so tonight i saw 28 days later. while you knew what was coming because of the nature of the movie (thats all i'll say), it was still pretty scary. not so much jump out of your seat scary, but maybe more nightmare scary. those that are squeamish should not see the movie. it was good though. just not for everyone.

i also had some ethiopian food at meskerem with jeannette and her friend eleanor. it was my first experience with ethiopian food and i must say that it was unique. who knew that ethiopians even had food. i mean, there was meat and everything. must be some upper class thing. (okay, totally kidding.) i would probably try it again, despite it not being my favorite food ever.

also, did anybody catch the sunset tonight? it was beautiful.

Posted by tien mao in Movies at 11:23 PM

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so it was a tad one sided and we only had one girl and they had four that rotated batting...minor detail. i went 2 for 4 (or 3 for 4, if you want to exclude error-like plays in the outfield) with 3 runs scored. no sliding this time and no balls hit to me at all. the ball was carrying today though, so at least i can say nothing was hit over my head.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 9:08 PM

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after looking at an apartment in the village, i decide to grab a slice of pizza and walk up to get some key lime pie. my plan for pie was foiled by the gay pride parade which was crossing 8th street. it's a pretty big event here in new york and probably the biggest gay pride parade outside of san francisco. it even has floats...one of which i saw. it was an altoids strips float. hmm, now to describe the float...uh...there were men on it, wearing speedo like bathingsuits, and they were well oiled...there was music playing and gyrating as well. so i decided to take a detour and just look at some sneakers instead. oh well, they had reason to celebrate with the big supreme court decision earlier in the week.

Posted by tien mao in NYC at 3:53 PM

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it's hot here, not quite as hot as it was during the week, so i'm trying to avoid any strenuous activities outside. i decided not to go to the mets game tonight because i was tired of watching them lose. tomorrow, i get to play softball again...woo!

Posted by tien mao in at 7:37 PM

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friday night, i went into williamsburg to see the debutantes play a show. yes, i work in williamsburg, so every time i go there on my own time kind of stings me. anyway, their show was great. for those in nyc, you should get on their mailing list and see them play sometime.

Posted by tien mao in Concerts/Music at 11:13 AM

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the great platte river road archway monument:

"what the hell is that?!?" that was the first thought that crossed my mind when i saw this monument on the way to san diego in may. even on the way back, i was puzzled. not until watching about schmidt on dvd did i know what it was. today, the ny times ("all the news that might be true") actually had an article about the monument. you can read that here.

Posted by tien mao in at 12:18 PM

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last night, a bunch of teenagers from high school, college, and europe, as well as some guys in their early 20s were selected to play in the NBA. while success is not guaranteed, signing bonuses are. players like lebron james, darko milicic, and carmelo anthony are already collecting on checks from their shoe companies, while others stand to get some shoe money along with those pesky nba salaries as well.

the draft board before selections begin.

for some reason, anthony kiedis of the red hot chili peppers was at the draft.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 11:17 AM

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this article talks about one of my favorite companies - krispy kreme. thanks to rachelle for pointing it out.

clearly, i approve...

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 1:15 PM

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last night, i went to the mets game with carolina. it was quite hot out, but not as bad as i expected. at least i wasn't on the field running around or dressed in a huge baseball head like mr. met was. speaking of mr. met, i finally got to take some pictures of him. unfortunately, i was unable to have my picture taken with him because of the throng of children. with that crowd, you would think a new harry potter book was just released or something.

(yes, i have an unhealthy obsession with mr. met, but he just makes me laugh)

here are some photos of what we ate and carolina working off the calories by waiving her free hat...

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 10:39 AM

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i hate this weather. i dont think i've mentioned that yet here. but what is the deal with it being 82° before i even left the apartment?!?

Posted by tien mao in at 7:50 AM

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so i just ordered an ipod from dell's site. why dell's site? it was 10% off with free shipping. it should be noted that i dont have usb 2.0 or an internal firewire. i guess i'll be going to my friend's apt to put all my music onto the ipod.

Posted by tien mao in Tech at 1:38 PM

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so i posted about this about a week ago, but now the national do not call registry has started. i believe new york is adding their numbers to that list, but just to be sure, you should register here (yes, the site is ghetto and it is quite slow - prob b/c of everybody registering).

Posted by tien mao in Rants at 9:15 AM

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so it's pretty big in the news, but there was a huge supreme court decision yesterday on affirmative action. you can read my alma mater's statement on the decision here.

Posted by tien mao in Education at 11:45 AM

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The review for Grimaldi's is up on the pizza page. It should be noted that I didnt add how many slices I had, which would be 7. Yes, from now on, you can call me lard ass.

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 11:22 AM

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after drinking some water and peeing, i went back to sleep for a few more hours. waking up for good later in the morning, i decided to watch the movie "ringu" which is the japanese original of "the ring". its a good thing that i decided to watch the movie during the daytime, because the original was even scarier than the american remake.

in the afternoon, i went to brooklyn to have pizza with some friends. we met up near the brooklyn bridge and walked over to grimaldi's pizza on old fulton street. the trip had multiple functions: walk over bridge, eat pizza, and have some ice cream. grimaldi's will now also be on the pizza review page (the review should be up later today).

the evening called for another subway series baseball game. the game was going well until the end when the mets blew the lead to lose to the evil empire in extra innings.

some images from sunday...

the brooklyn bridge

stairs to the l train at 14th st and 8th ave.

Posted by tien mao in at 1:25 AM

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saturday night was a bad night. remind me never to drink vodka again. actually, just to never drink 100 proof vodka while tired and hungry. that was a bad idea. why i did this, you ask? my friends johnny and katie were having a housewarming gathering in their new apartment on the upper west side. after drinking too much last night, i came home and passed out watching some show on channel 5. how do i know this? that was the channel it was on when i came to at 5:55.

Posted by tien mao in at 11:28 AM

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today in kickboxing class, i accidentally kicked a bag into the mirror, shattering part of it. oops.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 3:22 PM

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tonight, i went to the mets game where they played the cross-town evil empire team.

the mets lost, but the highlight of the game were two plays by tsuyoshi shinjo. the first was an assist as he threw out a runner at 3rd and the other play was a home run robbing grab at the wall. for now, you can see the play on the mets web site.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 11:35 PM

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i think the ny times ("all the news that might be true") is reading my mind. today, they have an article about telemarketing which i posted about yesterday. it seems that laws like new york state's are working, with 8 in 10 people saying they have received fewer calls.

Posted by tien mao in at 9:25 AM

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tonight, i watched the movie "the italian job" which was pretty good. lots of cool chase scenes and an overall coolness to the movie. quite entertaining. and if you have mos def in a movie, can you go wrong? oh, and it should be noted that charlize theron is quite hot.

in the movie they featured the mini quite a bit. you can check out the mini i built a couple of weeks ago. it costs a mere $23,532. i think i need to convince my parents to buy this car. of course, if they bought it, the mini wouldnt actually be my car, would it?

Posted by tien mao in at 11:37 PM

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starting friday, the mets play 16 games at home until the all star break. thats insanity. how do they expect me to go to so many baseball games. if anyone is interested in going with me for the games after this weekend, please let me know!

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 12:23 PM

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i think everyone agrees on this subject. i was on the ny state website today and stumbled upon a "no call" registry. on the site, you can list your info so telemarketers wont call you. at least thats what they say. i'll try it out. i cant take those 9 am calls on the weekend anymore.

Posted by tien mao in Rants at 1:47 AM

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i used to be so good with alarms, waking up right away, never hitting the snooze button. i dont know what happened. it must be the old age. that or the fact that i use a travel alarm clock because my real alarm clock's plug wouldnt fit behind my murphy bed. alas, this wont be a problem that much longer since it looks like i am selling my apartment. lawyers are already in the loop.

Posted by tien mao in at 11:06 AM

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man, softball is a high scoring sport. if only michigan could always beat duke in sports. damn that school. if you're wondering how i did, i went 1-3 with a single and a run scored. the run was pretty sweet if i do say so myself. i was on second and there was a hit and i was waived home. the throw from the cut-off man was coming and i slid...head first, to come in safe! woo. and i barely skinned my knee. today, i am paying for my efforts last night. the all out sprinting from home to first has left my quads and hamstrings very sore.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 9:04 PM

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Next stop, avoiding reality
By Gregg Easterbrook
Page 2 columnist

Hockey and basketball are done; the Triple Crown, Indy 500 and the Open are past. Now comes the deadest, dullest six weeks in the annual sports calendar -- nothing but baseball until August, when the NFL resumes. The next six weeks are sufficiently barren for sports fans that many will actually be excited when NFL preseason games start -- even knowing that NFL preseason games are awful -- because the onset of these games means that the real thing is around the corner.

With hardly anything now going on in sports, one could use the added time in constructive ways. Read the classics -- everyone talks about Plato's "Republic" and his "Timaeus," but how many people have actually read them? ("Timaeus," Plato's most popular work during his lifetime, asserts that the average person will never be capable of understanding God; this view was popular among the ancient Greeks.) Improve your diet; how about a nice lunch of steamed vegetables and decaf herbal tea? Do volunteer work for a faith-based organization. Engage in long, sensitive conversations with members of the opposite sex. Ask yourself the meaning of life. Seek spiritual advancement. Try to become a better person. In the next six weeks, there are no sports distractions.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback is moved to haikuize:

Comes now the dullest
weeks in sports. Please, don't make us
use this time wisely.

This gets to the nut of why the National Football League is America's most popular sport. Partly it's the high caliber of play, but mainly the NFL is an artificial universe that diverts us from having to think about the real world, or ourselves.

We'd like to thank the Chargers and Angie for reminding us about, um, football 12 months a year.

The mega-hype of the games, the obsessive following of every detail of the draft and the waiver wires, the advertising hoopla, the ratings, the cheer-babes with their swimsuit calendars ... not only is this all fun, it's fantastic distraction from the real world. In the NFL artificial universe, the life-and-death struggle for an extra yard diverts fans from the real life-and-death struggles going on around us; the artificially important standings move our gaze from real figures that matter, like poverty statistics (one in eight to one in six Americans still impoverished, depending on which definition is used); the huge emotional build-up to each game, and the huge emotional let-down that hits exactly half the fan base after each game, diverts men and, increasingly, women from emotional topics that ought really to matter, whether friends, family or injustice.

The NFL artificial universe, in short, gives us an excuse not to think about the real universe for a while. That's why it is so popular!

Note that in "Timaeus," Plato posits that the universe had no beginning, rather has simply always existed and will always exist. (You knew that about the book, right?) Inexplicably, Plato does not say whether he believes the sports artificial universe has always existed and will always exist. Let's hope so.

In other NFL news, there is some actual NFL news buried somewhere in this column. Fear not. Just six more weeks, and we can all return safely to the National Football League artificial universe.

Pentagon to Supply NBA With Surplus GPS Guidance Kits to Attach to Balls: Last week's TMQ bemoaned the decline in shooting proficiency and shot selection in the NBA. The following night, in the fourth Spurs-Nets collision, San Antonio shot 29 percent from the field -- worst such team figure in the NBA finals since 1955 -- while New Jersey fairly sizzled at 36 percent. In that game Bruce Bowen, Stephen Jackson, Tony Parker, Kerry Kittles and Malik Rose combined to go 6-for-43, that is, to miss six shots for every one that fell. Ay caramba.

Bad NBA offense became the sports-world theme of the week -- you read it here first! It all culminated in Sunday's night deciding game, when Bruce Bowen, Emanuel Ginobili, Lucious Harris, Richard Jefferson, Anthony Johnson, Kenyon Martin and Steve Smith combined to go 0-12 from the three arc. Uuuff dah.

Miss France, coming soon to a paragraph near you!
Kenyon "Cover-Your-Eyes" Martin: TMQ's column last week further complained about the tendency of Kenyon Martin of the Nets, when the pressure is on, to grab the ball, go one-on-one as if in a Nike commercial rather than a game, then heave up a low-percentage prayer that clangs. As the column pointed out, anybody can go one-on-one and then launch a bad shot; it's working for the good shot that distinguishes the mature basketball player. Sunday night, Martin was a cover-your-eyes 3-for-23 from the field and continued to grab it, go one-on-one and heave-ho during the Spurs' 19-0 late run that sealed the championship.

TMQ does not offer many immutable laws of basketball, but one is: Defense Starts Comebacks, Offense Stops Them. If the Nets, leading by nine in the fourth quarter when the run started, had hit even a couple buckets during the Spurs comeback, the teams might now be preparing for a seventh game. But rather than play a little fundamentals and try for a good shot, during the Spurs' run New Jersey repeatedly had one guy going one-on-one while four guys stood watching. Ye gods.

As for Martin, he spent as much energy in the finals complaining about the refs as working for good shots. He did get the short end of several calls, but Martin is only reaping what he hath sown. He cultivates the thug look -- excessive tattoos, cloaking his head on the bench -- so the refs treat him as a thug and presume guilt. Tim Duncan, by contrast, cultivates the look of a guy you'd want your daughter to marry. So the refs give Duncan the benefit of the doubt on fouls.

TMQ has no idea whether Martin is a bad character or the salt of the Earth; all I know about him is the impression he gives. The point is, that's all the refs know, too. In the real world, people are judged partly by appearances, and those NBA players who go out of their way to cultivate a negative appearance get treated negatively by the officials. Since the thug look came in a decade or so ago, who's been winning NBA titles? Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Shaq, Hakeem Olajuwan, David Robinson, Michael Jordan ... all clean-cut, normal-armed, winning-smile guys you'd want your daughter to marry. Who's been frustrated in the finals? Kenyon Martin, Allen Iverson and the rest of the scowling, Illustrated-Man me-bad crew.

You don't need to consult Plato to be able to figure out the relationship between making a good impression and career success. It's no different in the NBA than in the business world, except that in the NBA, you report for work in your underwear. If what Kenyon Martin or Allen Iverson want is to be picked for shoe commercials or to make a splash on the club scene, they are following the right course. If what they want is an NBA championship ring, they should begin by looking in the mirror.

