double-0-Seven

In this week's New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell examines the difference between a puzzle and a mystery and argues that Enron's business model and much of what U.S. foreign intelligence face today are more mystery than puzzle. To solve a puzzle, you simply need more information, but more information may only add complexity to a mystery.

Also in this week's New Yorker (a good one), David Denby does a diagnostic of Hollywood, the state of the business. The article makes mention, at the end. of the ArcLight, perhaps the nicest multiplex in the country, at least in terms of sight and sound.

Most sports fans already saw the highlights, but for the few who didn't, Boise State won the Fiesta Bowl using, among other trick plays, a Hook-and-Ladder and a Statue of Liberty play. Here's another angle which also includes the following: after scoring the game-winning 2-pt conversion, Ian Johnson ran over and proposed to his girlfriend, a cheerleader. He converted that one, too. Just an unbelievable game, maybe the most entertaining college football game I've ever seen. Here's a compilation clip of all of the 4th quarter and OT highlights. (Sorry about the clip quality--YouTube and its Flash video is really suboptimal for sports clips; let's hope that by the end of 2007 there's a high quality video streaming site for sports highlights).

The Apple menu command key comes from a Swedish symbol used to indicate interesting attractions in campgrounds.

How do you like your coffee? With a mushroom cloud drop of milk, please. Cool photo.

100 things we didn't know last year. "In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win."

I'm not usually one to make New Year's resolutions, and after being named Time's Person of the Year in 2006, I'm facing some brutal year over year comps, but one goal I have for 2007 is to be carbon neutral. It was easy to do while in NYC, when I took public transportation everywhere, but it will be a challenge in LA. There are a variety of Carbon Calculators on the web if you want to participate. It has been so warm in NYC this holiday break. Pieces of arctic ice shelf are breaking off or just plain melting. It feels to me as if the impacts of global warming will descend upon us quickly, perhaps not as quickly as this, but quickly enough that it's perhaps already too late for us to act. One way to start is by purchasing compact fluorescent bulbs to replace the incandescents you likely have in your household. I don't love the light of compact fluorescents, but I'm going to try living with it.

Technorati Tags: apple, design, environment, football, gladwell, globalwarming, photography, green, sports

Is there a one syllable name athlete?

Funny but also debate-provoking bit from this Football Outsiders NFL article:

The greatest athletes of all time by number of syllables in their name: Two syllables: Babe Ruth. Three: Wayne Gretzky. Four: Michael Jordan. Five: Muhammad Ali. Six: Roberto Clemente. Seven: LaDainian Tomlinson. Eight: Martina Navratilova. Nine: Chris Fu'umatu-Ma'afala or somebody.

Technorati Tags: athletes, bestof, football, list, NFL, sports

Sundry

At Broad Nightlight is a small collection of nighttime photos of Berlin, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. What's peculiar about these is how few people are visible.

The upcoming issue of Wholphin will contain Alexander Payne's film school thesis, The Passion of Martin.

10 innovative ad campaigns in Tokyo train stations.

The Amazon plog for the book How Lance Does It contains some interesting points. In one post, author Brad Kearns quotes Dr. Glen Gaesser on how to identify the most talented athletes. Said Glaesser, "Go to a race and stand at the finish line. Then...see who crosses the line first. There is the most talented athlete." Kearns also writes a passionate post defending Lance Armstrong: Why Lance is Clean. But my favorite quote is about Lance's successful approach, and it's on the back cover. "Lance hates losing, but is not afraid of it." That sums up a lot of all-time greats in many sports (remember the Jordan Nike ad "Failure").

A man sold everything he owned, took the cash, and bet it all on one spin of roulette in Las Vegas. This is what happened.

It doesn't appear that this chair is available for purchase yet, but already I want one.

An interview with Eiko Tanaka of Studio4°C, the company in charge of adapting Taiyo Matsumoto's classic manga Tekkon Kinkreet into an animated feature.

Technorati Tags: advertising, animation, anime, Berlin, film, film school, filmmaking, gambling, gaming, goods, HongKong, Lance, manga, movies, photography, products, psychology, marketing, sports, Tokyo, travel

Elevate Your Game

I'm not a huge fan of the Lebrons Nike commercials. I don't really understand them. But this new commercial (another link here) for the Jordan Melo M3 shoe? That I like. Notice the clock at the end: 2.4 seconds left. The shoe releases Nov. 24. Jordan wore 23 (and yeah, Kobe wears 24 now, but...well). The commercial screams Wieden + Kennedy and recalls classic Jordan Nike commercials like the classic one for the Jordan XXI.

Not surprisingly, Melo is part of Brand Jordan.

Technorati Tags: ad, basketball, carmeloanthony, commercial, nike, hoops, shoe, sneakers

Da beers

My dad stayed over last night because he had a morning flight out of LAX today. He wanted to see the Bears game, and since f****** DirecTV is incompetent, I'm still without any television programming. So I took him to Over/Under, the closest sports bar that Dave and I have been able to locate near our apartment.

Neither my dad nor I have seen a single Bears game this season. Going to see a game with him brought me back to my childhood. My dad became a sports fan in the early 80's, when he and I followed the Cubs, and we became Bears fans in 84, a year before they became Super Bowl champs. It's still one of those pieces of Americana which we can bond over, and that's one of the reasons I took him to a dive of a sports bar, the first time I've ever taken him to one, and probably the first time he's ever set foot in one.

Being with my dad must have accentuated my youth, because I was carded there for the first time. My dad asked how this all worked.

"Do we have to buy a beer?"

"Yeah, we probably should," I replied. He ordered a Bud Light, and I ordered a Red Hook. After a few sips of his Bud Light, I asked if he wanted to try a different beer.

"No," he said, "I can't really drink. After just this little bit, I already feel a bit..." [he pointed at his head and drew a few circles in the air]. That's the thing about me versus my dad. Relative to him, I'm always going to be an idiot (I can't decipher a single line of his PhD thesis) and a drunkard.

By the time we sat down, the Bears were already down 7-0. Several Cardinals fans (or they may have just been general underdog supporters) crowded the bar.

First half of Bears football I saw all season, and wouldn't you know it, they played their worst half of the year. The difference between football and baseball, for example, is that a football box score can be much more deceptive than a baseball box score. I can generally envision how a baseball game unfolded by the box score, what with its series of discrete confrontations between batter and pitcher/defense, but a football box score can only summarize with very broad brush strokes the quality of a game.

Some things I saw in the first half reminded me of the nightmare that was the last Bears game I watched, the loss to Carolina in the playoffs last year. Rex Grossman still makes terrible risk/reward decisions when under pressure. He just plain wilts and throws terrible passes and interceptions. The Bears offensive line is just average. I suspect one main reason the Bears haven't run the ball all that well this year is that their O-line is not as good as it was last year. They also let the Cardinals' ends through with regularity, leading directly to the two Grossman fumbles.

Lastly, and this still haunts me from that playoff game against the Panthers, the Bears defense doesn't seem to be able to adjust mid-game when the opposing team uncovers a hole in its Cover-2. Last year it was Steve Smith continuing to beat the Bears all game because he was either single-covered or the over the top help was soft. The next game, the Seahawks double or triple-covered Smith all game and contained the Panthers offense. In this game, the Cardinals receivers kept running to seams in the zone defense and sitting there, giving Leinart stationary targets to hit. It happened all half, and the Bears defense would not change. It drove me nuts.

At halftime, I left for my evening class, and my dad, disgusted, went back to my apartment. Of course, the Bears came back and won, and my dad and I missed it all. But we shared a beer together, happy hour pricing, and so the night wasn't a total loss.

The game

The trials and tribulations of the independent filmmaker. Everyone works with constraints in filmmaking. It's part of the process. But it's no fun to cling to your principles if it means you're too poor to feed your children (in this case, your movies). I'm hard pressed to think of another group of artists more beat up for selling out than filmmakers, but often they have no choice if they ever want to pay the bills and finance their own projects, the ones they really want to bring to life.

It's tough to face down Tiger head to head, even if it is in videogame golf (as Bill Simmons found out).

Da...

Oh, we Bears fans are feeling pretty good right now, but a true Chicago sports fan knows to be suspicious of such optimism so early in a season.

But I feel good enough to revive one of my favorite Onion articles: "'85 Chicago Bears Return to Studio: Shufflin' Crew begins work on long-awaited follow-up album."

Monday

David Remnick profile of post-presidency Bill Clinton in The New Yorker. Clinton is by far the most fascinating president of my lifetime.

UPDATE: Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Clinton's now legendary interview on Fox.

***

Drool. Drool.

***

I've always wondered why the sun made me sneeze, and now I know; photic sneeze reflex.

The condition occurs in 17% to 25% of humans with more common occurrence in Caucasians than other human races. The condition is passed along genetically as an autosomal dominant trait.

***

The September 2006 Stanford Book Salon selection was Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. It's one of my favorites, and the homepage for the Salon (an online book club) has a transcript of an introduction by Nancy Packer as well as links to a reading group guide to the novel and an interview with Wallace Stegner.

***

The Madden cover jinx strikes again. Spooky how consistently it works its evil eye. Fantasy football players were warned not to pick Alexander with their first round pick this year, and the non-superstitious who ignored the advice are now left scrambling to pick up Maurice Morris.

Ray Lewis is perhaps the only player who avoided the curse when he appeared on the 2005 cover, but since he plays on defense he only affected the small portion of fantasy football players who draft individual defensive players.

There is one logical reason why the curse might exist, and that is simply because a player who is featured on the cover is likely coming off a career year, and most players regress after such seasons. Still, many of the regressions were caused by severe injuries...somewhere the ghost of John Madden is screaming, "Boom!" as he sticks a pin in a Shaun Alexander voodoo doll.

A perfect 99

With videogames having shot to the forefront of pop culture, the annual release of the Madden NFL Player Ratings is almost as momentous an occasion as their actual performance on the field. Players check their virtual ratings with as or more critical an eye as they do the fine print on their contracts. This year, seven players achieved the perfect overall rating of 99:

• Champ Bailey
• Antonio Gates
• Walter Jones
• Shane Lechler
• Peyton Manning
• Lorenzo Neal
• Ed Reed

Whoooa Nellie, can't wait to line up to punt with Shane Lechler, I will bring the rain.

Pretty and beautiful

Maria Sharapova feels pretty. I feel she's pretty pretty, too.

David Foster Wallace pens a love letter to Roger Federer in NYTimes Play Magazine (yes, there are DFW's trademark footnotes, in this case displayed in pop-up windows, and footnotes to the footnotes, displayed below the respective footnotes in the pop-up window).

Also in Play Magazine, an interview with Martina Hingis. Most players are not very astute analysts of their sport (or rather, they can't eloquently express themselves when dissecting other players and the sport), but Hingis is an exception.

Debris

The holy grail of video game graphics is ray tracing, and it may not be more than a few years off.

Michael Moore is working on a documentary called Sicko about the American health care crisis, but he's running into a problem. Every time he appears on scene to film a family's struggle against health care injustice, the family is suddenly given health care. It's Moore's version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

David Wain is shooting The Ten, a series of ten stories, one for each of the ten commandments. The cast includes Jessica Alba, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Bradley Cooper, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Liev Schreiber, and Ron Silver, among others. Wain is probably most known for directing Wet Hot American Summer, so expect a remake of The Decalogue. If Wain needs to reduce his cast for budget reasons, it's not a stretch to think of a way for Jessica Alba to cause me to violate all ten commandments.

The sequel to Signs: Mel Gibson's Signs (of Anti-Semitism). It's tough not to think of this whole Mel Gibson debacle and think "Apocalypto."

Wondering who to pick as your fantasy football kicker? Neil Rackers. (YouTube clip, reminiscent of the Ronaldinho commercial).

Perhaps she is the Mark Fidrych of blondes, who burned too brightly, too soon, only to fizzle out at 25.

Swiiiiiiing, golfa

Ken sent me a link to this Nike swing portrait for Tiger Woods. They shot this with the Phantom v5 military-grade digital camera, capable of capturing up to 4000 frames per second. By "they" I mean Academy Award winner and frequent Steve Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski, one of my favorite cinematographers.

Ken was in awe of how still Tiger holds his head. At the center of his vicious vortex of a swing, his head is the eye of the hurricane, completely at peace. I love how wide and perfect his swing arc is. The arc traced by the head of Tiger's driver is the modern version of the Vitruvian Man. From the camera in front, you can see the tee jump up in the air and twirl like helicopter blades captured in slow motion.

He's competitive as hell, but more than that, his swing is fundamentally sound.

Game theory and penalty kicks

Fresh off a World Cup Final decided by penalty kicks, here are a couple economic articles on game theory and penalty kicks. Because of the setup for penalty kicks, the goalkeeper has to guess which way the striker will kick the ball. Tim Harford writes about the application of Morgenstern and von Neumann's game theory to this problem and cites a study by an economist at Brown that found that individual strikers and keepers were acting according to game theory:

Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, an economist at Brown University, found that individual strikers and keepers were, in fact, master strategists. Out of 42 top players that Palacios-Huerta studied, only three departed from game theory recommendations. Professionals such as the Brazilian Rivaldo and Italy’s goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon are apparently superb economists: their strategies are absolutely unpredictable and, as the theory demands, they are equally successful no matter what they do, indicating that they have found the perfect balance between the different options.

At a book signing about a month ago, Steven Levitt cited similar research that he'd just completed. He and some colleagues published a paper (PDF) studying predictions of game theory using data on penalty kicks in football and discovered that football players were acting close to the theoretical ideal. The one exception, they found, was that players were not kicking it up the middle as often as they should, perhaps because of the embarrassment that might result from a failed kick if the keeper doesn't dive to one side or the other.

The header from the footer

The Daily Mail hires a lipreader to decipher what Materazzi said to Zidane to provoke the header heard round the world. It turns out Materazzi called Zidane the equivalent of n***** and then said "we all know you are the son of a terrorist whore." And then, "So just f*** off." Given Zidane's Algerian background and quick temper, the headbutt is not at all shocking. I'm none too fond of Materazzi; he's a well-known punk. Still, I think if you're Zidane, you hold off on retaliation until after the game. Then, at the exchange of handshakes, you pull Materazzi's jersey over his head and then pound his face into the turf. It's not like this is the first time someone has used truly offensive trash talk to take another team's best player out of the game. If they miked more players in sporting events, people would be shocked at the type of things you hear on the playing field. [from Kottke]

In New York Magazine this week, a quick and dirty guide to happiness, with lots drawn from Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, which I've just about finished. Among the tips of interest:

• Those who seize the first option that meets their standards (which don’t have to be low, just defined) are happier than those who insist on finding the perfect solution.
• Don’t go to law school. Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions.
• Send the kids off to day care, summer camp, and boarding school. On a day-to-day basis, caring for children creates roughly the same level of satisfaction as washing the dishes.
• Take the local, and don’t wait for the express. Inaction gnaws away at the mind relentlessly.
• Order from the same takeout menu every time (as long as you're not ordering takeout every night of the week). Variety is the spice of life only for heavily repeated experiences.
• Take advantage of your exercise machine’s “cooldown period,” because adding a slightly less grueling epilogue to a grueling but valuable experience—like a workout—makes you more willing to repeat it in the future.

Bubblesnaps, a quick and dirty way to add speech or thought bubbles to your pics.

For Mac users, a way to play Quicktime videos in full screen without paying for Quicktime Pro.

An interesting dialogue at Slate between Jason Furman and Barbara Ehrenreich on the merits of Wal-Mart for the American working class. Decision goes to Furman, I think, though it's a bit of a mismatch as Ehrenreich acknowledges.

Ninja lessons [from Thrillist]

From Skype, for its US and Canadian users, 3 weekends of free SkypeOut calls to the UK, Mexico, and Japan.

Some nifty covers for download.

A more secure shoelace knot. I use another method that may be equivalent. I don't make two loops to tie my shoelaces. I make one loop and then tie the second lace around it once before pulling the second lace through to form the second loop. If I just swing the second lace around my thumb twice instead of once before pulling the second lace through, the knot never seems to come undone.

Parallels for Desktop for Mac is $49.99 through July 15, then its price goes up to $79.99. ArsTechnica gave it a positive review.

42, of course

Stephen Hawking asks Yahoo Answers: How can the human race survive the next hundred years? Sounds more interesting than it actually was. That's not really the type of question you toss out to the Internet. Maybe he just wanted a good laugh. For his next question, he should post some absurdly difficult quantum physics problem.

According to this Microsoft Labs adCenter predictive tech, my website should appeal primarily to <18 year olds, with the next largest demographic being 18-24 year olds. Having seen these results, you can expect increased coverage of Ashlee Simpson, Lindsey Lohan, and NSync here.

Useful guidelines for placement of punctuation vis-a-vis inverted commas, one of those grammar issues that always bedevils me.
UPDATE: Jenny was quite distraught that I'd consult the Brits for grammar. We Americans have our own rules for these situations.

I'm watching the World Cup final right now, but during halftime, I watched some Zidane videos on YouTube to maintain the mood. Smooth.
UPDATE: Hmm, I wonder if Zidane's OT headbutt will make it into any of these videos. Oh, those hot-tempered Frenchmen. Live by Zidane, die by Zidane.

Au revoir

Watching World Cup reminded me of this Nike soccer commercial from back in the day. Another winner from Wieden and Kennedy.

"Au revoir."

For those people who have been in a cave and haven't seen them, here's that current Nike commercial with Ronaldinho, the football equivalent of Tiger Woods bouncing the golf ball on his sand wedge:

And Ronaldo's response:

Swimmin' with Dylan

Download the instrumental version of "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, as well as "Nel Cimitero di Tucson," the spaghetti western track Danger Mouse sampled for Crazy. Something to tide us over while we wait for Paris Hilton's cover.

True height measures the effective height of a basketball player. Good news! Tyrus Thomas measures out as nearly a 7-footer in true height. I'm pumped up for the Bulls upcoming season, though it will still be ugly on offense.

Shina Tsukamoto's horror film novella Haze on Region 2 DVD.

Soundtrack.net has a sneak preview of James Newton Howard's score for Lady in the Water. Oddly enough, the soundtrack includes a bunch of Bob Dylan covers.

Wired Magazine has a profile of banned Tour de France technology. Most are just bikes that fall under the UCI minimum weight limit, though, and for a recreational cyclist that's nothing to get excited about. A few ounces here or there isn't going to turn the average club cyclist into a champ, and trying to descend a long, steep mountain on a featherweight bike is terrifying.

A long-standing conspiracy theory holds that the moon landing was staged, perhaps by Stanley Kubrick. The moon hoax is so popular that NASA had to address it.

Our entire future lies behind us

World Hum's list of the top 30 travel books. I always try and read a book about the area I'm traveling to, or a book by an author from that region, but I've only read the Bryson and Twain off of this list (Bryson's next book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, releases Oct. 17). The obvious cure, of course, is to pull out the passport and head back out into the world.

***

Speaking of travel books: download the 2000 through 2006 editions of the CIA World Factbook and Factbook on Intelligence for free as PDFs. Very cool reference.

***

Aymaran people of the High Andes think of the future as behind them, the past ahead of them, different than most everyone else, perhaps because of differences in their language. I have a conceptual metaphor for time as well. My mental map of the years looks something like this:

It's a bit more involved than that (if you imagine it as a flat board, the right side of the board is actually pushed further away from me so that the entire board is at an angle), but that's the best 2-d representation I can come up with. 1974 is the start b/c that's the year I was born. When I think of sports events of importance to me, I think of them as falling on this spatial representation of my life. 1984, Cubs lose in NLCS to the Padres. 1985, Bears win the Super Bowl. 1991, the Bulls win their first championship.

When I think of an individual year, my spatial representation is a vertical one, with January at the top, December at the bottom, the days of each week running horizontally, from Sunday at the far left to Saturday at the far right, one week above the next. I suspect this arises from the idea of a wall calendar whose pages are torn out and affixed to the wall, one month above the next.

When I think of 24 hours, my mental image is of a 12 hour circular clock, like an analog watch, with 12:00 at the top. The same with a minute, it's a circle with 0 and 60 seconds falling at the top.

***

Flickr still maintains a 20MB per month upload limit for its freeloading customers. Having just returned from a wedding, I had set up a Flickr group for everyone to use to compile photos for the bride and groom, but then the groom pointed out that the service is all but useless to people without pro accounts because they can only upload a few pics. Flickr needs to raise the upload bandwidth for non-paying customers.

Their pricing seems to be based in a world where printing was not possible. They should up the bandwidth limit but offer cheaper printing prices and longer storage of photos for Pro members. You want to hook people by getting them to upload pics, then convert them to paying customers by giving them strong incentives to stick around.

***

Is football (soccer) boring? I used to think so, but I'm coming around this World Cup (from the television ratings, it appears I'm not alone). I don't have the appreciation for the sport that an actual player has, but my love of cycling has opened my mind to sports that are usually described as appealing only to practitioners. A few things appeal to me. The sheer athleticism and coordination of some of the players is stunning, like watching Reggie Bush in the open field, but if he had to dribble a football. The format of World Cup once it moves into single elimination raises the stakes. Every goal that is scored seems a miracle, and many seem gorgeous in their angles and athletic execution. And the Brazilian female fans? Yet another justification for high definition television.

The global appeal of the World Cup leads to some great gatherings to watch matches. In Beijing last Saturday, as Jed and I were strolling down a dark street after the wedding, we came upon a group of Chinese twenty-somethings gathered around the blue-white glow of a television on the patio of a cafe. They had beers in hand and we were screaming with delight at every twist and turn. If I could have felt my feet, I am certain that I could have joined this group of strangers and been sharing Yanjing beers with them in no time. In 1994 I attended one World Cup match at Stanford Stadium, Brazil - Russia, and from start to finish it was one of most raucous sporting events I've ever been to. I spent almost the whole match jumping around, trying to learn some Brazilian chants and songs.

Still a few things about the sport put me off. Watching two subpar teams battle to a scoreless tie, the ball turned over time and time again, holds about as much appeal as watching professional darts. The theatricality involved in diving is just absurd; they should make players who dive exchange their soccer shorts for skirts for the next match. And using penalty kicks to determine winners in matches that are scoreless through overtime seems a poor method for determining the superior team.

I've often heard that he U.S. loses its best athletes to sports like basketball and football. I'm curious to see some athletic profiles of the best football (soccer) players. How tall and heavy are they, and what are their times in the 40? Vertical leaps? Strength? What types of American athletes would fare best if converted?

***

Please, please, let it end.

Da Da Da

When they come out with that list of 10 worst jobs next year, I think being a defense lawyer for Saddam Hussein has to make the cut.

Why do U.S. doctors continue to misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20% of the time? Perhaps because the current medical system offers no incentives to improve.

A deadly flu from Asia strikes America. There is no cure, and if you catch it, and you have a 10% chance of dying. If you take a vaccine, it will protect you, but there' s a 5% chance the vaccine will kill you. What do you do? The correct answer is to take the vaccine, of course, but patients choose correctly more often if choosing for someone else than for themselves. Not entirely surprising. It's tough to think big picture when you're smack dab in the frame.
UPDATE: Sorry, as one of my readers John points out, I should have said you have a 10% chance of dying. That's not conditional on catching the flu or not. Otherwise you'd need to know what the chances of catching the flu are.

Using similarity scores, Richard Lu rates the NBA prospects coming out from the NCAA this year. At the top of the list? Ronnie Brewer. LaMarcus Aldridge ranked 6, Brandon Roy 8, and Tyrus Thomas 11. Overall, the similarity scores confirm what most people have said, that this is a weak draft.

Yes, Dan Brown is a terrible writer. But one popular indictment of his mega-bestseller is unfair. Referring to Leonardo as "da Vinci" in the title is not the same as referring to Jesus as "of Nazareth" (as explained here by Geoff Nunberg of The Language Log). You don't need a linguistics PhD to know this, though. People refer to me as "da man" all the time, and I'm totally cool with that.

The top 10 ultimate grills. At number one on the list is the gorgeous specimen pictured below:

This backyard set from Lynx Professional Grills has a 42" grill with access doors, double burner, storage drawers, warming drawer, beverage area with outdoor refrigerator, ice machine, and cocktail pro (a bar area with sink and faucet).

