If Barry Bonds had been the most loved man in baseball, the truth about his steroid use would be a massive and forever damaging scandal.

Of course, most people don’t like him much. So it will be a lot worse.

Over at Metacritic, the Oscar winning Crash only scored a 69 out of a hundred with reviewers and about a 7.4 out of ten among site users.

Funny, I usually like movies like Crash, but I thought it was pretty trite and wildly overimplified what are in reality often far more subtle racial issues. Want a movie about race in America? Try Rize.

For what its worth, Brokeback was one of my least favorite Ang Lee movies (go re-watch Ice Storm and tell me that Brokeback is even in the same ballpark). Munich was laughable in its choice of which facts to twist (I’m not sure which was more offensive: The Jewish intelligence agent who demanded receipts from the killers he employed or the fact that the main character had repeated flashbacks to an event he didn’t actually experience himself). The Oscar set design was horrendous. The burning cars during the performance of the song from Crash was absurd (tho the fact that the person singing has a recurring role on The O.C. is pretty damn cool). Making time for a unfunny (even by Bossom Buddies standards) Tom Hanks spoof of people being cut off by music during their thank you speeches but not making time for the actual thank you speeches means someone in the control room is a real friggin idiot. Note to fashion “experts” who commented on Nicole Kidman: Luminous does not mean the same thing as crazy. And the guys from Three 6 Mafia all had grills that could’ve used a major polish.

It may be hard to be a pimp, but I’m guessing it’s even harder to be a dentist.

From the Atlantic Monthly Newsletter:

Unusual search-engine queries
that have brought visitors to
The Atlantic Online:

“Best colleges for not so smart kids”
“Calculus for toddlers”
“How to mask Rogaine from drug test”
“Slot machine mantras”
“Am I boy band material”
“Harold Bloom breakdancing”
“Adipose wrecks”
“Confession booth etiquette”
“Hairshirt revival”

Bush after being warned of just how bad Katrina would be…

We are fully prepared.

As I’ve said before, I think the finger-pointing when it comes to natural disasters is counter-productive (ethically and politically).

But there is a broader story here. It’s about inefficiency. It’s about the fact that sometimes the presidency is not best run as if it were a CEO position, but instead like it was a start-up run by a Red Bulled entrepreneur who cannot learn enough, know enough and consider enough when it comes to his or her company.

It might also be about honesty.

It’s certainly about loyalty.

But in the end, it was ultimately about water and wind.