The WNBA could use a few more Miss Brazils. Heck, we all could.
Miss Universe Swimsuit Update Last week's column asked readers to peruse the swimsuit and national-costume photos at the Miss Universe website. (Go here, then select a "delegate," then click swimsuit or, for fun, national costume.) The plan was to create a cheap, flimsy excuse to append cheesecake photos to the column -- international, multilateral cheesecake.

To TMQ's surprise, relatively few readers took up this challenge. Isn't Page 2 doing enough to keep your minds in the gutter?

Sean Kennings of Sausalito, California, tastefully preferred the evening gown photo of Miss France, Emmanuelle Chossatt, to her swimsuit view. TMQ immediately locked on to the erotic-literature significance of a French mega-babe named Emmanuelle, until finding this bio description of Chossatt, which is hard to top: She is "currently studying to become a helicopter pilot and has vocational qualifications in financial management and cosmetic aesthetics."

Sports-linked possibilities include Gislaine Ferreira, Miss Brazil, who has played professional women's basketball and also worked as a color commentator for television soccer matches. Rarely will the ESPN.com art department encounter a more legitimate-sounding excuse to append a cheesecake photo than Ferreira's swimsuit shot!

Faye Alibocus, Miss Trinidad and Tobago, received several reader mentions. She has training in ballet, tap, Latin, jazz and native dancing, these being similar to athletics.

Another possibility is Julie Taton, Miss Belgium, a PR specialist who represents that tennis-dominating nation. Belgium's motto: We May Be Small, But We're Annoying.

Polona Bas of Slovenia is a gymnast who has performed in international competition. Gymnastics is a sport, and there is the swimsuit photo justification. Marietta Chrousala, Miss Greece, will be working at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The Olympics is a sporting event, and there is the swimsuit photo justification.

Imagine the Gambians, As They Carry the Giant Pouched Rats Down to the Dock, Thinking to Themselves, "America Is the Greatest Country in the World, and Yet They Pay Us to Ship Them Rats": Researchers think the monkeypox outbreak was triggered by prairie dogs that came into contact with an infected Gambian giant pouched rat. Forget how this chain of events could be figured out in such a short time, while science is still unable to determine why women are wide awake after sex, and men want to sleep. The real question is: What caused innocent, trusting little prairie dogs to come into contact with Gambian giant pouched rats?

There's tennis, waffles and Miss Belgium. After that, they've got nothing.
According to this story in the New York Times ("All the News That Might Be True"), the rats "are imported as pets." People are importing rats? Don't they realize that a large supply of locally produced rats is already available free of charge? But these days no one wants a domestic rat. Oh no. It's got to be an imported rat!

Perhaps NBA Players Get Frequent Flyer Miles for Traveling: Last week, TMQ noted that not only are "the customary four or five steps" now seemingly legal in the NBA -- uncalled walking violations occur on every other possession -- but up-and-down has become legal too. Announcers rarely even bother to comment on the no-call of these violations.

At one point in the deciding sixth NBA championship game, Tony Parker of the Spurs spun into the lane, took the customary four or five steps, jumped with both feet, came down on both feet, looked around, took a step and then passed the ball. "He almost walked with it," announcer Brad Nessler mused. Presumably, if Parker had taken another four or five steps, then jumped again, then traveled a third time, then sat down to file his nails, something might have been called.

What would you have to do to get a traveling call in today's NBA? If you took the customary four or five steps, jumped, came down on both feet, took another five steps, stopped to call your agent on the cell phone, went into the locker room and changed to street clothes, took the ball with you to the airport and flew to a different city, when you landed and deplaned the officials would give in and whistle "Traveling!" At which point your coach would make a wildly exaggerated grimace and scream, "WHAT!!!!!"

Will There Be a Scene Where the Angels Fight Over Miller Lite?: Posters and billboards for the upcoming "Charlie's Angels Full Throttle" feature the stars' shapely rears in sprayed-on black spandex -- surely what actual detectives wear! The advertising pitch seems to be, "We give you the A for free, now come to the theater and see the T." Still trying to make heads or tails of the random-events plot of the first "Angels" flick, TMQ does not relish having to watch those many scenes of the sequel that will not be rear-end close-ups.

Cameron doesn't look too miserable to be trapped in that body.
The latest from Cameron Diaz reminds TMQ of her voice work in a movie whose plot viewers could follow -- "Shrek." That film ends with the Diaz character facing a magical choice between being ugly and happy, or beautiful and miserable -- her decision for the former is surely good psychological advice. But does even one single person in Hollywood believe it's better to be ugly and content than beautiful and miserable? The extremely gorgeous Diaz probably spends hours each week talking to friends and therapists about how unhappy she is. Given a magical opportunity to become ugly but completely content, TMQ suspects there is no chance she'd say yes.

All These Fictional NFL Contracts? Jayson Blair Is the Agent: A running obsession of TMQ (see, for instance, this September 2002 column) is the fictional NFL contract that, for reasons of cap-evasion and players' ego, appears to call for far more than the Party of the First Part will ever see.

This offseason, Jerry Rice and Tim Brown of the Raiders each signed widely hyped "six-year, $30 million" contracts that are actually two-year, $4 million contracts. In Rice's case, $24 million of the promised "$30 million" comes after the 2005 season, when number 80 will be 43 years old. On paper, the contract will pay this greatest-ever receiver much of its value in 2008, when Rice will be 46 years old and sitting in a broadcast booth somewhere, wearing a garish color-coordinated jacket.

Like all modern fictional NFL contracts, Rice's is really a short-term agreement with foam insulation at the end -- after a year or two, Rice will either retire or, if his knees still work without 3-in-1 Oil, sign an amended deal. Bear in mind that in June 2000, Rice autographed a "five-year, $31 million" contract with San Francisco. That five-year deal lasted one year. After the Niners cut him, Rice signed a "four-year, $5.4 million" contract with Oakland. That four-year deal lasted two years. On paper, Rice has over the last three seasons signed for 15 years and $67 million! He will to fortunate to pocket 20 percent of that total.

The first two years are the only portion of a modern NFL contract that can be taken seriously, because in the first two years a bonus is conferred and the signing team would absorb a stiff cap penalty by trading or cutting the player. After two years, cap penalties become manageable, allowing the player to be unloaded; or, equally important, creating the leverage that allows the club to demand concessions. Once in a while, the cap ramifications are such that long-term contracts are actually three-year agreements. Beyond that, everything in the out years is always foam insulation.

This offseason, Roosevelt Colvin signed a "seven-year, $30 million" contract with New England that actually pays $8.6 million in first two years, which is pretty good; then the contract will be renegotiated or Colvin will be released. David Boston signed a "seven-year, $47 million" deal with San Diego that actually pays $12 million over two years, also good, then Boston will renegotiate or be cut. Jake Plummer signed a "seven-year, $40 million" deal with Denver that actually pays $8.2 million in the first two years, then it's a pay reduction or the waiver wire. Brian Dawkins signed a "seven-year, $43 million" agreement with Philadelphia that actually pays about $11 million in its two-year consequential period. Brian Urlacher signed a "nine-year, $57 million" contract with Chicago that is actually a three-year, $23 million agreement.

NFL GMs dance around the cap better than Miss Trinidad & Tobago. C'mon, it was a nice try.
The goofiest fictional contract of 2002 was inked by Blake Brockermeyer, an "eight-year, $34 million" deal with the Broncos that was only guaranteed to pay about $1.3 million, some four percent of its ostensible value. TMQ's favorite part: On paper, the deal pays him $6 million in 2009, when Brockermeyer will be shilling for some car dealership.

The goofiest fictional contract of the current offseason was the "10-year, $102 million" agreement signed by Duante Culpepper. As ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli has pointed out, this deal is really three years for $10 million, making the true value about a 10th of the ostensible number; the rest of the "money" is unlikely ever to enter Culpepper's checking account. One of the many fictions in Culpepper's deal is a $1 million bonus for being in on 75 percent of special teams plays. Culpepper is bigger than a lot of guys the Vikings have in their wedge, but the odds of a quarterback going in to cover punts don't seem high. And of course, there is no chance whatsoever the contract actually will run 10 years.

Large fictional contracts enable NFL teams to extend cap charges into the future, while allowing agents to call press conferences announcing incredible, astonishing deals for their clients. In TMQ's experience, few agents call press conferences again two years later, when the player is waived or agrees to a substantial pay reduction.

In 2001, Brian Griese signed a "six-year, $39 million" contract with Denver; the deal lasted two years before he was waived this month, with $25 million unpaid. Griese's agent did not call a press conference to boast that his client would never see most of the money. Two years ago, Browns linebacker Jamir Miller signed what was on paper a monster contract, but its fictional value came from a totally unrealistic $14 million roster bonus due this winter. Miller was injured and decided to retire, but even had he been fine, he would have been waived or had to renegotiate -- how could anyone have believed for one instant that this fictional sum would ever be paid? Robert Porcher signed what looked like a monster contract that said he was due $7 million this season; he renegotiated down to half that. When Sam Cowart of Jersey/B signed a "six-year, $30 million" contract in 2002, the deal was unveiled at a press conference. On paper, Cowart was due a $3.5 million roster bonus around this Valentine's Day; he quietly renegotiated to zero bonus, and made other concessions. Amazingly, his agent did not call a press conference to announce that he had cannily negotiated a $3.5 million bonus down to zero.

"It was my understanding before I started the column that there would be no math."
Then there is Stephen Davis, atop the leader board for fictional contracts. To press-conference fanfare, Davis in 1999 signed a "nine-year, $91 million" contract. Sportswriters wrote in awe of this deal, pretending Davis would actually get the money. Last summer, that agreement was tossed into the recycle bin as Davis signed a renegotiated deal with the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons. Out years of the "nine-year, $91 million" agreement, where the big money resided, mysteriously vanished, replaced by a new "five-year, $31 million" contract "whose paper value Davis will never see either," TMQ wrote at the time.

In fact, TMQ wrote at the time, "The new 'five-year' deal might not even last Davis until Valentine's Day 2003, since it calls for a $7.5 million salary in 2003, a figure the Persons cannot possibly afford under their salary cap. Davis will either be cut next winter or his contract rewritten yet again, for the second time pressing the delete key on the imaginary mega-money." Davis was cut just after Valentine's Day 2003.

Now Davis has autographed a "five-year, $35 million" agreement with the Panthers, but most of the paper value is out-years mega-money that, once again, the tailback will never see. Over the last four seasons, on paper Davis has signed contracts for 19 years and $157 million!

Which fish are already on the hook for losing fictional money next winter? One aspiring candidate is Simeon Rice of the defending champion City of Tampa Bucs. Rice got a "$20 million" bonus to resign this March, but $8 million of the amount is conveniently "deferred" till next winter. TMQ remembers going on more than one date where the woman hinted of sex on some deferred evening if dinner was paid for now. How often did the deferred whoopee actually happen? That is precisely Simeon Rice's odds of getting an additional $8 million by Valentine's Day 2004.

Random House, Which is Owned by Bertelsmann, Will Publish TMQ's Next Book and the Excerpts Will Run in Time Magazine, Which Is Owned by AOL Time Warner. Watch for Details on ABC Primetime, Which Is Owned by Disney: Last week NBC* television hired Kevin Reilly, a programming executive from FX,** as its top official for new primetime shows.

Kevin Reilly's claim to fame is that he supervised development of the FX series "The Shield." This show airs on an enterprise owned by the supposedly flag-waving conservative Rupert Murdoch, despite the fact that "The Shield" depicts American policemen as soulless murderers who laugh at the law and kill whom they please without concern for guilt or innocence. Thanks for that vote of confidence in your adopted nation, Rupert!

There goes Michael Chiklis, presumably coming from a homicide he just committed.
TMQ finds critical praise for "The Shield" quite puzzling, since the show strikes me as a tired mélange of cop-drama clichés dressed up with "realistic" violence that is totally artificial. In "The Shield," just like in other totally artificial Hollywood cop fantasies such as the "Lethal Weapon" franchise,*** police officers are constantly blasting away with their sidearms, to say nothing of gunning people down on a regular basis. Actually, law enforcement officers rarely draw firearms and almost never pull the trigger. Statistics show, for example, that 95 percent of New York City police officers retire without ever discharging a weapon, except on the practice range. Nationally, studies show, one officer in 4,000 kills someone at any point during his or her career.

Nevertheless, the New York Times ("All the News That Might Be True") has praised "The Shield" as "realistic." Of course to the Times, the fact that "The Shield" is fabricated may constitute realism, but that's another issue. The Times has also declared of Shawn Ryan, "The Shield's" chief writer, "Mr. Ryan had won a series of playwriting awards while at Middlebury college in Vermont, and later moved to Los Angeles to pursue a successful television career working on shows like 'Angel' and 'Nash Bridges.'" Someone goes from playwriting awards at Middlebury, to churning out drek for "Nash Bridges" and "The Shield," and is praised for this by the New York Times. Verily, another sign of the decline of Western civilization.

* NOTE 1: NBC, which is owned by General Electric, is a competitor of ABC, which is owned by Disney, which owns ESPN; NBC is a partner with Microsoft in MSNBC, which has a sports news division, and Microsoft is a partner with ESPN.com; Microsoft recently signed an agreement to cooperate with AOL, which is owned by AOL Time Warner, which owns cable companies that show NBC, ABC and ESPN, and owns Sports Illustrated, which competes with ESPN The Magazine, which is published on Earth The Planet; AOL Time Warner cable channels carry CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon, all of which are owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, which competes with Disney's Miramax and Touchstone movie studios, and also owns Simon & Schuster, which published the Hillary Clinton book that was excerpted in AOL Time Warner's Time magazine and featured in a Barbara Walters special on Disney-owned ABC. So don't worry about media consolidation, and please support Michael Powell!

