Pajiba’s TV Whore is underwhelmed by the Bionic Woman premiere. I’m hoping for the best.

John McTiernan is going to jail! And it’s not for making Rollerball!

It’s all really funny because I don’t remember what the occasion was, but like nine years ago half of America kept insisting that perjury wasn’t a real crime and no one ever actually got prosecuted for it. So weird.

My friend Andrew Breitbart is doing a Breakfast Table-like dialogue in the LAT with a writer named David Ehrenstein. In today’s entry, Breitbart attributes to Ehrenstein, in passing, a love of America. Here’s Ehrenstein’s response:

I’m not so sure about the “love my country” bit as I’m markedly disenchanted with the entire concept of all nation-states. Move an inch beyond language and culture and their meaning and purpose almost invariably mirrors that of the Crips and the Bloods.

I can’t tell if he’s putting us on here, because putting aside “language and culture” is like putting aside oxygen and water. Sure, without those two things, the moon is just like Earth!

Mr. Ehrenstein is gay. I wonder if he would find culture to be such a minor thing if he lived in Iran. Here is one summary of Iranian law on homosexuality (remember, laws are derived from culture):

Iranian law dictates that penetrative male homosexual activity be punished with death, while non-penetrative activity is punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when death becomes the punishment. Female homosexuality is punished with lashes, also until the fourth offense, when death becomes the punishment.

But sure, other than little stuff like that, all nations are just big groups of gang-bangers.

Enjoy:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5oniErmeuE]

A few years ago I made some trouble with a piece about women’s sports that pointed out that women really can’t compete with men on the playing field. I was egged on by ads from Gatorade and Nike and the WNBA which all carried the same general theme: Women are just as strong and fast and athletic as men are. Which is crazy. The most telling of the examples I found was Marion Jones, whose 2000 Olympic gold medal performance in the 200m would have earned her a fourth-place finish in the high school boys state finals that year in New Jersey.

It seems that the political line has changed on women’s sports, as now exemplified by a new Nike ad:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9It24cN3_E]
“Are boys bigger, stronger, and faster? Yes. Is that all that has to do with being an athlete? No.”

“It’s not a girl thing. It’s not a boy thing. It’s a skills [“skillz”? -ed] thing.”

Well, okay. Except that the logic of this points either to (a) uni-sex professional sports leagues, or (b) no longer bothering to keep score. (We’ll leave aside that on the question of skills, too, men tend to be better than women. If you have any doubts, watch the passing and dribbling during a WNBA game some time.)

In another set of Nike ads for the U.S. women’s World Cup team, the slogan tells us that they’re “The best team you never heard of.”

What I don’t understand is why there’s this vaguely accusatory stance from women’s sports. Why do we have to pretend that female athletes are something that they’re not? Shouldn’t it be enough to appreciate them on their own terms?

Allow me to give props to my colleague Jonathan V. Last for doing some outstanding reporting in the current Weekly Standard on the subject of Second Life. Yes, all these months he’s been playing as a “resident” just for this piece and I am sure he will no longer be active in that world now that the story has been published. Also, I haven’t played Civ in a week.

In any event, I think JVL held back in describing the Second Life convention he attended in Chicago. Let’s just say the actual Second Lifers are, well, larger than life. Enjoy.

With Christine Rosen, that is. The new issue of the New Atlantis is out, top-lined by Rosen’s piece on social-networking websites, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.”

Print it out and treat yourself. Or, if you’ve been on really good behavior, get yourself a subscription to the New Atlantis. The best $24 you’ll spend this week.

No disrespect to Anthony Lane, but Variety‘s Todd McCarthy is the best movie critic in America. Here’s an example of why, from his review of Elizabeth: The Golden Age:

Tales underbrush is littered by annoyingly anonymous Catholic traitors, backed by Mary and Philip, plotting to murder Elizabeth, who is increasingly taken with [Walter] Raleigh. The two ride together in the country and achieve what, for the queen, must sadly pass as intimacy, a state more completely achieved between Raliegh and Elizabeth’s favorite young companion . . .