A few sports notes

Wait for it, wait for it....boom. The officiating in the NBA is atrocious (that play in OT of Game 5, with Dwayne Wade running around against the entire Dallas team and drawing a foul with 1.9 seconds left was like something from a local pickup game, when the one guy everyone knows is a ballhog misses badly and bails himself out by calling a foul), but I confess to taking some perverse pleasure in seeing Mark Cuban blow his stack. Anyone who could sell a company like Broadcast.com for a billion dollars has more than a lifetime of karmic surplus to work off.

Of course, having said that, I'd rejoice to high heaven if Mark Cuban bought the Cubs, because he'd hire some smart people to run the team. You can absolutely tell that he cares about a winning team, and as a fan you can't ask for much more than that. The current Cubs team is one of the worst I've seen. I can't even read the boxscores anymore, it's so depressing.

***

Lost in translation:

Ukraine 7-footer Kyrylo Fesenko was asked by Bucks assistant Brian James in a drill to "come off a screen and put the ball on the floor." So Fesenko, 19, did and just laid the ball down and left it there. "The coaches just looked at one another," James said. "He did do exactly what I told him. But then I said, `You must dribble.' "

***

A lot of columnists have written that baseball is unfairly beaten up over the steroids issue b/c they have more stringent testing than football or basketball. That's irrelevant even if true. By that measure, cycling is unfairly beaten up because they have even stricter testing than baseball. As your mother always said when you pointed to other kids as counter examples, "Oh, so if they ate poo..."

The economic success of baseball is dependent to some degree on the uncertainty that arises from competition between teams operating on a credible level playing field (yes, there's some economic imbalance, but it's been around since the beginning of the sport and hasn't deterred the fans from coming out).

Steroids may or may not alter the competitive balance among players and teams, but the perception is that they do. My impression is that the average baseball fan finds the idea of steroid use morally repugnant, and all the arguments to the contrary--for example, (1) steroids are not proven to improve a players performance, (2) things like Lasik surgery are also enhancements, and no one protests those, (3) cheating has been around in baseball forever--are in vain.

I know certain analysts profess an ability to look at the performances of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, and their ilk with complete objectivity, but I myself fund that the luster of their accomplishments has been coated with a surface of grime, whether that's fair or not.

Mixed nuts

"Happy Mornings" is a commercial for Folgers, though it's difficult to see how.

The winner of Bruce Schneier's Movie-Plot Threat Contest involves the destruction of Grand Coulee Dam, triggering a chain reaction that knocks out the rest of the dams on the Columbia River and leaves the West Coast without power for months, taking down the U.S. economy in the process.

Well, if the terrorists do go after Hoover Dam, perhaps our best hope is to send in the Transformers, who are already doing work at Hoover Dam. On that note, is this test footage of Optimus Prime from the new Transformers movie?

As for terrorist plots, the one that's scaring New Yorkers right now is the aborted plot to gas NY subways (as described by Ron Suskind in his new book The One Percent Doctrine, excerpted in the latest issue of Time).

Not new, but still cool music video: man juggles in time to Fatboy Slim's "That Old Pair of Jeans" (thx Ken). That's one of the two new tracks on Fatboy Slim's greatest hits album Why Try Harder, releasing tomorrow.

The new Apple "I'm a Mac" ads are clever and funny. But are they all that effective in moving Windows users over to Macs, or do they just preach to the converted? I'm with Stevenson, I think it's the latter.

Raising children doesn't make one happy. In fact, when children finally leave the next, parents experience an uptick in happiness. So writes Daniel Gilbert in an essay for Time. But, he notes, that capacity for humans to sacrifice for the good of their children is why we have holidays like Father's Day. At his weblog, Gilbert includes footnotes for those interested in delving more deeply into the research cited. Gilbert is the author of Stumbling on Happiness, a fascinating book I've just started reading this past week.

At Winged Foot this weekend, a score of 5 over par won the U.S. Open. That's not entirely surprising as the U.S. Open always has the toughest setup of the four golf majors. As long as the course is equally tough for everyone, the final score relative to par doesn't matter. But Matthew Rudy of GolfDigest.com feels this year's setup rewarded robotic play, with little decision-making required, and punished the world's true best players. Ron Sirak of Golf World disagrees.

Google Browser Stync

Bill Gates to transition out of full-time role at Microsoft in July 2008.

Google Browser Sync--umm, not show ready. It disabled my SessionSaver add-on, and now I lose my tabs whenever I close out of Firefox. I thought Google Browser Sync was supposed to preserve your browser tabs, but it just plain doesn't work. Sometimes it asks me if I want to reopen some tabs from my previous session, but they're never the tabs I had open when I closed out of Firefox. I was excited when I first heard about Google Browser Sync, but after a few days of use, I'm going to remove it. There was a time when every Google release was a pleasant surprise, but the bar has been lowered.

And speaking of tab preservation, why isn't that functionality just built into Firefox and Safari?

Superman Returns tix are available online now from sites like Fandango. I recommend seeing it in IMAX 3D, if there's such a theater near you.

No whammy indeed.

An estimated 16% of FEMA funds for Hurricane Katrina victims was misspent. Con men used false identities to obtain assistance checks to spend on anything from sex-change operations, Girls Gone Wild videos, vacations, and season tickets to the New Orleans Saints. Yes, some of that FEMA money went to waste. I'm referring, of course, to the person who purchased the Saints' season tickets.

In tribute of Father's Day, Nike is airing a commercial Sunday featuring Tiger Woods and his father. You can watch it online now.

Be careful when you get a haircut during World Cup. I was a barber shop getting a haircut when Peter Crouch scored for England today, and the guy cutting my hair was so excited he nearly gave me the Michael Madsen Reservoir Dogs special with his clippers.

Every time I see Dwayne Wade go by a defender to finish at the hoop, I wonder what Michael Jordan would have done in this "no hand check" era. Goodness gracious.

Can't Mark Cuban hire a copy editor for his blog? Isn't he a billionaire?

This modern art anecdote reminds me of the piece of modern art that was thrown out by the janitor at a museum because he thought it was trash. The artist couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.

Nike + iPod

The Nike + iPod Sport Kit is available for pre-order for $29 and works with iPod Nanos. The website says you have to own or purchase a pair of Nike+ shoes, and Nike's just don't fit my flat, wide feet. They're made for people with skinny feet and normal to high arches. But since the only distinguishing feature of the Nike+ shoes seems to be a pocket under the insole to hold the wireless sensor, it certainly seems possible to hack another pair of running shoes to hold the sensor. I'll need to study a pair of these Nike+ shoes to see what's so special about the sub-insole notch.

Nicole is blowing up

Last year, I caught some of her U.S. Open matches on the outer courts (pics here, here, and here), even chatted with her after a mixed doubles win. That's not going to happen again.

Former Mariner top prospect Ryan Anderson, or the "Little Unit," is now in culinary school and wants to open a steak restaurant.

Drive-in Movies at the Rock (Rockefeller Center) return tonight through Friday evening. Tonight they're showing I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, followed by Air Guitar Nation tomorrow, Once In A Lifetime Thursday, and Kettle of Fish on Friday.

A super score returns

SoundtrackNet reviews the new Superman Returns soundtrack by John Ottoman and offers sample clips from each track. I don't have high expectations for the movie as a whole, but two aspects of it really excite me. One is that 20 minutes of the movie, mostly action sequences, will be shown in IMAX 3D. The other is hearing some of John Williams' classic Superman cues revived for the big screen.

Use Javascript to add sidenotes to your web page. Awesome. I'll have to implement this since I'm so parenthetical happy.

It's not always better to buy than rent. Chris offers this rule of thumb: For every $100 you spend in rent a month, you�d be better off buying up to $12,500 in property instead. Tim Harford discussed the rent vs. buy decision recently and noted that renting has many hidden benefits.

8 special edition new flavors of M&M's, all with cutesy puns for names like Eat, Drink, & Be Cherry or Orange-U-Glad. I'm a sucker for limited edition candies, but $49.99 for a tin?

The folks behind the book The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport apply their metrics to Michael Jordan and confirm the popular opinion: he was the best ever.

A couple links

Two products with cool design: this "blind date" calendar and this lumen tree.

"Nostalgia" by George Saunders.

Yesterday, Golf World's Masters Performance Index predicted a Vijay Singh win at the Masters. That prediction's sitting pretty today, but there's a whole lot of golf left.

Gospel of Judas found. Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?

Bush authorized Plamegate leak says Scooter Libby.

Vitamins and poison pills

Here are those snazzy opening titles from Thank You For Smoking.

***

Are vitamins really good for you? Well, I guess we can wait to see what happens to Ray Kurzweil. Most of the harmful effects of vitamins seem to arise in studies with high dosages. Should be interesting to see Barry Bonds and Kurzweil in about twenty years.

***

Once solely the domain of Corporate America, poison pills have come to the NFL. The Seahawks inserted a clause in their offer to Vikings receiver Nate Burleson that the contract would become guaranteed if he played five games in the state of Minnesota. So of course the Vikings did not match the offer, not that they would have even without the clause. I'd be surprised if these types of poison pills were allowed to stand. If you're allowed to make up random poison pills, then the entire concept of matching offer sheets is negated. You can make up anything to prevent a team from matching your offer.

***

Ryanair turns a profit by discounting plane tickets heavily and making up for that with fees for most every other flight amenity. It's difficult to ascertain exactly how the airlines turns its profit just from reading the article--it could be primarily a result of a low cost structure rather than gimmicky fees--but you can't argue with their results in a tough industry.

***

The most popular movie in South Korean history is King and the Clown, a movie inevitably compared to Brokeback Mountain for depicting a gay male relationship.

***

I would be remiss if I didn't record here that this was the first year that March Madness was streamed online, for free. This was a well-designed first effort, complete with a Boss Button, which would transform the streaming video window into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with one click.

***

The cost-of-living in NYC is so high, I don't feel quite as guilty as I otherwise would in using the local Barnes and Noble and Sephora as a personal library and medicine cabinet. I still do feel guilty, but on the other hand, there's something of the New York survivor spirit in the frugality of such tactics. I have no idea if those high-falutin moisturizers really reduce aging, shrink pores, and restore a youthful complexion, but $50 for an ounce is probably too high a price to find out with my hard-earned savings.

Yesterday I stopped in B&N to flip through John Dewan's The Fielding Bible, which I do have on order, though from Amazon.com. It attempts to bring defensive evaluations to another level by using data from Baseball Information Solutions.

Instead of just looking at statistics, Dewan and company used video of every batted ball the past several seasons and translated each into a vector composed of direction and velocity. Then they computed which of those balls should have have been turned into an out by a particular fielder. That provided each defensive player with an expected number of outs, and the main statistic in the book is how many plays each player made versus expectation, the plus/minus. The book includes some other statistics for each position to evaluate things such as fielding of bunts for corner infielders and throwing arm for outfielders (the only position not evaluated is catcher).

Some of the book's conclusions align with widely held assumptions. Ichiro is the best right fielder (though the trend is one of decline). Orlando Hudson is probably the best defensive 2B in the game. Manny Ramirez and Adam Dunn are atrocious in left. Torii Hunter is fantastic in CF.

Bill James contributes an entire chapter on Derek Jeter's defense, a much debated topic. After putting Jeter through several different defensive evaluation systems and watching video of Jeter's best and worst plays, James, a noted contrarian, concedes that Jeter's defense is indeed lousy (Adam Everett evaluates as the best shortstop three years running, and it isn't even close). Hey, Jeter counts among his ex-girlfriends Jessica Alba and Adriana Lima; please allow us this one grudging flaw in his game.

At any rate, it's a fun compilation of stats to pore over, the type of book to bring to a ballgame and use to incite heated debates between innings.

42

Lots of exciting finishes in March Madness this year, no doubt. Color me George Mason green and yellow. Just remember, Cinderella may wear a glass slipper, but you still should have her remove them at the door.

More on the Final Four: of the over 3 million entries in ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge, 4 people picked all four teams in the Final Four correctly. About 2/3 of entrants didn't pick a single one of the Final Four teams. I wonder how many of the 284 people who picked George Mason to win it all actually go to or went to the school.

Maybe 42 really is the answer to the secret of the universe?

The proper way to pour ketchup.

Everyone thanks those in our volunteer army who are fighting in Iraq, but if a draft were instituted, everyone would raise bloody hell. During times of peace, signing up for the military seems like a decent deal, but these days, the Army is missing its recruiting numbers despite lowering its standards and raising its cash bonuses. It's one of the ugly truths about the Iraq war: those who fight the war are the ones who don't have more attractive options. The issue is close to my heart because one of my editing class projects was Edet Beltzberg's upcoming documentary on army recruiting. Much of that footage was wrenching to watch.

Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, gives a karate chop to the throat of the current Administration for the war on Iraq. I'm almost done reading Inside Delta Force, his account of the founding of Delta Force and his years in service. The book is in the news now because David Mamet used it as inspiration for his new TV show "The Unit" on CBS. The book isn't quite as thrilling as I thought it would be, mainly because Haney can't reveal a lot of classified methods and anecdotes. As for the TV show, I'm not so sure all the actors are cut out to deliver Mamet-ese. I enjoy his dialogue much like I enjoy a bloody chunk of prime grade beef, but in the hands of the wrong cook, even the finest cut of beef can be turned into lunch room salisbury steak. Haney's dismissal of the effectiveness of torture is a damning indictment of the abuses at Abu Ghraib from a different perspective--torture doesn't gain effective intelligence, Jack Bauer notwithstanding.

This might be the coolest bath toy you could buy for your toddler. I wonder if human fear of snakes is innate or arises from reading the Bible or watching movies like Anaconda, a movie which mostly developed my fear of Jon Voight in a ponytail.

Movies from Sundance always seem to be trickling into theaters. Brick was one of the consensus group favorites of our Sundance crew two years ago, though I thought the conceit of setting a film noir in high school lost its novelty appeal by film's end, giving way to a somewhat unsatisfying potboiler ending. Still, it's a gas to hear high school kids spewing hard-boiled dialogue, and what better place to transfer the stock characters of film noir than high school, a time in our lives when most of us were trying on personas in a massive game of social fencing. As compared to most multiplex fare, Brick is joltingly fresh. The movie won the Originality of Vision award at Sundance, and that was the appropriate honor to bestow on that movie.

Thank You For Smoking is the latest of this year's Sundance babies to hit the big screen. Like Brick, the movie sprints out of the blocks with gorgeous opening credits and loses breath by the finish. No one wears sleaze better than Aaron Eckhart, though, and the movie shares his charming cynicism. Until Nick Naylor (Eckhart) loses his nerve, the movie is a pleasant smartass. Rob Lowe and Adam Brody as a CAA agent and his assistant had industry insiders at Sundance crying with laughter. For those who want Eckhart neat, instead of on the rocks, try In the Company of Men, in which he played one of the more memorable characters many people have never heard of.

David Bordwell wants more from contemporary film criticism. More than just opinions or insights, he wants to learn approximately true things about film. Something tells me the two movie blurbs above probably don't meet his standard.

James sent me a link to this amazing single hand of poker between Phil Ivey and Paul Jackson. Whereas many players hide behind sunglasses, Ivey eschews them in favor of his cold, piercing gaze, against which sunglasses might be the only defense against going blind.

Okay, smarty

Jeopardy is conducting online testing next Tuesday through Thursday, Mar 28-30. You have to meet the requirements and register, then you'll be assigned a time to log on to take the 50 question qualifier.

***

This online site allows you to opt out of all those credit card offers in the mail. Since even torn-up credit card applications aren't safe, this may save you the cost of buying a shredder.

As a reminder, you can also sign up online for the Do Not Call registry, and you can reduce your junk snail mail further by following advice from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

***

James turned me onto the most entertaining poker show on televsion, High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network. It's a cash game, minimum $100,000 buy-in, no limit hold'em. In a tournament, all anyone ever has at risk is there initial tourney stake, but in a cash game, every dollar you put in is your own. It's not as easy to bluff or call a bluff when every dollar in is one of your own dollars at risk. High stakes cash game players (esp. Barry Greenstein) scoff at some of their tourney player brethren who've become famous thanks to TV, and this game is their chance to prove, in front of the cameras, that a cash game NL Hold'em game is the toughest game around.

In the most recent episode, Phil Hellmuth's arrival was greeted with glee and derision (Negreanu shouted "Yum yum!"), and Hellmuth proceeded to lose his entire $100,000 buy-in in the three hands of his that were televised (though admittedly at least one was a tough hand to get away from). All around the table, the lack of respect for Hellmuth's game was palpable.

Players can use huge bricks of cash in lieu of chips. The use of cash adds a literal element of intimidation, and it's also an impressive visual gag for the cameras, seeing two 1 pound bricks of cash worth $50,000 each flying into the pot and bouncing across the felt. Several leggy-busty models called "sweaters" stand around in the background at all times, and amateurs who put up the $100,000 can buy in. Occasionally Lakers owner Jerry Buss makes an appearance, loses all his money, and disappears again.

Toss in former Welcome Back Kotter star Gape Kaplan as the TV analyst and you have a one for the TiVo.

***

The first ever electronic replay challenge in tennis. Since it's been around on television for years now, this isn't that exciting. On TV they seem to be able to bring up an electronic replay all the time, so I don't know why the chair judge just doesn't use it on any close shot.

Victoria

Portable cloaking technology finally a reality?

In search of the mythical pitch called the gyroball, a baseball thrown with the rotation of a football spiral, or a bullet, and nearly unhittable.

Beware the flirtatious IM stranger, especially if you're a college basketball player about to play a big game.

Fastest growing city on Earth: Chongqing. The two times I've been to China, I'm always amazed to travel through towns like Chongqing, that no one has ever heard of, all with populations larger than New York City.

...the planet's population is currently split almost right down the middle: 3.2 billion in the city, 3.2 billion in the countryside. But by the start of 2007, the balance will have tipped decisively away from the fields and towards the skyscrapers.

I predict more men will be asking for jalapenos on their Subway sandwiches.

Tree Hugger

Sony Playstation 3 to launch in November, 2006...this and more news from the PS3 conference. Blu-ray DVD playback, HDMI output, 60GB HDD, full backwards compatibility. No price announced, though.

Set up your Netflix account to default to HD-DVDs. Not sure why they haven't distinguished between HD and Blu-ray, since those are incompatible formats. Not a whole lot of titles on the docket, but you can sign up to be notified when the initial titles release at Amazon's HD DVD store or its Blu-ray DVD store.

Keepvid.com, for preserving those treasured videos from sites like Google Video, YouTube, Vimeo, and others of that ilk.

My sister had to mock up a fake videogame box cover for a class project. Her game was a satire of first person shooters, an eco-terrorism game called Tree Hugger. Yep, that guy who just tossed his empty soda can on the sidewalk is about to be lined up in the crosshairs. Severe? Perhaps. Similar policies in Singapore seem effective. I was taken aback mostly because this is my little sister we're talking about. Yes, we are one crazy family. You can click on the image for a larger view.

You might not be the only one betting on college basketball this week.

Tutorial on simulating tilt-shift photography using Photoshop. So much fun!

XXI

I agree, the new Wieden and Kennedy Air Jordan commercial for Nike is awesome. Gave me goosebumps and a curious watering in the eye. The move which most recalls Jordan for me is simply the kid with his hands on his knees, chomping on gum with the Jordan scowl.

Hoth 2014

The Chappelle Theory: "He knew that at the same time he was signing his record-setting deal, there was a secret cabal of powerful African-American leaders from the business, political, and entertainment industries working together to ensure that the third season of Chappelle's Show would never happen."

It's not too early to start campaigning for the Winter Olympics. Ice planet of Hoth, 2014!

FoxiPod uses Greasemonkey with Firefox to allow you to download MP3s directly into iTunes, something I'd been wishing I could do in Firefox for a long time. Safari dumps MP3s into iTunes already, but when doing so it initiates playback right away which can be disruptive.

Curling audio clip mash-up (MP3). Sure seemed like curling got a love of media love, even if in jest, this year.

Judith Harris first came to prominence for her groundbreaking book The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, which argued that a children's peers were far more influential on their personality development than their parents. Now Harris has written a new book, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, which updates and builds on her earlier work. I look forward to reading it.

Rakebreak.com

Rakebreak.com allows you to recover some of the rake you pay at many popular online poker playing sites. Many sites will cut Ratebreak.com in a chunk of the rake it takes from you. Then Rakebreak gives most of that back to you, keeping a bit for yourself. Refer friends, and if they accumulate $400 in rake, you get a $50 bonus. [via Thrillist]

What is Microsoft's Origami Project, which is being unveiled this Thursday? The most popular theory seems to be an "ultraportable lifestyle PC," a sort of jack-of-all-trades gadget that combines all your devices into one: digital camera, camcorder, cell phone, MP3 player, PDA, Internet access device, e-mail device, and portable picture display.

The Sony Portable Reader System (PRS-500) is up for sale at SonyStyle.com for $349.99. I'd want to experience the screen resolution of one of these babies in person before plunking down that much cash, but electronic readers do geek me up, and this is the most promising model yet. The first thing Sony needs to do, however, is give this baby a name. PRS-500 is not sexy at all. Hmmm, maybe something like Origami Project, if that's not already taken. [via Engadget]

In the Minnesota Timberwolves game last night, Kevin Garnett tossed a ball into the stands in frustration and hit a fan in the face. Garnett was ejected, and rightfully so (a young girl to his right, perhaps the man's daughter, burst into tears), but my eyes rolled at footage of the fan being wheeled out on a gurney by medical personnel. From being hit in the face by a basketball? A player with a $100 million contract hits you in the nose with a tossed ball, and television cameras all swing around to focus on you--that's the time to bust out your best Oscar performance and get a good lawyer on the phone. But I think the guy probably realized that even the U.S. legal system would have a hard time finding in his favor when you have grade school kids being nailed in the face by hard red rubber dodgeballs every day in P.E. On a positive note, I'm sure the guy will be happy with his parting gift, likely to be some signed paraphernalia by KG.

Hot rumor at the NFL Combine is that Vince Young scored a 6 out of 50 on the Wonderlic test, though the latest news is that the grader may have scored the test wrong, though his score wasn't much better. Wonderlic must have some good lawyers because I couldn't find a complete sample Wonderlic test online anywhere, though ESPN.com once published a sample 15 questions that everyone online is forced to cite when posting about the test. Supposedly, Matt Leinart scored a 35, and the average score for an NFL prospect is about 19. I've never seen any studies that demonstrate any correlation between Wonderlic score and NFL performance, though Young's score would make him the lowest scoring starting QB in the NFL. That score would likely hurt Young's draft stock, not necessarily because his test score means he's unable to grasp an NFL playbook but because like many standardized tests, it's a test of your willingness to study for a defined task. A score of 6 would indicate that Young's preparation for the Combine was spotty, at best. He knew it was coming. So the latest news is that Young retook the test and scored a 16, and that he'll take the test a third time.
[related: Pro Football Weekly published scores for lots of players from last year's NFL draft]
[update: I did manage to find a sample Wonderlic test online]

Whatever People Say I Am Thats What I Am Not

Google Pages is a free, online web page creation tool.

Whatever People Say I Am Thats What I Am Not, the mega-hyped new album from maybe the most hyped new band of the last year, released yesterday. The good news is the album is a whole lot of damn fun, and the hype is forgivable because the band allowed MP3s of their tunes to float around the Internet for a long time before they released their work. That helped to build the buzz and a fan base. Even before their CD released, they sold out a few concerts in NYC before most people could hit redial on their phone. It helps to be good, yes, but it also helps to realize how to feed the machine that is the Web hype monster with some choice cuts. Cheap, efficient marketing.

NYTimes food critic Frank Bruni reviews NYC's midtown Hooters in his new blog. "They may wear skimpy attire, but they have big hearts."

The Manhattan Trader Joe's could be opening in mid-March, ahead of schedule. Some localization will occur: Two-buck Chuck will be three-buck Chuck due to Manhattan inflation.