** NOTE 2: FX, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, also owns Fox, which competes with Disney's ABC, General Electric's NBC and Viacom's CBS, and owns Fox News, which competes with CNN, which is owned by AOL Time Warner, and owns Fox Sports Net, which competes with ESPN, and owns HarperCollins books, which competes with Simon & Schuster and with Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann, which owns BMG Music, which is negotiating to combine operations with the Warner music label owned by AOL Time Warner. Really, don't worry about media consolidation!

*** NOTE 3. "Lethal Weapon" movies are produced by Warner Brothers, which is owned by AOL Time Warner, which competes with the 20th Century Fox studio owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation,**** which competes with Paramount Pictures, which is owned by ... oh, forget it.

**** NOTE 4. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation just bought DirecTV, whose monopoly over NFL Sunday Ticket prevents Sunday Ticket from being offered on cable in the United States. This means that the 90 percent of American homes that do not or cannot get the DirecTV satellite signal must watch whatever bad Sunday afternoon game Viacom's CBS division or Murdoch's Fox division wants to force them to see -- while NFL Sunday Ticket, and thus total viewing freedom, is easily available to any home in Canada or Mexico via cable.

But, perhaps best not to get me started on the DirecTV monopoly.

The Catfight: Definitely a first-ballot inductee into the commercial hall of fame.
TMQ Felt the Problem All Along Has Been That the Ads Feature Only Two Wet Near-Naked Mega-Babes: Sports fans everywhere -- at least, traditional male and nontraditional female sport fans -- are lamenting Miller Lite's decision to end its "catfight" ads, which use flimsy pretexts to show mega-babes fighting in various states of wet undress. According to press accounts, the series is ending not owing to tedious hand-wringing about propriety, but because Miller Lite sales have not increased since the two stars began ripping their dresses off on national television. Beer drinkers, you have only yourselves to blame!

TMQ hopes everyone caught the late-night (and cable) version of the original ad, which ends when one of the mega-babes stops the wet-lingerie fight in the fountain to say to the other, "Wow, this turns me on. Want to make out?"

Do not despair, however, as the "catfight" series will depart in style with a "pillowfight" ad in which the two familiar babes are joined by Pamela Anderson, and the three women end up near-naked and wet in a hotel room. Possibly Miller Lite is pretty much giving up on the female beer-buyer market at this point.

TMQ NBA Player of the Year: Last season it was Donny Marshall of Nets. This who-dat gentleman played one minute in Game 2 of the 2002 finals, touched the ball once and immediately hurled up a ridiculous 3-pointer that clanged. Why not imitate the stars? Marshall was instantly yanked. He ended the series with two total minutes, and in that short span he shot three times, clanging all three.

This season the Tuesday Morning Quarterback NBA Player of the Year is veteran Steve Smith of San Antonio. He entered the final game of the championships for one minute, touched the ball and immediately hurled up a 3-pointer that clanged. For the 2003 playoffs, Smith was 2-for-12 from the 3-point line and a cover-your-eyes 5-for-24 (.208) shooting overall. He complained to sportswriters about not playing enough.

Through His Agent, the Orangutan Demanded a Five-Year Deal Plus Local TV Show and Golf Tournament Income: One of the reasons many coaches prefer college to the pros is that, at the big-time schools at least, it's hard to fail. The built-in recruiting advantage at the big-time schools all but assures a winning season for most major football or men's basketball programs, while the East Carolinas sprinkled into the schedule assure every season will contain at least a few huge-margin victories. Basically, an orangutan could coach a football-factory or basketball-factory university to a .500 season, explaining why so many big-school collegiate coaches are entrenched for long periods. You've got to be a special kind of screw-up to lose a big-school coaching job.

Hello Larry Eustachy, Jim Harrick, Mike Price and Rick Neuheisel. Enron and WorldCom are hiring, fellas.

Of these fiascos, the predictable one was that of Price, dismissed by Alabama before he had strutted the sidelines in even one game. Last December, when Alabama hired Price, TMQ foresaw that the Tide would come to woe. That column pointed out that the kind of man who would walk out on his team a few nights before its appearance in the Rose Bowl -- which is what Price did to Washington State, in order to take the 'Bama job -- is not the kind of man you want around. TMQ noted, "Price lied to his (Washington State) players by saying he was staying, then bolted the instant the money was right. What 'Bama is getting is the kind of coach who cares exclusively about himself."

This is the woman Price decided was worth throwing away his career for.
Proximate cause of Price's dismissal was his being seen in a Pensacola, Fla., strip club. This was not the first strike. According to the university's president, Price had already been formally "warned about his public behavior," despite his very short tenure at the school. Now, watching naked dancers is a legal activity and, in the right circumstances, a form of good, clean fun. Having just started a high-profile leadership position at a university with troubled athletic programs is not the right circumstances. But why was Alabama surprised that Mike Price would betray the school? After all, he had just betrayed his previous employer. The football gods chortled.

Amazingly, Jayson Blair Never Quoted Greg Packer: Don't miss this hysterical Wall Street Journal article about Greg Packer, a 39-year-old Long Island highway maintenance worker who constantly gets himself quoted as a "man in the street" by rushing to the scene of media events and then pretending he happened to be passing by. According to this article in the New York Journal News, Packer has been quoted at least 177 times in various media reports in recent years, always as an average-Joe bystander. Packer has standards, though. He told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm not going to talk about the Mets in Yankee Stadium. That would be total disrespect."

Reader Animadversion
Jim Goloby of Champaign, Ill., defended the honor of the champion Spurs against TMQ's statement that they "aren't exactly the 1966 Celtics on offense." Goloby notes that San Antonio shot .462 this year during the regular season, while the 1965-66 Celtics shot .417. Clang, apparently, is not a new phenomenon.

Amanda Hayden of Greenland, N.H., wrote of the mega-babe pictures that mysteriously find their way into TMQ, "As a female sports fan, I am not delivered photos of hot male sports personalities in their most flattering swimwear. Why does this phenomenon only work in one direction?" Amanda, TMQ has published beefcake intended for female readers: Check this column from last season, with a shirtless pic of Jason Taylor. And check this item from last season, "The Revenge of the Chicks," in which half a dozen female readers deliver themselves of haiku on this very topic.

Fine, here's Jason Taylor. Hope that tides you over.
Doug Brosz of Laguna Niguel, Calif., protested TMQ's contention that NBA teams that launch a 3-point attempt, when trailing by two with seconds left, should instead have tried for a two-point basket and overtime. Since the best shooters are about .500 on two-point attempts, Brosz contended, and a team has about a 50 percent chance of prevailing in overtime, a one-in-two chance times a one-in-two chance yields a one-in-four chance that a regular shot in trailing-by-two buzzer situations will yield a victory. The typical 3-pointer, Brosz goes on, has about a one-in-three chance of falling. One-in-three is better than one-in-four, making treys smart in this situation, he concludes.

TMQ's item asserting that Hillary Clinton could not possibly have written "Living History" was quoted in the Washington Post. Soon all America will be reading ESPN.com for its political news!

Many readers, including Brian Levinson of Queens, N.Y., wrote in defending Hillary's honor. Levinson noted that the Sid Blumenthal book "The Clinton Wars" asserts that the First Lady did, in fact, write at least parts of "It Takes a Village." Levinson further protests that nobody makes a fuss over the fact that George W. Bush could not possibly have written his campaign book, "A Charge to Keep."

Well, maybe Hillary actually wrote some of "It Takes a Village," but Blumenthal can no more stand as a source-authority for a pro-Clinton contention than Karl Rove can be the judge of whether W. was a good governor of Texas. And pundits don't complain that Bush didn't really write "A Charge to Keep," because he never pretended he wrote it! The book was marketed as "by George W. Bush with Karen Hughes". Because Bush freely admitted that Karen Hughes wrote his book, all is well. It's suspicious that Hillary Clinton doggedly, determinedly claims authorship of books she could not possibly have had the time to produce herself, setting aside the issue of writing ability.

Other Hillary defenders wrote in to note that the cover of the work in question does not in fact say "by Hillary Clinton." What it says is:

Living History
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Thus, this defense goes, Hillary never actually claimed authorship. That's just an inference people are drawing -- Hillary has no control over other people's assumptions! Much depends, it seems, on what the definition of "by" is.

"Hey, is that J.K. Rowling? I think I'll get her to write my next book."
Clinton might be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, and it will be a great day in American history when the first woman is elected to the White House. But Hillary's lying -- about authorship, about law-firm records that mysteriously appear on tables -- is disturbing. Bill Clinton was mainly a good president; his downside was habitual lying. Bill almost seemed to like to lie, to show what he could get away with. Lying brought Bill Clinton low, deeply damaged the Democratic Party, and will be the main fault held against the 42nd president by historians. Now, looking ahead to a Hillary candidacy, we see the same danger signs of habitual lying and the same "how dare anyone question me!" response when the lying is called out. It's disturbing.

Last week's column cited the John McCain book "Faith of Our Fathers" as representing the honesty the current Clinton volume lacks, and said that book was marketed as "by Mark Salter with John McCain." Salter called TMQ to note the cover actually said "by John McCain with Mark Salter." Anyway, the point is, it was truthful. McCain's new book, "Worth Fighting For," is sold as "by John McCain and Mark Salter;" the dedication is jointly to McCain's wife and to Salter's wife. If Hillary had only been honest about her ghostwriters in this way, people would admire her for truthfulness rather than being suspicious of her for deviousness and ego. That she cannot grasp this -- or that she thinks, "how dare anyone question me!" -- is disturbing.

TMQ hopes that if Hillary is the Democratic candidate in 2008, the Republican contender will be Condoleezza Rice. That way the first female president will be assured, and gender can be dismissed as an issue in the campaign.

Hang On Till August: Tuesday Morning Quarterback will return in six weeks when the offseason marathon finally ends and large, ill-tempered gentlemen prepare to collide as the NFL alternate universe resumes.

Posted by tien mao in at 7:36 PM

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at least thats what weather underground says. tonight is my first alumni softball game this season. michigan vs duke, what a classic matchup. i hope i play well and dont mess up. that would suck. great lawn, field 1, 7pm if anybody wants to watch me...not sure why you would though.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 1:43 PM

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an article on airline security in the times ("all the news that might be true").

Posted by tien mao in at 10:56 AM

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today is carolina's birthday.
there dont seem to be too many famous people born on this day, but carolina was born today, which is all that counts.
check out who else was born on this day here.

Posted by tien mao in Birthdays at 10:39 AM

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last night, some college friends of mine (dan, john and katie) came into town for the weekend. we went to peter luger for dinner which was good as always.

today we went to evil empire stadium in the bronx to watch the evil empire play the st. louis cardinals (two of my friends are from the lou).

there was also a mullet a the game...

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 8:03 PM

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back in december while at work, i was bored and i was looking to entertain myself for a little while. earlier that month, i had a discussion about why the nba is so crappy and i said it was because of the lack of bball fundamentals and the drastic decline of the mid-range jumper and the players' love of the 3 pointer and the dunk. this past week, gregg easterbrook discussed how the nba is an ugly ugly league. here is an excerpt from the column:
"Adoration of the three-point shot also contributes to NBA decline. Every NBA gentleman now wants to drain a trey and then dance around pointing at himself; most seem willing to clang quite a few silly attempts in order to get that one moment of self-pointing. Announcers and sportswriters are complicit -- they wildly praise the three-pointer that falls, rarely criticize the silly long attempt. Players know they will be wildly praised if they hit a big three, while no one will say anything if they miss threes that should have been twos. So, responding to the incentive structure, players launch crazy shots that go clang, and offensive quality erodes.

Then there's slam-dunk psychology. Announcers and, especially, marketers extol the slam. Yet the most exciting play in basketball is the layup -- because layups don't happen unless at least two players are working together. The best and most exciting play in Sunday's Spurs-Nets game was a first-quarter fast-break layup by New Jersey, the layup coming after two very sharp, coordinated passes. Slam-dunks don't require coordinated play. Slam-dunks don't require practice. They just happen. What do we see in the current Nike commercials? Basketball players going one-on-one and slam-dunking. We don't see coordinated action being extolled; we see immature, pointing-at-myself strutting."

(for those that are interested, i can forward you my analysis with statistics included.)

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 2:04 PM

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apparently, this is our national costume:

or at least it was for the miss universe pagent.

Posted by tien mao in at 11:06 AM

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thats the best formula that i've seen in a while. this morning, i had my first tasting (of many to come, i'm sure) of krispy kreme's doughnut of the month for june, july, and some of august (how a doughnut of the month can run for parts of 3 months has escaped me). this key lime pie doughnut has combined two of my favorite things. key lime pie and krispy kreme doughnuts.

(two of those pictures are just for jeannette, who loves to point out the filling every time she sees an image of this doughnut.)

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 10:03 AM

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tonight, i went to katz's for dinner which was a pastrami sandwich on rye with some mustard, pretty standard. katz's probably has the best pastrami in new york and it is quite unique. its probably got more fat per slice than any other pastrami that i've had, but i'm not complaining. tomorrow i am going to peter luger's for dinner with my college friends who are in town from st louis and philadelphia. saturday, we are going to a baseball game where i will probably have some hot dogs. as you can see, healthy eating is not something i partake in. check out rachelle's site for more details.

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 9:08 PM

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i'm finally back at my desk. i should clarify that its not that i'm happy to be back at work, but i'm happy to be back sitting and not standing for 7 hours straight. i hate standing. i dont think i mentioned that before, but its true.

my messy desk

Posted by tien mao in Work at 3:02 PM

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i dont think my feet have ever hurt more than they did today. i think the two days of working a trade show and wearing shoes that whole time have caused the pain in my feet. i think i have weak feet. i should go see a podiatrist or something. tonight, i look forward to lying in bed and resting my feet. maybe some ice cream too. yum.

