Not Bigelow. Galley Favorite Angela Lansbury is returning to the White Way in, of all things, a play about tennis. Sign me up.

The good news is that the Eagles just killed the Bucs by the numbers. I mean, outgaining them 506 yards to 196 yards? 22 first downs to 14 first downs? 7.7 yards per rush to 3.7 yards per rush? 8.3 yards per pass to 3.0 yards per pass? That’s Eagles football, baby.

What’s that, you say? The final score? Sure, the Eagles may have lost the game and some people may get bogged down with that sort of linear thinking, but there’s a deeper way to look at yesterday’s debacle:

The Eagles are, as I’ve been saying to anyone who would listen, a bad team. This is a 6- or 7-win squad. If they finished 8-8, it would be a real achievement. The first six games were fool’s gold. Here’s the combined record of the teams the Eagles have beaten: 9-14.

Go ahead and look at the schedule. Find the wins remaining on the board. Tennessee? Remember, they’ll be playing the Vince Young Titans, not the team that started the season winless. Washington? Mabye the home game. Jacksonville? Maybe. Those are the three best chances for victories. Everything else looks like a stretch.

So why was yesterday not terrible? Because if you look at the Eagles as a 6-10 team, not a 4-2 team, then you can find the positives. You can be happy about the comeback and about how great McNabb looked in the second half. When bad teams lose flukey games, there are positives to be found. You shouldn’t have expected them to win in the first place.

P.S.: I’m not hating on the Birds. Actually, I think that this team is eminently lovable. They’re fun to watch and they have great characters. And, like a cancer patient in remission after chemo, you can’t help but rooting for them. And hope that by next year, they’ll be back to 100%.

Joey Lauren Adams: auteur.

Seriously.

An excellent round up of all sorts of news, including this awesome bit:

In The Break-Up news, Jennifer Aniston is attempting to send a message to Hollywood that she’s more than just a pair of breasts attached to a spinal cord: She’s also an important actress, damnit. And what better way to demonstrate this than to produce and star in a film based on a study found in a Deepak Chopra book?

Galley Friend P.G. sends us this video link to EA developers talking about Madden ’07 for Wii. You might salivate.

But I have about zero interest in seeing Borat. But I do have the love for S.B.C.. Check it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIL-JSQX-9s]

Actor Wesley Snipes has been indicted on no less than eight counts of tax fraud and may face 16 years in prison. Federal prosecutors claim Snipes failed to file his returns for six years and owes the government close to $12 million. Not even Willie Mays Hayes can outrun these charges. No roundhouse kick will knock down these allegations. White Men Can’t Jump but they sure can find a way to send you to jail. U.S. Marshals will soon be knocking on his door. Let’s just say The Money Train will be making one last stop–to Riker’s Island! To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar!

Okay, enough already. This is serious stuff. But let me add that if the feds end up putting Snipes away, there will most definitely be an increase in the population of vampires.

Seth Stevenson is all over it:

Maybe the red-state viewer, to whom the ad is likely directed (I assume that’s the main target market for pickups), interprets the overall statement as an optimistic, can-do, morning-in-America kind of thing: We’ve come through the bad times and we’re ready to kick some ass again. But to me, this spot feels more like the advertising equivalent of Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech. It arrives at an awkward, unsettled moment in the American psyche (underscored by the 9/11 and Katrina imagery in the montage), and it almost seems the ad hopes to capture the essence and feeling of that moment. Dredging up all these depressing incidents in our recent past, and then saying, “This is our country,” sure seems like an effort to address our “crisis of confidence.”

I guess I’d ask Chevy: How’d that strategy work out for Carter?

Grade: D. Automotive blog Jalopnik reports that an early version of the ad included footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Well, that would have brightened things up. I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too.