Hugh Hewitt has a scary, worrisome post.

Jenny has a great riff on Brad and Angelina:

I swear if these two freaks of nature ever breed biological children together the kids will either be so ridiculously beautiful people will need to wear special suits and goggles to protect themselves from the radiation which exudes from the kids, or they’ll resemble mythical monsters like the ones in Clash of the Titans. “Hi. I’m Angelina, and this is Brad. These are our children, Medusa and The Kraken.”

Meanwhile, the Blog Crush^TM rolls on:

Those crazy Brits spell cozy with an “S”, but they scarified Coventry during WWII to protect Ultra, and that took fuckin guts, so they get a pass. And if you’d lost track in this awesome game, Jude Law and Sienna are off-again for now because he wants to go to Africa with his ex-wife and kids over Christmas. But this isn’t the first time Sienna and Leo have been linked, earlier reports had them meeting in New York after her initial split with Jude. All I really care about is the hopeful demise of the Leo-Kirsten Dunst rumors. I’ve never accidentally tried to pick up a transvestite (in this country) but I’m pretty sure I’d prefer a light raping at the hands of a tranny than to even shake hands with Sabertooth Dunst.

Forgive my lateness in posting this. I think the clock is slow.

I always thought Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen would defy the odds and stay together for a long time. And I guess, in relative terms, 24 years is a long time together. In any event, a publicist for Bertinelli reported yesterday that the two, who have been separated for four years, have officially divorced due to irreconcilable differences.

At the time, I thought it was the best of both worlds–having a hot wife and being in a great band. Sure there were excesses, and few thought it would last, but why can’t this be love? And while nobody said it’d be easy, you just have to roll with the punches to get to what’s real. (I know, I’m pushing it.)

Yeah, we’re runnin’ a little bit hot tonight. I can barely see the road from the heat comin’ off of it. You reach down, between my legs…

Okay, now that was gratuitous.

Nevertheless, perhaps we should have seen this coming: In 2004 Van Halen told Guitar World that “I’m back, I’m black, and I’m chasing young, white meat.”

Poor Valerie Bertinelli. She’ll just have to take it one day at a time.

Okay, I’m done.

Hugh Hewitt is betting that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will beat King Kong both in total box office and–amazingly–on the weekend when Kong opens. I’d take that bet.

Narnia opens this Friday and Kong opens next Wednesday. They’ll both have monster screen counts–I expect them each to be around 3,200 screens. But I’ll be shocked–totally and completely blown away–if it’s even close next weekend. The word of mouth on Narnia is fair to good, Kong is getting nothing but raves. The only thing Narnia has going for it in the context of Hugh’s theoretical wager is that since it’s shorter, it will probably get one more showing per day than the 3+ hour Kong. (I forget what the exact tipping point is, but I believe that once a movie crosses the 170 minute line, it loses a booking.)

Still, even if Narnia performs every bit as well as Disney hopes, next weekend it will face at least a 40% decline (and probably closer to 50%) from its opening weekend. So, just for the sake of argument: If Kong were to debut to $50 million, which is a pretty conservative estimate, even taking into account its disadvantage in play dates, Narnia would have to open to $70 million this weekend to even have a shot at beating it next weekend. If Kong opened to $60 million and Narnia declined a bit more steeply, it would have to open to $87 million even to be in the vicinity of Kong.

Two Notes: First, I’m not commenting at all on the artistic worthiness of either of these movies. I haven’t seen them; I hope they’re both great. I’m just trying to put the economics and the math into perspective.

Second, Hugh links to this Drudge story with various breathless expectations about Kong breaking the modern Titanic record. “Yes, I think this will do TITANIC numbers. It is going to be a huge movie,” says one “Hollywood insider.”

Don’t believe him! For starters, Titanic‘s opening numbers were very good, but not great; they don’t make the top 100 biggest opening weekends. How much do you think Titanic opened to?

Answer: $28 million. That’s right. What made Titanic such a monster hit wasn’t its opening–it was the film’s crazy-small rate of decline. Titanic never did more than $36 million in a single weekend, but it did very big numbers for 18 weeks in a row–18 weeks!