Posted by tien mao in Work at 8:39 PM

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The Rust Age of the NBA
By Gregg Easterbrook
Page 2 columnist

Each year around this time, Tuesday Morning Quarterback journeys alone to a distant wilderness, fasts, meditates, gawks at the Philadelphia Eagles' cheerleaders' lingerie calendar and offers a prayer of thanks to the football gods that the NFL has not become the NBA. Herewith the prayer:

Oh football gods, on thine couch above
Copyrighted be thy names.
Give us each fall some mojo sport
And reverse our bad calls,
As we reverse the ball calls of others.
Deliver us from the NFL turning into the NBA!
For thine is the gold standard, the buzz and the ratings
Now and forever, at least till the next network contract.

Thanks be to the football gods that the NFL does not become the NBA! There is a reason why the National Football League is America's No. 1 sport by every measure -- attendance, ratings, merchandising -- as the once-hot NBA continues its downward slip-slide in popularity. The reason is the decline of NBA play, which every season seems to become more simplified, less coordinated and more immature. Every year the NBA becomes less mature by about one tree-ring. During the Magic-Bird-MJ Golden Age, it was a sport of mental 30-year-olds, then 29-year-olds, then 28-year-olds and so on. Currently the NBA is a sport of mental 19-year-olds.

If the NFL turned into the NBA, there would be no plays on offense; 11 guys would just run around doing whatever they felt like, calling for the ball. Each person who actually got the ball would immediately throw a 60-yard pass, then turn to the officials to scream for a foul. Players would refuse to speak to each other, and cover their ears when coaches spoke. Players would put tattoos on their helmets. Fans would start leaving while the game was still on the line, as the home fans did Sunday night in the Meadowlands. With a minute remaining and the Nets down three, there were already hundreds of empty seats throughout Continental Airlines Arena, while those moving up the aisles to exit blocked the view of those staying for the quaint reason of finding out who wins. Home fans streaming out in the final minute of a close championship game. Ye gods. You've got to have a pretty troubled sport to achieve that. Welcome to the NBA.

But don't take my word for it, take the people's plebiscite. NBA attendance is down, while NFL attendance sets a new record almost annually. NBA ratings have fallen almost 45 percent in the past decade, while NFL ratings remain tops in sports and have been rising mildly in recent years. For a decade the quality of the NBA product has been going downhill. The NBA's attitude is that fans are too stupid to notice. But fans know about the decline and are paying steadily less attention. Please, oh football gods, don't let this spread to the NFL!

The central measure of NBA quality decline is the ever-more-awful performance of teams on offense. The clichè is that NBA gentlemen play no defense, but the reverse is the problem. It's the offensive game where the awfulness is, and this was true long before the Nets and Spurs played the lowest-scoring NBA Finals quarter in history on Sunday night; was true long before the Nets and Mavericks, two teams in conference championship series, each turned in embarrassing sub-double-digit quarters in key games.

We present you with Miss Universe, because Jason Kidd is just not pretty.
NBA defense has been pretty decent in recent years, because defense principally requires exertion, and most NBA players are giving fans their money's worth there. Check those bald heads -- they're dappled with sweat from effort. And with the expansion of NBA rules to allow both zone and man defenses, some defensive schemes now actually exhibit planning, the Spurs 3-2, which they have switched in and out of to bedevil the Nets, being an example.

Offense, on the other hand -- cover your eyes! Offense requires coordination between players. Offense requires players listening to coaches and following their instructions. Offense requires team spirit and unselfishness. Offense requires knowledge of fundamentals, the kind of knowledge you get by playing several years in college. On coordination, coaching, unselfishness and knowledge of fundamentals, nearly every NBA offense has gone south. This is why the game has become ugly, aesthetically. Fans know it and are responding by watching less.

Almost any NBA contest provides examples, but take the most recent -- Sunday night's Spurs-Nets collision. It was not unusual defense that made for 63 combined points in the first half, or for a New Jersey nine-point quarter; it was appalling offense. If the Nets ran any coordinated play at any point Sunday, I missed it. Every possession was a high screen followed by someone going one-on-one while his teammates watched. Give-and-go? Pick-and-roll? Baseline rubs? If New Jersey ran even these simple plays, let alone anything requiring practice or coordination, I missed it. The Nets on offense looked like a bunch of guys who had just met a few minutes before and just chosen up sides for a pickup game.

The nadir came when the Spurs led by five and New Jersey took possession with 43 seconds remaining. Did the Nets run a play -- do anything that required planning or thinking? Kenyon Martin grabbed the ball and went one-on-one as everyone else watched; his shot clanged and the game was effectively over. Yumpin' jiminy. The farther into the postseason the Nets progress, the worse their offense becomes. New Jersey averaged 102.2 points per game in its first playoff series, 101.3 in its second, 90.8 in its third, and is down to just 85 points per game in the championship round. The farther New Jersey progresses, the more often its offensive possessions become one guy grabbing the ball, going one-on-one and heaving up a bad shot that clangs.

The Spurs, in turn, aren't exactly the 1966 Celtics on offense. But at least they run plays, mainly the inside-out action, instead of just going one-on-one. Merely running plays, rather than running around at random, may be what hands San Antonio this year's title.

While the NBA is purportedly a flashy offense-dominated league, overall offensive proficiency is in long-term decline. The Spurs, the likely champions, are shooting just .447 percent in the playoffs. Boston, which got to the conference semifinals, shot just .422 in the playoffs. Detroit, which got to the conference finals, shot just .410 percent in the playoffs. Dallas, promoted as the exemplar of 21st-century offense, averaged just .450 percent in the playoffs. Imagine what would be happening to NFL popularity if runners averaged 2.9 yards a carry and passers averaged 4.7 yards per attempt.

Shooting numbers are so poor because NBA teams spend much of their time launching low-percentage shots. Anyone can go one-on-one and then heave up a low-percentage prayer. Getting into position for high-percentage shots requires tactics, set plays and coordination among players. In the ego-is-everything contemporary NBA, plays and coordination don't happen. Low-percentage shots happen. Clang happens.

Ladies and gentlemen -- here is your NBA leader of tomorrow.
One reason for the erosion in NBA quality is the ever-earlier age at which players join the league. Jumping from high school, or after one or two years of college, means players arrive with insufficient coaching in fundamentals -- equally important, with insufficient repetitions of the fundamentals. Callow, lightly-coached players arriving in the NBA must choose between patiently learning fundamentals, or going one-on-one and then jumping around pointing at themselves. Which option would the typical teenager be expected to select? TMQ's big argument against letting anyone below the age of 20 play in the NBA is that this is bad for basketball, killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Every year there are more younger, unpolished players and fewer golden eggs. Think about it.

Adoration of the three-point shot also contributes to NBA decline. Every NBA gentleman now wants to drain a trey and then dance around pointing at himself; most seem willing to clang quite a few silly attempts in order to get that one moment of self-pointing. Announcers and sportswriters are complicit -- they wildly praise the three-pointer that falls, rarely criticize the silly long attempt. Players know they will be wildly praised if they hit a big three, while no one will say anything if they miss threes that should have been twos. So, responding to the incentive structure, players launch crazy shots that go clang, and offensive quality erodes.

Then there's slam-dunk psychology. Announcers and, especially, marketers extol the slam. Yet the most exciting play in basketball is the layup -- because layups don't happen unless at least two players are working together. The best and most exciting play in Sunday's Spurs-Nets game was a first-quarter fast-break layup by New Jersey, the layup coming after two very sharp, coordinated passes. Slam-dunks don't require coordinated play. Slam-dunks don't require practice. They just happen. What do we see in the current Nike commercials? Basketball players going one-on-one and slam-dunking. We don't see coordinated action being extolled; we see immature, pointing-at-myself strutting.

The Nike commercials don't even depict games. They depict one guy trying to jump over or blow past one other guy -- the least challenging, least interesting aspect of basketball -- one-on-one being the form of basketball that requires no thinking whatsoever. Nike may believe that emphasizing low-percentage immature strutting is a way to sell shoes; perhaps Nike calculates that its typical customer is a low-percentage, immature sort of individual. But this race to the bottom surely is not selling the NBA. Every year there are fewer golden eggs.

Readers Asked, As a Public Service, to Inspect Swimsuit Photos: Congratulations to 6-foot-1 Amelia Vega of the Dominican Republic, Miss Universe 2003 -- though, as TMQ annually complains, if it's really a Miss Universe competition, why were there no contestants from other worlds? The whole thing is rigged so that Earth always wins.

International women in swimsuits. Thank you, Donald.
Last year the form you had to fill out to apply for the Miss Universe competition mysteriously asked "gender M/F?" Presumably the male applicants didn't progress far. This year the gender question goes unstated, but the form restricts birth years to 1976-1985 -- that is, to an age of 18 to 27.

TMQ perennially complains that the Miss America website posts nothing regarding the single most important aspect of the event -- pictures from the swimming competition. No such problem for the Miss Universe pageant, which is owned by Donald Trump and, in the spirit of The Donald, cheesecake-friendly. Just go here, pick a country under "select a delegate," then click photo and then swimsuit. Alternatively, for fun, click "national costume."

Through some rapid clicking, TMQ discovered that the delegates from Australia, Costa Rica, Finland and the Netherlands were among those making a mega-babe impression in swimsuits. Many are athletic -- hey, there's a flimsy excuse that would justify cheesecake photos! Anna Stromberg of Finland participates in snow skiing, ice skating, soccer and judo; Ashley Talbot of Australia favors gymnastics, snow and water skiing, martial arts and mountain climbing; Andrea Ovares of Costa Rica does gymnastics and spinning, in addition to playing soccer and basketball. The national costume photo of Malayka Rasmijn of Aruba was quite something, as was the fact that she speaks four languages and races dragsters for a living. What might the national costume of the United States be? According to Susie Castillo, Miss USA, it's a Wonder Woman outfit. TMQ would have thought business attire, Kate Spade bag and sneakers.

Owing to time, I only skimmed a few Miss Universe delegate portfolios. This week's Reader Challenge is to gawk at the Miss Universe contestants and call to TMQ's attention others who are either mega-babes, deserving of a swimsuit appearance in the column, or whose national costume is entertaining. Propose your nominees and reasoning (must be printable) here.

The Three-Pointer At Its Worst: Last season, Robert Horry of the Lakers won a key playoff game against the Kings with a trey at the buzzer. Los Angeles trailed by two with seconds left; the Lakers played it smart and went for the tie to force overtime; the sphere bounced around; Vlade Divac of Sacramento hurled it away from the basket thinking to win the game; Horry, standing at the three line, caught the ball and drilled a three. TMQ wrote at the time -- see this column for many more examples of declining NBA offense -- "Horry was carried off the court on his teammates' shoulders, but he should have been taken away by the CIA for questioning." With his team down by two in the final seconds, what on Earth was Horry, a power forward, doing 25 feet from the basketball, blowing on his fingernails, rather than down in the paint trying to tie the game? But he took a zany three, got lucky and was praised. It was, TMQ wrote at the time, "a spectacularly successful bad offensive play that will have pernicious effects for years to come."

Hey, Robert ... the Daddy is open.
Now the chickens have come home to roost. Detroit trailed by two with seconds to play in a conference final game against New Jersey. Did the Pistons do the smart thing and try for a two to force overtime? Chauncey Billups stepped back for the three to win, clang. Somehow Detroit considered Billups from three-land the right move in a need-two situation, though Chauncey shot just .310 percent from the arc (and a cover-your-eyes .374 overall) in the playoffs. San Antonio trailed by two with seconds left in Game 2 of the finals. Did the Spurs do the smart thing and try for a regular basket to force overtime? Stephen Jackson, shooting .337 from the arc in the playoffs, stepped back for the three to win, clang.

These are the pernicious effect of the Horry play. Remembering how Horry was praised for blind luck while playing poor tactics, NBA players now want to fire up a three to win when tactics dictate a two to tie.

The Customary Five Steps: At this point, traveling has become so common in the NBA that it might as well be legalized. Four and five steps are standard; unlimited steps seem to be allowed so long as you dunk the ball. Announcers don't even bother to mention traveling anymore. Purists like TMQ think one reason for the decline of NBA quality is the lower standards on this rule. But if traveling is going to be legal, let's make it official and change the rule.

This year, up-and-down has become legal as well. On Sunday night, Jason Kidd drove the lane, took the customary four or five steps, leapt into the air, came down on both feet, paused, then jumped for a basket. No whistle, no comment from the announcers. Kobe Bryant and other NBA players have used this up-and-down lane drive this season -- to my knowledge, no whistle has sounded. In the Lakers-Spurs series, Shaq drove the lane, took the customary four or five steps, jumped up to fake, came back down with both feet, paused, then jumped to slam. "What a shot!" Marv Alpert thundered, not mentioning that what made it so distinctive was being illegal. In the Philadelphia-Detroit series, on the final Pistons' possession of regulation, Tayshaun Prince drove the lane, took the customary five steps, stopped, jumped with both feet, came down with both feet, took another three steps and scored the basket that forced overtime, which Detroit won. "I've never seen a move like that!" TMQ heard one highlight-reel type rave. TMQ hopes you've never seen a move like that, and hopes you never see it again.

Up-and-down seems even to have been decriminalized in the NCAA. In the Duke-Kansas tourney game, Sheldon White at one point spun into the lane, leapt, came down on both feet, looked around, then took two more steps and shot to score. No whistle.

So if up-and-down is now going to be legal, along with traveling, might as well make both these new rules official. Just bear in mind that every time standards are lowered, the number of golden eggs declines.

So Sammy cheated! Don't you know that it's all the rage right now?
Investigators X-Rayed TMQ's Sentences and Found Banned Gerunds: Allegations that Sammy Sosa has been using corked bats have been hotly denied by his press spokesman, Jayson Blair. His agent, Jack Grubman, swears that all 4,000 of Sosa's previous home runs were genuine, while Arthur Andersen is conducting a no-holds-barred audit. WorldCom is tracing Sosa's cell phone calls to make sure that none were to cork dealers, while Adelphia promises to review tapes of his previous games. Following a meeting at the offices of Enron -- no, I can't go on with this joke.

