This has nothing to do with anything, but if you’re a guy, then there’s a good chance that you have a fascination with military airplanes. And if you do, then this is just about the greatest site ever. It’s filled with beautiful (and surprisingly affordable) models of planes of nearly every make and vintage. My personal favorite is the F4U-1 Corsair:

You could lose a lot of time window-shopping on this site. Particularly if you looked at the menu bar on the left and saw that they have ships, too.

Public Service Announcement: My friend and fellow blogger Howard Mortman passes along this important link to ThanksUSA.org, which is currently conducting a “national treasure hunt” to help the needy families of those currently serving in our armed forces. It’s a worthy cause.

In other news, has there been as much hype and underground marketing for a film as there’s been for Snakes on a Plane? Case in point: You can actually get Samuel L. Jackson to call up a friend and leave an automated message with remarkable details, including your name, the recipient’s name, occupation, and hobbies. (God knows how long Jackson must have spent recording every possible name.)

Galley Brother B.J. sends in this NFL rule change and comments:

If this doesn’t work next year, there’ll be a rule requiring the opposing quarterbacks in the Superbowl to be brothers.

Also, fumbles are now still live after the whistle, gee that’s not going to lead to a bunch of late hits.

The clip from the aborted Batman musical last week reminded me of nothing so much as one of the ingenius Simpsons musical spoofs, the best of which was this amazing Stop The Planet of the Apes: I Want to Get Off. If you can find links to the Betty Ford musical and others, I’ll post them.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAxkNbyqxD8]

I don’t have time to fill out this random Sports Guy column generator, but if you do and you send me the column it spits out, I’ll post it.

Update: Courtesy of Galley Friend S.B.:

The Sports Guy Goes to an Auction

So I’m sitting there the other day watching ESPN2 and I see that Derek Jeter
had a great game. There is nobody, with the possible exception of Grady
Little, that I dislike more than Derek Jeter. In the pantheon of people that
‘Make the Sports Guy Mark Loretta,’ these two are a ‘Mark Loretta.

The phone rings. It’s my friend Bish. very, very angry! Bish is always
willing to discuss our mutual distaste for Derek Jeter. Don’t get me
wrong–we respect his abilities. But he’s the Squiggy of sports. Totally
annoying, yet on TV all the time. Bish mentions that it would be nice if
Derek Jeter caught a case of dysentary at the beginning of September, paving
the way for the Red Sox to the playoffs like William Henderson on The Clear.

Bish points out that the chances that Derek Jeter will come down with
dysentary in September are minimal, but that if we expanded the
possibilities, there would be a greater chance for debilitating success. As
usual, Bish is a crazy genius.

Here is what we came up with:

4. Derek Jeter receives a vicious Camel Clutch from Big Papi in front of
40,000 fans jammed into The Garden.

(On a side note, has there ever been a greater moment in sports than when
Hulk Hogan bodyslamming Andre the Giant? I don’t even care if it was fake,
that was awesome. That rivals when Rudy getting carried off the field for
‘Most Inspiration Non-Real Sports Moment 2006.)

3. Derek Jeter is informed by his wife that their child was not fathered by
him but rather by either Eddie Guardado or Isiah Thomas.

2. Derek Jeter hangs scrapbook-style clippings of Brandon Walsh and
Daniel-San in his locker and is immediately put on the DL.

1. Derek Jeter meets the gay guy from Real World, falls in love, and leaves
team to begin filming ‘My Fair Yankee.’

After we finish with the conversation about Derek Jeter we turn ourselves to
the real topic of conversation, the upcoming draft of the Linda Cohn is Sexy
Memorial Baseball Association, a new fantasy league that Bish and I will be
joining this year.

Ordinarily, I’m never an advocate of partnering up to own a fantasy baseball
team. That’s like getting picked up by Anna Benson and going back to her
place, only to find out that Wilt Chamberlain is already there. If the best
you get is to share, sometimes it’s not worth it at all, right?

However, this league only had one slot open, so Bish and I agreed to partner
up, in the hope that one of us could switch over and manage the next
vacancy. After much debate, and eliminating the excellent possibilities of
‘Naked Risk with cake’ and ‘Yokozuna’s Shiny stripperss as potential team
names, we settle on ‘The NY Wankers.’

The thing that’s exciting about this league is that it’s an auction format
league, which is totally different than a draft league. I mean, it seems as
though it would be the same as a draft league, but it’s not. It’s like the
difference between NHL 93 and NHL 94-you take out fighting and add
one-timers, you’ve got a whole different game, even if they are both hockey.
Any good sports fan knows that undefined but not everyone knows how to do an
auction.

Pre-Auction preparation is important. First, it is important to choose a
date when the auction will take place. This is easy. Choose the date when
the whipped guy does not have to go to a play, and that’s your date. Finding
the whipped-guy-can-make-it date is crucial for auction success. (speaking
of which, what is with all these girlfriends who think that ‘fantasy draft’
is code for ‘I’m going to have my buddies over to watch Def Leppard perform
songs by George Muresan while I lube job? Though that would be cool.)