Tiger Woods annihilates his first opponent in The Accenture Match Play Championship, 9 & 8 (basically, Tiger won every hole of the match, nine in a row, with 7 birdies and 2 pars). Even I, with my terrible game, might have been able to eek out a tie on one hole on the front 9. Before the match, Ames had made a comment about Tiger's driving to the press, saying, "Anything can happen, especially where he's hitting the ball." After the match, when asked if he had any response to Ames' comments, Tiger responded, "9 & 8." Just this once, it would have been great if trash talking was allowed in golf. Every time Tiger sank a birdie putt, he could've turned to Ames and said, "How do you like where I hit that ball, you $*@#!?" Everyone knows if trash talking were allowed, Tiger would be even more dominant than he is. He'd be like Jordan, just cruel and relentless.

I forgot to point out yesterday that Sports Guy's latest column, summarizing his NBA All-Star Weekend trip, was awesome.

236 phrases/keywords censored by a Chinese blogging service. Among them:

• Set fires to force people to relocate
• Hire a killer to murder one's wife
• Fetus soup

Duck and dunk

Pop quiz on marriage, one that bursts some common myths.

If you're looking to buy one of the new MacBook Pros that comes out this week, a good place to go is Amazon.com. They're offering a $150 rebate if you buy by Feb 28. Add in the A9 Instant Reward, Free Super Saver Shipping, and no sales tax (for most of you), and that's a healthy financial incentive to buy from Amazon instead of elsewhere. Of course, the only problem is that it's not available yet, so you can't buy it. Buyers should keep an eye on the site this week to see if the Add to Shopping Cart button makes an appearance before Feb. 28.

Nate Robinson is a great athlete, and the Spud Webb hurdle dunk was a lot of fun. But how he won the dunkoff after missing something like 87 dunks in a row is a mystery greater than even the figure skating scoring rules. I guess it's no surprise the sponsor this year was Sprite. The NBA changed the rules this year so that misses don't count against you, which is a good idea to encourage players to try some truly difficult dunks. But c'mon. You have to put some cap on it; this was a scene straight out of Tin Cup. And anyhow, Andre Iguodala made a jump, catch, and dunk from behind the backboard! He jumped so high he hit his head on the backboard the first time and had to duck under it to actually make the dunk (you can see a sequence of photos of the Iguodala dunk here)!? Can we get a Dick Button call on that dunk? They should have a rule that if you make a dunk that's truly spectacular and groundbreaking, you can just win the contest right then and there, outright. Like when Vince Carter jumped from behind the backboard, did a 360 degree spin, windmilled and dunked with one hand. Or when Jason Richardson tossed the ball off the backboard, caught it in mid-air, put the ball through his legs, finished a NYTimes crossword, and dunked. The judge of whether a dunk qualifies for such an outright knockout win would be the number of NBA players on the sidelines who jump out of their seats with and start high-fiving and hugging and giggling and screaming like a band of high school cheerleaders. It should've been over when Iguodala ran off the court and out the tunnel.

Sweet dunk...

...but here's the dunk that should have ended the contest.

The other thing that amazes me about the All-Star game is watching how easily NBA pros can make the half court shot. In that competition with three player teams making a variety of shots around the court, it only took Tony Parker and Kobe Bryant one shot each to nail the half court shot, and it didn't take the other teams much longer to nail it. They should just have a new contest on All-Star weekend, the half-court shooting contest.

Pride goeth before

The Visa jinx continues at the Winter Olympics. Their three most prominent Olympic athletes have all come up short: Bode Miller, Michelle Kwan, and now Lindsey Jacobellis, who "pulled a hammy" in the snowboard cross finals yesterday. Visa is breathing a sigh of relief that they never aired their Dick Cheney quail hunting TV spot. Coca-Cola pulled its Michelle Kwan spots, but their big Winter Olympic athlete endorser Apolo Anton Ohno is still missing gold (as well as an l from his first name).

In her Visa commercial, "Nervous," Jacobellis's coach tries to quell her anxiety before the event. All his motivational talk fails to do the trick, until he says, "Imagine your Visa check card just got stolen." Leaving aside the goofiness of the entire Visa check card ad campaign, it's particularly cruel that Jacobellis wasn't nervous enough in the snowboard cross finals to pull out victory.

After the event, reporters tried to tactfully extract some remorse from Jacobellis, but she stuck to her story, for the most part. She said she'd been having problems with the jump and tried to use her method grab to stabilize. Because that was obviously not the case, even to the most uneducated of viewers, every one of her denials was as discomfiting to listen to as the crash was to watch. Was she trying to cover for herself, or had some higher ups on the U.S. Olympic team given her the lines to read in a PR cover-up?

If she'd broken down and cried, wished she could have that fateful jump back, no one would have blamed her. But she maintained a placid, almost stoic PR face, though she conceded later in the day that some showboating may have led her astray. When she appeared in the studio with Bob Costas, I cringed in anticipation of a withering series of questions, but Costas showed a welcome restraint. He asked once about the showboating, but applauded her for not ducking the press. After all, she's just twenty years old and comes from a sport where style and an attitude of rebellion is entwined with the birth of the sport. A bit of youthful exuberance in that situation is understandable, if not good judgment, and the shade of the medal around her neck and the continual replay of her gaffe for years and years to come is punishment enough.

Leaving aside Jacobellis's fall, snowboard cross is the coolest new Winter Olympic sport. It puts competitors on the same course at the same time, allows contact, and results in a clear winner, with no human judging of creativity or skill. Also, it results in lots of spectacular crashes. When ESPN shows highlights of hockey games or NASCAR races, they show two types of events. Goals or the winner crossing the finish line, and fights or crashes.

Crashes just might be the most important factor in drawing viewers. Why is figure skating the most popular Winter Olympic sport? Could it be because the winner is the only one who can remain upright? Would more people watch ski jumping if Eddie the Eagle were competing, with the potential of turning into a human fireball with every jump? Why is watching Bode Miller downhill ski so riveting? The promise of spectacular crash draws out the rubber-necker in all of us.

Snowboard cross is human NASCAR. In Jacobellis's final, one competitor lost control on a jump and had to be evacuated on a stretcher, all within the first thirty seconds. Another rider flew off the course through a fence and had to crawl up a hill to make it to the finish line for bronze. If she hadn't gotten up, I guess they would have had an extra bronze medal. The next time I'm out snowboarding, I hope to be able to race a few friends down a snowboard cross course. They should build some in addition to the terrain parks at many resorts, and they should put them near the bottom of the mountain to add some fun to the last run of the day.

I have a proposal for another new Winter Olympic sport, a twist on the biathlon: one guy skis down the mountain while several other skiers with machine guns chase him down. Some of the pursuers can even be on motorcycles with studded tires. The competing skier has guns of his own, one in each of his ski poles, and has to survive while navigating an obstacle course down the mountain. Winners are determined by a blend of a few things: survival, the number of pursuers he/she manages to gun down, and style points on jumps and rails and the such. Based on a few James Bond movies I've seen, I'd expect good things from the British team.

Back on the topic of Olympics sponsors, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Home Depot employs more Olympians than any other company. Every time the Olympics come around, Home Depot airs its ads touting its Olympian employees. Do Home Depot employees get a lot of time off to practice? Does Home Depot pay for their training? Is there a pool in the back office of every Home Depot? It's such a tease. I go to Home Depot expecting that when I ask for something off of a shelf high up, some Home Depot employee will sprint down the aisle with a long segment of PVC pipe, pole vault up towards the roof, grab my item, and then nail the landing with arms raised to the sky ("Wow, hey, I've got to shop here more often.").

By the way, NBC found its new hit comedy during the Winter Olympics, but unfortunately it ended tonight. Yes, My Name is Ice Dancing. I'd never watched this sport before, but yesterday after my nephew went to bed, we adults tuned in to ice dancing. A good time was had by all, especially with the return of the great Dick Button. He brings a real knowledge of the sport, without a doubt, but more importantly he brings a Bud Collins-esque panache and fervor and a brand of honesty rare in the sports commentating world.

When Button gets himself worked up, the results are spectacular.
"NOW THAT'S A TWIZZLE WITH SOME SIZZLE!"
"CAN YOU FEEL THE SEDUCTION! YOU CAN'T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF OF HER! HELLO WORLD, MY NAME IS ISOLDE!"
"YOU KNOW WHAT, TO THE HECK WITH THAT POINT!"
"THIS ROUTINE BORED ME TO TEARS! THERE MAY HAVE BEEN DANCING, BUT NOT ON THE BACK OF MY EYELIDS!"
[Note: I made these up, but like Hollywood biopics, they were inspired by a true story]

Add that to the facial expressions of the ice dancers as they "get into character," the indescribable costumes (why does every guy have to expose his chest?), the supercharged backstage tensions between couples who are mixing work and love, and the potential that at any moment a guy might lose his grip and toss his partner into the third row of the stands, and you have entertainment gold. One way to improve the broadcasts would be to add some pop-up notes during the routines, a la VH1:
75% of ice dancing and figure skating couples have dated.
Ben is secretly in love with Tanith.
Sasha Cohen is really 9 years old.
Olivier's favorite color is fuschia, and his favorite movie is Billy Elliot.
[Note: I made these up, too; I think Sasha Cohen is actually only 7 years old.]

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to work on my comedic screenplay starring Will Ferrell and Kirsten Dunst as a pair of ice dancers, Vince Vaughn as their coach, and Owen Wilson as a competing dancer from Bulgaria.

A word from our sponsors

I stuck a few Adsense text links in the right column. I tried to keep ads off of this page, but in the past half year I've been hit with a lot of traffic overage fees, about $5 a month, and I've always wanted to run this site wallet-neutral. In the past my Amazon associates rev has covered enough of my hosting fees that I didn't bother with ads. I have two suspicions about the Adsense text links. One is that they'll need to be more prominent than they are now to generate much revenue, if any, and the second is that my blog content may not be topically constrained enough to generate many relevant Adsense links (Google offers tools to test the latter, and a few trials haven't turned out much). But for the time being, I'll keep them subtle and minimal, and if one strikes your fancy, do click through and help a brother out. At any rate, when I finally get around to the site redesign I keep putting on the back burner, I'll figure out what to do with them.

Even bobsledders use steroids. That strikes me as really odd. If you're one of the guys in back, isn't your primary skill to sit?

NBC is not covering the Olympics live, and that's a problem in this day and age. A quick peek at ESPN or any major news site online or on TV and you can't help but find out who all the winners are going to be later that evening. I have no idea why they aren't doing live broadcasts on NBC. On the East Coast, NBC replays its primetime coverage from something like 12:30am to 5:00am, for no apparent reason. Why not a live broadcast and then a primetime replay? Even NBCOlympics.com's online video clips are delayed in order to not ruin things for the network. The tail's wagging the dog.

I had a friend in town on Sunday, and at dinner she said that I'd never guess what her favorite new TV show was. I said Grey's Anatomy. I was right. It wasn't difficult since every girl I know watches that show. It's the new Sex in the City, complete with Ellen Pompeo providing Carrie-esque voiceovers. Their big push to grab onto the coattails of the Super Bowl worked, though, as many guys who had the game on were forced to watch the show with the ladies afterwards (like me). An artillery shell in the gut? Are you kidding me? What a McGuffin.

Two movie soundtracks I enjoyed recently: Syriana and Mysterious Skin.

Breaking the speed limit

When record-breaking snows are falling outside my window (26.9 inches), I yearn to be on a mountain somewhere boarding. Since that's not meant to be right now, the next best alternative is to make some hot chocolate and cozy up under a blanket to watch the Winter Olympics.

Maybe my favorite winter Olympic sport is the Alpine Downhill. Those guys are just configured differently than the rest of us, to be able to launch themselves down the mountain like human missiles over icy, hard-packed snow at upwards of 75mph. One mistake and it's into the Medevac with you. Those Spyder downhill suits are cool, a bit like high-end futuristic Spiderman Halloween costumes, ones that happen to cost $700. They're also appropriate, because it seems the downhillers are only hanging onto the mountain by some superpowered adhesion; so many times it seems they're at the verge of escape velocity, when they'll just suddenly separate from the mountain and soar off into the clouds.

Two things I'd like to see: (1) video from a helmet cam mounted on one of these guys on a downhill run, projected on a big screen, and (2) that technology that allows NBC to show each racer on screen simultaneously with a ghost image of the current leader, like they have in videogames. That would allow easier visual comparisons of lines and form. They used it once when comparing men's winner Deneriaz with silver medalist Walchhofer, but only after the race was over. In doing so, they showed that Walchhofer lost the race when he nearly failed to land on the Angel's jump (though his recovery was unbelievable).

Super Bowl XL not so L

[I've been terrible about finishing posts recently. I have dozens of drafts, near-finished, sitting unpublished. I'm not sure why I've been so reluctant to publish recently. It's some variant of writer's block. I'll try to be better in the coming weeks.]

I thought the Super Bowl was boring. I can't remember any of the commercials. Of course, I was working on my laptop while the game was on, but at no point was I so riveted that I felt the need to give the game my full attention.

Part of the problem lies in the expectations. Two weeks of media buildup is just too much. Everyday, every sports page and every sports network had a gazillion features on the Super Bowl. It just doesn't warrant all that analysis. Cut out the extra week of media hype, and get the game on.

I'm hardly the first one to point this out, but the officiating was lousy, and that's a shame. That's what a lot of fans will remember, and not that Pittsburgh had to win three games on the road against a few of the top teams in the NFL just to get to the Super Bowl. The pass interference call on Darrell Jackson in the end zone, when he caught the touchdown, was ticky tack at best. He should've kept his arm down, of course, because even if he didn't tap safety Chris Hope, he would've scored that TD. In such a violent sport, it's disappointing when huge swings of momentum come down to such marginal offenses. Then, of course, there was the phantom hold on Sean Locklear, holding being perhaps the most nebulous call in football. Hasselbeck was called for a chop block later, but he was going for the tackle, as Madden and Michaels pointed out, so it was the wrong call. How ironic that in the age of instant replay, the officiating seems to have gotten worse, rather than better. The Steelers themselves were robbed in the game against the Colts, so though they may not sympathize, they should be able to empathize.

Beyond the officiating, many big-name players failed to live up to moment. Jerramy Stevens, after getting berated all week by the melodramatic Joey Porter all week, dropped about 27 balls that hit him right on the hands. On Stevens' only touchdown, the great Troy Polamalu failed to get over and cover. The most noise Joey Porter made all week was prior to the game; once the game began, he disappeared. I'm still not sure what he was all worked up about, but he came off all week as a caricature of an angry man. Ben Roethlisberger's TD run was iffy, at best. Football's strength is not in precision of measurement, and his TD exposed that. Who knows whether the bowl crossed the plane? With the exception of the long toss to Ward near the goal line, Roethlisberger was awful. That interception he threw to Herndon was terrible. The best Steeler QB was Antwaan Randle El. Shaun Alexander, NFL MVP, ran for a very quiet 95 yards. Jerome Bettis, the most media-friendly player all week, couldn't convert on two goal-line rushes, and fittingly retired right after the game. I've always enjoyed his game, that bruising running style, but he was in the twilight of his career this year.

Seattle played better for most of the game, but they looked like the keystone cops at the end of each half, trying to manage the clock. Tom Rouen, not a big-name player, kept punting the ball into the endzone instead of trying to pin the Steelers inside the 20 for some reason. Josh Brown, also no marquee name, missed two field goals indoors.

If some calls had gone their way, Seattle would've kept the game much closer, and who knows who would've won? But it's fitting, in some way, that Seattle got screwed by the refs. I lived there for seven years, long enough to absorb the long history of tough luck in Seattle sports. Griffey, the Big Unit, and finally A-Rod left town. As for the Seahawks? During pre-game introductions I could've sworn they were playing in Pittsburgh, the fans were just jam-packed with Steeler fans. Every time I looked up during the game, it seemed as if the NFL was running an ad with some Steeler cradling the trophy even though the game was still going on (by the way, that was an absurd ad campaign; I half expected to hear Bill Cowher sniffling and shouting at the trophy, "Damn it to hell I wish I could quit you!"). I think Seattle has one national sports championship, in basketball, and that probably came in the era of short shorts. Just a tough luck sports town.

Another problem with the Super Bowl, even more so than for regular season games, is that there are too many commercials and stoppages of play. The average NFL game is just way too long. After an extra point, they go to commercial. They come back for a kickoff, and then go back to commercial again. Why does there have to be a commercial after a kickoff? It's not as if the QB is on the return team. Just give the offense a bit longer than usual to got on the field after a kickoff, and stay with the game.

As has been mentioned in the press a lot this year, most of the tickets to the Super Bowl go to the rich and connected. The entire game feels sterile. It's always played indoors, in a dome. The field is immaculate, the fans are wealthy, well-behaved. The halftime show is always so unimpressive on television. The audio sounds faint, as if it's being recorded by a shotgun mike in a hot air balloon hovering over the stadium, and even the biggest rock star looks puny and ridiculous playing on a stage in the middle of a football field. The Super Bowl always manages to find some crazy fans to surround the stage at halftime, and the way they cheer and dance with such exaggerated enthusiasm to every song is frightening.

One last thing I'd love to see at the Super Bowl is coverage on more than one channel, with each channel carrying a different angle of the play. Only on replays do fans get to see some of the more revealing angles, and for a generation raised on the Madden video game, that's just too restricting. Many plays can be better appreciated from a wide shot behind the QB than from the usual birds eye sideline view that's the standard NFL viewing angle. Even the standard angle could be improved by pulling back a bit so fans can see more of the action in the secondary.

As a footnote to that request, I'd love to see the NFL offer a pay-per-view version of the game with microphones on the field of play. It will never happen, but I would kill to hear the trash talking on the field. Just what was Joey Porter yelling into Jerramy Stevens face after he dropped that last pass of the game? We'll never know, and that's a shame.

I did enjoy one thing about the Super Bowl, and that was the trick play pass from Randle El to Ward. On TV, it's always blindingly obvious when a receiver or running back means to throw. They don't run full speed, and their eyes are focused way downfield. Apparently, it's not so obvious to people in the secondary, because they bought the fake completely and left Ward right open, and Randle El put that ball on the money. More NFL teams should spend time designing a few good trick plays. The payoff when they work seems so high, and when they fail the loss is usually minimal.

Raconteurs

Chuck Klosterman blogs the Super Bowl week for ESPN.

Jack White and Brendan Benson are The Raconteurs (via Stereogum).

A new Malcolm Gladwell article, this one on police profiling. It's been a while since he's published.

Ridiculous

Managed to catch the last quarter of the Colts-Steelers game...wow. That was the most entertaining quarter of football I've seen all season. I don't even know where to begin.

Two plays might epitomize the game. Manning is sacked on 4th and 16 after Joey Porter blitzes yet again, from the same spot as on the previous play, and isn't picked up. Steelers take over on the 2 yard line of Indy, then Bettis fumbles. Nick Harper, who had his knee slashed open by a knife (wielded by his wife) a day earlier, picks up the fumble and breaks into the open field, on his way to an apparent game-reversing touchdown. Then, with just one man to beat, that being athletic but by no means swift Ben Roethlisberger, for some reason Harper cuts back towards the center of the field and allows the QB to tackle him with a one-armed swipe to the shins.

I think it's safe to say free agent Mike Vanderjagt won't be kicking for the Colts next season. Rich and I were on the phone laughing our arses off after Vanderjagt boomed it about 25 yards right and all the way into the stands. As Rich put it, that's pretty much the equivalent of yanking it into the Blue Monster at Doral.

I felt bad for Dungy, but then, in the post-game press conference, Peyton Manning hung his offensive line out to dry, saying something to the effect of, "I'm going to be a good teammate here and say the right thing, but we had some protection problems." Not a cool thing to say about the guys who have to protect your butt agains a couple of 250 to 350 pound behemoths coming in and putting you on your butt next year.

No one's ever going to feel sorry for Manning when he blames everyone but himself everytime he loses, again, in the playoffs. A huge talent with the maturity of a three year old.

Runs in the family

Happy birthday to my nephew Ryan, who turned 3 on Sunday. Last Sunday was all about him. By the way, if you're struggling with a gift idea for a 3 year old, I suggest a fish. Jen got one for Ryan, and a fun time was had by all watching Ryan carry on a conversation with his new companion, who Ryan insisted on naming Dorothy even though the fish was male. I believe that's a product of the marketing efforts of The Wiggles, with their character Dorothy the Dinosaur, and Pixar, who featured a fish named Dory in Finding Nemo.

As for this coming Sunday, Ryan (um, he's the littler one below) left little doubt as to what that's going to be all about. That's right, I'm going to be drilling him on the Cover 2. There comes a time in every child's life when he must trade in his Wiggles t-shirt for the uniform of his favorite sports team. As far as sports allegiances go, the father's genes are dominant.

At an early age, we should have noticed the signs.

"What's your favorite animal, Ryan?" we'd ask. And even though his vocabulary didn't include Urlacher yet, his gestures left no doubt.

The Terrible Triad

I had a terrible flashback when I saw Carson Palmer crumple after suffering a torn ACL and MCL and damage to the media meniscus. That injury is commonly referred to as the terrible triad because they tend to occur together. The knee is just a stubborn joint, it can bend forward until the leg is straight, and it can bend backwards until your foot hits your butt, and that's about the extent of its operation. It's not so good with side to side forces, like a big defensive lineman rolling into it from the side.

The good news is that ACL reconstruction has come a long way. In the old days, they wouldn't even bother repairing the ACL, and athletes would just back out and play with an unstable knee, though it was highly recommended that you strengthen your muscles around the knee. My doctor actually gave me that option, but I didn't want to limit myself to sports requiring only straight-ahead linear motion, like running or cycling. My docs didn't bother repairing my MCL, but they did take a piece of my hamstring to replace my ACL, and they snipped a bit of my torn meniscus out and stapled the remainder together with some biodegradable material that just dissolved after a while. A half year of rehab later, and I was back out and running around, with the added benefit of being able to predict inclement weather with my reconstructed knee.

***

This hard drive is a real brick.

***

Play Windows Media files in your Quicktime player on the Mac.

Bob Loblaw

What foods to buy organic (lots of fruits, meats, and baby food), and what not (seafood).

Analysts guess that Sony's Playstation 3 will cost $499 when it's released, as opposed to the $399 that the Xbox 360 theoretically costs now, though if you want one right at this very moment you'll probably pay a lot more than that on eBay.

Skype 2.0 for Windows offers free video calling. Non-Windows XP users don't get the video calling feature, but that means we get to continue calling in the nude, so we've got that going for us.

Nikon to halt production on all but two of its seven film camera bodies, phasing them out one by one. My old Nikon film camera is already starting to display that healthy antique glow.

No go on running Windows XP on the new MacBook Pro, at least for now, but you can run Vista if you can somehow get your hands on a beta copy.

John Madden Arrested for possession of turhumanheaducken (I've flirted with the turducken for many a Thanksgiving now, so James just had to pass this along to me).

Digi-portraits - Sweet! I want one!

Kobe vs. Lebron tonight, though it's really lame in the NBA that star players almost never guard each other, so it's really more like Lebron and Kobe tonight, on the same basketball court and occasionally within a few feet of each other. John Hollinger compared the two statistically (ESPN Insider subscription required), and to summarize, Lebron won out by the slightest of margins.

God, I wish I knew how to quit you!

2 Stars, 1 Slot

Because we're guys, my brothers and I are constantly bantering around movie lines. The quote du jour, useful in so many situations: "God, I wish I knew how to quit you!" Actually, you can just use the quote by itself, in any context, and it will crack us up 90% of the time. We haven't even seen Brokeback Mountain yet, though we have seen Brokeback Goldmine, and I've read the short story by Annie Proulx.

Did you see Reggie Bush on his touchdown run last night (rhetorical question)? The man accelerates like a sportbike. Awesome. Too bad USC didn't put him in at linebacker to shadow Vince Young, who ran all over USC like it was a Pop Warner game. That's the thing about college football (or even high school football): you can just put the ball in the hands of your best player by putting him at QB and letting him run with the ball on every other play, and it will usually work. My high school football team played against Donovan McNabb in the high school playoffs once, and that game reminded me of watching Young run all over USC last night. Young looked like he was bigger than every USC defender past the defensive line anyway. That camera shot from behind Young, standing triumphant and pointing his hands like six-shooters as a blizzard of multi-colored confetti rained down on him, was a beauty.