Here is what you see if you go to the Arthur Andersen website -- a single screen that connects to nothing. But then, we now know Arthur Andersen was always just a screen!

Proposed: Swap Sparkids for Chippendales: Lisa Leslie of the LA Sparks recently was praised for becoming the first woman to dunk in a WNBA contest. (Georgeann Wells of West Virginia University was the first woman to dunk in any competition event, an NCAA contest in 1984.) This made TMQ wonder, if NBA teams have scantily clad mega-babe dance teams, shouldn't WNBA teams have shirtless ultra-hunk cheer studs? The Los Angeles Sparks instead have Sparkids, the low-rent answer to courtside animation.

But No Warning About Sex, Which Means It Is A Realistic Portrayal of the Typical Wedding: Disclaimers for the movie "The In-Laws" caution viewers of "action violence." The movie is a comedy about a wedding.

Maybe They Should Be the Bergen County Nets: With NHL and NBA finals events in the Meadowlands on consecutive nights, ABC showed a graphic of the number of times in sports lore that two major championships have been won in the same year by "the same city." But it's the New Jersey Devils and the New Jersey Nets going down to the wire. In what sense, exactly, is "New Jersey" a "city?"

Non-Cheerleader of the Week: WNBA teams have no cheer-hunks and NBA teams do not have cheerleaders, they have "dancers". This distinction surely can't be because basketball is more sophisticated than football, considering that a typical NFL playbook is hundreds of pages thick, whereas in the NBA the playbook consists of an erasable marker and a diagram of the court. TMQ is always aghast, during timeouts, to see NBA coaches furiously scribbling a play on their little diagrams and showing it to their charges, as if extremely highly paid professional basketball gentlemen had never seen a designed play before. Of course, maybe they never have.

Welcome to the party, Isamari.
Anyway, the NBA has "dancers," not cheerleaders, in part because the court environment allows basketball babes to perform more rigorously choreographed routines than is possible on a football sideline. So TMQ's Non-Cheerleader of the Week is Isamari of the Spurs' Silver Dancers. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Texas, Isamari is a nursing student whose goal is to become a nurse-anesthetist -- presumably, just looking at her makes some guys pass out -- and who would like to visit "Tibet, to learn about a culture that is so peaceful." Isamari, since Tibet's failed 1959 rebellion against Chinese occupation, the country has been a culture of dictatorship. The current Department of State Human Rights Report calls Tibet's human rights record "poor," documents general repression -- including the torture of Buddhist nuns -- and cautions travelers that movement of foreigners within Tibet is "tightly controlled." Unhappy conditions in the country are China's doing, of course, but for the moment the Riverwalk is a lot more peaceful than Tibet.

That's Like Passing Huge Tax Cuts and Pretending No Deficit Will Someday Come Due. Who Would Ever Do Anything So Foolish?: Though Memphis was awful this year, it won't have the second-overall pick in the NBA draft, because the Grizzlies traded their 2003 selection to Detroit six years ago. Several badly fouled-up NBA franchises, including the Grizzlies and Wizards, have in the last decade traded No. 1 choices far in the future in order to acquire has-beens and who-dats today. Since the typical NBA general manager knows he won't be around in six years, why should he care? But the league should impose a time limit on such transactions.

What Memphis Needs Is a 2,1-High Center to Clog the Lane: As European, Mexican and South American performers continue their influx into the NBA (cartography note: Mexico is in North America, not South, as is commonly said), the league now lists player statistics not only in metric numbers, but using the European convention of commas where the U.S. system places decimal points. For instance, did you know that Mehmet Okur is 112,9

We give you the Laker Girls, because we felt it was too soon for a picture of Hillary.
It Takes a Village to Write a Hillary Book: Last year, TMQ pointed out that Hillary Rodham Clinton was lying when she claimed to be the author of "It Takes a Village," which was actually penned by a ghostwriter named Barbara Feinman Todd. Specifically, TMQ noted last year, "Hillary's official U.S. Senate biography states, 'In 1997, she wrote the best-selling book It Takes a Village.' This is an outright lie. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture if official Senate biographies did not contain lies?" Clinton's current Senate biography repeats the lie that she wrote "It Takes a Village," while going on to assert that Clinton "also wrote 'Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids Letters to the First Pets.' Her latest book, 'An Invitation to the White House' was an immediate best seller … in addition, the Senator has authored numerous magazine and journal articles as well as op-ed pieces." All these statements are outright lies, as the other Hillary books were also ghosted, while staff members penned the "numerous magazine and journal articles" for which Clinton now claims authorship.

Comes now "Living History," another book "by" Hillary Clinton. Set aside whether this much-hyped marketing vehicle contains so much as a single sentence that rises above the level of statements of the obvious regarding events that have already been reported in excruciating detail. Once again, Clinton is presented as the author of what is actually a ghosted book. The world learned that Barbara Feinman Todd wrote "It Takes a Village," because the publisher inadvertently issued a press release announcing the true author; Hillary threw an ego fit and demanded that all reference to Todd's existence be removed from the book and its press materials, which was presented to the world as if it were the product solely of Clinton's late-night labors. This time around, the pages of "Living History" thank three people -- the much-admired former White House speech writer Alison Muscatine, veteran ghost Maryanne Vollers and researcher Ruby Shamir -- who are assumed to be the actual authors. But the cover and the frontispiece still boldly state, "by Hillary Rodham Clinton."

"Living History" is a 562-page book. A work of that length would take an average writer perhaps four years to produce; a highly proficient writer might finish in two years, if working on nothing else. Clinton signed the contract to "write" the book about two years ago. About the same time, she also was sworn in as a member of the United States Senate. Clinton took an oath to protect the Constitution and to serve the citizens of New York. So in the last two years Clinton has either been neglecting her duties as a United States Senator -- that is, violating her oath -- in order to be the true author of "Living History," or she is claiming authorship of someone else's work. Considering that Clinton has made almost daily public appearances during the period when she was supposedly feverishly "writing" her book, let's make a wild guess which explanation pertains.

If you didn't write something, and claimed to the world that you did, what you would be doing is lying. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture if United States senators did not lie?

Perhaps you're thinking, "But all people who reach the limelight lie about being authors." No, they don't. Consider that the previous book project of Maryanne Vollers, one of Hillary's ghosts, was about Jerri Nielsen, the doctor who had to be airlifted out of Antarctica. How was that book presented? As "Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole" by Jerri Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers. No lying about the true author.

TMQ wonders how Sen. Clinton found the time to write a 562-page book.
Consider that John McCain's autobiographical work, "Faith of My Fathers," proclaims on its cover "by Mark Salter, with John McCain." The true author's name is there for everyone to see, and this neither detracts from sales ("Faith of My Fathers" was a commercial success) nor causes anyone to think any less of McCain. Famous people who care about their honor, like McCain, freely acknowledge using ghostwriters -- this is called "honesty." Famous people with serious ego problems, or who don't care about their honor, lie about being authors.

Now suppose you were a college student, hired someone to write a thesis paper for you, then submitted the work as your own. Suppose, when caught, rather than confess, you indignantly insisted you were the true author. What would happen to you is that you'd be expelled. For you to lie about having written something would be considered inexcusable.

As for Hillary's presidential aspirations, voters have on occasion elected presidents who turned out to be liars, such as Richard Nixon, and lived to regret it. If voters choose a president whom they know in advance to be liar, woe onto the voters. And what is it that the jacket of Hillary Clinton's new book proclaims to all the world?

Her Exact Words Were, "Tonight I Am Having Dinner With You Exclusively": One reason the establishment press won't point out Hillary's lies about authorship is that it is engaged in a symbiotic relationship with her. Sunday, the senator gave a prime-time "exclusive" interview about her book to Barbara Walters of ABC; Monday, the cover of Time magazine was an interview with Hillary; Tuesday, she gives a prime-time "exclusive" interview to Larry King of CNN; "exclusives" with NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN, MSNBC, CNBC, ESPN/2 and the Food Channel can't be far behind. Any news organizations that noted Clinton is lying when she claims to be an author would be frozen out of this game.

And didn't "exclusive" once mean, "to this news organization only?" Now "exclusive" seems to mean, "I am only talking to this news organization at this particular moment." By such a definition, virtually all interviews are exclusives. Hmm, when TMQ began dating the Official Wife of TMQ, she assured me she was seeing me "exclusively."

The Clerk Will Now Call the Roll on the Hillary Clinton Deception About Authorship Act of 2003: President Bush's hydrogen-research funding request, made during his State of the Union address, emerged from Congress as the "George E. Brown and Robert S. Walker Hydrogen Future Act of 2003," amending the "Spark M. Matsunaga Hydrogen Research Act of 1990."

Now members of Congress are even naming elements after themselves! And Tuesday Morning Quarterback loves that spurious use of middle initials for members of Congress -- Senator Spark M. Matsunaga, as if to say, "Oh, you mean that Spark Matsunaga."

Note That I'm Tastefully Leaving Out Other Comparisons Involving Harnesses and Riding Crops: As the Triple Crown season concludes, TMQ is moved to the following comparison regarding horseracing. Vast expense, months of planning, emphasis on appearance, emphasis on stud performance, all building up to about two minutes of action -- hey, horseracing is just like dating!

Undercover Brother: Mindless movie or conspiracy exposè? You decide.
In "Undercover Brother II," We Learn the Sinister Truth About Field-Goal Kickers: In 2002, "Undercover Brother" declared that the 3-point shot was introduced into the NBA to help whites. TMQ was dubious of this conspiracy theory, as all players of all colors, creeds, religions and national heritages seemed to be making the same unpleasant clang sound with their trey attempts.

But then Mehmet Okur from Turkey, who looks like he should be bagging leaves for a lawn service, went 7-for-13 from the 3-line in the playoffs for Detroit, helping advance the Pistons to the semifinals. Then the Canadian antiwar protestor Steve Nash, whose hair makes him look like he's just taken a quick, refreshing dip in a pool of transmission fluid, went 37-for-74 from 3-land in the playoffs, almost pulling out a championship appearance for the shorthanded Mavs. Then Steve Kerr had his rapid-fire four-straight-treys outburst that left jaws hanging and put the Spurs into the NBA Finals.

Could it be that "Undercover Brother" was actually right about something?

Just the Words "Cherry Vanilla" Brighten Up My Day: Probably readers assume that mega-babes rush up to TMQ everywhere and write their phone numbers in lipstick on my arm, or at least, Mercedes and Acura provide free cars. Actually, as this column has noted many times before, the only tangible benefit I have ever sought is a bag of ESPN Zone tokens for my kids, and Disney corporate headquarters still hasn't sent same. I was, however, delighted to receive from reader Joe Rancatore, Jr., a dry-ice-packed shipment of the yummy specialty ice cream he makes at Ranc's Ice Cream and Yogurt in Belmont Massachusetts. If you stop by his store, TMQ suggests a cone of one scoop cherry vanilla, one scoop bittersweet chocolate. But not even Ranc's makes the Official Flavor of TMQ: blueberry almond martini. Just as well, perhaps.

TMQ Perfect Moment: Gawk at Cheerleader Calendar While Eating Ice Cream: Besides ice cream, the other tangible object of value that TMQ has received is a Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders' lingerie calendar with each month autographed in gold Sharpie by the cheer-babe in the picture. This was sent my way unsolicited by the Eagles' PR department, and has become a treasured TMQ possession. When the calendar runs out in December, I plan to donate it directly to the Smithsonian Institution.

Eagles cheer-babes, please tell us you have something spectacular planned for this year's calendar edition. Elegant, tasteful, artistic and revealing, OK?

Signature Dish at Salvatore's: T-Bone Steak. Get Two and You Have to Leave the Restaurant: Working the refs almost always backfires, and never was this better displayed than in a Sixers-Pistons playoff game in Philadelphia. Bennett Salvatore called a terrible game, as he so often does. Larry Brown and the Sixer players responded by jawing at him endlessly, while Rick Carlisle remained stone-faced and cautioned his charges not to engages in ref-baiting. The result was that the Pistons went to the line 38 times and the Sixers 22 times, in a four-point game played on the Sixers' home court. Yes, Salvatore is a terrible ref. But some refs are terrible, and dealing with them is one aspect of being a professional. Philadelphia exited the playoffs partly through its childishness in dealing with the officials.

How can we forget the Eagles cheerleaders?
Click here for a review of the "elegant atmosphere" at Bennett's Steak and Fish House in Stamford, Connecticut. Does Salvatore, who is notorious for calling technicals whenever coaches so much as look at him cross-eyed, throw diners out if they complain about the fish sauce?

Coaching careers note: Carlisle's Pistons just bested Brown's Sixers in a playoff series. What happened a week later? The Pistons fired Carlisle in order to replace him with Brown. Yea, verily, the basketball gods will exact vengeance on Detroit.

The Trenchcoat Is Lovely for Perp Walks, And You'll Want Something Casually Formal During Testimony: Martha Stewart has now been indicted on criminal charges of obstruction of justice, and faces a civil complaint of insider trading. Read Martha's reaction in her own words.

The main charges involve accusations of altering evidence about trading that, in itself, appears to have been legal. This makes the whole situation puzzling, to say the least: Why perjure yourself about your innocence? Calling the situation "bizarre," Stewart's own lawyers offer no explanation of why she would be dishonest regarding legal acts. Here's a possible explanation: Stewart knew there was something fishy about what she'd done, and tried to doctor the evidence in hopes of denying everything. Only after an anti-Martha backlash started did she focus on the fact that her trades, while unethical, had not been against the law. By then, she had doctored evidence and was, in the classic sense, hoisted on her own petard.

Seen "in the light most favorable" to her, as lawyers say, Stewart through no initiative of her own received indirect insider information suggesting stocks she owned were about to plummet in value -- her broker called to say the company's president was unloading all his personal shares. That probably means something bad is about to happen to the stock, but you can't be sure this is what it means; it might mean the company president needs to pay off his mistress. At any rate, tipped that the shares probably though not definitely were about to nose-dive, Stewart immediately sold her entire position. The next day the shares nose-dived.

