Don’t be fooled by the canned, straining hipsterism (“finger-bling,” etc.), the people at Entertainment Weekly are plenty smart and you can’t hold them responsible for the editorial dictums of Time-Warner magazine world. So if you focus on the substance, this piece on the future of The Hobbit property is pretty good stuff.

When New Line began planning to sell the LOTR props and costumes at auction, Jackson intervened and said that he’d like to have them, both for sentimental reasons and for a museum he hoped to set up one day. The studio balked. Jackson then pointed out that he had never signed a contract for the extended Return of the King DVD. He informed New Line that he’d be happy to accept the costumes and props as his fee — the suggestion being that he might not work on the DVD otherwise. Those extended cuts had become far richer revenue streams than anyone could have predicted. Jackson got his props. The relationship between the filmmakers and the studio at that point was said to fall somewhere between hellish and nonexistent.

Then there’s the pressure New Line is under:

In fact, time may be running out to launch the movie. On some not-too-distant date, the rights to The Hobbit will revert back to Zaentz. Most insiders guess it’s 2010. To make the movie then, New Line would have to renegotiate — assuming Zaentz would want to do business with them again — on much more expensive terms and with plenty of competition from other studios. And there may be another deadline: Shaye and studio co-chair Michael Lynne reportedly have only until late 2008, when their contracts with New Line are said to expire.

And then there’s this:

In the past, Jackson has suggested that he would make two films, with the second one filling in the story arc between the end of The Hobbit and the beginning of Rings. Although Tolkien never wrote a novel bridging the eras, he did scatter clues in shorter pieces and epilogues that could form the basis of a screenplay.

Sorry.

Here’s Tom Boswell today, writing about the Rockies’ amazing run:

Maybe they’re headed to a World Series trip that will shame all the sport’s other improbabilities. After all, they were in fourth place in the National League West, five games out of the wild card on Sept. 17. Some sport-addled math professor somewhere is going to crunch the numbers on that and she’ll nearly run out of decimal points in computing the odds. [emphasis added]

First, two qualifiers. (1) I love, love, love Tom Boswell. He’s my second-favorite sports columnist, ranking below only the Immortal Bill Lyon. (2) As a writer, I’m actually fairly deliberate about switching up gender pronouns and trying to keep them balanced out. I think it’s a little silly, but it doesn’t matter much to me and it does seem to matter quite a bit to some readers, so I’m happy to try to reach out.

Except, when the outreach creates such a jarring, ridiculous dissonance with reality. For instance, you could, technically, use the pronoun “she” when talking about an anonymous place kicker because in the history of sports there have been one or two female place kickers in football. You could use “he” when talking about a non-specific Avon salesperson because there are now a couple “Avon Men.”

But, at the risk of straying into Summers territory, what percentage of math professors are women and how many “sport-addled” female math professors are there out there? Ten? Twenty? Six?

This sort of ludicrous gender outreach is bad for writing because it actually does sacrifice something important on the altar of political feminism and derails the piece.

Final caveats: Maybe this was an editor mucking around with Boswell’s copy. Or maybe Boswell had a specific lady sports-addled math professor in mind, in which case I drop all of the following complaints and applaud him for throwing her a shout-out. And finally, in any case, this complaint should in no-way be taken as a diminishing of Boswell who, again, is pretty fabulous.

I just wish this sort of stuff would stay out of sports.

I’m such a super-fan that I didn’t even rebut the blind commenter who suggested, after the Redskins loss, that the Eagles were a playoff team–because I want him to be right!

Sadly, I don’t think he is. Here’s a rumor floating around in Philly that would be kind of a big deal, if true:

It’s been a constant rumor all year, but after Sunday night’s loss to the Giants, sources close to Andy Reid and the team say there’s a strong possibility Reid may get off the sidelines sooner than expected. All year, Reid’s family troubles have been taking a noticeable toll, and many of his players are biding their time until Big Red makes an announcement. With Marty Mornhinweg already assuming much of the offense, Reid’s a lame-duck coach at this point, just poking around on the sidelines to keep his mind off of his woes. The likely scenario is inserting Mornhinweg in the coach’s seat so Reid can ride out the rest of his contract as Executive Vice President of Football Operations, leaving him more time with his fractured family.

However, the next graph sounds so implausible that it lessens the credibility of the first:

Also, sources are saying with Donovan McNabb most likely spending his last year in Philadelphia, this bye week might be the best possible time for the organization to officially switch gears. McNabb will continue to start (for now), but regardless of how the season turns out, this is most likely his victory lap in Philadelphia.

If you’re in the Birds management and you think this is the end of the road for McNabb, don’t you keep him in there and try to beef up his numbers as much as possible in order to keep his trade value high?