Giddyup

Oh, thank goodness, the Bears finally put Rex Grossman in at quarterback. Finally, a QB with some accuracy. Yes, Kyle Orton has been the QB as the Bears have put up a winning record, but that's mostly because of their defense, O-line, and RB's. It's amazing how much halo credit fans, broadcasters, and journalists have been willing to grant Orton even though he seems like he can't hit the broadside of a barn most days.

Orton may be a good NFL QB someday--he keeps his cool and avoids drastic mistakes most weeks--but the pro game is still a bit fast for him. He telegraphs his passes with his eyes, and he throws balls where no one, whether on offense or defense, can catch them (also, that beard is just wrong). It takes nearly every college QB at least a year to adjust to the speed and complexity of the pro game, and Orton is no exception. Orton's fortunate to have had lots of hands-on experience this year, but if Grossman is healthy he should be given the chance. He's had several years to study the pro game, even if a lot of it has been from the sidelines.

Grossman has been hurt for most of his time as a pro, and so people call him brittle as if he's Mr. Glass. His first injury was an ACL tear, which was a fluke, and his second was an ankle injury, which I never saw. Anyhow, having weak bones, as one journalist accused Grossman of, is an actual medical condition which can be tested for. Worse comes to worse, if Grossman goes down again, Orton gets back in with some game experience under his belt, and Orton supporters are happy.

With Grossman at QB, the Bears become an even more dangerous opponent, especially coming out of the weaker NFC. If the Bears can win out, they'll have a bye in the first round of the playoffs and a home game in round two. I don't think there's another team in the NFC that the Bears feel like they can't beat, including Seattle on the road.

Anyhow, I get ahead of myself, but it's just been so long since Chicago's had a team with the potential of going to the Superbowl that the whole city is giddy. Alan and I call each other after every big play, like Mike Green blowing up Michael Jenkins.

As an aside, there's no more beautiful sight to a Bears fan than the sight of the players' breath in the sub-zero Chicago air.

Bleaghh

Monday, at the gym, I felt nauseous on the treadmill. I stumbled home, then spent the next 24 hours curled up with a water bucket nearby, hovering on the edge of puking my guts out. I disobeyed two of Anthony Bourdain's precepts from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly: I ordered seafood on Sunday, and that seafood was in the form of mussels from a chef I did not know personally. Never again. On a positive note, my calorie count was quite low that day.

NBA to create a searchable database of all its video footage. We'll all be able to spin our own highlight reels, depending on how well the footage is indexed.

Before you visit MoMA in NYC, grab some audio tours or podcasts for your iPod. For example, grab an MP3 Acoustiguide about the latest special exhibition, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. MoMA even encourages you to create your own audio tours of your favorite works of art there, for others to enjoy, complete with images from MoMA's online collection. I'm sure some good ones have been created already; it's on my to-do list now, too.

Microsoft's inability to manufacture more Xbox 360's for their holiday season launch is a huge misstep. They finally got release position on Sony, then failed to press their advantage. Even Steve Ballmer's kids don't have one.

You can buy extensions for your powerstrip to avoid the annoying loss of an extra outlet to a bulky transformer, or you can just purchase a next generation powerstrip like the PowerSquid.

Paris by night, a gorgeous nighttime panoramic shot of the City of Lights (1.8MB file). More visual foie gras here. Damn I miss Paris. [via Me-Fi]

Trailer for Mission Impossible 3, or M:I:3, I guess. No director ever has ever had to utter the words: "With more intensity, Mr. Cruise."

One of those strange ways the world has ceded some privacy online is through WeddingChannel. Every wedding I've attended the past several years has posted all its registries online for the world to discover through a simple name search on bride or groom. You can even look up old registries, as for Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, or those of some ex you're still stalking, to see if they're tying the knot, and if so, what sort of cookware they'll be using in the home they're making with someone else. Fun way to kill a few minutes.

Every release of Firefox justifies a revisit of the most useful Firefox Extensions. SessionSaver is the most useful to me because of the sheer number of tabs I have open at once, and NoScript makes web surfing a much more serene experience, but it's the aggregation of all of my extensions that make Firefox my browser of choice.

First full-length trailer for The Da Vinci Code. There's nothing subtle about this trailer, which basically is the equivalent of a freaky albino monk coming to your front door and dragging you kicking and screaming to the movie theater to turn over your $10.50.

Bodacious

That Peyton Manning commercial for Mastercard makes me cringe. In it, Peyton seeks the autograph of a grocery store clerk and feigns ecstasy when a hardware store employee tosses him his apron. Having a multi-millionaire athlete satirize the anonymity of the common man? Priceless.

***

Sportscenter aired a segment on Bodacious, one of the most feared rodeo bulls of all time. The footage of him bucking cowboys off of his back like rag dolls was awesome (and I don't mean that in the modern sense of mega-cool). Here's a short homage to Bodacious which includes the key highlights from his life, including his conquest of famed bull-rider Tuff Hedeman. Bodacious broke every bone in Hedeman's face, and the next time the two were to meet, Tuff climbed off when they opened the gates, essentially waving the white flag.

How did bull-riding start? What cowboy thought to himself, "Hey, let's put an electric prod to that bull's testicles and then see how long I can hang on its back before it either tosses me and tramples me or headbutts me in the face, cracking my skull like a coconut?" Someone on the prarie was smoking some serious peyote.

***

One of the first things I do upon arriving in Southern California is to hit In-N-Out, home of America's most beloved burger. I'm embarrassed to admit, though, that it wasn't until this most recent visit for Thanksgiving that I heard of and sampled something off of their secret menu.

I went for a burger Animal Style, and my receipt actually read "ANIMAL STYLE". A burger prepared thus contains a layer of sauteed onions embedded in the melted cheese. I enjoyed it, though it unleashed hell on my digestive system. James tried getting his fries Animal Style; it didn't really work. All you could taste were the onions.

***

Over Thanksgiving break, our family was discussing what book should serve as the next nominee in our unofficial family book club. Every so often, one book gets passed from one kid to the other until all the siblings have read it. Given our diverse tastes, it takes a special book to make the rounds; fiction novels seem to be the most palatable across the board. The first book to complete our circuit was Atonement, and currently crossing home plate is The Time Traveler's Wife.

One book that came up just a few kids short was The Life of Pi. It was originally to be adapted for the silver screen by M. Night Shyamalan. Now it's in the hands of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I was intrigued to see the Shyamalan version. The book has, in its own way, a big twist of an ending. When I heard Shyamalan was directing, I could already picture how he'd reveal the twist in a Keyser Soze-like moment.

I would have preferred Shyamalan direct, if for no other reason than that Jeunet's sensibility doesn't mesh with mine. Regardless, I want to see the movie to see how Jeunet interprets the book, and he will have fun with the fantasy imagery. I'm always surprised at how many people interpret the book in vastly different ways--the ending seems to strongly favor one interpretation of all the events that came before. The book accompanied me for a week through New Zealand in 2003 after I picked it up from a Borders in Auckland. I'd like to flip through it again to refresh my recollection of the details, but my copy seems to have disappeared.

On the bright side, with Jeunet on board, we're spared the possibility that Shyamalan might have cast himself as the lead.

***

Michel Gondry's next movie, The Science of Sleep, sounds interesting, and joy of joys, it will be at Sundance!

Ticket packages for the first half of Sundance sold out in a day this year. I had a lottery time on day two and got shut out. If you have enough friends also entering the lottery, you can pool resources, but the festival is outgrowing its capacity. Every year its popularity rises some more, and every year the scrum for tickets and accommodations becomes that much more onerous.

***

Thank goodness, we can finally sleep at night: Congress is looking into the "deeply flawed" BCS system. Hey, I'm a guy, I like sports, but it's ridiculous that our elected officials spend time investigating sports issues like steroids in baseball and the college football post-season format.

***

I'm always a big fan of Filmoculous's list of year-end lists. Here's his compilation for 2005. Among them is the short-list for Time's Person of the Year. My money's on either Mother Nature or The Google Guys.

Kairo

A little of this and that as I lie here on my deathbed, hacking and wheezing from what I really hope is not avian flu...

New Michel Gondry music video for The White Stripes "Denial Twist" (Quicktime), featuring Conan O'Brien? If you believe music videos are primarily a conceptual art form, then Gondry is the reigning master. To get your own Director's Label DVD from here on out, you really need to direct a White Stripes and/or Bjork music video.

Fun e-mail thread b/t Mark Cuban and The Sports Guy. Simmons got in a few jabs I'm sure everyone wanted to level against Cuban, but the Mavs owner largely resisted the bait. Would that more sports journalism exchanges were so candid (or any type of media interviews, for that matter).

In Movies101 tonight, they screened the new movie version of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley. It got me thinking that I should start growing out my mutton chops and working on my English accent now if I want to be Mr. Darcy for Halloween next year. The mutton chops was apparently to that period what the mullet was to the 80's. If Jason Priestley could do a British accent, he'd still be working now.

For someone who enjoys being surprised, the teaser trailer for Darren Aranofsky's The Fountain provides just the right amount of information. Which is to say very little. Even that web page is nothing but white sans serif text on black.

The trailer for Steven Spielberg's Munich, based on a screenplay by Tony Kushner based on a Vengeance : The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, by George Jonas, is from a more traditional school of Hollywood marketing and gives away too much. Still, I couldn't resist watching it because Janusz Kaminski's cinematography is so damn beautiful.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse finally comes out in American theaters this Friday (well, at least in LA and NY), nearly half a decade after it first released in Japan. Miramax bought the rights, contemplated an American remake, and basically sat on the picture for years. Being a big fan of Kurosawa's movies, I rented a DVD copy from Scarecrow Video in Seattle in late 2001. The DVD's legality was suspect, as was its quality, but that added to the thrill, like finding some rare concert bootleg on cassette tape and having to rent a tape player just to listen to it. I watched it one night, home alone, and experienced several outbreaks of horripilation, which does not mean I soiled myself, though I almost did that, too. I enjoy a good cinematic scare, but somewhere along the line, monster/serial killer/slasher movies became formulaic and lost that ability to surprise, and thus to scare. Sure, if something hideous pops out on the screen to a percussive jolt, I'll startle, but I'll also bleed if you punch me in the nose. Pulse works at a subtler level and infuses the audience with visceral unease, a rare experience at the movies these days (If Pulse doesn't come to your town, plenty of DVD copies can be found on eBay).

Werner Herzog, now there's an always interesting filmmaker, whose Grizzly Man was one of the better movies I saw this past year. His next movie seems no less unique: The Wild Blue Yonder, a science-fiction fantasy.

The new Madonna album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, has leaked out onto the web. At last check, the Megaupload link was still active, though I'd be shocked if Warner Brothers wasn't busy cranking the winch on a giant cannon to line up the link in its sights. Thou shalt not steal, but if you've pre-ordered the album and can't wait for Tuesday, it's really damn catchy and danceable. [yay for Stereogum]

March of the lemmings

Wolfram Tones: Create music based on Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Download them as ring tones if you like. Many of them do sound like ring tones, actually. It reminds me of GarageBand with a random music generator. Not stuff I'd listen to all the time, but it's interesting to click on the various music genre buttons to see how much it resembles what you think of as country or r&b or classical. Someday perhaps there will be a Computer Idol competition. On a somewhat related note, the ideas in A New Kind of Science (NKS) seem to have relevance to the current evolution vs. intelligent design debate. NKS is online, so you can read, for example, this chapter: "Intelligence in the Universe."

The UCI, cycling's governing body, exonerates Lance Armstrong of doping charges and criticizes the accusers. L'Equipe to respond saturday. One thing is certain; this whole bitter fight is no help to the sport, as doping has once again, as in 1998.

Derek and Ken were in town for Labor Day Weekend. I always learn something when I spend time with those guys. One of my learnings this past weekend was that lemmings do not commit mass suicide. It's a myth perpetuated by a Disney documentary in which the filmmakers ran lemmings off of the side of a cliff to create the myth of their suicidal tendencies. Looks like that Disney documentary is available from Amazon.com on VHS. I'm not sure how the lemming myth took hold of me, but I suspect it was Gary Larson and his Far Side comics. I remember one depicted a whole flock of lemmings headed for the edge of a cliff to jump into the ocean, but one is shown wearing an inner tube with a sly grin. Another showed a family of lemmings in a car, headed off on vacation. The mother and father lemming sit in the front seat while two lemming children are in back. The mother is shown shouting at the kids, "Hey! I told you kids to knock it off back there!... or so help me I'll just take this car and drive it off the first cliff I come to!" I miss The Far Side. Larson went out on top.

Meet the F**kers (Windows Media), a Daily Show video clip that provides some satiric catharsis for any anger you might feel towards the Bush administration for their slow reactions to Hurricane Katrina. I hadn't seen the footage of Mike Myers' reaction to Kanye West's outburst until watching this clip, or Michael Brown's disastrous interviews, or the Larry King interview with Celine Dion. Memorable.

Colin Powell regrets his statements to the United Nations in February of 2003. I was aboard a ferry from the north island of New Zealand to the south island when he gave his testimony, and I watched it on CNN. Little did I know it would be downhill from there for someone who seemingly everyone thought would make a perfect presidential candidate.

I'm going to join Bill Simmons on the Bears bandwagon. Really good young defense, and if Kyle Orton surprises (and sometimes new starting QBs do) then perhaps they can win a bunch of low-scoring rumbles. It all depends on what that offense looks like after they take off the bandages.

Vincent Cerf is the new "Chief Internet evangelist" at Google. I look forward to hearing about this Internet thing. It sounds cool. As an aside, based on my years of working in the Internet biz, anyone who has "evangelist" in their job title has a cushy job.

The Nokia 8800 is one gorgeous cell phone. Though China isn't listed as one of the countries where you can buy one, I saw them in several stores in Beijing and Shanghai. The slider resistance is firm but silky smooth. I held it, fondled it, drooled over it, but left my credit card sheathed. $800, which is roughly what they were charging, is a lot to pay for technological sex appeal.

More from Flushing

I attended three sessions of the U.S. Open this year. Twice I was there on days when Sharapova was scheduled to play. Once I visited during the evening, and she was scheduled in the day session, and the other time I attended during the day session and she appeared in the evening session. I realize that if she seems me in the stands she might just quit tennis and elope with me, but this conspiracy to prevent me from seeing her in person is getting out of hand.

Not that the pro women's tennis tour isn't stocked with other tall, leggy, attractive blondes. I'm resigned to the fact that it's impossible for the general public to obtain decent seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium, so I spent much of my time at the U.S. Open this year strolling the outer grounds instead (a grounds pass is a good value that first week because so many to players are pushed to the outer courts). There aren't as many seats outside Ashe, but the views are far superior (some of my US Open pics here on Flickr).

Everywhere I turned, I encountered gigantic model-sized women's players from Russia and Eastern Europe. Among all professional female athletes, tennis players probably have the most normal and attractive (though extremely fit) physiques. Tennis doesn't produce any disproportionately sized muscles or odd body shapes. More than just looking good, though, these girls can play.

Based on my scouting, the one to own in your keeper fantasy tennis league is Nicole Vaidisova (warning; loud, repetitive techno music on her temporary homepage) of the Czech Republic, only 16 years old but already 5'11" and a client of IMG. I watched from courside as she and Mark Knowles pulled out a third set tiebreaker to win their first mixed doubles match. She's been hyped as the next "it" girl on tour, one to follow in the footsteps of Sharapova with her combination of game, height, and looks.

Afterwards, she hung out courtside, and I chatted with her briefly. Several people interrupted to ask if she'd pose for photos with their kids. She was generous with her time, not at all unapproachable like many baseball players, to pick on one sport. For a 16 year old, she has big all-around game, including a big first serve. Project her growth, both of her game and her height, and the forecast is sunny. Did I mention she's not ugly?

I also caught matches starring some of the Russian contingent of top women's players. Elena Dementieva always wears a saffron/pumpkin dress and matching visor, her long hair tied in a pony tail or braid. She has huge quads that help her generate massive pace off of her groundstrokes, but she's most well-known for her shaky second serve. She throws her toss way out to the right and hits a feeble but heavy spinning slice serve that often flutters into the net.

I've always had a soft spot for Dementieva because of it, even though it's something she could and should correct as a professional. It's like watching a defiant bird with a clipped wing. Simply having to contemplate hitting it, knowing everyone in the stadium, including her opponent, is anticipating it, is a heavy mental burden, but to her credit she has learned to live with it. For a serve that travels so slowly, it's unexpectedly effective. I watched both Capriati last year and Davenport this year struggle to attack it, both of them falling to Dementieva in the semifinals. And once the serve is in play, Dementieva just crushes the ball.

I also caught bits of matches with Daniela Hantuchova and Anastasia Myskina. Hantuchova is a giant. What are they feeding the kids these days? Lebron James, Maria Sharapova, Dwight Howard...if someone offered to let me relive my youth with an extra 6 to 12 inches of height in exchange for not having one of my fingers or toes, I'd have to spend a weekend thinking about it. Hantuchova doesn't hit as hard as you'd expect of a 6 footer, and at the age of 22 she may be over the hill. Just kidding. Sort of.

Myskina is exasperating to watch when she's struggling. She's always berating herself, shouting at her coach, screaming at her racket, gesturing in disgust. She's like the hot-tempered, somewhat inconsistent poker player at the weekly game whose a lot of fun to be around when they're winning, but who always blows up when the inevitable collapse occurs, leaving everyone around them to stew in an uncomfortable silence.

I saw Gustavo Kuerten ("Guga") play, though only briefly, on court 11, as Tommy Robredo dispatched him in four sets, leaving Guga's contingent of Brazilian fanatics all dressed up in face paint with nowhere to go.

I also saw Roger Federer play again. Last year I saw him annihilate Tim Henman and Lleyton Hewitt in the semifinals and finals to win the Open. It was the best tennis I'd ever seen from anyone, ever. He made Hewitt look like a club pro in the finals, breaking the little Aussie battler three times to win 6-0 in both the first and third sets.

In the match I watched this year, Federer beat Nicholas Kiefer in four sets, but it was a sloppy four sets. Federer even tossed his racket in frustration once, a rare display of emotion for the usually level-headed Swiss superstar. He still moved on. Some players just put others out of their comfort zone, and perhaps Kiefer is one of those nuisances for Federer.

Federer has dominated Hewitt recently, but Hewitt is playing near the peak of his game. If Federer plays like he did versus Kiefer, Hewitt could beat him, but if Federer plays like he did just two days later versus David Nalbandian, then no one left in the draw can touch him. I watched Hewitt dominate Dominik Hrbaty in straight sets. Hewitt's not my favorite guy - the racial incident with Blake and that line judge still lingers in my mind, all those "C'mon's!" when he's beating up on a lesser opponent are ridiculous, and he just reminds me of a silver spoon country club brat - but there's no denying that he's a fabulous hard court player. He resembles a video game tennis player in his impenetrable consistency, and seeing him advance was the lesser of two evils considering Hrbaty's pink shirt. That's quite possibly the ugliest sporting outfit in the history of tennis.

I caught Andre Agassi on center court against 6'10" Ivo Karlovic, a Croatian with perhaps the hugest serve in men's tennis. He doesn't get it up over 140 mph like Roddick, but it's a more consistent and deceptive serve, if you can call a 137 mph serve deceptive. He was bombing it into the corners and aced Agassi 30 times. To cut off the huge bounce of the Karlovic serve, Agassi had to move up to try and catch the serve on the rise, which is like moving to the front of the batter's box against Randy Johnson. Agassi's return is so good that he actually got a few. One Karlovic serve came in at 137 mph to Agassi's forehand in the deuce court and came back a millisecond later at about the same speed right down the line for a winner. Karlovic had soft hands at the net and should have serve and volleyed every point. Neither guy could break the other, so it went to three straight tie breaks, all going to the American.

Agassi, if he can overcome Ginepri, and if he has the legs, has enough power from the baseline to attack Federer, who is still prone to some errors off his backhand wing. Plus, Agassi has Gil Reyes, one badass looking personal trainer, in his corner. Just having a guy like that in the stands, in his dark, pinstriped suit and black shirt, has got to be worth a few points. I'd just like to see two players at their peaks in the men's final instead of a blowout.

The fans at Flushing Meadows appreciate an underdog which means they usually root for Federer's opponent. But more than that, his personality hurts him with New York fans. He's not demonstrative, he wins with an effortless ease, and he rarely shows much emotion. He's like Sampras in that way. It's too bad; he seems by all accounts to be a good guy, a generous one with charity, and his game is just classically beautiful. New Yorkers like their demonstrative, almost histrionic players (witness their support for an almost boorish Jimmy Connors in that legendary match against Aaron Krickstein), but they should rally for a classy guy in Federer.

Another up and comer who I caught on the Grandstand was #1 seeded junior boys player Donald Young. He's a 16 year old southpaw, just 5'9", 145 lbs. He looks slight, like a young kid just hitting around on the playground, but then he unloads a 131 mph serve up the middle and you realize he's got some game. He's feisty, a perfectionist. Everytime he missed a shot he held his hands up towards the sky in supplication and disgust. Someday, after he finishes growing and maturing, he'll be back at Flushing Meadows in the men's draw.

One thing I like about tennis players as opposed to golfers is that tennis players can deal with noise while they're serving, playing. During the match between Agassi and Blake, fans gasped and shushed and screamed during points, but the players never lost a beat. The average overpaid pro golfer (hell, even a recreational player) has a conniption if a mosquito passes gas, and this is with their target sitting motionless on the ground instead of moving at 100 mph with movement. No players on the outer courts complained as I snapped pics with my SLR during their matches.

One tip for making an Arthur Ashe match more enjoyable, especially if you're in the nosebleeds, is to use your American Express card to rent one of the free radios they offer. The radios allow you to listen in to the USA Network television commentary (usually of the Arthur Ashe match), and the color commentator these days is often John McEnroe, one of my favorite announcers in any sport. It also adds a lush aural environment, amplifying the audience murmur to an "ocean-in-seashell" level of white noise, allowing you to hear the thwack of the ball, cheers of the crowd, and grunts of the players more clearly than the annoying banker two rows behind you, blabbering on his cell phone. I rented one this year and will never watch another center court match without it.

McEnroe is a great tennis analyst. He and the always incisive Mary Carillo help to carry whatever tennis novice CBS employs as the play-by-play guy, usually Dick Enberg. Replace the bland commentary of Enberg with the dulcet English tones of Cliff Drysdale instead and you'd have the strongest announcing trio in any sport. I spotted Johnny Mac hitting around after announcing two matches during the day session and snapped a photo or two of him through the fence. He's the same old Mac, with that corkscrew service motion and hot temper. After missing one serve, he cursed, "Shit!" The first week of the tournament, he has a great work schedule. He stops in at Ashe to announce when he wants to, and if he's bored he seems to have free reign to go off and hit.

The outer grounds are fairly nice, with shops where you can buy anything from the Sharapova tennis outfit to Roger Federer's racket to a $40 giant tennis ball by Wilson, the most popular item for collecting player autographs. The food is passable but crazy expensive. Prepare to pay $10 to $15 for a burger or sandwich and $4 for a drink.

AOL sponsors an indoor entertainment center where you can test the speed of your serve and participate in a variety of other tennis challenges. I stepped into the net cold to test the speed of my serve and nearly tore my arm out of its socket just to hit 92 on the gun. If you're going to go for Roddick-type serves, make sure to warm up first.

Takk

New album by Sigur Ros releases September 13th. Love them. This one's sung in actual Icelandic, instead of the made-up Hopelandic.

Peeved by the attacks by L'Equipe, Lance hints that he might come back and kick some butt in the Tour again next year. If so, he needs to make up his mind soon.

I've watched Felix Hernandez pitch a few times now. Awesome. Wicked stuff, especially that movement on his mid-90's heater. In 51 innings he's struck out 50 batters and walked only 10, giving up only 31 hits. Lefties are batting .129 against him. I hope he stays healthy and drug-free for many years.