Embarrassed by having suffered a greed attack, the "best light" interpretation continues, Stewart later tried to alter records to make it seem her decision to sell that day had just been an amazing coincidence. Simultaneously, she was unjustly accused, in the press and by a publicity-seeking congressional committee, of engaging in a much worse form of insider trading -- of knowing "material nonpublic" information, in this case that a company had learned a primary product was about to be denied government approval. Upset at being accused of doing worse than she actually did, Stewart lost her poise and made devious statements to investigators. There ought to be some sympathy for the bundle of nerves you, too, would become if you knew that federal investigators were poring over the minutiae of your affairs, hoping to find a way to ruin your life.

If you're worth a billion, you're a special kind of stupid when you get in this mess over $47,000.
But don't fall for the notion, advanced by pro-Martha commentators, that her sale of the ImClone stock was a victimless crime. Stewart does not dispute that by using privileged information to sell her ImClone shares just before their value dropped, she avoided a loss of about $46,000. That's the same as saying she swindled the stock buyers out of $46,000, and if someone swindled you out of $46,000, you would want government agents to knock on that person's door. Swindles are not very tasteful, Martha!

Martha's handcuffs create an excuse for Tuesday Morning Quarterback to repeat its Stewart jokes of a year ago. Herewith,

The Stewart empire is based on the magazines Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Baby and Martha Stewart Weddings, plus her "everyday" and "signature" product lines. Tuesday Morning Quarterback suggests her new publications will be:

Martha Stewart's Minimum Security Living

Martha Stewart's Gang Colors Guide

Martha Stewart's Markin' Time

New "signature" products will include decorative electronic ankle bracelets, pure Scotland wool orange jumpsuits with hidden shiv pocket and Early American lacework wall-hangings perfect for steel bars. In the "everyday" category, tips on how to dress for jury sympathy, plus the most fabulous recipe for bundt cake with fresh raspberries, peaches, crème Anglais and baked-in key! For an actual Martha Stewart bundt cake recipe, click here.

Now, Having Taken Shots at Martha and Hillary, Let's Take a Shot at a White Male: "In a crisis, don't hide behind anything or anybody. They're going to find you anyway." Thus said Paul "Bear" Bryant, legendary football coach admired by Alabama native Howell Raines, who resigned last week as editor of the New York Times ("All the News That Might Be True").

The N.Y. Times editors should have stuck to their Bear Bryant approach.
Raines was renown for quoting Bryant around the newsroom, but when crisis arrived for Raines, he ignored the Bear's counsel. Though a newspaper editor, Raines spent a month refusing to give interviews about the Jayson Blair fiasco and hiding behind the claim that he, as editor, could not possibly have known that writers were fabricating material! Raines also worked furiously to shift blame, though Bryant cautioned against leaders trying to shift blame, saying a leader's philosophy should be, "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes okay, you did it. If anything goes really well, the team did it."

The Bear knew whereof he spoke; Raines tried to hide, and they found him anyway.

NBA Low Point of the Year: The Celtics, a playoff team, recorded the worst two defeats in franchise history, losing to the Pistons by 52 points and to the cover-your-eyes Wizards by 45 points.

Next Week: Tuesday Morning Quarterback's advice for surviving the grueling final weeks till the NFL returns.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 8:43 PM

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okay, i've determined that trade shows arent that much fun at all. factors that make them worse: being in your hometown, getting 5 hours of sleep to get there 2 hours before the show starts so you can finish setting up, standing around for 7 hours. oh, and day 2 tomorrow. crap.

Posted by tien mao in Work at 5:58 PM

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last night i finally saw the matrix reloaded and i must say that it was much better than people said it was. i really enjoyed it. maybe all the people telling me that it was "just okay" made me expect less. but i think it was mostly because i went in expecting more of a philosophical movie than the first matrix. thanks to halley for that one. tonight, x2!!

Posted by tien mao in Movies at 7:14 AM

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so i've determined that setting up for trade shows is no fun. i guess i didnt need today's experience to know that since i've set up two others, but this one seemed to be the worst. for the buildings ny show, we only had a day to set up our booth, which really isnt enough time, but oh well. another factor was the heat. dont they have ac, you ask? well, since the loading docks and the doors are open during the move-in hours, they dont bother with the air conditioner or heat. nice, right?

Posted by tien mao in at 7:18 PM

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i get to spend the day at the javits center. we have to set up the booth for our next trade show, buildings ny. so tired. must sleep.

Posted by tien mao in Work at 7:25 AM

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my friend mark was born today. check out what else happened on this day in history here.

Posted by tien mao in Birthdays at 7:18 AM

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i went all out baseball-wise today since the mets will be away for about two weeks. the game yesterday was cancelled due to the rain so they played a doubleheader against the mariners today.

mr. met on the bigboard leading the 7th inning stretch.

me in the 2nd game. clearly all stretched out.

oh, for those who care, the mets lost both games. 13-1 and 7-0. the mets also lost both games to ichiro: 2-1 and 1-0. a sad state of affairs in flushing.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 10:20 PM

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saturday at the belmont, funny cide attempted to become the first triple crown winner in 25 years. for those that are not familiar with the triple crown, it is composed of three races over 5 weeks: the kentucky derby, the preakness, and the belmont stakes. the belmont is the true test of a thoroughbred though because the race is 1.5 miles. races started at noon with the stakes running at about 6:30, so there was plenty of race action and opportunities to bet. the weather was horrible with rain all day which came down very hard at times. by the 11th race (the stakes), the track was rated at "sloppy".

the clydesdales were there to sell some beer.

horses are so cool.

my eyes, two times the normal size.

calvin and me on the rail before the stakes. (check out psycho woman over my shoulder)

empire maker coming down the stretch to spoil funny cide's hopes for a triple crown.

audrey learns how they make glue.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 11:23 PM

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nobody could make it to the mets game tonight, so i went all alone. while there, i read the paper and took a nap. the mets were playing the seattle mariners in baseball's interleague play. that means that ichiro was in town. woo. hes ichi-rific. the mets won 3-2.

Posted by tien mao in Sports at 11:28 PM

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tonight was take 2 of quiz night at rocky sullivan's for "the chairmen". last week, we did pretty good, with 98 points and only lost by 5. last night, however, didnt seem to go that well. to commemorate the anniversary of d-day, there was a whole round on it. i must say that this was the worst quiz round ever!! i think we might have gotten one right that round. it really sucked. everyone was booing the guest quiz master for that round. i guess he has way too much time on his hands. he said it took like 3 weeks to come up with his questions. after the night was over, we somehow had 102 points and the winners had 108. seems odd, but we think the quiz master helps out the teams that do poorly by giving them more points. we still tied for last though.

Posted by tien mao in at 11:53 PM

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right now, my feet look like i have been bathing for an hour or two, but all i have are wet shoes. stupid rain. i think this might be the first time that i curse the rain. why are my feet wet? well...
after work, i met up with jeannette, her friend masako, and rachelle to have some krispy kreme at penn station. what kind did we have? the chocolate malt that was the old doughnut of the month. we had to go to penn station because all the other krispy kremes were out of them (probably should have raised a red flag, huh?). after this, we went to the krispy kreme in chelsea and the hot doughnuts now sign was on!!!!! we then proceeded to eat the dozen doughnuts that we ordered. we then met up with yvan and a buddy of his at a bar near the seaport where we had some food and a beer. afterwards, we headed for the espnzone in times square where we played as many games as we could to burn off those doughnut calories.

for more details, check this entry on rachelle's site.

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 11:56 PM

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so i was supposed to go to the baseball game tonight, but since its supposed to rain, my plans have changed. i cant say that i'm too upset though since i'm going to see raising victor vargas. i might even be excited to see it.

Posted by tien mao in at 5:53 PM

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Life in the NFL doldrums
By Gregg Easterbrook
Page 2 columnist

The doldrums are actual places, equatorial sections of the oceans where wind is rare, seas are flat and sailing ships of yore dreaded to find themselves becalmed. The doldrums are also where football fans currently reside. It's been months -- long, agonizing months -- since the last NFL game. The draft is past; the unsightly new uniforms have been unveiled; the minicamps are about as exciting as watching Halle Berry putting her clothes back on. Football faithful are toughing it out, waiting for the NFL to resume, and it's still another three months until opening night.

Well, Tuesday Morning Quarterback hears you. And this is what you can do about the situation: nothing.

In the spirit of solidarity with football fans becalmed in the doldrums, TMQ will offer a couple of bonus June columns. I'll employ every cheap trick in the book to shoehorn in football references, rationalizations for cheesecake photos and nonsequitors. In the latter spirit, since the new fall TV lineups just came out, here is TMQ's exclusive advance look at the fall TV lineups for the year 2004:

"CSI: Beef Inspectors": The sell-by date on the ground chuck -- how can you be sure it's genuine? Matt Damon and Famke Janssen star as tough, hard-hitting USDA inspectors who know which end of the microscope to look through. "Somebody murdered the beef on your plate. They bring the killers to justice" -- TV Guide.

"Law & Order: Postage Meter Unit": Does that envelope really weigh less than an ounce? In the United States Postal Service, there are the inspectors who check the return addresses and the letter carriers who deliver the catalogs. This is their story.

"Joe Loser": Twenty great-looking, smart, charming women compete to win the affection of a totally unreliable, insufferably egotistical skirt-chasing two-timing liar. "A realistic portrayal of the New York City dating scene" -- Time magazine.

"The Real Baghdad": Cameras follow young Iraqi men and women as they experience the joys and traumas of coming-of-age in the ancient city -- power outages, looting, public stonings, discovering unexploded ordnance. First episode: Akmed wants to kiss Riza at the food riot, but knows her 45 brothers and cousins would disembowel him. "Reality TV meets globalization meets the Rumsfeld Doctrine" -- Foreign Policy magazine. Viewer warning: regrettably, all participants must be fully clothed.

"Stalin: The Teen Years" (Miniseries): That snub at the Workers' Revolutionary Struggle High School dance, the relentless comments when he couldn't grow a mustache -- what were the traumatic events which turned Josef Stalin from a sensitive, caring teen into someone who causally murdered 30 million countrymen? Part One: "The Teasing."

"Merlin of Winnetka": Zany, madcap adventures ensue as Merlin the wizard is accidentally hurled forward in time and rents a room with a zany, madcap modern blended family. "It's zany, madcap fun" -- Family Circle magazine. James Garner voice-overs the thoughts of Schnarful the dog.

Sports Illustrated 2003
We don't need to tell you -- swimsuit television is good television.
"Top Thong": Ten mega-babes compete to see who will grace the cover of the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Critics praise the lengthy slo-mo close-ups of halter-top adjustment. "Watch it with the sound off" -- Tuesday Morning Quarterback.

"Shirtless and Brainless": For-women beefcake show centers on the photography editor of a men's fashion magazine, who spends all day surrounded by vacuous ultra-hunk male models. In the premiere, she agonizes about whether it is ethical to promise a male model a magazine cover in return for sex. In the season finale, she realizes they're all gay anyway. From a television treatment by Joan Didion.

"Night Fry Cook": A Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher who was unjustly disgraced by a sinister corporate CEO takes a job in the back room of a dingy diner and becomes involved in solving the dozens of shocking crimes that commonly occur in plain view of a fry cook. Robert DeNiro, with Susan Sarandon as the waitress who's seen it all.

"Earth Angels": Lovely, warmhearted guardian angels appear in people's lives and use supernatural power to solve crises involving birthday parties, unfair bosses and lost cats -- though stand by doing nothing as thousands die pointlessly in the Middle East.

"Law & Order: County Recreation Department": In the American county rec-department system, there are the groundskeepers who mow the fields and the part-time officials who call the fouls. This is their story. With regular cameos by Rebecca Romjin-Stamos as a sex-bombshell volleyball coach.

"Typecast!": A mysterious stranger starts a Los Angeles detective agency staffed by unemployed actors who can't get work because they allowed themselves to be typecast. Starring William Shatner, Lynda Carter, Mark Hamill and introducing Sarah Michelle Geller.

"Kneeling Their Way to the Top": Interlocking "thread" stories of the provocative escapades of several gorgeous, hip young interns who will trade anything for success at a publicity-crazed New York publishing firm. Pushes the envelop of network taste as the uninhibited heroines freely discusses their adventures with rope burns, blindfolds and other fine points of modern romance. "Makes Sex and the City seem like Jane Austen" -- People magazine. Sponsored by Manolo Blahnik.

"365": You've seen him save his brainless daughter over and over again. You've seen a reality in which Keifer Sutherland is the sole person in the entire world capable of doing anything correctly. But you've only seen him for 24 hours. Using advanced miniature camera technology, Sutherland will now let reviewers watch him 24-seven, 365 days per year. "Combines Web voyeurism with formula-thriller clichés for a new twist on airtime filler" -- Daily Variety.

"Stryker Impact, P.I.": Producer Aaron Spelling returns to primetime with yet another series about a tough, unorthodox private eye who doesn't play by the rules. Seth Green stars as a Nobel Prize-winning psychoanalyst, disgraced by a sinister corporation, who becomes a karate-master-concert-cellist-babe-magnet detective who lives in an abandoned missile silo, drives a mint condition Stutz Bearcat and has at his disposal unlimited equipment and electronics despite the fact that, if the episodes are any guide, he has never received one single dollar from the clients he selflessly saves.

"My Big Fat Wife": Honest look at everyday family life. A spinoff, My Dull Listless Husband, is in development as a January replacement series.

Venice Beach
When lying on broken glass is the norm in Venice, you're getting voted off.
"Survivor: Venice Beach": The next round of contestants go to the famous roller-blade beach in California where, in order to win, they must get noticed -- and ripped clothes, near nudity, pierced eyelids and munching roasted rats hardly stand out here. First trial: finding a parking place.

"Sixty Minutes Six": It's shocking! You'll be shocked! Shocking! And that's all we have time for tonight.

