the shrewdness of apes

t.s.o.a. exercised some rare good judgment and scrapped an earlier post/manifesto that was written during a solid seething session early this afternoon. perhaps it will pop up in another form someday, but for now just forget about it. let's do some links!

* sean weitner wrote a wonderful real-time breakdown of the first season of 24 for flak magazine. now he's back to break down the breakdown of the third season, which finally and permanently lost me after about the fifth episode. in addition to his main thesis that constant negation has worked to the show's detriment, i would submit that the show has gotten stale because of too much repetitiveness: kim's idiocy, sherry craftiness, pres. palmer's principled dignity, countles moles working at CTU, nina popping up in every plot, etc. really, if they want to continue the show, it might be good to bring in a new lead character and change the setting. (oh, and go buy flak's print edition).

* freaks and geeks fans rejoice! the limited edition, 8-DVD set is on sale now, and ships in april. it contains a bunch more stuff than the 6-DVD set that will follow (like jeff rosso and feedback live in concert!) and is limited to 25,000 copies. of course it's $120, which is a pretty big commitment at least all at once. then again, some of us do have a birthday coming up.....

* at first i was excited about this article from the morning news about the potential basketball arena in Brooklyn. but the reporter only talked to one old guy who lived in the neighbrohood who basically took him around and reminisced about what the neighborhood used to be like, while saying things like "There’s plenty of space on the waterfront. Build a trolley or shuttle if you have to." but why do that when you have the largest transportation hub in Brooklyn right there? then they talk about how wonderful the old warehouse buildings are, and yeah they have some charm, but for the most part they've been converted to luxury condos, so forgive me if i don't shed a tear for those who would be paid to move elsewhere. and he doesn't mention the most important factor (to me at least) which is that the most of the area where the arena would go is a complete eyesore and waste of space that just feels wrong and oddly desolate when you walk through it. bring on the arena, i say.

* finally, rob neyer makes some good points about using statistics in a column about the folly of trying to predict final standings in baseball.