Galley Brother B.J. adds:

I’m having so much fun picturing Lovie Smith’s speech to his team before the Eagles play the Bears in Chicago on 10/21:

Defense, remember when you’re sacking McNabb, be gentle. We need him
healthy for next season. And, instead of the usual trash talk, of “I’ll
fuck you til you love me,” “all day, baby, all day,” “you ain’t getting
shit off motherfucker”–say things like, “that’s a shame, our line might
not be the best, but they don’t give up this many sacks,” or “do your
receivers ever get open? You know Berriman & Mohmed are quite good at
getting open.” Or maybe, “listen to those Bears fans, they’re fantastic, they love their team and their players.” Just be nice to him & stress how great it
is to play in Chicago.

That may be overselling it, but here it is:

A new, prime-time, network version of American Gladiators.

Hosted by Hulk Hogan.

Dig it!

Over the weekend I stumbled across a new browser called Flock, and after tinkering with it for a couple hours, I’m going to put Firefox aside for a week and give it a try. Its a Mozilla application and it’s geared heavily toward people who use social-networking sites (which isn’t me). And it looks a bit chunky. But that said, it has excellent RSS and blog management built in and it seems pretty zippy after startup. Might be worth giving a look.

Exhibit #16,317 on the undeniability of gender differences: You remember the Greatest Team You Never Heard Of–they finished third at the women’s World Cup after the U.S. coach made the bizarre decision to bench his starting goalie, Hope Solo, who he had ridden to two straight undefeated years in favor of 36-year-old former star Briana Scurry. Coach Ryan’s explanation, that Scurry had a better lifetime record against Brazil, was basically the same argument Mr. Burns used in substituting Homer for Daryl Strawberry (“But skip, I’m five-for-five with five home runs!”).

Brazil blew out the U.S., Scurry was terrible in goal–bad enough to have lost the game for the Americans even if nothing else had gone wrong. And after the game Solo let out a mild rant, saying, “It was the wrong decision, and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves. And the fact of the matter is it’s not 2004 anymore. It’s not 2004. And it’s 2007, and I think you have to live in the present. And you can’t live by big names. You can’t live in the past. It doesn’t matter what somebody did in an Olympic gold medal game in the Olympics three years ago.”

Harsh but, then again, truth is an affirmative defense. Not only was Solo right, but just about everybody in sports paying attention had said as much (or more) both before, during, and after the game.

But here’s where it gets weird: The women on the team got upset with Solo . . . and then they voted not to let her play in the consolation game against Norway.

That’s right, a group of quasi-professional athletes were so upset at the off-the-field comments of another player that they took it upon themselves to demand that the player be benched. And the coaching staff went along with it!

I submit to you that this sort of behavior is basically unthinkable in men’s sports. (Try imagining this story in the context of an NFL team.) It shows a complete, polar-opposite understanding of competition, comradery, authority, and the importance of winning. Mind you, I’m not making any value judgments here: the women’s view may well be the morally preferable one.

But they couldn’t be more different.

I don’t know how long I’ve had Encore as part of my cable package, but as a result, over the weekend, I had a chance to rewatch The Insider starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Technically it is superb–what else would you expect from Michael Mann–and as Variety would say, perfs are stellar across the board. Particularly spot on is Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace, admitting that he does not want to spend his dying days on NPR. Wallace frets over his legacy (“How will I be remembered?”), which is probably what Dan Rather was thinking when he filed his lawsuit. And as always, it’s a treat to see Bruce McGill and Philip Baker Hall on screen.

Completely over the top, however, is when 60 Minutes finally airs the tobacco segment in its entirety, including the interview with Jeffrey Wigand. Pacino sees it in an airport and suddenly everyone stops to hear Wigand explain how the tobacco lobby was dishonest and how nicotine is, in fact, addictive. Mann cues the soulful wailing in the background as a mother and her children stop to listen, clearly in shock and disbelief. Even a janitor in the background stops to watch. The entire airport basically comes to a standstill. (When it comes to Big Tobacco and the movies, I much prefer Thank You for Smoking.)

What to make of an opera that imitates a musical that imitates an opera? That is basically what has happened in the latest production of La Bohème at the Kennedy Center. Puccini’s original opera, which took place in Paris ca. 1840, was later remade into the Broadway musical Rent (incidentally parodied in Team America as Lease). But the current offering by the Washington National Opera combines both with some jarring results: On the one hand you have a classic Puccini opera, the “Quando me’n vo'” aria done well by Alyson Cambridge (Musetta), and solid performances by Slovenian soprano Sabina Cvilak (Mimi) and Mexican tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz (Rodolfo). On the other hand, you’ve got Rodolfo recording Mimi with a Camcorder, shown on a screen on stage, while she is singing. Other cast members are using cell phones and cell phone cameras. It’s just a little distracting.

On the other hand, the use of surtitles made for some amusing moments–particularly when Mimi lay dying and saying, “I could really use a muff.” Then Musetta comes to her aside and lets Mimi touch her muff. “It’s so soft!” Mimi sings. Indeed. (Why am I the only one laughing?)