"The Wiseacres": Zany, madcap sitcom about a typical modern blended family. Mom is a scatterbrained Supreme Court justice, Dad breeds Brazilian parrots, the sultry teenaged daughter goes to school topless and the overweight kid brother frequently breaks expensive items. Seen through the eyes of their kindly next-door-neighbor former Mob hit man who's in the federal Witness Protection Program. "Zany, madcap fun" -- the Los Angeles Times.

"Gloves Off": Public-affairs interview show set in boxing ring. Liberal and conservative guests take swings at one another while screaming their points over a madding crowd. "Makes Bill O'Reilly seem like Miss Clavelle" -- USA Today.

"Gabriel 'n' the Gang": The archangel Gabriel materializes on Earth and goes to live with a zany, madcap blended family. He teaches the children touching lessons about life and occasionally uses the power of God to intervene in their schoolyard crises, though stands by doing nothing as thousands die pointlessly in the Middle East. Starring Whoopi Goldberg as a gender-bender divinity and John Facenda as the Voice of God.

"Jenny Jamieson of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories": Wanting to get in touch with what really matters in life, a highly successful investment banker leaves the rat race and moves her six adopted multi-ethnic children to a yurt near the Arctic Circle. In the premiere, Jenny starts to worry that there's nothing to do.

"Remake!": Big-name guest directors take turns filming remake episodes of classic television. Premiere: M. Night Shyamalan produces an updated episode of "Dan Tanna," guest-starring Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. Second episode: Jane Campion remakes "My Mother the Car." According to AdWeek, "Detroit is hotly competing for the product placement -- will the car (voice-overed by Kathleen Turner) be a Chrysler Pacifica, Porsche Cayenne or Kia Rio Cinco? Smart money says the Kia."

"Just When You'd Had Enough": A beautiful lesbian who suffers from retroactive amnesia falls in love with an ultra-straight obsessive-compulsive unwed single father of cloned test-tube babies whose birth mother wants them back. To make matters worse, everyone's parents interfere! "Zany, madcap action" -- Newsweek. With Jenna Elfman and Jimmy Smits.

Jenna Elfman
Fresh from the back of a milk carton, it's Jenna Elfman's career!
"Stephen King's Taste of Eternity": Several gullible people with personal problems get stuck in a remote place. A lurking, quasi-supernatural presence follows them. Cars won't start. Heavy breathing. Sudden screams. This will be the plot of every episode of this innovative new show. "King fans will love a series that, just the like books, goes on and on and on and on and on and on" -- Chicago Tribune.

"Not Even We Know Who We Are": In addition to incredibly good-looking operatives, an Agency Far, Far More Secret Than The CIA has vast, gleaming high-tech underground facilities staffed by thousands without, apparently, anyone in Washington knowing anything about its budget. In the premiere two-hour television event, Eddie Murphy guest-stars as a super-villain who has vast, gleaming high-tech underground facilities with thousands of henchmen, without any explanation of where his money comes from.

"Waiting for Jerry": The guy who played the assistant manager of the shop that was pretending to sell no-fat frozen yogurt becomes the 458th "Seinfeld" veteran to get his own sitcom. In the premiere, hundreds of "Seinfeld" cast veterans arrive at the shop and complain about the yogurt.

"Something Smells Funny": A dashing young FBI agent goes deep-cover to infiltrate a Mob organization trying to monopolize the trash-hauling business. "Does for garbage what 'The Sopranos' did for New Jersey" -- Parade magazine.

"The Hallways of Topeka": Taking the "West Wing" concept to the state level, this hard-hitting show depicts the politics swirling around Cyrus Pendleton, a small-town veterinarian elected governor of Kansas. In the premier, Cyrus must decide whether to be photographed in public with a Grange official who has a shady past. Then, in a shocking cliffhanger ending, Cyrus is shot, stabbed, poisoned, electrocuted, decapitated, infected with Ebola and defenestrated -- or, is he?

"CSI: DMV": Ving Rhames and Janeane Garofalo play tough, nerves-of-steel agents who track down expired license plates. Parents strongly cautioned: waiting-line language, interracial necking and drivers' tests.

New this fall from ESPN:
"They Swing": Saturday-morning golf show tracks luscious lingerie models in bikinis and sheer teddies as they shine irons and practice their swings on the driving range.

"Scotty, Give Me Warp Five": Sports columnists argue about the day's news, using computer-enhanced devices that cause them to speak at five times normal human speed. "You won't understand a word, but your dogs' ears will certainly perk up" -- Popular Mechanics magazine.

LeBron James
Up next on the Deuce -- people who will sell LeBron's Nikes for a living.
New from ESPN2:
"Robbing the Cradle": The Deuce records a sports first with live broadcasts of the junior-varsity games of prep basketball phenoms.

"Two Cherries": The Deuce airs continuous footage of people throwing their money out the window at slot machines at the Luxor casino resort in Vegas. Color commentary by Bill Bennett.

And new from ESPN Classic:
"Wait Till Last Year": Rebroadcasts of games of some of the worst sports teams ever fielded -- the 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs, this April's Detroit Tigers, any game ever played by the Los Angeles Clippers. Screened and selected by sports experts for sheer awfulness.

No One Has Yet Rented Space on Her Fanny, But Presumably It's Only a Matter of Time: TMQ fails to see why there was such a razzle about Annika Sorenstam playing in the PGA -- and not just because Tuesday Morning Quarterback is on record as favoring Swedish blondes. Though sadly, at 5-foot-6, she is not a tall Swedish blonde, TMQ's epitome.

Of course Sorenstam should have played. Sport is fundamentally a form of entertainment, and was it ever entertaining to see her humiliate those timorous ersatz-macho male golfers! Vijay Singh, first to denounce Sorenstam, has now made the name "Vijay Singh" internationally synonymous with "idiot." Call us back when you stop being afraid of girls, okay, Vijay?

Male professional golfers want to be revered as athletes, despite having someone else carry their bags while dressed in bright green pantaloons. Along comes a female golfer who is a genuine athlete. Instead of saying, "Bring her on," defeating her and ending the controversy like -- what's the word I'm looking for, oh yeah -- like men, Singh and other wimps demanded exemption from competition. (In calling Singh and his ilk wimps, I am endorsing the charitable explanation; they are either wimps or sexists, take your pick.) Watching a 5-6 woman single-handedly beat the bright green pants off an entire ilk during the first round of the Colonial trials was about as entertaining as it gets.

Annika Sorenstam
Vijay didn't have the intestinal fortitude to show up for Anna's show.
Second, Sorenstam deserved to play because any woman who can compete on her own terms should get a shot at any professional sport. As TMQ has previously opined, "If there is ever a women who can play major-college or pro football on her own merit, then of course she must be allowed to do so. Note: TMQ hopes not to meet that woman."

Owing to simple biomechanics of height and strength, it seems unlikely there will be many top female athletes who can compete with the top males, as Sorenstam went on to show when she ran out of gas in the second qualifier. For instance, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team plays higher-quality, more artistic ball than most NBA clubs, but wouldn't stand a chance against one. (Note: Washington Wizards excepted, assuming for the sake of argument that the Wizards meet the definition of "basketball team.") Women's subordinate position in most athletics is dictated by simple biomechanics of the X-Y chromosome. But as women train and practice more, there are sure to be increasing instances of some who can hold their own in coed competition. So bring 'em on. It's entertaining, and it's what is fair.

As for Sorenstam, TMQ was not only impressed by her opening 71 on a 7,080-yard men's course, but also by the three product logos she is now squeezing onto her outfits -- for Mercedes, Calloway and the fashion house Cutter & Buck. Can it be coincidence that two of Sorenstam's three product logos are worn directly over her breasts? That the logos are even the shape and size of a woman's breasts? TMQ scanned the Web unsuccessfully for photos of Vijay Singh wearing product logos on the sexual parts of his anatomy, assuming for the sake of argument that he has any.

Instinct tells TMQ that at this moment, marketing agents are negotiating guaranteed breast-placement deals for Sorenstam. Wonder if corporations must pay extra if they specify left or right?

Note to McNown: the Preferred Career Path Is First Become Success, Then Date Playmate: The recent waiving and, presumably, final career crash-and-burn of former high No. 1 pick quarterback Cade McNown creates a cheap, flimsy excuse to mention 1999 Playboy Playmate of the Year Heather Kozar. McNown was once linked to Kozar by gossip columnists, at a time when he should have been studying game films rather than photo spreads.

Heather Kozar
Let's hope Cade did better than a two-minute drill with Heather.
Note No. 1: This item exists to provide an excuse for the ESPN.com art department to append a Heather Kozar cheesecake photo. Note No. 2: Of all Kozar memorabilia, TMQ wishes most he had not her Playboy foldout but her page from the May/June 1999 Matco Tools calendar. Read Kozar's rags-to-riches story -- how she ascended from buffing SUVs at the Windfall Car Wash in Akron, Ohio, to spread-eagled on the bear rug in the Playboy Mansion -- in her own words here. Best line: "Playboy is an ideal company and family to be a part of." A family, eh? TMQ suspects incest.

Verily, the Football Gods Art Merciless: Instead of Dates with a Centerfold, Akili Smith Got to Dress for the Bengals: Yesterday the Cincinnati Bengals waved goodbye to Akili Smith, third overall pick in the 1999 draft and an even higher, more-hyped quarterback than McNown to crash-and-burn. Smith was 17-41 for 154 yards over the last two seasons, a sizzling 3.7-yards per attempt, and leaves with a career passer rating of 52.8, barely besting Ryan Leaf's career 50. (In the NFL's cryptic formula, if every pass you attempt clangs to the ground incomplete, you still get a rating of 40.) Last season, TMQ wrote of Smith that eventually this gentlemen "will be lucky to be covering punts for the Edmonton Eskimos." Smith seems right on schedule for his Eskimos' debut.

Actually, Smith has some talent. If he'd been taken in the latter rounds, where he deserved to go -- he only quarterbacked one year at Oregon, after all -- he might have been brought along slowly, appreciated by fans and, gradually, developed into a starter. Instead, expectations were exaggerated, fans turned on him and Smith's confidence was lost; quarterbacks who lose their confidence rarely regain it. Rock bottom came late in Smith's sole season as the Bengals' signal-caller. Cincinnati trailed Pittsburgh by 17 in the third. A shotgun snap sailed over Smith's head. This extremely highly paid gentleman chased the rolling rock for a moment, then simply sat down on the field and watched as Steeler Jason Gildon scooped up the ball and ran back for six, ending any Cincy hopes. The home fans booed mercilessly. Smith was effectively finished.

What is especially painful about the Akili Smith fiasco is that in order to nab him, Cincinnati executed the worst non-trade in sports history. The year was 1999. Mike Ditka was coaching New Orleans and dangling his entire draft, plus future high picks, to get in position to select Ricky Williams. Ditka offered Cincinnati three No. 1 picks (two of which turned out to be lottery-level), two No. 3s and a package of late-round choices for Smith. Presented this bonanza, the richest draft-pick package since the Herschel Walker deal, Cincinnati said no, holding the choice and taking Smith. (Ditka ended up trading somewhat less to the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons for position to get Williams.) The draft bonanza of the Walker trade, all purists recall, positioned Dallas for its three-peat Super Bowl run. Cincinnati had a chance for a similar windfall and instead took a gentlemen who rarely played.

Of course, had the Bengals acquired all those picks, they only would have blown them.

ESPN Stringers Get Locker-Room Doors Slammed in Their Faces So That TMQ Doesn't Have to Do It: As part of the neutron-star-like collapse in progress at the New York Times ("All the News That Might Be True"), former Times writer Rick Bragg told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that many of the paper's correspondents do not deign to conduct their own interviews, rather, "rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants."

So -- unpaid recent college graduates do the actual newsgathering for the organization that presents itself to the world as the Paper of Record? This large, profitable corporation expects beginners to work for free, in return for no recognition? Publications hire people as "stringers" or glorified freelancers, rather than as employees, to avoid paying them living wages and health-care benefits. Meanwhile the Times editorial page routinely pounds the table about how all Americans should get medical insurance.

Michael Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton
"Aliens have come to take you back, I just read it in the New York Times."
Perhaps you've played the party game at which one person whispers something in another's ear, and then a second relays and so on until many whispers later, the message bears no relationship to the original. Here is how this game applies to the stringent newsgathering standards of the New York Times:

TIMES STRINGER: Sir, what happened during the hurricane?

INTERVIEW SUBJECT: Me and the misses, we was scared. She ran. I ran.

TIMES STRINGER: (Relaying to intern) He said the missiles are on the way to Iran.

TIMES INTERN: (Relaying to clerk) According to unconfirmed reports, Iran is being attacked by missiles.

TIMES CLERK: (Relaying to news assistant) The New York Times has just confirmed that Iran is attacking the United States with missiles!

TIMES NEWS ASSISTANT: (Relaying to the senior correspondent who pretends to have reported the story) President Bush is at this moment being briefed on the Iranian missile strike.

All leading to this page-one banner headline in the New York Times:

UNITED STATES DECLARES WAR ON IRAN
White House Cites Reports of Missile Attack

Carry Your Yurt in an SUV for Extra Ecological Awareness: An above item mentions yurts. Longing for your own? Check out Pacific Yurts, "featured in Time magazine." Offering yurts with "certified engineering up to 100 PSF snow and 100-mph wind load," the company asserts that "our customers speak of adventure, romance, their sense of freedom and pride." How much romance you could have in an unheated yurt in a 100-mph wind might remain to be seen. When spec-ing your yurt, TMQ recommends the rain diverter and the optional seven-foot height, unless you and everyone is your romantic survivalist fantasies are shorter than the six-foot standard interior.

"American Idol" Plug: Mara Rose, the Official Daughter of TMQ, let out a war whoop when Ruben Studdard won. Later she explained, "Ruben needed to win to get a recording contract, whereas it was obvious Clay Aiken would have a career regardless of whether he won." Since when did 12 year olds start talking like this?