Okay, so most of the last season of Six Feet Under left me cold. But the last few episodes, after you-know-who dies, were quite good. The last montage of scenes in the last episode moved me.

What happened to summer?

James and Angela and I ate at Angelica's Kitchen, an organic vegan restaurant, on Monday night, and we sat next to Morgan Spurlock and his girlfriend (wife?), both of Super Size Me fame. I guess he hasn't relapsed since his McDonald's days. In a way, perhaps it's healthy that he just gorged himself for a month on that stuff. He'll probably never have a hankering to eat a burger at McDonald's again. The best dish was Angela's tofu sandwich.

I like Google News, but I thought they were going to weight their news sources with a bias to more reputable, big-name sources. The biggest problem with Google News and Google News Alerts is all the random stories from small town papers, many being repeats of the AP Wire story. That problem still exists.

Oh dear lord do I miss DirecTV. This season they added an optional NFL Ticket SuperFan add-on package that includes over 100 games in HD, a Red Zone channel that switches automatically to any game where a team enters the opponent's red zone, a Game Mix channel where 8 games are broadcast on one screen, and a Short Cuts feature showing commercial-free replays of games in 30 minutes or less. It's like crack for a fantasy football player, and it's not available to me b/c I can't get line of sight to the DirecTV satellite from my apartment in Manhattan. When I was a DirecTV subscriber in Seattle, I didn't mind that DirecTV had basically a monopoly on showing all the NFL games, but now I'm ready to break into the roof of the nearest skyscraper to set up a satellite with a mile long run of cable to run through my front window. Time Warner Cable stinks.

More than 400 million watched the finale of "Super Girl", an American Idol-esque Chinese reality tv show. That's about the same number of people as live in the United States and Britain combined. The winner was Li Yu Chun, a tomboyish Sichuan native (a video clip of her final performance can be found here). The show only allowed female singers, and the official show title was "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest." The show was touted among Chinese youth as a triumph of democratic voting, as anyone could pay 1RMB (about $0.12) to vote via text message.

Awesome

The James Blake and Andre Agassi quarterfinal match tonight? Awesome. Classic. I think it's the most gutsy comeback I've ever seen from Agassi (3-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (6)).

Most everyone knows Blake's trials and tribulations this past year. He broke his neck when he fell into a netpost, lost his father to stomach cancer, then lost movement in half of his face due to shingles. His tennis career looked to be over, but he came back and came within a few shots tonight of reaching the semifinals of a Grand Slam for the first time. He was born in Yonkers, and he was a sentimental favorite this U.S. Open.

The first two sets, he played like the James Blake from the Top Spin video game. In every video game, some players just seem to be best suited to the way the video game physics and controls are set up. It isn't always the player whose best in real life. In Top Spin, that player was James Blake (followed closely by Lleyton Hewitt). Blake's video game doppelganger had the super fast feet, a bomb of a first serve, and, if he got a floater, could hit a nuclear rocket of a forehand for a winner, perhaps the most important shot of all in a tennis video game since it's so hard to put shots away.

The first two sets against Agassi tonight, Blake played like his video game counterpart. He was hitting winners off both sides, just smearing the ball. He was getting to everything Agassi hit; Blake may be just be the fastest player I've ever seen on a court. I thought Agassi was done (and learned later that he'd never come back from two sets down at the U.S. Open, so my feelings were justified).

It didn't seem possible, but Agassi started hitting harder in sets three and four. It was the epitome of modern tennis, groundstrokes like lasers screaming back and forth over the net. Both Blake and Agassi seemed capable of hitting a winner on nearly every shot. As defines a great match, more rallies seemed to end with outright winners than unforced errors, and more of the unforced errors were actually forced.

The fifth set tiebreaker was a classic. Down 5-4, Agassi jumped on a Blake second serve in the ad-court and punished it inside-out for a clean winner. 5-5. With Agassi leading 6-5, Blake ran around a ball to hit an unbelievable forehand winner down the line. 6-6. On the next point, Andre drew Blake in with one of his patented backhand dropshots down the line, then hit a clean pass right back down the same chute. 7-6. Befitting the greatest returner in the history of tennis, Agassi scorched an outright winner off a Blake second serve to end the match.

One thing the U.S. Open has that no other Grand Slam has is night tennis. There's nothing like the last match of the night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. During the daytime, fans can be lulled by the blazing sun. New Yorkers don't do so well early in the day anyhow, and fans' attention is divided among matches all over Flushing Meadows, streaming in and out between games. At night, for the last match of the night, only Arthur Ashe is lit, and more often than not, the match ends past midnight. The fans who remain are die hards, the crazies. They have to be to want to take the 45 minute ride back to Manhattan on the non-express 7 train.

My first taste of the U.S. Open this year

Caught my first live taste of the U.S. Open this year last night.

They've made a few changes this year. First, they've painted the courts blue to make it easier to see the ball. I'm a big fan as it really works. Secondly, if balls are hit into the stands, fans can keep them. Considering each ball costs a dollar or two, I think that also makes sense. Lastly, after each match in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the winner autographs four balls and hits them into the stands.

I still have no idea how you score courtside or even halfway decent seats to Arthur Ashe Stadium if you just purchase through publicly available outlets. I maxed out a 300mm zoom lens, multiplied it by 2X, and tried to handhold from my nosebleed seats. If I were any higher up my head might brush up against the Goodyear blimp.

The "Where's Andy's Mojo?" American Express billboards and banners and posters are everywhere. I imagine they'll be up for the rest of the tournament, a painful reminder of what a huge upset his first round loss was.

In the first match, Serena Williams toyed with Catalino Castaño and moved on 6-2, 6-2. It was a fairly lackluster match, and Serena was spraying the ball. Fortunately for her, clay court specialist Castaño didn't have any weapons to hurt her with, so Serena could attack at will. She still moves great and can cream the ball. The crowd wasn't all that engaged but gave a warm embrace to Serena when she announced in the post-match interview that she'd donate $100 to victims of Hurricane Katrina for every ace she hit through the end of the year.

Before the next match, the rains came and forced a delay.

The final match of the night featured Rafael Nadal playing American teenager Scoville Jenkins in gusty conditions. Nadal is the Mallorcan tennis prodigy, now ranked second in the world, whose known almost as much for his capri pants and chiseled physique as he is for his game. Nadal comes bounding onto the court, even just for warmups, wearing a sleeveless body-hugging t-shirt. Older men all around me explained to their wives and daughters, "That's Nadal, the hot young guy on tour." The women checked him out on the jumbo screen and clucked their approval.

It was my first time watching Nadal in person. I can see why he's so unbeatable on clay. He's lightning quick around the court, and he hits his groundstrokes with a massive amount of topspin. It's a heavy ball. On clay he's difficult to attack because the clay slows down any offensive shots, allowing Nadal to get to nearly every ball, while Nadal's heavy groundstroke bounce up around his opponent's shoulders. To attack his groundstrokes you have to have faith that Nadal's topspin will bring his groundies down short, moving in to attack them on the rise. It's easier said than done, though easier to do on a hardcourt.

At least once in every match he's involved in, Nadal pulls off his trademark crowd-pleasing, signature reversal. His opponent will hit some deep, seemingly unretrievable shot to the corner, but Nadal will streak across and get it back, then quickly scramble all the way to the other corner to snatch the opponent's next near winner. This will go on for a few shots until Nadal gets into position to buggy-whip a winner past his amazed and disgusted opponent, causing the crowd to leap to its feet with a roar. When he pulls of such points, Nadal sprints, leaps, and pumps his left fist Tiger Woods style. Federer is still my favorite player to watch, especially in person (he's one of the rare players who is more impressive in person than on television), but Nadal brings a youthful flair that offers a nice contrast to the stoic demeanor of the average USTA pro.

If Nadal can flatten out his groundies, and if he can move in and take some of his returns earlier (he stands a good seven or eight feet behind the baseline to return serve), he can be even more dangerous on the hard courts. He was conservative relative to Jenkins, who had a big first serve and forehand and went for it on both strokes to try and neutralize Nadal's speed. Jenkins gave Nadal a tougher than normal second round match but ultimately made too many unforced errors. Nadal was not playing all that way, not hitting many winners, not forcing the action. Jenkins was the one dictating play, but too many of his attacks ended up in the net or long. Nadal will need to play better to move far in the tournament.

Watching Williams and Nadal today highlighted how much lightweight graphite rackets changed the sport. I started off with my dad's wooden racket, then his aluminum Wilson T1000. Those rackets were so heavy that you had to make a full shoulder turn on your groundies, addressing balls with a neutral or even closed stance.

Graphite rackets are so light and stiff that they allow players to hit wristy forehands with a Western grip and an open stance. It's easier and quicker to get into an open stance than a closed stance, and the follow through with an open stance can bring the player into a ready position for the next shot almost immediately. Meanwhile, the racket does a lot of the work, as stiff as graphite is. Nadal regularly hits forehands off his back foot, yet he crushes the ball. If players today tried to hit that type of forehand with a wooden or aluminum racket they'd be felled by a debilitating case of tennis elbow before their eighth birthday.

NY vs SF

Andy Roddick bounced in the first round of the U.S. Open in 3 straight tiebreak sets
Where is Andy's mojo indeed?

New York vs. San Francisco
Written with tongue-in-cheek, but humorous reading for anyone who's lived in both cities before.

The first of a multi-part series on The Game, the thinking man's scavenger hunt
While living in Seattle, I heard so many stories about it from participants. Always wanted to play but never pulled a team together. It sounds awesome, though.

Laser-sighted slingshot
A video shows it splitting pencils. If only they had this when I was a kid.

A though experiment by George Saunders
"But dropping the idea that your actions are Evil, and that you are Monstrous, I enter a new moral space, in which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity, rather than judging; on acting in the most effective way (that is, the way that most radically and permanently protects my chickens), rather than on constructing and punishing a Monster."

The Evian Water Bra
Fill it with cold water to keep your breasts cool. Someone signed off on some Evian summer intern's project without reading the proposal.

$ > time

Hurricane Katrina rips hole in Superdome roof
It sounds like something out of The Day After Tomorrow.

Money is more valuable than time
This according to a paper presented at the 2005 World Congress of the Econometric Society. The researchers found that people were much more generous with their time than their money.

A transcript of Lance Armstrong's appearance on Larry King Live
I still haven't read an account of what happened that makes it clear exactly what was tested, how it was verified, etc. All this medical testing jargon is just confusing. It's shocking how eager Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc is to sully the image of his event's most famous and most recent champion. Can you imagine David Stern leaping at the opportunity to publicly lambaste one of the NBA's star players? The Tour was already going to need a lift next year with Lance gone, and this is hardly the best way for Leblanc or L'Equipe to promote next year's race.

More and more couples are streaming music from iPods instead of hiring DJs for their weddings
One couple is cited as saying that they didn't think the DJ would have music from their favorite bands, like the Postal Service and the Shins. They then note that neither they nor their wedding guests are big dancers, which explains a lot.

Marat Safin drops out of the U.S. Open with a knee injury
Thus removing one of the few players with enough game to beat Federer. Safin is replaced by Bjorn Phau of Germany, who is not among those aforementioned players. Actually, on hard courts, maybe Safin is the only guy who could have stopped Federer.

An interview with Cameron Crowe about Elizabethtown
I am intensely curious about the already famous telephone conversation from this movie. Crowe mentions that Kirsten Dunst's character makes Orlando Bloom's character a "mixmap" - a map with musical cues. Very cool, like amateur museum podcasts, in a way. I can see posting a musical mixmap as a podcast to someone in another city. More from Crowe on Dunst:

And she's a huge music fan. I play music during takes and she's the first person I've worked with who'll go, "Um, I don't like that song." The camera will be rollin' and I'll play "Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye, and she'll go, "Turn that Marvin Gaye music off! Put on some Rilo Kiley."

She stays up all night and downloads music from LimeWire. She needs to be arrested.

During the summer TV lull, I set my PVR to tape Six Feet Under so I could finally see what the hubbub was about. From what I'd read, I'd be catching the show after it had jumped the shark, and that might explain my cool reaction. Watching the first half of this last season was like listening to one's parents arguing; really shrill and overwrought. The show also relies too heavily on confrontations with ghosts and spirits, something The Sopranos deals in occasionally as well. That's always felt like a dramatic crutch to me, a way to cover ideas that can't otherwise be conveyed by acting and dialogue between real people. I can understand how fans of the show would stick it out through every last episode, though. I was the same way with The X-Files, a show that lurched on for several seasons after it had careened off the tracks.

Former Washington Post pop music critic David Segal laments the the loss of spontaneity in modern rock concerts

James Surowiecki weighs in on tipping in light of Thomas Keller's decision to abolish tipping at Per Se, replacing it with a fixed service charge

A tid and a bit

It's not often that I get to share equal billing with Ray Allen

This year's New York Film Festival lineup
Me thinks I must attend a few of these

Tidbits

Cory Doctorow to virtually sign a virtual edition of his latest novel in Second Life

Download some live tracks by The Flaming Lips for free

***

In the Tour de France, you often hear how the Discovery Channel Team and Lance don't mind if another team takes the yellow jersey because then that other team will have to defend the jersey. What that means is that the team which has the yellow jersey rider will drive the peloton to chase down breakaways in order to keep their man in the yellow jersey for as many days as possible, even if that man has no chance of winning the Tour. This is one of the odd things about the Tour, where just being a leader for part of the race is worth fighting for. Each stage of the Tour is a mini race in itself. I don't believe you make any money for winning a stage, but the economic incentive often cited as the reason for contending for these intermediate goals is to garner more exposure for your sponsor, whether on the podium accepting the yellow jersey or in newspaper articles or on television in a breakaway. I'm skeptical that the math works out--team sponsors seem to go bankrupt every few years in cycling, but it does create dozens of stories within the overall drama that is race to win the Tour.

***

Speaking of cycling, Vinokourov went high risk-high reward today and attacked late on rain-slicked roads to take second place and make up 19 seconds on Armstrong with a 7 second gap and the 12 second time bonus. Vino has to be seen as Armstrong's chief competitor, chiefly because he's not intimidated by anyone and he's always attacking, something that can't be said of Ullrich or Beloki in years past. Vino will likely lose at least a minute to Armstrong in the last individual time trial so you know he'll be attacking in the mountains. Two alpha dogs butting heads will make for some exciting stages, especially if Ullrich becomes Vino's sidekick. Some have faulted Vino for taking too great a risk for such a short time gain, but I believe Vino recognizes he has to take risks to even have a chance to topple Armstrong. You can't sit back and wait for Armstrong to crack; the odds of that are as slim as the new Lindsay Lohan.

***

Say what you will about Tom Cruise, and many people have called him crazy, but he is acting with the passion of a true believer. That is, if he really does believe that Brooke Shields is hurting herself with whatever drugs she's taking, and if he really does believe that Scientology offers a better way out for her and others sharing her condition, then his behavior is consistent with those beliefs. Few are the people who tout their beliefs and act on them with equal ardor. That's not to say he's necessarily right, and I'm no expert on the topic, but he's at least consistent. And his interview with Matt Lauer was a refreshing change from the usual ass-kissing puff pieces that are celebrity interviews.

***

I was reading Chuck Klosterman's new novel Killing Yourself to Live : 85% of a True Story yesterday, and in it he opines that Radiohead's Kid A feels as if it predicted 9/11 in a way. He goes on to describe what he thinks each track signifies. Curious, I popped the CD in. Exhausted, I dozed in and out for most of the album. The next morning, my clock alarm radio woke me not with music but with the absence of music. Two serious voices gave updates on a developing situation in London, and the variance from the usual music caught the attention of my subconscious. It was that same divergence from my clock radio's usual morning music alarm that woke me the morning of 9/11.

I had a class in SoHo this aftenoon and took the subway. I wasn't sure if it was the London attack that had scared people off, but only one other person was in my subway car on the ride down.

***

The kickball team I'm on won its sixth game yesterday when the other team failed to show on a rainy day while the bare minimum eight of us trekked all the way up to Riverside Park in the storm. It's the second or third game we've won via forfeit. Our chief skill is attendance.

***

Boxing fans who missed it the first time around will want to set their TiVo for Showtime on Aug. 6 when they televise a replay of the epic Diego Corrales-Jose Castillo slugfest before the Jeff Lacy Robin Reid fight. They put their heads together from the opening bell and just pounded on each other from close quarters for 10 rounds. Nothing seemed to slow either of them down. By the eighth round, Corrales' left eye was a slit and Castillo's left eye was streaming blood. Each fighter was so possessed that even several low blows seemed to have no effect. In the eighth round, Castillo hit Corrales so hard that Corrales's mouthpiece flew out, but he kept fighting and landed a left that wobbled Castillo. Both fighters seemed indefatigable, throwing punches as if they were attached to button-mashing videogame players.

Then, in round 10, Castillo knocked out Corrales with a massive left hook to the chin. Corrales got back up but looked dazed, and Castillo proceeded to knock him down again with another left hook. Corrales stood up just on the ten count and said he was okay, but the ref fined him a point for excessive spitting out of his mouthpiece (a delaying tactic). He looked done, but then he proceeded to rise from the dead in one of the most amazing comebacks I've ever seen, pinning Castillo against the ropes and pounding his head like a pinata. Only the ropes seemed to be holding Castillo upright and the ref stepped in and stopped the fight.

Just a magnificent, brutal fight, as close to a modern day gladiator battle as I've ever seen. I may need to subscribe to Showtime again; all the best fights this year were on Showtime, not HBO, and a rematch is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 8 though nothing's been signed yet.

Tour Day 1

Well, I guess Lance is in good form. His performance today was like coming out in the decisive game 7 of the World Series and knocking out the other team's starter in the first inning, or coming out in the first round of a prize fight and knocking his opponent to the canvas twice. Or like Michael Jordan reversing baseline to elude a double team against the Knicks and then throwing down on Patrick Ewing. In actually catching and passing Ullrich, Lance dealt a humiliating psychological blow to one of his chief competitors. It sounds as if Armstrong and Brunyeel and everyone in the know consider Vinokourov the chief competitor from T-Mobile anyway, but it was still a bit shocking and sad to see Ullrich actually passed in a medium length time trial (TT). Mentally, it's always easier to chase a target on a bike than to be out front, and as soon as Lance saw Jan, everyone knew what was going to happen.

(Image by famed cycling photographer Graham Watson): check out Lance's
sweet custom Bontrager rear disc wheel, covered with graphics of significance
from his life, including the number 7 and the Zodiac symbol for Cancer.

Another timely pic by Graham Watson: Armstrong lines up Ullrich.

Ullrich was fortunate to be able to mount his bike at all today. In a TT training ride yesterday, Jan was pacing behind his team station wagon when a truck cut them off. The station wagon braked hard, and so did Jan, but as anyone knows, road bike brakes suck. Jan flew through the rear window of the station wagon head first and ended up in the back seat, shattering the rear window. He's lucky to be alive.

Prologue winner Dave Zabriskie showed that his TT win in the Giro was no fluke. He rode the second fastest average speed in a TDF TT ever. Amazing! In 19km, he was putting gaining about 3 seconds a km on riders like Vino, Landis, Cancellara, Voigt, and Ullrich. On a flat TT course that's massive, requiring a large advantage in power output. The future of American cycling may not be that grim after all.

The future may be grim for Lance's Shimano rep or mechanic, though. I'd hate to be that guy. Lance came out of his pedals at the start of the TT, just as at the Dauphiné. I believe Lance still rides Shimano Dura-Ace pedals. Don't expect Lance's cleat to pop out in Tuesday's TT, or they'll be building another roadside memorial for someone.

Bill Gifford writes in Slate that the Tour de France has become a bore and suggests some ways to spice it up. The article is a bit of a mess, and it's not entirely clear what Gifford claims is boring. At first he blames the French and the course layout. He feels the template of flat stages, a time trial, followed by the mountain stages is dull. The Tour organizers have actually altered the course every year the past few years to try and make things more challenging for Armstrong, but it doesn't work because the best rider is the best rider, and Armstrong adapts to each course and turns it to his advantage. I don't think Gifford seriously considers going back to a Tour with fewer, longer stages (in the past, some stages have run nearly 300 miles and forced riders to ride on into darkness) or to a Tour with riders slogging through unpaved roads. He cites both as evidence of the good ole days of the Tour.

Then Gifford writes that the riders today are "overtrained automatons," reminiscing about colorful characters like Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil, "whose ideal race preparation consisted of 'a good pheasant, some chapagne, and a woman.'" The truth is that there are colorful characters in cycling now, but a cyclist who drank and ate and didn't train to his full potential wouldn't survive in today's Tour, nor would they in most other sports.

Gifford's first suggestion is to put more mountain stages in the first week of the Tour, or insert some steeper mountains like Spain's Angliru, a mountaintop finish so steep that David Millar got off his bike a foot from the finish line and retired in protest after riding up Angliru in the rain one year. I'm fine with more mountaintop finishes, even steeper mountains, but adding these, especially in the first week of the Tour, would likely just give the Tour to Lance sooner. You'd also lose all the top sprinters, many of whom retire when the mountains arrive anyway, and I enjoy watching the huge sprinters haul ass towards the finish at some 45mph the first week.

Gifford also suggests adding more unpaved roads to the route a la Paris Roubaix. Well, the Tour added cobblestones in last year's route. By virtue of having the strongest team, Lance was out front safe while Mayo crashed and never recovered, effectively dropping out of contention that day. Gifford wants more mountains to separate the contenders from the pretenders, then asks for more unpaved roads, which just add more random accidents that might actually hurt the real contenders.

His next suggestion: lose the dope. Sure, everyone would love to see that, though that doesn't necessarily correlate with a more interesting Tour. It's just the right thing to do, but Gifford doesn't offer any proposals as to how to clean up the sport.

Lose the race radios. An interesting idea, to remove the element of on-course tactical coaching. This is how cycling used to be. It could be interesting to do so, allowing for more breakaways and forcing cyclists to rely on themselves on the road. In practicality, live television coverage means even the average spectator knows how far ahead a breakaway is, and without radios domestiques would simply have to ride back to the team car to get an update from a coach watching a live feed on television or hearing it over the cell phone from someone in a hotel room. Gifford believes this would allow more breakaway packs to stay away, which might be true, but a pack of unknowns in a breakaway has never really been all that exciting to me. A solo breakaway? Yes, that makes for good drama, and with race radios, they're all the more compelling when they succeed, which still happens at least a few times each Tour.

I agree with Gifford that the French are over-represented in the Tour. The race organizers favor French teams, even when they don't earn their spots on merit. It dilutes the field, and last year the Tour missed the flamboyant Italian sprinter Cipollini, who earned a fine in every Tour for wearing an outlandish costume of some sort.

Finally, Gifford comes to what feels like the crux of his argument: "Lance must lose." Gifford felt Lance rode defensively last year. I seem to remember Lance sprinting to a stage win over Kloden, even when he didn't need it. Asked why he hadn't just given Kloden the meaningless stage victory, Lance replied: "Pas de cadeaux." Lance won five out of the last eight stages, hardly riding defensively. I think Gifford simply doesn't like the fact that Lance dominated the Tour last year. Maybe Gifford should mail Lance a pheasant and a bottle of bubbly to share with Sheryl in the hopes of throwing the king off his game.

What the Tour needs are some challengers to push Lance in the mountains, like Pantani did in 2000. Vino, if healthy, is a lot of fun to watch, always attacking, and if Ullrich throws his support to Vinokourov, that would be a compelling storyline. Another potential adversary of not would be Iban Mayo if he survives to the mountain stages without losing too much more time and if he can find his pre-Tour form from last season. Maybe former teammates Floyd Landis or Levi Leipheimer or even Roberto Heras will attack in the mountains.

Another way to spice up the Tour might be to toss in a time trial as the final stage, as in the 1989 Tour when LeMond edged out Fignon to win by 8 seconds in the closest Tour ever. In all of Lance's Tour victories, the final stage has been ceremonial, a victory parade up and down the Champs Elysees.

The truth is, however, that Lance peaks for the Tour and is always the strongest rider coming into the race. No amount of meddling with the course will hold off the inevitable, especially when he rides on the strongest team. Contrarian sentiments are always refreshing, but Gifford's critique of the Tour lacks punch.