Next, and more difficult, is the auction location selection. Many times
people will choose to have their auction in a strip club. This is a bad
idea. Nothing good can come of this; at the end of the day every person in
the room is going to be Hooray! and have an extremely sore undefined after
four hours.

No, the auction must be held in someone’s house-biggest furnished basement
wins. The coolness of the wife/significant other can be a deciding factor if
two people have similar options-say, if owner A has a Madden ’06 arcade
game, but owner B has a case of Miller Lite. Nothing will kill a fun evening
faster than the host’s wife emasculating him with a ‘Go sleep on the couch.’
We have selected next Tuesday night, at 8 pm, at a guy’s house where his
wife will be in hopscotch, and therefore unable to disrupt the festivities.

I will not be sharing with you my player ratings for this coming
season-after all, Greg Raymer doesn’t play poker with the hand face up-but I
will give you some insight into my auction strategy. The thing is, an
auction has so much more of an influence on your season than a draft does.
In an auction, every player in the league is at your disposal. Everyone
starts out equal. It’s the conservative of fantasy sports.

It’s also like a Marathon running. It requires endurance, it requires
stamina, it requires concentration and planning. Without further ado, here
is my ‘Sports Guy Auction Strategy Guide’:

Round One-work the body

Once the auction starts, timing and strategy are much more important than
they are in a traditional draft. The first hour or so of the auction has to
be spent feeling out your opponents. Are they particularly loyal to the
Devil Rays? Do they have a tendency toward mouth breathing? You are looking
for weaknesses that you can exploit later on. Store these like baseball
cards

Here is a good place to test people by chucking out a few names of guys
you-d never want on your team-aging, oft-injured players, like Derrek Lee,
or over-hyped rookies that will never pan out like Cliff Floyd.

Everyone is going to get some good players at this point, so make sure you
don-t overpay and find yourself begging for money like Johnn Drama asking
for Vinny Chase’s AMEX Black.

Round Two-Have a Sense of political science

In round two, there will be one moment that defines your draft. Things will
be going along smoothly, and all of a sudden you’ll get involved in a
bidding war on a player. It’s not unlike a big pot in a no-limit hold-em
tournament-you’ll have your the Joker-Batman in Batman moment, and you need
to decide what to do.

Oftentimes, this will come down to a single dollar, here or there-if you bid
high waiver wire for Doc Gooden, you know you’ll get him, but you’re facing
a bid with the clock ticking. Are you going to be a hero, carried off the
field like Big Papi? Or are you Jim Mora Sr., skulking off the field into
the jeering history of your team’s fans, with only your family still willing
to speak with you. Now is your moment. Set the tone.

Round Three-Moving Day

Hour three of the draft is moving day, like the third day of The Masters.
You need to shoot a 70. This is where you’ll fill out a lot of the players
that, while less sensual, make up the core of your team. Do not discount the
importance of moving day. If you wait until the next phase to build the core
of your team, you’ll find yourself as lonely as Paris Hilton in a The
Catholic League service.

Moving day is the time to make things happen for your team. This is where
you are going
to define the season that you have. If you end up moving day
by taking an accurate mix of future stars, injury-risk players, and Mark
Loretta, you’ll be okay.

Round Four-The Game of Trivial Pursuit

By the end of the fantasy auction, the endeavor has become Ridiculous. The
only thing it can be compared to is a game of Trivial Pursuit, played among
friends. Something that, at the beginning of the endeavor, seemed like such
fun, but by the end of it, is just a group of people banging their heads
against the wall, adamantly trying to finish what they started, the joy of
competing against your friends replaced with a desire to prove that you are
the duke of All Trivia and that is that.

In this phase of the auction, you must be careful. This is the ‘go get your
****ing shinebox’ moment of the draft. People will be exploding like
grenade, screaming incomprehensible things like the low talker and
threatening to throw a fit if they do not get their way.

Just bite your lip, set your jaw, and try and endure. It’s a long season
coming forward.

‘You can do it!’

Seriously. Stop whatever you’re doing now and go to AICN, which has posted a sample clip of a musical number from the aborted production of Batman: The Musical.

It’s the Joker, singing his little heart out.

Last night’s Inside the Actor’s Studio featured Hugh Laurie, who is both cooler and more quick-witted than Dr. Gregory House. It turns out that he was a stud rower at Eton and Cambridge and while at university was snogging Emma Thompson.

You’ll want to catch it on repeat.

GameSpot is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association may radically shrink the annual videogame expo E3, moving it from the LA Convention Center to “a location that would support exhibitors in meting room space only.”

That doesn’t sound like an industry that’s confident that their next generation products are sure-fire winners.