The bigger point is that nobody can predict a Titanic-sized hit. Look at the list of All-Time Biggest Blockbusters and you don’t find many movies that look like sure-fire, super-duper monster hits. The Sound of Music? E.T.? The Exorcist? 101 Dalmatians? The Graduate?

While you can predict with some degree of certainty opening weekends, you can never predict the type cultural moment that creates the insanely small week-to-week erosion rates that produce the most commercially successful movies. Some day a movie will break Titanic‘s domestic record, but when that day comes, it will be a surprise.

Final note: Hugh Hewitt’s a great guy with a discerning movie palate, but he can occasionally allow his rooting interests in a film to distort his box office expectations.

Update, Wed. 7:25 a.m.: Please don’t get the idea that I’m rooting against Narnia–I’m not. I hope it’s good and if it is, I hope it makes a ton of money. Because when good movies do good business, we all win.

But commenters who are insisting that Narnia is going to open huge simply because “everyone” will see it don’t understand how the industry works. Opening weekends follow the broad contours of seasonal movie attendence patterns, which is to say that, from year to year, the box office numbers for each month remain strikingly similar.

Remember that we’ve gone backwards and decided that in order to have even the slimmest of hopes of beating Kong next weekend, Narnia has to open somewhere between $70 million and $87 million this weekend. Look at the list of biggest December openings. Only one movie opening in December has ever fit into this range, and that was Return of the King, which squeaked by with $72 million in its first weekend. Only one other December movie, The Two Towers, opened above $60 million. Do you think Narnia is going to open bigger than either of these movies, which had the added benefits of being sequels? (Sequels earn a higher percentage of their overall gross on opening weekends than non-sequels do.) I don’t.

We’ll wait for the Amazing Gitesh Pandya to make his expert prediction later this week, but right now the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which has an uncanny gift for getting these things right, is predicting a $58.9 million opening for Narnia. That sounds pretty plausible to me.

Everyone else can ignore this thread.

In response to my meltdown, Galley Friend M.G. has some reasonable-sounding thoughts, but still comes to the same conclusion: Blow it up.

Let’s first just start by saying we’ve been here before. Most of us were born here, and watching the Birds collapse is like taking off that nice Brooks Brothers suit at the end of a long night during which you almost scored with the hottest girl in the room. Now we’ve returned home to put on our old jeans, eat a hot pocket and sleep it off–cold comfort, but comfort all the same.

It really was over when we lost to the Skins–they’re not even mediocre, they stink. At least now that McNabb is out for the season, we can lose with dignity, secure in the knowledge that the Dragon of the NFC East has not been slayed, just put on the IR to return next year. The Eagles will be feared again.

The real problem is twofold. First, the Eagles still have nothing like the reciever corps necessary to run a successful West Coast offense–an offense most of Philly has embraced at this point. T.O. and Freddie Mitchell got themselves thrown out of town. Pinkston is a bum with hands of stone who has strangely avoided the wrath of JVL. And McMullen and Brown have a long way to go.

Second, the Eagles secondary is perhaps the most overhyped defensive unit in the history of professional football. Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent were hyped, but solid. Sheldon Brown, Michael Lewis, Rodderick Hood–these guys never earned the reputation they had at the beginning of this season. And they let every washed up QB in the NFC put up record numbers on them–Drew Bledsoe having a career day in 2005???

JVL is a cold, calculating fan who saw long before I did the troubles that would befall our Birds. Unfortunately, he is probably right. Time to clean house, rebuild, look toward the next decade. My only quibble: Dawk. Dawk has been the heart and soul of this team for years, and he deserves better than being put out to pasture in the Sun Belt. Even if the Eagles could get a second and third round pick for him, it would break the city’s spirit in a way losing never could.