***

I wouldn't go so far as to call Wimbledon a bore, but the absence of the pure serve and volley game at the All England Club saddens me. On the women's side, all the top girls are baseline mashers. Since Navratilova, I can't recall a single woman other than perhaps Novotna who played the serve and volley game on grass. On the men's side, Tim Henman and Taylor Dent seem like the last of the serve and volley grasscourters. Federer actually came to net less than Hewitt in their semi. Part of this is because racket technology has increased the effectiveness of the backcourt game. You can hit a lot more winners off the ground, and increased spin and pace on passing shots and service returns decreases the effectiveness of going to net. There was something beautiful, though, about seeing guys like McEnroe and Edberg charge net and turn a huge return into an unreachable, angled volley. Maybe with so many hard hitters and big returners in the juniors, no one ever develops a serve and volley game. Grass court tennis is starting to look just like tennis at the Aussie Open or U.S. Open.

Doyle Brunson wins his 10th World Series of Poker bracelet. And, though I didn't even know she played poker until James and Angela told me she did, actress Jennifer Tilly won one, too. There are so many WSOP events that soon there will be as many WSOP bracelets going around as Livestrong bracelets.

It's Tour time, baby!

Ever since 1999, July has meant one thing in my mind: Lance in France. The 2005 Tour de France kicks off Saturday morning, and I'm all geeked up. One thing, though, does have me down. I'm not headed over to watch the Tour in person for the first time in four years. The cost proved prohibitive this time around, and I'm going to ache as much as if I had to work through the Christmas holiday season. There's nothing like being in France and watching the Tour in person. It's the type of vacation I could do every year for the rest of my life, and for a while I thought I just might. Everyone should try it at least once.

I'll miss riding through the beautiful sun-drenched French countryside, hundreds of thousands sunflowers swaying in the wind; suffering up the gorgeous but soaring Alps as if climbing into the azure skies; inching up the steep and unforgiving Pyrenees in sweet agony; eliciting a few cheers of my own from spectators from all over the world, camped out on the roadside waiting for the Tour to pass by; burning so many calories that no amount of delicious French food can keep me from dropping a few pounds; struggling to make sense of sweat-drenched paper maps and unmarked backcountry roads; French cheese and bread; the thrumming bass of helicopter blades from further on down the mountain, portending the arrival of the head of the peloton; the sound of several hundred thousand fans, worked up to a frenzy; partying with crazy Dutch contingent on a mountaintop finish (so generous the past two years with their satellite television, their beer, their music); the invigorating chaos; feeling the breeze from these god-like cyclists screaming by at 35 mph just a foot or two from my face; les femmes françaises; discussing cycling with people who've followed the sport nearly all their lives, who know cycling like few people in the American public do; Paris.

I wish I could be there to watch Lance's last Tour. As those of you close to me know, I feel a particular kinship with Armstrong. I lost my mother and grandmother to cancer in 1998, the year Armstrong came back from cancer to prepare for the Tour. My left knee exploded (just about) that same year, that awful year, and after surgery my physical therapist prescribed cycling, a low-impact way to regain mobility in my knee and strength in my legs. In 1999, when Lance Armstrong shocked the cycling world by winning his first Tour de France, I purchased a road bike and became a cycling junkie. In 2000 I completed the Seattle to Portland (STP) one-day ride with a group of friends. In 2001 I got a taste of what it means to suffer in the mountains during the Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day (RAMROD).

In 2002 I really learned what it meant to suffer in the mountains during a Tour de France cycling camp led by Lance Armstrong's coach, Chris Carmichael. Tom Simpson died on Mont Ventoux in 1967, and under a scorching French sun I thought I might join him. In 2003, on my second tour of duty in the south of France, Lance survived all sorts of calamities to tie the record of five Tour victories. And last year, my most recent trip to France, Lance broke that record.

Though American television has carried very little of Lance's race season, I've followed his performances online. He looked strong in the Dauphiné Libéré, and he looks to be peaking at just the right time. Meanwhile, Jan Ullrich looks just a bit heavy and slow, as if he'll have to ride himself into shape during the Tour yet again. Some things never change.

I don't see any reason why Lance shouldn't be favored to win again. He has Tour preparation and his team dynamics down to a science. Despite living at the eye of a hurricane of publicity and fame, he has an iron grip on every variable in his control.

The team he's bringing to the Tour de France is, on paper, the best cycling stage team ever. The new ICU rules requiring teams to enter all the Grand Tours actually consolidated power with the top teams, and Discovery Channel Cycling is now the strongest team in the world. Among those shepherding Lance around the outside of France:

• Jose Azevedo, sixth in the Tour in 2002 and fifth in the Tour last year.
• Manuel Beltran, three time top-10 finisher in the Vuelta.
• George Hincapie, Lance's faithful lieutenant, someone who's evolved into the ultimate domestique. Also the guy who's lived every male cyclist's dream by hooking up with one of the Tour de France podium girls.
• Yaroslav Popovych, perhaps the best of the rising young stars in the cycling world and Lance's future successor as Discovery Channel team leader.
• Jose Luis Rubiera, four time top-10 finisher at the Vuelta and Giro.
• Paolo Savoldelli, winner of the Giro in 2002 and this year!

If they stay healthy, they'll be a juggernaut.

At this stage in his career Lance would not ride the Tour de France unless he felt he could and would win. The athlete Lance reminds me of most is Michael Jordan, and not just because they both have their own buildings at Nike HQ. Both are hyper competitive, brash and magnificently arrogant, and both maximize their freakish genetic athletic gifts with an unmatched work ethic. Both say the right things to the press, managing their public images with meticulous care, yet ask any of their opponents and they'll tell you that Lance and Michael are vicious, ruthless killers. I remember reading an article by Jason Williams (the one who shot someone on his estate) in which Williams described Michael as a "hard, hard man," that if you crossed Mike on the court he'd track you down and utter, "I'll f***ing break you" in what I can only imagine was a voice from hell. Mike even cracked many a teammate in practice, before they'd even made it into an actual game. One of the images of Michael I'll always remember is his face-off with Xavier McDaniel in the 1992 Eastern Finals. The Knicks had been beating up on the Bulls all series, and the X-Man had finally crossed a line. Michael locked foreheads with McDaniel, shooting him a look of raw fury and uttering what I doubt was the Lord's prayer. Then Jordan went out and led the Bulls to a Game 7 rout.

Various stories of how Lance and Mike gain a psychological edge on their chief competitors circulate among followers of the sport like myths. Lance calling his competitors during the offseason from mountainside climbs and asking them if they knew where he was. Michael trash-talking opponents like Charles Barkley during offseason rounds of golf, probing for any sense of doubt or weakness. Jeff Van Gundy called Michael out on it one season in the press, and the next time the Bulls played the Knicks, a game I was at, Jordan dropped 51 on the Knicks and then cussed Van Gundy out from the court after points 50 and 51 dropped through the net.

They both also demand absolute loyalty from those around them. Slip up once and you'll go from the inner circle to the doghouse just like that, and that doghouse is like a max security prison. Pippen was the perfect teammate for Jordan because he didn't want to be the alpha dog. Hincapie is the perfect sidekick for Lance because for three weeks each July he has no thought other than to put and keep Lance in yellow. Lance's teammates who've left for other teams--Kevin Livingston, Roberto Heras, Floyd Landis--well, let's just say Michael Corleone telling Fredo, "You're dead to me now" comes to mind. One can't shake the sense that even those loyal to Michael or Lance are scared of them. Tiger Woods is the same way, as his former caddy will attest. At this year's Tour of Georgia, when Lance Armstrong helped lead out teammate Tom Danielson to the overall race lead over ex-teammate Floyd Landis on the brutal Brasstown Bald climb, Lance pointed at Landis and then the race clock as they crossed the finish, as if to point out that Floyd could have had the race lead if he'd just stayed by Lance's side.

Even if they didn't have enemies, I suspect Lance and Michael would conjure some up. Both athletes have origin stories for their greatness, almost like comic book heroes. Peter Parker became Spiderman when bitten by a radioactive spider and when his neglect of a criminal led to his Uncle Ben's death. Michael Jordan set out to prove the world wrong when cut from his high school basketball team. Lance Armstrong carries an eternal chip on his shoulder because his father abandoned he and his mother to grow up in a rough neighborhood in Dallas. Later, the cancer that nearly killed him actually transformed him into a champion. Mentally, he had cheated death, and no human competitor could ever intimidate him. He'd live life to the fullest because he had been given a second chance. Physically, it didn't sap his power but did shave some ten or fifteen pounds off his frame, turning him into a that rare combination: a cyclist who could climb and time trial. Who knows if these events have any significance at all? The stories may be passed around more for the rest of us than for Lance or Michael.

Both elevated their sports in unique ways. Jordan, as documented in Playing for Keeps by David Halberstam, Jordan was a once in a lifetime player on the court and off the court, transcending his country, sport, and race to become an international mega celebrity. The NBA is still searching for Jordan's successor as its international mega-ambassador. Armstrong's first Tour win came a year after international cycling seemed ready to collapse under a series of drug scandals. Though cycling still has the drug-use sword of Damocles hanging over it, Armstrong has stayed clean and remained the sport's top story. Having beat cancer, Armstrong is more than just a cyclist; he's an living miracle, an all-purpose motivational speaker, and a deity in the cancer survivor community. Though not everyone loves to see one person dominate a sport year after year, having a single lightning rod for the fan's adoration and attention or hatred allows mythologies and legends to sprout. The NBA hasn't been the same draw since Jordan retired from the Bulls, and I highly doubt the Tour de France will see the same number of American spectators in 2006 that it did in 2004.

Lance's toughest competitors in the 2005 Tour? Himself and bad luck. He's definitely older, not quite as dominant in the time trials on mountains as he once was. For a professional cyclist he's an old man at 34. In a three week stage race, when only minutes or seconds separate the top several riders after over 90 hours on the road, any number of mishaps can cost a rider the race. A crash, an injury, one bad day on a mountain, food poisoning, an overzealous fan, a political protester, mechanical failure.

After that, his toughest competitors, as named by Johan Brunyeel, will be Jan Ullrich, Alexandre Vinokourov, Ivan Basso. Ullrich is a great time trialist but isn't explosive on climbs, and he's like Patrick Ewing or Karl Malone to Armstrong's Michael Jordan: perhaps just not vicious or cold-blooded enough to deliver the winning blow. Vino is a brave, aggressive rider, but not a great time trialist, and he'll be marked the whole race through this time around. Basso hung with Armstrong on two mountaintop finishes last year, but his time trialing isn't in that topmost echelon. Levi Leipheimer, and old teammate of Armstrong's, is also a strong time trialist and climber, but his team may not be strong enough to carry him through. None of Armstrong's former teammates has ever really damaged Lance in the Tour, and there may be a psychological barrier at play there.

Two ways to get pumped for the Tour this week: read Lance Armstrong's War by Daniel Coyle and watch the Lance Week programming on the Discovery Channel family of cable networks. Sang first alerted me to Coyle's book (his cousin used to date Coyle), and then I spotted a few rave reviews in the press. I'm a sucker for any non-fiction Lance Armstrong and/or cycling-related book, and the details at the book's official website sealed the deal. In particular, don't miss the Q&A with Coyle about Lance. Coyle moved to Europe and followed Lance for the year of his sixth Tour de France win, living my dream life, and in doing so, Coyle appears to have captured a more intimate portrait of the man. Most people who've been around cycling for many years know that Lance can be brash in a Texas-sized way, and Coyle donned his wings for a flyby of the sun. This quote from a Velonews interview with Coyle is revealing: "he is a good hero for my 10-year old son, but I wouldn't necessarily want him to date my daughter." Sounds like Michael Jordan, no?

I just received my review copy of the book today, and it will be a miracle if I don't devour it in the next few days.

Tour coverage in the U.S. will be on OLNTV, as usual, live from 8:30 to 11:30am EST daily, with several replays on into the evening. In most years, the Prologue doesn't provide much separation among the race contenders. This year, however, the Tour begins with a medium length time trial rather than the more customary short prologue time trial. This will limit the top finishers to true time trialers, of which Lance and Ullrich are two of the best, and it might provide significant separation among the contenders right away. Santiago Botero and Michael Rogers are also excellent time trialists, and Lance's former teammates Leipheimer and Floyd Landis could be near the top as well.

Follow daily updates on the Tour online at Velonews. Find collections of links at the Tour de France blog, which I'll be checking out this year for the first time and through which I discovered this gorgeous infographic on Lance (PDF). Read commentary at The Paceline and Team Discovery Channel websites. And this year Sirius is offering a daily Lance in France podcast during the Tour; iTunes 4.9 makes it a cinch to subscribe.

And to ease the blogging load on myself so I can keep up with the Tour, I'll try to post bits from my personal journal from my first visit to the Tour de France in 2002.

Google Earth

Google Earth, an interface to the world's geography.
[Sniff] Not available for the Mac.

Hollywood plans a remake of Don't Look Now
The original is one of the creepier movies I've ever seen, but most people who've heard of it know it only for the brilliant time-jumping lovemaking scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Don't wait for the remake; just watch the original.

In the latest round of man vs. machine in chess, it's the machines by a huge margin
I enjoy reading the articles by the Brits summarizing the matches. Much like their countrymen in the golf broadcasting booths, the English have a knack for pulling off the colorful metaphor. In golf, instead of hitting into the water, a golfer's golf ball plummets into a watery grave. Instead of being badly beaten by the machine, Michael Adams "was cut down by the monster machine with one ruthless thrust."

Disney and Dolby Labs to roll out new digital 3-D digital projection systems
Chicken Little, a cartoon, will be the first to try the new tech on for size.

Wimbledon.org has a feature called Shot Tracker that displays animated views of each shot in a match for featured matches
Sadly, the website does not have any feature allowing for animated 3-D views of Maria Sharapova. The statistical summaries of each match are quite impressive. I've never seen tennis coaches charting tennis matches the way baseball scouts chart opposing pitchers in baseball. I wonder if it's because they can grab all the info from technologies like Shot Tracker after the fact.

Maverick Remote-Check Wireless Thermometer allows you to multi-task while bbq'ing
Nifty. Too bad I live in NYC and can't grill. Here's the product page.

Salon.com looks into Scientology so the curious don't have to risk their own lives doing so
Parts 1 and 2 of the 4-part series are up. Tom Cruise is rumored to have reached the OT-VII level, one of the highest echelons of Scientology (OT standing for Operating Thetan). Supposedly at this level one gains the skills to master one's universe. Mock him and Scientology at your own peril. BTW, the term "clear" has now gained a few new meanings for me: (1) a steroid-like cream and (2) an optimum individual who has had engrams removed from the reactive mind. Hmm, not so clear anymore.

The latest Six Feet Under soundtrack has some intriguing exclusive tracks
Including one by Arcade Fire and one by Interpol. I don't appreciate albums like this that try and force the buyer to purchase an album for the few exclusive tracks they don't already own. The Apple Store only allows you to get the Arcade Fire and Interpol tracks if you purchase the entire album. Sorry, no thanks.

Paris is the leading candidate for the Olympics in 2012, just ahead of London and Madrid
New York is second to last, just ahead of Moscow, this all according to Gamesbids.com's BidIndex

Corrales-Castillo, or King Kong vs TRex? Yes please.

Corrales-Castillo II? Oh yeah.
I finally tracked down the torrent and downloaded a video of their first fight. Unbelievable. Just an epic fight.

Here's that new King Kong trailer
The link goes straight to the Kong-sized version. Trying to navigate from the main site through the trailer link just sent me to the Volkswagen site. Very annoying. I'm looking forward to seeing the Kong vs. TRex fight. I was two years old when the John Guillermin version of King Kong came out. It was the first movie I ever cried at. I was sad that the big monkey got killed.

Best man speeches

Bawdy best-man speeches given by the actual best man on earth at the time
I hate to generalize based on such a small sample size, but based on all the weddings I've been to, the Best Man speech is humorous, poking fun at the groom and leaving the room in stitches. With a bit of alcohol, there's always a chance that something inappropriate might be said. The Maid of Honor's speech is sentimental and weepy, leaving the entire room uncomfortably silent, a few girls dabbing at their eyes while the guys look at the floor wishing it would end.

Phil Jackson returns to coach the Los Angeles Lakers

Asafa Powell of Jamaica breaks the world record in the men's 100 meter dash
He ran it in 9.77 seconds to beat Tim Montgomery's disputed (b/c of doping suspicions) record of 9.78.

The magic sunscreen that's still illegal in the U.S.
Mexoryl is not FDA-approved, but it blocks UVA light better than any ingredients in sunscreens in the U.S. Bootleg it from drugstores on the Upper East Side or from Canadian pharmacy websites.

Discovery Channel goes 1-2-3 in final stage of Tour de France tune-up race
George Hincapie, Yaroslav Popovych, and Lance Armstrong take places 1 through 3, respectively, in the final stage of the Dauphiné Libéré. Armstrong finishes fourth overall, behind unknown Inigo Landaluze, who was the only rider on his team to finish the race, and Santiago Botero and Levi Leipheimer. Vino finished fifth. Should be a really competitive Tour de France. I recall that OLN TV had much more coverage of cycling leading up to the Tour last year. Much to my disappointment, cycling television coverage has been sparse this year outside of the Giro d'Italia.

The New York Asian Film Festival 2005 has a sweet lineup of movies

Michael Jackson to change his lifestyle
"Michael Jackson's lawyer said today that the singer will no longer share his bed with young boys."

Rockefeller Center hosts free Drive-In Movies from tonight through Saturday evening at 9pm each night. Seating begins at 6pm.
The lineup this year is documentary-heavy:
June 14th - “Rize” - David LaChapelle's documentary about krumping, a style of dancing from the L.A. ghettoes. Saw and enjoyed this at the Tribeca Film Festival.
June 15th - “The Baxter” - Michael Showalter romantic comedy set in Brooklyn.
June 16th – “All We Are Saying” - Rosanna Arquette's star-studded documentary on the state of the music business.
June 17th – “Show Business” - documentary about the brutal Broadway production business.

Who's so vain?

What do you call a book that is not a novel and not a collection of short stories but something in between?

5 movies Alex wishes people would stop quoting

Usually I find those anti-piracy ad spots to be annoying and self-righteous; that said, I would've liked to have seen this one.

Who was Carly Simon singing about in "You're So Vain"?
NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol paid $50,000 for the answer at a charity auction.

Teaser trailer for Revolver, the new Guy Ritchie flick starring his bud Jason Stratham
Guns, gangsters, goons, gambling, Guy Ritchie.

***

Early reviews of Batman Begins are positive
Ebert calls it the only Batman movie he's liked thus far, though I'm not sure I'll trust him on this series if he didn't like the original Burton Batman. I watched the 10 minute Batman Begins preview during the season finale of Smallville, and it seemed decent, but Christian Bale's Batman voice was very strange, almost choked. Okay, what does it matter? Mike and I are going to see it in IMAX the day he gets into NYC.

***

Did anyone see the Federer-Nadal semifinal? I wasn't even sure when it was on television. I'm not a huge fan of clay court tennis, but that would've been something to see. I tried to set my DVR to grab it, but instead it grabbed the other semifinal which I had no interest in. Nadal is one of the quickest players I've ever seen, and he hits with a filthy amount of top spin, especially off the forehand side. Good to see Safin and Nadal pushing Federer in the first two slams this year. The French Open isn't the most interesting tournament to watch on television, but Paris in early June? It might be the best Grand Slam to watch in person. I'll have to see it in person some year.

***

I'm sad that the Phoenix Suns got knocked out of the NBA playoffs. They were the only storyline sustaining my tepid interest in the NBA playoffs. Amare Stoudemire is a freak. I could watch him and Nash running the screen and roll all game long. Stoudemire is so quick, his arms so long, and his vertical so explosive that he always seems to get the basket, no matter who's guarding him and how much space they give him. If you had to pick one player from the NBA to play with you in a 2 on 2 game, I'm not sure you'd take anyone besides Amare.

The Suns play the type of basketball that's fun to watch on television. Otherwise, NBA basketball is dull as can be. The officiating doesn't help; it's awful, even to the naked eye of the average fan. I went to a Bulls-Sonics game in Chicago earlier this year with Mike, and the game set a record for most fouls ever in a single game at the United Center, over 70 of them. Every ten seconds it seemed like a whistle blew. Just brutal.

***

So much for the spring. Summer is upon NYC, and I'm sweating. My old and cranky air conditioner is a raspy SOB. Let's hope it holds out.

Lions, midgets, and zombies, oh my

Lion mauls 42 midgets in Cambodia in staged battle
CMFL: Cambodian Midget Fighting League. Hmm. Cambodia sounds like a crazy place--they had a zombie outbreak there, too.

Idaho Legislature House Concurrent Resolution No. 29 commends the production of Napoleon Dynamite (via Mr. Sun)

WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's
most famous export; and
WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered
multiethnic relationships; and
WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality
and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and
WHEREAS, Grandma's trip to the St. Anthony Sand Dunes highlights a long-
honored Idaho vacation destination; and
WHEREAS, Rico and Kip's Tupperware sales and Deb's keychains and glamour
shots promote entrepreneurism and self-sufficiency in Idaho's small towns; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's artistic rendition of Trisha is an example of the
importance of the visual arts in K-12 education
WHEREAS, Pedro's efforts to bake a cake for Summer illustrate the positive
connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships; and
WHEREAS, Kip's relationship with LaFawnduh is a tribute to e-commerce and
Idaho's technology-driven industry; and
WHEREAS, Kip and LaFawnduh's wedding shows Idaho's commitment to healthy
marriages;
WHEREAS, Napoleon's tetherball dexterity emphasizes the importance of
physical education in Idaho public schools;
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the
Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent
resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of
Their Lives!"

Darwinian's survival of the fittest in action

People spend more on golf clubs, but their scores stay the same

Eat Hufu, the healthy human flesh alternative (via Marginal Revolution)
"It's not people!"

Alex Ross reviews the the Opera Bastille production of Tristan und Isolde, done in collaboration with video artist Bill Viola
I'm a fan of Viola's work and would love to see this. It would mean going to Paris, though I don't need an excuse to visit. New experiments like this are exciting. During your typical three to four hour opera, my attention is almost guaranteed to waver at times. A video that evokes the themes of the opera might not only serve as eye candy but add to the audience's understanding of the opera's themes (especially to those sitting so far away that they can't discern the expressions of the performers.

China tops Italy to become the world's fourth most popular tourist destination behind France, Spain, and the US
I hope to visit there myself this summer.

What would your Wu-Tang Clan name be?

Back from long weekend in DC

Back from a weekend in DC where I played my first rounds of golf this year with Ken, who was kind enough to put me up. I took the Washington Deluxe bus down, on Eleanor's recommendation, in lieu of the Chinatown buses. $35 round trip, reasonably clean coach buses and on-time performance. Can't complain, though I was riding during off-peak days. Riding buses from town to town, I always feel like the Bill Bixby Bruce Banner, or John Rambo from First Blood.

Beautiful weather all weekend. Spring is here, though my golf game is not. My highlight was hitting a 310 yard drive, aided by a slight downhill slope and a really dry fairway. We played Tom Doak's Beachtree Golf Course and Worthington Manor, the 2004 U.S. Open Qualifying Course. Both are good deals. Beachtree is links style on the front nine, and through the woods on the back nine. The fairways were wide open, greens in perfect condition. The front nine is tough. Worthington Manor is a challenging course. Very few fairways are flat. The entire course undulates, including the greens, and the pin placements were nasty. I can see why they use that as a U.S. Open Qualifying Course.

I also had a free afternoon to stroll around the Mall and see the sights. It's been a long time since I toured the monuments, and apparently this is a prime time to do so with the cherry blossoms in bloom. I must have walked nearly six or seven miles that day, across bridges, through museums, around reservoirs and fountains, up and down escalators and hills. I'll try and post a few pics from my visit when I've finished unpacking.