Clay Aiken, Ruben Studdard
There hasn't been a couple this cute since C-3PO and R2-D2.
Atlantic Monthly Plug: And an item above mentions the doldrums -- from where, in the Pacific, a private company is launching the first entirely private large rockets to space. Never heard of this? See TMQ's article in the May Atlantic Monthly.

TMQ Will Have the Dijon Swiss Burger Medium Rare: Ravens No. 1 draft pick Terrell Suggs, who is light for a defensive end, told NFL scouts he was skinny because he couldn't afford extra food at school. This is exactly what skinny No. 1 Bills draft pick Erik Flowers, also a defensive end, said when he came out of the same school, Arizona State University. Flowers was a bust. Let's hope the football gods have not sent a lunch-based omen about Suggs.

Why Flowers and Suggs went hungry isn't clear, since NCAA athletic scholarships typically include the school meal plan, and Arizona State offers numerous options. Here is the ASU dining hall's all-you-want menu from the week Suggs was drafted. A typical day's main-course options included:

Breakfast:
Breakfast burrito
Scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon
Oatmeal

Lunch:
Philly cheese steak
Chicken Caesar salad
Pepperoni or chicken & pesto pizza
Dijon Swiss burger or grilled cheese
Chicken gumbo chowder or beef & vegetable soup
Baked ham & provolone panini

Dinner:
Fried catfish, baked potato, broccoli spears and corn pudding
Beef & broccoli stir fry, sticky rice

Terrell, all this stuff and there was nothing you felt like eating? Wait till you see the Baltimore training table. It's going to be a carefully supervised diet of grilled chicken and steamed fish, veggies, salads and smoothies. You will long for the days of fried catfish and baked panini at the ASU cafeteria in Tempe.

Since "ESPN Game Day" Airs Live from State College and College Station in the Fall, Why Can't TMQ Be Written Live From Backstage at the Luxor Topless Review?: Note regarding the gambling-show joke above: TMQ is opposed to gambling, an industry which feeds on the poor and money-stressed, but certainly favors the Topless Revue at the Luxor mega-casino in Las Vegas. Right now the Luxor is where-it's-at in Vegas, owing to its preposterous faux-Egyptian architecture, its hosting of the Blue Men Group -- not the Seattle NFL franchise, but the act that inspired TMQ's cognomen for same -- and its award-winning Topless Revue, voted Best in Vegas in 2002. And if the Luxor's show is Best in Vegas, does this mean there is an organization that goes around rating topless dance reviews? Where does one apply for that job?

Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders
Just a small sampling of what gets TMQ going.
According to the Luxor, at the Topless Revue "all your fantasies come true in provocative detail." All my fantasies? That would require about 10 extremely open-minded mega-babes, plus assorted chains and leather; the remote-castle setting alone would cost more than Bill Bennett lost. In fact, the staffing requirement for satisfying all TMQ's fantasies would in concept resemble this group photo of the qualifiers for the 2003 Atlanta Falcons cheer-babe squad.

Reader Animadversion: Many readers, including Richard Meneghello of Portland, Oregon, wrote to protest TMQ's item asserting that the Syracuse University men's champion basketball program had not graduated an African-American scholarship athlete "in about a decade," while men's runner-up Kansas University graduated two-thirds of its black athletes in the same period. In fact, "many" is an inadequate adjective for expressing the quantity of reactions TMQ received from Syracuse faithful. And Jayson Blair assured me he had fact-checked that item!

Turns out my statement was partly wrong and partly right. Right in that I accurately quoted a study decrying Syracuse's long-term problem with low graduation rates of scholarship athletes; wrong in that the study stopped with 1996 enrollments, the most recent data reported to the NCAA. From classes enrolling in or after 1997, the Syracuse basketball program has graduated several African-American scholarship holders, including Kueth Duany, who played in the NCAA men's championship game as a graduate student with remaining eligibility, and Etan Thomas, who recently gave a poetry reading. Note to outraged Orange fans who saw the column in its first hour: "about a decade" was corrected mid-afternoon Eastern time. Here is the column as corrected, and the way the majority of ESPN readers saw it.

Defenders of Orange honor point out that the NCAA's graduation-scorecard system does not give the school credit for scholarship players who start off elsewhere, transfer in and earn their mortarboards. A recent example is Ryan Blackwell, who began at Illinois, moved his flag to Syracuse and graduated. Nor does the NCAA give Syracuse credit for players who start in its program and eventually march to "Pomp and Circumstance" elsewhere. These rules apply to all schools, of course, meaning any NCAA program loses a graduation credit when a player transfers in or out. This seems ridiculous, as all that matters from the standpoint of education is that a scholarship player graduates; where he graduates is immaterial. By forbidding all universities credit for the academic success of transfers, the NCAA under-reports the total number of athletic graduations – which seems self-damaging on the part of the NCAA. But then, inflicting self-damage is one of the NCAA's specialties.

White House Officials Rejected Calls for a "Weather Report for Peace," Saying the Forecast Was Cloudy: While diplomats debate the Middle East "road map," TMQ wonders: Why not go high-tech and make it a Map Quest for peace? I couldn't find an online map service that would provide driving directions from Tel Aviv to Rahmalla, though if Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas would travel that road more often, good things might happen. Best I could find was driving directions to the Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv. Note that no roadblocks are shown. It should just take you a few minutes to get there!

Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders
"Yea! The website is up! Now we can have peace!"
Check the official website of the Palestinian Authority. The PA's maps section displays how the political topography of the region has changed over the years, and even has a diagram of Israeli Defense Force checkpoints. Looking for an all-night argument? The Palestinian Authority facts utility is sure to provide grist, though TMQ found it encouraging to discover a PA press release that included the phrase, "Israeli sources reported." The official IDF site posts fairly candid reporting of its own activities in the occupied territories, which also seems encouraging. Looking for another all-night argument? The IDF report on the battle of the Jenin camp refutes charges of deliberate killing of civilians, while admitting IDF guilt for some deaths. Suggestion to the IDF: Your site is already available in English, French, Hebrew and Russian. Make it available in Arabic.

Never Answered: Why Did the Forces of Evil Want Sunnydale, California?: Since the theme of this column is television, let's wrap up some complaints about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which staked itself into dust in two weeks ago.v

Buffy faithful were aghast at the lame series finale -- see Hillary Fray's expression of aghast-ness here. This did not prevent the New York Times ("All The News That Might Be True") from running an editorial lamenting the end of Buffy. TMQ will miss Buffy too -- it could be funny and original -- though by the end of the dreadful final season, was reaching for the wooden stake himself.

One TMQ complaint about the "Buffy" sendoff involves the Hollywood convention of the protagonist being severely injured and then inexplicably fine again. A standard instance: In the first "Beverly Hills Cop" movie, during the climatic battle, Eddie Murphy is shot point-blank and collapses to the ground; viewers are supposed to think they are seeing his death scene. Then, a moment later, Murphy jumps back up, fine. In the movie's denouement that follows the gunfight, he's clowning around. What happened to just being shot at point-blank range?

In Buffy's climatic battle, she is run through with a sword, which enters her back and comes out her stomach. She drops to the ground and viewers are supposed to think they are seeing her death scene. After the commercial, Buffy leaps up and resumes fighting, not even bleeding, to say nothing of hemorrhaging. No explanation whatsoever.

According to the show's conceit, vampire slayers heal faster than regular people. But in previous episodes, this meant Buffy could be injured at night and restored by the following day; in one episode, only supernatural intervention prevented a bad wound from killing her. Now she receives what should have been a fatal blow and is completely recovered in minutes. "Buffy" producers seemed to assume viewers are so incredibly stupid, it takes just one commercial to make them forget that a moment before our heroine was breathing her last.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not TMQ.
Earlier seasons of "Buffy" at least followed the convention of "within the premise" -- that is, cinematic action can be preposterous so long as it honors the prevailing concept of the show or movie. By the "Buffy" finale season, action had become arbitrary. In one episode, for example, auxiliary slayer Faith is arrested by the Sunnydale police. Suddenly they draw guns and announce that they are going to kill her. Faith then snatches drawn guns out of the hands of four men before any of them can shoot -- guns get snatched out of hands a lot on television -- and beats the cops silly with the assistance of Buffy, who appears on the scene. Faith and Buffy banter about their boyfriends, then walk away leaving the four men unconscious. So were these really cops? Why would real cops suddenly turn into remorseless assassins -- especially with witnesses present? (A dozen people see Faith arrested.) If these weren't real cops, why did Buffy leave them to regain consciousness and menace someone else? No explanation whatsoever. Numerous times during the "Buffy" serials, various mystical beings have warned her ominously, "You have no idea what's coming next." Neither, apparently, did the writers.

Toward the end, "Buffy" scripts increasingly relied on the hoariest of all melodrama clichés: Suddenly, someone is there! Bad horror movies (are there good horror movies?) and other formula-plot vehicles rely on some monster or murderer suddenly being within meat-cleaver-swinging distance without having made any noise while approaching, without any way of knowing where the jeopardized party would be or, often, without any hint of how approach was possible on a physical basis.

In the penultimate "Buffy" episode, she seeks paranormal power in an ancient temple of whose existence, we are told, the rightful vampire slayer alone may know. Suddenly the super-villain Caleb jumps out at her in the temple, though we just saw the temple from the outside and it had only one door, which Buffy is blocking. Caleb seems about to kill Buffy, when Angel, her former beau and star of the plodding "Buffy" spinoff "Angel," suddenly jumps out and knocks Caleb down. How did Caleb get in? How did Angel get in? How could the temple have existed undisturbed for 600 years, as viewers were told before the commercial, if it was so vulnerable that any passerby could stroll in? How did Caleb or Angel know where to find a magical temple whose existence could be known only to the rightful vampire slayer? No explanation whatsoever.

And why, within the Buffy concept, was the fate of the universe determined by fist fights? Buffy and her numerous supernatural foes did almost all their fighting with punches, kicks, swords and axes. Dozens of episodes turned on evil beings elaborately plotting to kill Buffy using blades or poison or magical traps. Why didn't they just shoot her? They all knew where she lived, and several of the evil beings were depicted as phenomenally wealthy, so they could have afforded a rifle.

TMQ often expected to hear some backstory about how vampires and demons formed during the Dark Ages and, by curse, could only fight or be fought using weapons that existed then. If there was such a backstory, I missed it. In this show, the devil's offspring have unilaterally disarmed, and to be sporting, the good guys won't use guns either.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
You wouldn't be afraid of monsters either if you were Mrs. Freddie Prinze Jr.
Another gripe is that "Buffy" characters often acquired supernatural powers, then forgot about them. At the end of the season in which the Big Bad was the cyborg Adam, Buffy became telekinetic, manipulating space-time to counter Adam's advanced technology. Later, Buffy forgot about being telekinetic and never called on this power, even when she seemed about to die. Something similar happened at the end of the season when Buffy's pal Willow was transformed into the Big Bad. (TMQ liked all the navel shots of Willow, but found her mid-series conversion to lesbian unconvincing, since how could Willow be a near-omnipotent super-witch possessing ancient knowledge sufficient to destroy Earth, yet not know her own sexual orientation? Willow's all-girl sex scene just before the series conclusion was pretty hot by TV standards, though.) During the Willow-bad season, at a crucial moment, the reformed demon Anya saved the day by revealing her ability to teleport herself. But then she forgot how to teleport herself. In subsequent plots, Anya was trapped in dangerous circumstances and had no idea how to escape.

Finally, TMQ was left wondering about the physics of "Buffy." Assume, within the premise, that Buffy and her demonic foes possess super-strength. What bothered TMQ is that super-strength was repeatedly depicted as conferring the ability to cause someone to go flying through the air with a punch. Buffy punches a vampire, and he flies backwards 15 feet into a wall. Caleb punches Buffy, and she flies backwards 15 feet through a wall.

Even if you possessed super-strength, could you cause someone to fly 15 feet by punching them? Somehow, TMQ doubts that even a substantial amount of energy, transferred into a person's body by a fist-shaped impact, would propel a person long distances through the air, rather than just break bones and do tissue damage. Can any hard-core science type explain the physics? Submit your incredibly scientifically advanced analysis here.

Next Week The Tuesday Morning Quarterback annual prayer of thanks to the football gods that the NFL has not become the NBA.

Posted by tien mao in at 4:43 PM

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okay, my love of krispy kreme is well known. as is my love of key lime pie. for the next three months, there will be a key lime pie doughnut at krispy kreme!! check out the details here. needless to say, i stand to gain some weight when these come out.

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 12:41 PM

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woo, i just found out that adult swim on the cartoon network has the family guy on at 11:30 pm. i guess i've found something to watch at that time slot. thats if i remember.

Posted by tien mao in TV at 11:44 PM

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i figured that my laziness could use some work, so i decided to order from fresh direct. you order your food online and they deliver to you at a nominal cost ($4.50, i believe), kind of like a kozmo.com with a revenue model. i dont think that i ever mentioned how close my grocery store is. it is across the street and one building away.

anyway, here are some photos of my stuff.

Posted by tien mao in at 8:10 PM

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more concert tickets. got these in the mail today.

Posted by tien mao in at 7:35 PM

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i learned this morning that mcdonalds is the largest toy distributor in the world. interesting, no?

Posted by tien mao in at 10:00 AM

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there is nothing quite like sunday night baseball. minor issue, it was really cold. the mets were playing the braves, sure the mets are way behind, but who cares, its the braves. the game was great. mets were trailing 4-2 when they decided to come back and get 8 runs in one inning! the mets went on to win 10-4 and it was t-shirt night too.

Posted by tien mao in at 11:56 PM

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today, i placed my very first order for fresh direct. i've heard some good things and i've been meaning to try it out. i ordered lots of fruit, some stuff from their deli, and some corn. all of those items were free!! they give you $50 free for your first two orders or something like that.

Posted by tien mao in Food/Drink at 12:55 PM

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