Scott the Reader has this fantastic example of voiceover run amok:

The following is an example from a particularly pretentious, superficial script I read last night (submitted to a prodco from a producer).

To set the context, Jasmine (the name has been changed) is working as a Parisian escort, though she doesn’t actually seem to have needed to sleep with anyone. Sexy Marcus, who has hired her, suspects her amateur status. She wishes she had met him under different circumstances.

JASMINE (V.O.)
He unveiled a feeling within me I hadn’t
discovered, I hadn’t known. I soon felt a
vacuum of uncertainty emerge like a storm
causing me to question where I stood within
my own gamut of truth and lies.

Italics the author’s.

Headache the reader’s.

That was Leon Wieseltier’s so-hot-you-need-a-cigarette summation of John Updike. It also applies–only in a really good way–to Josh Friedman, who’s back with this awesome post.

I beg of you: Read it in its entirety. The payoff justifies every syllable of the build-up.

Heavy.com is running this very funny ad on Drudge. Worth sitting through the Basic Instinct 2 ad.

Mitchell Hurwitz is done:

“The fans have been so ardent in their devotion and in return . . . I’ve given everything I can to the show in order to try to live up to their expectations,” Hurwitz told Daily Variety on Monday in a telephone interview from Gotham. “I finally reached a point where I felt I couldn’t continue to deliver that on a weekly basis.”

Nonetheless, Hurwitz said he put off making a final decision on his involvement so Showtime and 20th could talk about a possible deal.

“Of course, if there was enough money in it, I would have happily abandoned the fans’ need for quality. But as it turns out, there wasn’t,” he said.

I love understand more than he’ll . . . never-know.

Bad news for Mitch:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — A judge has issued a temporary restraining order requiring David Hasselhoff to stay away from his estranged wife, according to court papers unsealed this week.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark A. Juhas signed the order March 6 ordering the former “Baywatch” star to stay at least 100 yards from actress Pamela Bach except for “peaceful contacts related to court ordered visitation” of one their two teenage daughters.

Michael Wilbon has a pretty good piece on the GMU-UConn upset, with this great moment:

Of all the people in the building, including Larranaga, Calhoun probably had a better handle than anybody on what George Mason has accomplished in getting to the Final Four. Calhoun, in defeat, was almost proud of George Mason, mostly because Calhoun coached at Northeastern for 14 years, which coincidentally is a Colonial Athletic Association colleague of George Mason.

“I can only imagine, and probably better than most, the feeling they must have on that campus and in that locker room,” Calhoun said. “Those kids, many of whom were passed over by the Big East schools and others . . . I tip my hat to their conviction, to staying with what they have, to the incredible coaching job that [Larranaga] did. I feel a great deal of inner joy, honestly, about what they must be going through right now, something they probably never could have imagined. We have imagined it, and we’ve done it. But they could never have imagined that.”

This has to be one of the great sports upsets in modern history. What else even comes close?

NC State beats Houston? Maybe. It was a title game, which makes it a bigger stage; but the Wolfpack was an ACC school.

Jets beat Indy? No way. They’re both professional teams. At the professional level, any team should have at least a theoretical chance at beating any other. I don’t know that that’s true at the individual level. Which brings us to . . .

Buster Douglas beats Mike Tyson? Maybe. As they noted on ESPN this morning, Tyson has become such a clown that it’s hard to remember that before Douglas knocked him out, we all assumed he would be heavyweight champion of the world for years and years and years. He was invincible.

Villanova beats Georgetown? My pick, if only because of what Villanova had to do to win that game. Remember, if Nova had shot only 75% from the field for the night, they would have lost! They shot 78.6% from the freakin’ floor. And the game was still whisker-close. And it was a title game. That’s pretty hard to top.

Red Sox beat Yankees? I include this in the discussion only because the Sox were down 0 games to 3 and no matter how evenly matched the two teams were, a 4-game comeback had never been done before. That’s enough to put it on the short list.

Well, not all the way back, but the Wayback Machine has a small offering of the genius here, with classics like:

LOTR: ROTK: This is being considered as the prime contender, so I watched this at Hef’s cause it’s nice to see something like this on the big screen. And for a film that is incredibly faggoty, I thought it was pretty good. I mean watching this reminded me of when I spent my younger days working on model cars, shooting stuff on 16mm with friends, and beating up on the D&D nerds. A while back Will Smith sent me this clip, I doubt any of you would have seen it, where these kids were acting out D&D for real, one kid was saying stuff like “Thunder Bolt, Thunder Bolt.” Sometimes when we were on set on BBII (Best Visual and Sound effects Oscars? Hello?), he would start throwing things at Martin and saying that. Always got me laughing. Anyway for a film that’s totally about fairies, dwarves, and gay ass spandex, I thought it was well done, but Viggo should have beheaded at least three more people. Then he would been more heroic. But I thought it was smart how Jackson (who always looks homeless when in photos, and have you seen his wife… Dude you’re rich and famous now, I’ve been balls deep in Miranda Otto and you haven’t? Still, nice to know I didn’t get his sloppy seconds) gave the film so much girl power.

The only problem is that the archive is incomplete. If anyone out there has a remedy–or a bootlegged copy of the blog archive, I’d be indebted.

If you’ve ever seen the Quick Change act at an NBA game, you’ll particularly appreciate this Brendan Koerner piece in Slate.