Until then, a quick tour of the world, URL style...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected the 265th pope
He was, from what I'd read, the prohibitive favorite. The election process is steeped in tradition and ritual. The longest election (conclave, to use official terminology) lasted two years, nine months and two days and elected Gregory X.

Gregory, not surprisingly, wrote new rules to speed things up. If no one was elected within three days, he decreed, rations were to be cut to one meal a day. After five more days, the cardinals would be restricted to bread and water.

Good for Gregory for cutting through the red tape.

Apple announces Final Cut Studio, including Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 4
Time for me to start eating ramen again for a month.

Prose Before Hos
Word.

Hallelujah, Maria Sharapova turns 18 today
Men everywhere no longer have to feel guilty about their thoughts. Oh, what am I saying, of course they should.

Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith tickets are already on sale, though if you're reading this you may already be out of luck for the midnight first screenings
Buy tix from Movietickets.com or Fandango. Watch the new TV ads, which contain lots of Jedi on Jedi action. Battle of the Heroes, the first track from the John Williams soundtrack, is available at iTunes.

Zabasearch is creepy
Punch in a first and last name and a state of residence and find address, phone number, and birth month/year for a whole lot of people. Of course, if you really wanted this type of info, you could obtain it (probably the same way private investigators and Zaba did, through public records), but the ease of type-and-click seems like a stalker's dream.

TGIF

Wow, they are taking gamesmanship to a whole new level in tennis these days

I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly: did Roger Ebert give Eros zero stars or four stars?
Reading the review, it seems he at least liked the Wong Kar-Wai film of the trilogy, so zero stars is surprising. On the other hand, he called the Antonioni piece an embarrassment, so four stars doesn't make sense either.
ADDENDUM: Okay, the website has been updated to clear things up. Ebert gave a different rating to each of the three pieces of the trilogy. Wong Kar-Wai received four stars, Soderbergh three stars, and Antonioni just one. Their website just wasn't primed to handle movies receiving more than one rating, thus the confusion.

Mr. T says treat your mother right (Windows Media, via Stereogum)

Coincidence: I was grocery shopping in Chinatown just two days ago, and stopped for noodles at Marco Polo. Two days later? That same shop shows up in Aliens Loves Predator (a funny one, by the way)

BET developing their own Apprentice knockoff hosted by Damon Dash. Humiliating elimination ritual? Dash removes a special gold chain from the contestant's neck
I'm not making this up, though maybe someone else is. I hope it's true, though

Tough day for Illinois hoops

The Bulls lose Luol Deng for the season, Eddy Curry has been in the hopsital for a few games with irregular heartbeats, and the Illini lost a close one to North Carolina. Tough day for Chicago hoops fans, but the NCAA final was a good game, and the Illini can't complain about not having chances to win it. They had several open 3-pointers to tie or take the lead at the end of the game. They just didn't drop.

Sean May came as advertised. NC did a great job feeding him the ball, and no one on Illinois (Powell, Augustine, or Ingram) could stop him, even when they double-teamed him. The late Head turnover at 65-65, I believe, was a dagger, as was Felton's 3-pointer from deep, with Deron Williams and Dee Brown in his face. If it was any coach that could have beat Illinois, I'm glad it was Roy Williams. He seems like a decent guy.

That's about as good a game as you can see in the NCAA finals nowadays. College's best players either leave early or just skip past Go and it's $200 and head to the pros where $200 is how much they tip the locker room laundry man. Deron Williams, Sean May, Rashad McCants, and probably even Felton are juniors, but they won't be back next year.

But the turning of the calendar always brings new untold stories for sports fans to hang their hopes on. The Cubs are in first place today! Whoo-hoo! And a Pretty in Pink sequel is in the works! When life dumps coal in your socks, it also drops a sugar cube in your breakfast mug.

ILL...INI

Illinois-North Carolina tonight! Should be a great game. Since Joannie, Karen, and Mike all went to Illinois, and since it's my home state, I'll be cheering for the Blue and Orange tonight. But more than that, the Illini play an entertaining, beautiful style of team basketball. They move the ball, run set plays, and rarely just run isolation plays for one star. They don't have the individual one-on-one type of offensive talent to do that, so they stay in constant motion. With three really solid guards in their starting rotation (Luther Head, Deron Williams, Dee Brown) they take care of the ball and move it well; a really high percentage of their baskets are assisted. They also play a very solid defense. Fun, fun, fun.

When I visited Mike and Joannie in Chicago a few weeks back, Mike took me to some of the Big Ten tournament games. I saw Illinois play firsthand. They weren't at their best then, but they still won without too much bother. On any given night, you can't tell who Illinois' star is. Some games it's Deron Williams (Arizona game). Sometimes it's Head (early in the Big Ten Tournament) or Augustine (late in the Big Ten Tournament). Many times it's Dee Brown, a water bug of a guard (against Wisconsin early in the season, for example). Against Louisville it was the minister, Roger Powell.

North Carolina is a tough matchup for the Illini. The Tar Heels have the individual talent to play man defense against Illinois, whereas teams like Arizona and even Louisville had to play a zone. Illinois kills zones with their ball rotation and three point shooting, and it's so hard to track them in a zone because of their motion. The Tar Heels have more individual talent than any team in the country in the top seven of their rotation, and May is a beast. The early line has Carolina favored by 2.5 points, and that sounds about right.

Last weekend, Jason and I watched from my living room as Illinois staged an awesome comeback against Arizona. Tonight, I'll still be watching from my living room, while Jason will be in the fifteenth row in St. Louis. That sounds about right, too.

Footnote: I'm old enough to remember cheering on the last Illini team to make the Final Four, the 1989 team that included Kendall Gill, Nick Anderson, Stephen Bardo, Kenny Battle, and Lowell Hamilton, the team that got shot out of the semifinals by Glen Rice and Michigan. So I'm one of those people old enough to have experience on my side in the "who's better, the 89 or 04 Illini" debate. But I won't weigh in, because I can't get over how that dates me.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the surreal

The good...

...Ben Gordon scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Bulls to a win over Charlotte. I love Ben Gordon. So few players have as broad an arsenal of moves on offense, and that jump shot of his carves beautiful, high arcs through the air. In the fourth quarter, the Bulls offense is to give it to Ben and get out of the way. I'm thankful the Bulls are decent again. I know we had Jordan and the six championships, but the team has been truly awful for a long time until this year.

...With alleyoop.com out of commission and John Hollinger moved on to ESPN Insider, 82games.com is the new website mecca for analytically-inclined basketball fans.

The bad...

...Bucknell, which upset Kansas in the NCAA Tournament, had to borrow Northern Iowa's prep band for that game because its own band was on spring break

It borrowed Oklahoma State's band, and many of its fans, for its second game, training them in Bucknell cheers. That's rough when even your band doesn't think you'll win and decides to stay home.

The ugly...

...Phat Phree selects its NBA All-Ugly team

Some of the dubious winners:

• Sam Cassell: "Everything that can go wrong with a human face, aside from gigantic warts, goes wrong with Cassell's."
• Popeye Jones: "But I see this picture, and quite frankly, it's hard to believe he isn't somehow mentally impaired in some way."
• Gheorge Muresan: "Inch-for-inch the ugliest man on this team, that team, any team."
• Larry Bird: "Larry Joe Bird, in addition to being an All-Ugly performer, also owns the distinction of being the ugliest man on the ugliest team in NBA history, the 1985-86 Boston Celtics."
• Patrick Ewing: "Ewing's jaw... there hasn't been one of its like in the human race in 60- shoot, 70,000 years. If Ewing was to pass on, and you got a hold of his skeletal jaw and buried it in the Olduvai Gorge, the archeologist who dug it up might announce that he had found a speciman that was almost certainly Homo Erectus, though remarkably well-preserved."

The surreal...

...Jose Canseco will be on the next season of the Surreal Life

Fellow cast members will include Bronson Pinchot, former Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, and Caprice. Remember, last season spawned its own spinoff called Strange Love in which Flavor Flav wooed Brigitte Nielsen, prompting a public denunciation of Flav's behavior by his Public Enemy brother Chuck D.

...Okay, I'm really late on this one, but SpongeBob SquarePants might be gay?
Conservatives note that SpongeBob is an icon in the gay community, "perhaps because he holds hands with his pink sidekick, Patrick Starfish." So that's what Robin Williams was joking about at the Oscars. I've really missed out on this whole SpongeBob thing. I've never seen it and have no idea what it's all about. I'm old.

Loose change

Watchmen, the movie
Coming in 2006. No pictures, though, so all I can see in my mind's eye is David Gibbons' art

Stream the new Hot, Hot, Heat album
I couldn't get the stream to play on my Mac, though

7:35 in the Morning
"So, what the hell is making me smile at...seven thirty-five in the morning?" More than one twist in this Oscar-nominated short

New Atul Gawande article about how doctors make money in this week's New Yorker
Gawande finds no answers to the tangle that is health care economics in the U.S.: doctors feel overworked and underpaid, patients feel robbed, and both patient and doctors despise their health insurance companies. Interesting survey of the topic, especially an anecdote about a surgeon who decided to stop accepting health insurance and to charge what the market would bear

Fantastic Four trailer from ShoWest
The more footage that releases, the worse it looks

A new New Order album, Waiting for the Sirens' Call, arrives April 26
Stream the album here. I had no idea they were still together. The last time I saw them was at Moby's Area One concert at The Gorge. Bill and I ran up to the stage when they came on, but most of the young kids hung out way back on the lawn and smoked pot, wondering who the overweight middle-aged dudes were on stage. I felt old.

The 2005 Tavistock Cup ended in a tie
Tiger Woods played for the first time in this golf tournament between two crazy wealthy golf clubs in Orlando, FL: Lake Nona and Isleworth. It's a private tournament but features ridiculous golf talent

If the heart does quit, from this mortal coil you must flit...the Johnny Cochran obit
What a crazy career, from defending P. Diddy to OJ to the Seinfeld gang as Jackie Chiles

A different type of child photography
Photos layered over paintings

Clash of the Titans

Phil and Tiger dueling mano y mano all afternoon. Awesome. Ken and I were on the phone much of the afternoon discussing it as if recording a podcast commentary.

Tiger was using his new Nike Ignite 460cc(!?!) driver with a Graffaloy Blue graphite shaft. Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson was sporting his new Callaway clubs: Fusion FT3 driver, Big Bertha fairway woods, X-Tour irons, and HX Tour ball (all prototypes). So this is what happens when the best golfers in the world use equipment designed to help the average weekend hack. It was strange to see Tiger swinging a driver with a larger head than the one on my Titleist driver, and to see Lefty swinging cavity back irons. I'm never going to be embarrassed to pull an oversized or game improvement club out of my bag again.

Having two of the world's top players in the final pairing is a rare event, despite the number of events golfers play each week, so to have Phil and Tiger 1 and 2 and Vijay Singh in 3rd at the Doral was epic. Watching Phil and Tiger slugging it out reminded me that they play golf, but it doesn't resemble the golf anyone else plays. On the 603 yard 12th, Tiger reached the green in two for the second day in a row, hitting a 290+ yard 3-wood second shot that rolled past the hole to the far end of the green. 290+ yard 3-wood off the fairway!

Tiger went for it all day. His round by round driving average:
Round 1: 310.5
Round 2: 285.5
Round 3: 319.0
Round 4: 334.5

Neither Tiger nor Phil was particularly accurate hitting fairways off the tee (Phil tied for 74th, Tiger for 68th in driving accuracy), but when you're crushing drives over 300 yards a slight tradeoff for accuracy is worthwhile. On the 370+ yard par 4 16th, Tiger went for the green with his drive. He swung so hard he actually left the ground with both feet. It was like a cartoon swing, like Bugs Bunny winding himself into the ground. On Saturday, Woods, hit some 3 woods that landed on the green and checked up like my pitching wedge. This was like videogame golf.

If Woods has found his swing again, it will be a lot of fun seeing Tiger, Phil, Vijay, Retief, and Ernie slug it out (Els won the Dubai Open with an eagle on the last hole of the tournament today).

Ken told me that a lot of pro golfers live in two golf resorts near Orlando, Florida: Isleworth and Lake Nona. So many stars live in those two developments that they actually hold their own golf tournament, the Tavistock Cup. This years tourney will be held March 28-29 and be televised by The Golf Channel. The rosters for the two teams this year are silly good. It's for fun, but players on the winning side earn $100,000 each, losers $50,000 each. That's like a friendly weekend game of poker where the winner takes home $25K.

Different game.

Paris-Nice

The Race to the Sun is Lance's first race of the season. Starts tomorrow, and I believe OLN will televise it.

Perhaps it will inspire me to get back on the bike. I still haven't unpacked it since arriving in NYC!

Oh, and Tiger and Phil are the final pairing at the Doral tomorrow. I mean today. Nice.

Oscars, the day after

Halle Berry showed up to accept her Razzie for Catwoman (via Boing)

George Bush won a Razzie for his performance as president in Farenheit 9/11. The Razzie being the opposite of an Oscar. I want to see video of Berry's recreation of her sobbing Oscars acceptance speech.

"I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit," [Berry] said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him "next time read the script first."

Many people involved in Motorcycle Diaries were unhappy that Antonio Banderas was selected to perform "Al Otro Lado del Rio" last night

Slate reads Jorge Drexler's singing of the song as his acceptance speech as a form of protest. This comes on top of the Minnie Driver/Beyonce controversy (Driver, looking to launch her music career, was crushed when replaced by Beyonce for the Oscar performance of "Learn to Be Lonely")

Backstage at her press interview, Cate Blanchett was asked whether the Oscar win would change her: "Absolutely, you asshole!"
See video of it at Oscars.com in the Video section, though it's all the way at the end of her Q&A section. Cate's great

Was Arnold at the Oscars last night? They kept playing the theme from Terminator. Was it an homage to the governor?

Jordan hits game-winning shot at the United Center
That would be the son, Jeff, for Loyola. Yes, this has nothing to do with the Oscars

...

Michael Sokolove laments the state of the NBA and suggests two ways to improve its play: ban the dunk and get rid of the 3-pointer

Tom Yum Goong, the latest Tony Jaa martial arts flick
That trailer looks like vomit, but here's the executive summary: Jaa beats the snot out of people with his knees and elbows. That title is unfortunate, but Jaa is worth the price of admission. Those who live in a decent-sized city in the U.S. might be able to see the Jaa's breakthrough flick Ong Bak in theaters now (click through the menu to see RZA's endorsement)

The Global Consciousness Project
Can this random number generator somehow predict the future? If nothing else, interesting fodder for a movie

Thundercats: The Movie
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I never really watched the cartoon growing up, so without a prompt, I would've identified this as the work of Andrew Lloyd Weber on a bad acid trip

miscellany

A company employs Third World laborers to play MMORPG 24/7 to create digital weaponry and later sues the game's creator for trying to crack down on the practice
And other humorous tales of lawsuits brought on by virtual events. I have this new image of my childhood, me taking a bath while someone I'd hired sits there rocking a joystick back and forth, helping my character run the 1600m run in the Decathlon for Atari 2600

Smoking ban in NYC hasn't hurt business
Though the analysis cited is far from scientific. Still, it's a blessing that coming home smelling of smoke and having to dry clean your outfit the next day is a distant memory. Let's hope public bathrooms without automatic flushing sensors will also go the way of the pterodactyl in the near future

Vietnamese man survives bird flu. Doctors puzzle over two mysteries: how did he contract the disease, and how did he survive?
Frightening possibility is that the disease has recombined with human flu and evolved the ability to pass from person to person, not just from bird to person. That could lead to a global pandemic. Docs believe one reason this man survived was his fitness; he runs 14 miles a day. If that's the level of fitness required to survive bird flu, I'm in trouble

Humorous ACLU ad about the implications of some type of national identity data warehouse
Of course, the private sector (e.g. Wal-Mart, your local pizza joint, Citicorp) sees this as a holy grail and has already made numerous efforts to build such global views of their customers

Implicit Association Tests
I stumbled home from drinks with a friend slightly buzzed tonight and took every one of these tests. It's embarrassing to have one's biases revealed so easily

Bode Miller wins first in the men's downhill at the world Alpine ski championships
Daron Rahlves finished second, making it the first 1-2 finish for U.S. skiers at a world championship. Said Miller afterards: "I don't have any weaknesses really. I'm decent on the flats, but not the best, I'm good on turns, good in the air, off jumps I don't really make mistakes. There's no hole in my skiing."

Police use Photoshopped photos to ID the location of a child pornography site
The police used the invisibles technique employed primarily for puzzles up until now. By erasing people from photos, they made it easier for the public to identify the location

A new movie by Shunji Iwai titled Hana & Alice
Umm, shoot, I can't read Japanese. I'm a huge fan of Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou Chou (out on DVD Feb. 15, 2005!) though, so I hope this makes it to NYC. All About Lily Chou-Chou felt to me like a Japanese New Wave movie

Ourmedia.org will offer a place to host audio and video content for free, with unlimited bandwidth
Wow, how are they going to afford that?!

"I played it because I have a pair"

This Volkswagen ad remix of Singing in the Rain is incredible

Hypnotic black and white short: Muppets Overtime

Bode Miller loses one ski 15 seconds into downhill run, nearly finishes the entire run on one ski at speeds of 70 to 75mph
He might have lost one of his two skis, but he didn't lose the pair that counts. That is freaking crazy

Jeff Bagwell's ex-wife is auctioning off 30 days of ad space on her cleavage
The current bid is $10,700. The T&, err, Q&A, is worth reading. Baseball wives, and now ex-wives, are all the rage this offseason. We need to get Shaune and Anna Benson to do a charity mud wrestling event or something

Malcolm Gladwell on the Superbowl

Always a strange convergence of my personal interests when Malcolm Gladwell pops up on ESPN.com
And he even mentions The Sports Guy in the interview. Universes are colliding! Gladwell applies some the wisdom he gleaned while writing Blink to the Superbowl and advises the Eagles to run more no-huddle against the Pats. Makes sense to me. It always seems like offenses go no huddle just before the half or at the end of games when trying to catch up and suddenly march up the field. On the other hand, I feel like defenses should disguise coverages and switch formations more often before the snap. Why line up and give someone like Peyton Manning time to read you over and audible?

Hollywood Poker

Even the movie stars have caught Texas Hold'em fever
The five most avid poker players in Hollywood are cited as Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Mimi Rogers, James Woods and "Welcome Back, Kotter" star Gabe Kaplan

Amazon.com introduces Amazon Prime: for $79 a year, receive unlimited free two day shipping on 1 million in-stock items (presumably those shipping from Amazon's warehouses as opposed to its partners') and $3.99 overnight shipping

The perfect Valentine's Day gift: Pornogami
I'm inclined to think Blade Runner might have even more art cred today if the Edward James Olmos character had left 3-D paper penis's strewn about instead of paper cranes

New version of Skype for Mac OS X

SearchEngineWatch's list of the best online reference sites of 2004

An old link, but I'm always running behind: results of BBC news Sound of 2005 poll
Apparently, the band to watch in 2005 is The Bravery, followed by Bloc Party (sample MP3s here)

Keanu Reeves gets a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame

Didn't take long for Rudy T to tire of Kobe
Okay, that hasn't been confirmed, but I'd like to think that's the case. Grant me my schadenfreude

Wow, I don't remember seeing this painting in Super Size Me (it's titled "McNipple," so you've been warned)

Scientists measure how closely two words relate by counting hits when Googling the two of them together
This may be a stepping stone towards creating artificial intelligence since computers have a hard time gleaning the meaning of words

Come on!

It wasn't the plan (especially because I was meeting friends for breakfast early this morning), but I stayed up until nearly six in the morning last night to watch the men's final of the Australian Open. I was pulling for Safin since Hewitt is such an annoying brat. After the first set, when Hewitt just destroyed Safin, I thought the match was over.

I shouldn't have doubted a guy who beat Roger Federer, the world's top player. Back when Safin destroyed Sampras in the 2000 U.S. Open Final, I thought he would go on to win numerous Grand Slams, but he went mental. Safin, to me, is the current purest embodiment of what men's tennis has become. It's the power baseline game which began with guys like Lendl and Krickstein and passed on through Courier and Agassi. The tennis court is still the same size and players move at about the same speed, but increases in player strength and improvements in racket technology have increased the pace and spin of the average groundstroke. That makes it much tougher to come to net. Even an average approach shot will likely lead to an unreachable passing shot.

Safin's average forehand or backhand travels at around 75 to 80mph, and he can hit winners at 90 to 100mph. At any point in time, any forehand or backhand he hits could be 90mph to the corner of either service box. One of the crosscourt backhand winners he hit in the fourth set looked like it was shot out of a bazooka, and it still landed inside the service box. I don't think a shot like that was possible with wood rackets. Safin serves huge, yet he only double faulted something like 7 times the entire Australian Open. He has a beautiful service motion, but that statistic is still mind boggling.

Hewitt is the modern incarnation of Michael Chang, a scrappy baseliner, but a bigger hitter in every way. And a bigger mouth. He once made a not-so-subtle racist remark about a line judge at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, I can't remember which, and he annoys other players by screaming "Come on!" when they make unforced errors. He's a great player, unbelievably quick--he reached some balls by Safin that I don't think any other men's player could have chased down--but his attitude on court is aggravating, like that of so many spoiled tennis brats you see in junior tennis. Last night, after a line judge called a foot fault on him, he still won the point, and afterwards pointed at the line judge in a threatening manner, receiving a conduct code violation from the chair judge.

I'm not sure why Hewitt chooses to be such an unsporting prick. He doesn't need to be. With his scrappy style, he could easily be the people's favorite. Instead of screaming and fist-pumping after an opponent's error, he could easily save that for some of his own great shots, yet after some of his best gets against Safin, he didn't react at all. He has a bit of Jimmy Connors in him, the provocateur. I always felt that some of McEnroe's outbursts resulted from aggravation at himself and his inability to live up to his perfectionist standards. Connors and Hewitt seem to want to goad their opponents into losing their cool.

Entertaining stuff and worth watching on replay on ESPN2, if for no other reason than to see shots of Safin's fairly-hot girlfriend Dasha Zhukova, on screen nearly every game. Patrick McEnroe is very solid on color commentary, though he brings a more laid back personality than his brother, also an astute color commentator.

The Aristocrats, et al

The opening text crawl from Star Wars Episode III has been released on the starwars.com

Ouch--apparently widescreen MGM DVDs sold b/t Dec 1, 1998 and Sept 8, 2003 were actually just pan-and-scan DVDs with the tops and bottoms cropped out. A class action lawsuit has been brought against MGM, and you have until March 31, 2005 to submit a claim form. If the suit is settled, you can either exchange each of the DVDs for $7.10 or a new, correctly framed copy

1 in 4 men suffers from trajectile dysfunction

Instant classic: Safin defeats seemingly unbeatable Federer in Aussie Open semis in 4 1/2 hours and five sets
Two of the players with the most game on the men's tour beat the crap out of each other for hours in the Aussie heat

Entourage filmed a scene for season two at Sundance at the Egyptian Theatre
I was there, saw the cameras out front, saw the Queens Boulevard poster outside the Egyptian Theatre entrance, and failed to connect the dots. I'm an idiot.

Black RAZR V3
Sexy

Sign up to be notified when the Kung Fu Hustle DVD is available for sale
I had more fun in that screening at Sundance than any other

The boys of South Park tell the Aristocrats joke (Windows Media File--vulgar and not for the easily offended)
One of the movies screening at Sundance was The Aristocrats, a documentary in which Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) and Paul Provenza follow 100 comedians doing their version of the joke. I didn't see it, but after reading the synposis, I was certainly curious about what the joke was about. The joke seems to be like Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto for violinists, a rite of passage for comics to prove their mettle.

How to get reservations at French Laundry

Google and Yahoo are introducing television closed captioning search capability, and Amazon announces block viewing for its A9 Yellow Pages
Still, no search service is able to locate individual missing socks from my laundry, though

$13 Smirnoff beats out premium, higher-priced vodkas in NYTimes taste test
I can now cite this taste test when explaining why I bought Smirnoff instead of Grey Goose for the pre-party. Certainly sounds better than admitting I'm cheap.