Any team with Donovan McNabb will be competitive, just as the Eagles were at the beginning of this season. The organization is top-notch, and if there is a silver lining the cloud that was TO, it is that everyone knows Philly is the place to be if you want to play on a national stage. If Donovan builds it, the All-Pro players will want to come. But it is time to bring out the wrecking ball, Philly knows how to lose, but we prefer to do it with purpose and dignity–that means building for the future and not rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

Meanwhile, Galley Brother B.J. has a different, more optimistic view:

onestly, I think you’re over-reacting. The players that lost last night’s game are back-ups that are only playing because on injuries (yes, I’m looking at you Mike McMahon and Koy Detmer and I’m at least glancing in your direction Reno Moats).

The game started with a very good drive by Seattle for a touchdown. The thing that killed the Eagles defense on that drive was the lack of a pass rush evidenced by the touchdown pass where Matt Hassleback had about 8 seconds to survey the field and pass. Things were not lost at this point. The D needed to make some adjustments, but this defense has shown that they can still play (just ask LaDainian Tomlinson).

Then, the Eagles have a pretty good looking first drive until McMahon throws an interception returned for a TD.

The Eagles defense then hold Seattle to a 3 and out and a 4 play drive that ends in a punt.

Seattle, next scores on another McMahon pick 6. Seattle up 21 – 0. You could very easily argue that at this point the game was over.

Then, Koy throws an interception that gets returned to the Eagles’ 2 yard line, and Shaun Alexander runs the ball in for a touchdown. Seattle up 28 – 0. By now, the game is over.

Seattle’s offense adds another touchdown before the half, mostly off of a long completion that was effectively a jump ball.

Seattle’s final score comes on the Moats fumble that was returned for a touchdown.

Of the 3 scores that occur ed before the game was over, 2 of them were directly the result of Mike McMahon. I’m not trying to throw McMahon under the buss and blame all of the Eagles problems on him because the Eagles do need to address certain areas (D-line, depth at WR TE and HB). But, the Eagles loss last night was not due to across the board incompetence. There is enough talent on the team/cap room to make some adjustments and address these problem areas.

David Skinner is too humble to plug his excellent piece in glossy pub Boston magazine (sadly not available online). It’s on singer Madeleine Peyroux. And her ex-boyfriend William Galison. And the nasty feud over an album that could’ve made them famous. It’s like the dark side of The Commitments, minus a horn section. (There is violence, though it stops short of an Ike Turner.) Read it.

Galley Friend B.W. sends this Onion-esque link:

Vatican sources said yesterday that the commission would recommend that Limbo be replaced by the more “compassionate” doctrine that all children who die do so “in the hope of eternal salvation”, rather than the traditionally held belief that their souls suffer eternal deprivations at the hands of the Slaadi and their demented lords Ssendam and Ygorl.

What this change in theology will do for the millions of Dungeons & Dragons players across the world is not yet clear. Randy Thomson, a Dungeon Master of 23 years from Buffalo, New York, is livid. “The Pope has no authority to mess with the cosmology of our beloved multiverse!” Thomson ranted, between gulps of cola. “This will be like Second Edition all over again, when they tried to take away our demons and devils. If it’s a schism the Pope wants, it’s a schism he’ll get!”

But not all players of the game are so enraged. Lisle Sheffield, a player for 14 years from Tucson, Arizona, said, “Frankly, I’m pleased with this move. The planar cosmology was a straitjacket imposed by the medieval-style beliefs of roleplayers from the 1970s, who saw the need for a way to restrain the actions of characters within a rigid alignment system. In these enlightened times, such measures are not necessary, as modern secular humanism encourages accountability for actions within the moral framework of the D&D setting without the need for rules. I see the abolition of Limbo as the first step towards a more open and honest roleplaying system.”

These arguments don’t go down well with Timmy Livingstone, a 14-year-old from Sacramento, Caifornia, who discovered the game with his friends last summer. “The Pope can’t take away Limbo! Who does he think he is! My 78th level half-elf-half-dwarf paladin-ranger-barbarian just got a +23 sword of Slaad-slaying, and was going to go to Limbo and kill Ygorl and take over the whole plane! How’s he going to do that now? He might have to take over the Seven Heavens instead! Let’s see how the Pope likes that!”

It’s especially dispiriting when it’s a “conservative” acting like a cross between Ward Churchill and John Kerry. No movement is without its idiots.