For the first time ever, cancer has passed heart disease as the #1 killer of Americans under the age of 85

Drip drop drip drop

The radiator in the apartment upstairs sprung a leak, so I this week I had to put buckets and towels out to collect the dripping water through my ceiling. What started as a tiny, spherical water stain slowly spread and morphed into a giant, unsightly, urine-colored drip painting. The upstairs tenant was out of town, and the super didn't have a key. All night, I listened to the metronomic plip...plop...plip...plop of drops of water cliff diving into my bucket. I felt like Hitomi from Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (or Jennifer Connelly from the upcoming remake).

Next installment of JibJab: [Bush's] Second Term

John Hollinger picks his NBA All-Stars

Steve Jobs to deliver Commencement speech at Stanford in 2005
Great...my commencement speaker was William Perry

Google plans to offer a tag that will help bloggers to signal the search engine to ignore links in comments, hopefully neutering comment spam
It will also render eliminate the Googlerank value of legitimate comment URLs, but that's a minor side effect in my mind. I despite comment spammers

Autumn Thunder: 40 Years NFL Films Music
A 10 CD box set featuring the martial tunes from NFL Films. Great background music for that Superbowl party with your buddies. All that's missing is narration by Steve Sabol and Harry Kalas

Over holiday break, we watched Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy on DVD
That will surprise no one who knows of me and my unhealthy love for Will Ferrell. Now, Anchorman is by no means a classic or even a good movie (I'm not going to bother reviewing it), but no true devotee of Ferrell's oeuvre would miss it. Without seeing it, I wouldn't understand the subtext and nuance of half the things my brother James says, and now the same can be said for people who speak to me. I do think it's cheesy that the studio forces you to buy a more expensive DVD giftset in order to get the Wake Up, Ron Burgundy supplemental disc that contains Burgundy's other two interviews from the MTV Movie Awards (Burt Reynolds and Jim Caviezel--"Tell me, Jesus, do you ever use your superpowers in games of chance?"). The video of Will and the gang covering Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band (excerpt)...well, let's just say, if you don't think it's good, I will fight you. Anchorman was also geographically relevant to our family vacation, the movie being set in San Diego.

Ron Burgundy: The Germans discovered it in 1904, and they called it "San Diego", which in German means "whale's vagina".
Veronica Corningstone: No, I don't think that is what it means. No, it doesn't mean that.
Ron Burgundy: I don't know. I was just trying to impress you. I don't think anyone knows what it means anymore. The translation was lost hundreds of years ago.
Veronica Corningstone: Doesn't it mean "Saint Diego"?
Ron Burgundy: ...No. No, that isn't it.
Veronica Corningstone: No, I'm pretty sure that's what it means.
Ron Burgundy: Agree to disagree.

To distract free throw shooters of the visiting team at a basketball game, wave your thundersticks in unison, rather than randomly (maybe)

Wacky warning labels and past winners
Warning on can of self-defense pepper spray "May irritate eyes" and a waring on a fireplace log warns "Caution - Risk of Fire"

Could thousands of people have been saved from the tsunami if notified via cell phones or the Internet?
Interesting question that many probably wondered as they watched news videos of people hanging out while waves began to climb higher and higher up the shores, oblivious to the much deadlier waves racing their direction

3 DJs suggest wedding mixes
One of them opened one wedding with "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division, I hope as a joke. Dan Finnerty lists "Making Love out of Nothing at All" as the most inappropriate song for a wedding.

Dell CEO Kevin Rollins calls iPod a fad like the Sony Walkman
Rollins needs to rethink his business analogies. The Walkman was one of the most successful consumer products in history, and just because Sony couldn't recognize when portable music players morphed from Discmans to portable MP3 players doesn't mean Apple will make the same mistake

Company creates downloadable cards for reprimanding rude cell phone chatterers
New Yorkers have a simpler method. At the U.S. Open last year, a man took a business call during a semifinal match. When it was clear he didn't plan to either leave the stadium or cut the conversation short, several other fans stood up and shouted at him with a menacing glare, "Hey, shut the f***ing cellphone off!"

....

Apple's Tipping Point
Interesting chart theorizing that Apple has slowly evolved its strategy to now finally aim for mass markets with the iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini. Interesting, though I don't know that the iPod Shuffle is a mass market product. Without a display, it seems to me to be a specialized product. I sure could've used one when training for the marathon, though. I had to switch my first generation iPod back and forth between my right and left hands because it was so heavy. I'd consider getting one to just load new music to play at random while walking or jogging around NYC; I wonder if the mass market feels the same.

Man trades in 275K airline miles and $8,000 for a flight in a MIG jetfighter

I received my copy of Esquire in the mail today, and it has a huge photo of Scarlett Johansson on the cover. Wow. I am, like, kind of a big fan.

The Bulls are fun to watch again
I'm a huge Ben Gordon fan. Not when he was leading UConn over Stanford in the 2003 NCAA's, but now that he's playing for the home team...

Sizing translations for women's clothing at popular retailers

Aishwarya Rai, oft described as the most beautiful woman in the world, has never kissed on screen

"No down lineman" defense

The Monday night football game is on in the background. Late in the 2nd quarter, New England has gone into an innovative defense: they have no down lineman, only a series of linebackers standing a few feet from the line of scrimmage. Some rush, others drop back into coverage. Not the 4-3 or the 3-4; call it the 0-7. So far, it's held. Of course, the offense is being played by Miami, this year it's conceivable you could play without any defensemen at all and still stop the Dolphins.

If Michael Lewis had written Moneyball about a football team, it would have to be the New England Patriots. They don't overspend on stars, and their coach Bill Belichick is known for reading work by economists.

UPDATE: Hey, the Remains of the Day front page jinx struck again. The Pats choked away a late 11 point lead and lost 29-28 to the lowly Dolphins.

Klein, Cartier-Bresson, Rutgers, and Macchio

I went New York holiday sightseeing Saturday with a friend. We went by Rockefeller to purchase a Christmas ornament at the Swarovski booth. I could have sworn the Christmas tree at Rockefeller was much taller in years past. Perhaps I've just grown taller?

Our next stop was the Met. One of the exhibits we visited was the compact photography exhibit "Few Are Chosen: Street Photography and the Book, 1936-1966". It's not a large collection, but it contains work from my favorite photographer, William Klein, and a few of my other favorites, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. They had old, old copies of the books Life is good & good for you by Klein and The Americans by Frank behind glass cases, but not a copy of Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment, an out-of-print book I'd love to own. The image to the left is perhaps Cartier-Bresson's most famous, "Behind Saint-Lazare station, Paris, France, 1932."

After a Xmas-tree ornament-hanging party Saturday night, James and Angela took me to Blue 9 Burger in the East Village. Good burger, often referred to as the NYC equivalent of In & Out, but not quite that good. A burger with a bit of grease or fat? That's okay, much better than a dried out patty. I always feel guilty eating burgers with Angela because she orders them without the meat; it's the anti-Atkins burger. I'm not sure what you call that. The man behind the counter said, "Oh, you want grilled cheese."

Sunday, I took the train out to New Jersey to meet up with Scott and Ruby and their golfing buddies for a round at the Rutgers course. We lucked out with a sunny day after the previous day had nearly brought snow. I haven't golfed since the end of September, which just means that I hadn't grooved my already ugly stroke. The first nine holes, I felt like a beginner to the game. I could barely remember how to grip my clubs, and I shot a 55, one of my ugliest nine holes in years. Then I shot a 39 on the back nine, maybe my lowest nine hole score ever (from holes 10-18 I went triple bogey, par, par, par, par, par, bogey, bogey, birdie) and actually had a ten or eleven foot putt for eagle on the 18th, a par five I reached in two. What a schizophrenic round.

It was my first round of golf since moving to NYC, and I now have a sense for what's involved: a long train ride out of Manhattan, with clubs in tow. Not the easiest thing in the world, but doable. I need to get in my rounds with Rob before he becomes a father (of twins, no less!). I know enough new parents to know what that means for one's free time.

Yesterday night, I went with friends to see It's Karate Kid! The Musical. With tickets costing $15 and set in Teatro La Tea in a community center on a somewhat sketchy street on the lower East side, I was fairly certain as I walked in that I wouldn't be seeing Sarah Brightman as Ali. And yes, at least a third of the audience were friends of the cast. This buyer be warned.

Now, Karate Kid is a movie that could be adapted almost straight up and serve as a comedy. It's a much-adored cult classic (at last check, a new first print of the DVD was selling for $99.99 on Amazon). I even remember seeing it in theaters with Tim Rush and his parents back when parents had to take my friends and I out to see movies. But this adaptation chose to dial the spoof up to 11. Almost every character in the musical was gay except Ali and Mrs. Larusso, who was bisexual. Picture Mr. Miyagi as a black drag queen, and his magic hand-rubbing-chiropractic-magic-move administered while seated on the back of a moaning Daniel Larusso and you'll have a good sense of what type of play this was. Don't bring your child if you don't want to be answering "What does [insert sexual obscenity] mean?" all night. The entire show is built on a conceit that doesn't hold up from start to finish (and I never picked up on any latent homosexual overtones in the movie; Top Gun, sure, but Karate Kid seemed fairly asexual to me), and the dance moves and music don't even attempt to aspire to Balanchine or Gilbert and Sullivan. The dialogue and lyrics were often difficult to make out as speakers fired the songs out in all directions in a somewhat echoey room. But the show has its moments. My personal favorite was "Miyagi's Lament," a rap tune that I'd love to get on tape.

The funniest moment, though, came when Scott told us at intermission that the actor playing Johnny Lawrence was the same guy that Scott had just beaten up at a restaurant a short while ago. Supposedly this guy and his friend were being extremely rude to Scott and his date, and so Scott had gone out to the sidewalk and chucked this guy into a car. In Scott's version of the story, the actor was the big guy, and his friend was a short bald guy.

After the second act of the show, Scott was certain this was the guy. So I looked up his bio in the program, and it turns out that this actor had most recently directed and starred in several Saturday cartoons for Fox, the Kids WB, and PBS, and was gay. When I'd first heard the story of Scott's altercation I was picturing the big guy as Vin Diesel, and it turns out he was a gay drama student. I'm going to blame the lighting--trendy New York restaurants are dark, so dark you can't tell if you're drinking red wine or tap water, beating up a bouncer, or one of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Fab Five.

Sprinkles

Eliot Spitzer to run for governor of New York

Another article about how streets are safe the more you remove signs and lights and other traffic engineering debris. It forces drivers and pedestrians and all who use the road to make eye contact and watch out for each other. I first mentioned this topic before after reading an article in Salon on the same issue. I liked this passage from this latest article:

"To my mind, there is one crucial test of a design such as this," Monderman says. "Here, I will show you."

With that, Monderman tucks his hands behind his back and begins to walk into the square - backward - straight into traffic, without being able to see oncoming vehicles. A stream of motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians ease around him, instinctively yielding to a man with the courage of his convictions.

The article also offers six suggestions for how to build a better intersection:

1. Remove signs: The architecture of the road - not signs and signals - dictates traffic flow.

2. Install art: The height of the fountain indicates how congested the intersection is.

3. Share the spotlight: Lights illuminate not only the roadbed, but also the pedestrian areas.

4. Do it in the road: Cafés extend to the edge of the street, further emphasizing the idea of shared space.

5. See eye to eye: Right-of-way is negotiated by human interaction, rather than commonly ignored signs.

6. Eliminate curbs: Instead of a raised curb, sidewalks are denoted by texture and color.

I forwarded Derek the article since he first introduced a lot of these concepts to me. He noted that these progressive techniques would probably take years to make it to the States, if ever. No engineers and their lawyers would risk trying something like that in the U.S.; we're far too litigious a society. It's a shame.

Ricky Williams is attending college in a town called Grass Valley. I'm not making this up.

Chappelle's Show - Season 2 on DVD comes out Feb 8, 2005. Already an instant comedy classic.

Damn academics

"From Sunday through Friday our football program has exceeded all expectations in every way," [Notre Dame] athletic director Kevin White said at Tuesday's news conference. "The academic performance is at a fever pitch. It's never been better. Tyrone has done some wonderful things. But again, on Saturday, we struggled. We've been up and down and sideways a little bit, a little bit inconsistent."

Yeah, it's a real shame that football players at Notre Dame have to actually be students. At least the Athletic Director was honest about his priorities. Some people say that college sports are more enjoyable to watch than pro sports, that it's a purer game. I don't believe that in the case of college football and even to some extent with college basketball. Having read more than enough stories about football players being passed through classes mysteriously or receiving cars and cash for phantom jobs, and having seen the graduation rates at the schools ranked in the top 25 at the end of each college football season, and I can't help but think of college football as a free farm system for the NFL, or a semi-pro league where schools profit from their athletes for almost nothing. The NBA and NFL would love to not have to pay for a minor league, the way pro baseball or hockey teams do, so they continue to try to restrict the age of incoming players.

Of course, Notre Dame is easy to pick on because they signed a contract with NBC, so every one of their games is televised nationally. I doubt any none-Notre-Dame-alums are grieving over the Golden Dome's misfortune. At least Notre Dame maintains higher academic standards for their athletes than the ones the NCAA requires, unlike many other schools. Anyone who thinks that doing that doesn't hurt the quality of their football team is naive.

At Stanford, the minimum academic requirement for all incoming athletes was a 3.0 GPA and an 1100 SAT. Does the student body in the cheering section care about that when Stanford's getting killed by UW or USC or Cal in football? Probably not on Saturday afternoon, but I don't think most students go there to be associated with a winning football team. If I ever become one of those forty to sixty somethings still buying season tickets to my alma mater's college football games and sitting in the stands wearing a diaper, living and dying on the play of a bunch of 19 and 20 year old boys, just shoot me. It's a sign that my college education probably didn't do me much good.

I personally wouldn't have anything against paying college basketball or football players (I'm assuming these are the NCAA's top two revenue-generating sports). Doing so would be explicit acknowledgment that some schools bring in athletes purely to improve their record on the field and to sell lots of tickets, and that those schools have little interest in providing that athlete with much in the way of an education. Some people have no desire to do anything but play sports, even if the odds against achieving that are slim, and if schools are going to exploit that, at least let those kids share in the revenue they bring in ticket sales and television/bowl revenues. Last I checked, Coach K wasn't working for free dorm housing and a scholarship.

Of course, the problem with doing so is that it would blur the purpose of universities. If you want those athletes to be students, I think you have to have some minimum academic requirements for entering students. If someone is totally unprepared for the academic rigor of college, they shouldn't be dumped into school solely to give the fans in the stands a warm, fuzzy feeling on Saturday afternoons, especially if they'll be working the Krispy Kreme donut machine as soon as their college playing days conclude. If they're solely there to win games, then that part of the school is essentially serving as a sports organization, a minor league semi-pro team. That brings me back to wondering if the NBA and NFL would ever do the right thing and just sponsor minor leagues instead of leaving that to universities.

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

The Chamber of Fear, aka Detroit

Okay, I'm really late with this, but I finally watched a Tivo of Detroit vs. Cleveland from Thanksgiving Eve. Lebron was ridiculous, scoring 43 points while guarded mostly by Tayshaun Prince, the best on-ball defender in the NBA last year. It was the way he scored that was so impressive, taking the ball aggressively to the hoop, using left hand and right. Of course, Ben Wallace wasn't inside to enforce a perimeter around the paint, but still.

"He hit some hard shots," said Tayshaun Prince, who was outscored 43-4 in his matchup with James. "He's the hardest guy in the league to guard. His speed, quickness and athletic ability are unmatched."

This is a good sign for Lebron. Many thought he was extra motivated to prove to Larry Brown, the coach who benched him most of the Olympics, that Brown was wrong. Jordan had that killer instinct, like whenever he felt slighted by an opponent or a coach, or even if someone implied that someone was better than he was. Think of the 35 he dropped on Drexler in the NBA finals Game One, or the 51 he dumped on the Knicks when Jeff Van Gundy implied that Jordan conned players into thinking he was their friend so he could pound them on the court. I was at that last game, and when Jordan hit that last jumpshot to go over 50, he shouted at Van Gundy with a look of pure death. Gave me the chills.

If Lebron has that type of mean streak, we're in for some good times. Good times.

Like this and like that

The sequel to Popular Science's list of the Worst Jobs in Science, which amused me last year

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are going to wrap Central Park

In a world where the costs of prescription drugs and health insurance are rising, one procedure has bucked the trend: laser eye surgery. In fact, it has decreased in price. How can that be?

Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated film, set a Japanese box office record with $15 million in its opening weekend. I can't read Japanese, but you can guess what most of the links are by hovering over them with your cursor and reading the link name in English in the browser status bar. Studio Ghibli's online site hosts an extended preview (Quicktime).

Football Outsiders will produce Pro Football Prospectus 2005
That's good news, as the team at Football Project put out by far the weakest of the three Prospectus books.

Java-powered Monkeys trying to write Shakespeare
While I watched the simulation run, the record was the first 22 letters of Cymbeline. [From an article in the NYTimes about computer programs that can write fiction]

V-Girl
A 3G virtual girlfriend, supposedly driven by artificial intelligence. She'll send you text messages asking "Do I look fat on your cell phone VGA screen?" and throw a hissy fit if you take a discreet camera phone pic of some hottie wandering by.

Mint Lifestyle
For just $12,000 a year, and with just 200 members in every city, this luxury personal concierge service will set up just about whatever your filthy rich little heart desires. Examples on their site include:
"I want a Porsche GT Coupe. Can you get me to the top of the list?"
"I would like to have dinner with President Clinton. Can you make it happen?"
"Can you put the kids on the G5 and send them down to Cabo?"
"There's a really beautiful Miro on display at Christie's. Do you think I could borrow it for the evening?"
"I think Wynton Marsalis is fabulous. Do you think he could play at a small dinner party I'm planning?"

UpSnap.com
Like Google SMS, except you can simply reply to a template they send to you so you don't have to remember any numbers. For those of us who can't afford Mint Lifestyle, I guess we could try sending "Porsche GT Coupe 212" as a test message and cross our fingers.

The DNA of Literature
I've been reading some of the archived Paris Review interviews, which they've announced they'll be putting online for free over the coming months. Some are already posted. I've always been a huge fan of the Paris Review interviews of writers at work, and they seem even more relevant now that I'm back to writing regularly. A quote from Faulkner's interview (PDF):

Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failng at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

The current issue contains an interview with Tobias Wolff. You'll have to buy a copy to read it in its entirety, but it's worth it for those who are interested in writing as a way of life.

Cold snap

Did I complain about how warm it was during the marathon? I take it all back. Yesterday evening temperatures dropped below freezing, and today the high was 41 degrees Farenheit. To run on a gorgeous autumn day through NYC was a blessing.

Today, I can walk normally again. Everyone told me the first two days post-run would be the worst, and they were right.

A thousand empty paper cups

I've been reading the 9/11 Commission Report, and the 9/11 timeline at Center for Cooperative Research has been a useful copmarison. More and more, I doubt the former and trust the latter. Paul Thompson is also planning to publish his terror timeline in book form.

A treasure trove of SNL transcripts

It was a great year for humor books

Halo 2 sells $125 million in its first 24 hours
I...must...resist...

The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches (sent from James)

Trailer for the remake of the Japanese suspense flick Dark Water
The remake is directed by Walter Salles. I saw this with Bean at the Seattle Int'l Film Fest a few years back and enjoyed it. Unlike Ju-On, the creepiness of the original didn't derive just from camera tricks and audio. At its root the mother in the story is haunted by her own feelings of maternal abandonment, and that overpowering sorrow pervades the movie. I'm not high on these remakes of Japanese horror movies, though. I love Jennifer Connelly, once a dormmate of mine, but having highly recognizable Hollywood stars instead of relatively unknown Japanese actors in these roles reduces the sense of everyday horror by a crippling amount.

Interesting quiz on population and health and economy - I only scored 60%. This quiz, on agriculture and food, was even tougher. I only scored 50%.

Amazon follows in BMW's footsteps with a series of short filmercials.

Informative graphics illustrating the ebb and flow of the electoral vote from 1940 through 2000.

The trailer for the videogame based on Star Wars III: ROTS gives away more about the action scenes in the movie than the trailer for the movie itself.

Now that the nearest snowcapped mountain is further away for me, maybe I need to turn to alternatives to snowboarding, like Freebording. Seems like it would be a lot more fun in San Francisco, where there are hills, than New York, where you're likely to end up as a multi-colored advertisement on the side of a cab. Looks like fun, regardless. Clever design.

David Foster Wallace reviews the new Borges biography for the NYTimes, using 7 footnotes in the process.

Ramen restaurants in NYC
Mmmmmm, just in time for the winter cold snap.

Through the 5 Boroughs

A marathon post about my marathon

Today, my body is tied in knots. Some ligament or tendon on the outside of my left knee is throbbing, and my legs are so sore and my hips so stiff that I have trouble walking up and down stairs. My back is stiffening, and I've been on Advil non-stop since yesterday morning. I went outside today to run errands, and I walked down the street like Kevin Spacey playing the part of Roger "Verbal" Kint in The Usual Suspects, my left leg dragging behind me like bag of dirty laundry. If I'm standing, it hurts to sit down. If I'm sitting, it hurts to stand up.

The way I feel this morning (physically), I can't help but try to understand why it is that I ran the NY Marathon yesterday. Human bodies, with the rare exception of some outliers on the edge of the bell curve, are not optimized to run that distance. But whereas most animals might be willing to push their bodies to the limits for survival (to find food, procreate, escape predators), only humans do so for recreation. Only a human could transform such a physically traumatic experience into something transcendent.

I wasn't thinking about that when I tried to fall sleep the night prior to the marathon. I'm normally a night owl, so even to lie down at 11 p.m. was an odd feeling. I didn't have high hopes of getting much sleep, but I didn't worry about it as much as I had in the past. I've never slept well before big endurance events like Seattle to Portland, RAMROD, or riding up Mont Ventoux, whether from jet lag or excitement or anxiety, or all of the aforementioned. For single day events, one night's sleep is not as important as all the nights leading up to the day. So I didn't stress about the thumping bass from my next door neighbor's Saturday night party (the funkiness concluded around 1 a.m.) or the blaring of horns from eternally impatient cab drivers on the street (their impatience never ends). I finally fell asleep sometime around 2:40 a.m., and just as I did, my phone rang.

Who could be calling at this hour? I looked at my phone. It was my phone alarm, and it was 5:00 a.m. already. I showered, dressed, skipped breakfast, and cabbed over to the NY Public Library to meet Jenny and Jason for the buses to Staten Island. Thousands of runners snaked along several blocks to load hundreds of buses. On the over hourlong bus ride, we all knew it would be a warm marathon day. The sun, not filtered by a single cloud in the sky, heated up our bus like a sun room and had us all stripping out of our outer layers.

Jenny was in the Orange start group, Jason and I in the Blue (all marathoners were split arbitrarily into three groups--Orange, Blue, Green--to split the traffic flow into three manageable streams during the first several miles of the race). Jason and I spent most of that time waiting in line for bathrooms, applying more sunscreen and BodyGlide, and snacking.

I felt calm, though anxious about one decision: should I wear the black, long-sleeved Under Armour shirt my sisters and brother-in-law had purchased for me as a gift, or should I wear one of my regular short-sleeve running shirts? My long-sleeve had "Go Eugene" ironed on the front, and to distort a Steve Martin line from The Jerk, "This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now." Namely, people would cheer for me by name. Never underestimate the power of personalized cheering. On the other hand, in that sunshine and heat, a black long-sleeve would probably be too warm. Temperatures would reach the mid-60's by mid-day. Jason suggested I pin my number to my shorts, allowing me to switch between the two jerseys. I took his advice and started out in the hometown black.

Jason started further up in the line, in the 8000's, while I was near the back with my 36137 race number. When the cannon fired, I stood among strangers alongside a fence, far from the start. As we walked towards the start, I saw, in the distance, the first throng of runners streaming across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge like an army charging towards its enemy. A steady drizzle of runners left line to run to the fence to relieve themselves, and I felt sympathy for the women, who had to have friends devise creative means to offer them some privacy. A veteran marathoner to my right asked me what my goal was. I really had no idea, but I wore a 4:30 NikeRunning