WE LOVE THIS GUY.
Steve Kerr was a classy guy in Chicago in the Jordan era, a classy guy in Portland for one glorious season, and is a classy guy now in San Antonio. He also is a cold-blooded competitor and leads the NBA in career three-pointer percentage. Last night, after virtually not playing at all in the postseason, he killed the Mavericks with four treys in less than 15 minutes of work. I seem to recall him doing something similar in the 1997 finals….
I AM SHOCKED — SHOCKED! — TO FIND NO WMD HERE! It has long been a hobbyhorse here at MALT that the original rationale for war in Iraq — Iraq’s development of nerve and germ agents — was much-hyped in the immediate aftermath of war but has since been elbowed off the stage in favor of the “we heroes are here to liberate the oppressed people of Iraq” mantra. The reason for the shift being? Ain’t no such weapons. Judith Miller, of the NYT, was one of the main proponents of the “we’re finding evidence of WMD” meme. Now, Howard Kurtz of the Post reveals how and why Miller and the Times were so wrong: she was having her info fed to her by Ahmed Chalabi (as was MET-Alpha, the Army’s team looking for WMD).
You can imagine the insane grin on Howard Kurtz face as he typed this piece, based on an internal Times email. But as gleeful as the Post always is when sticking it to the Times, Kurtz does a good job of reminding us why this is a big deal–our collective memory is getting shorter and shorter. The people of the United States and of the world were lied to, flat out lied to, in preparation for this military boondoggle, and it is important that we work to remember that, and remind others. Next year is an election year, after all.
VIDEO GAMES ARE GOOD FOR YOU. Sweet! I was talking to another lawyer yesterday about my recently sedentary lifestyle, and he said he was staking all his hopes for longevity on two glasses of red wine a day. Add some vids to that, and you’re set…
Speaking of video games, over on Slate Mark Van de Walle is speaking the ugly truth: the new Enter the Matrix video game sucks! Van de Walle sees it as the apotheosis of the iron rule: licensed video games based on movies are terrible. It goes back to the ET video game, which in 1982 killed off the Atari 2600 (until its recent resurrection). I’ve played EtM to its conclusion (as one of the two characters) and then uninstalled it. It was buggy, unpolished, and — worst of all — boring. Its only raison d’etre is the presence of additional footage that complements the movie. Unfortunately, you only get to see these scenes in cuts between the action. You are supposed to be able to replay the footage you have already seen through the games much-hyped “hack” section. Sadly, the “hack” section was essentially nonfunctional in my game, even after I downloaded the huge (5 MB) patch. By the way, 5 MB is a HUGE patch, indicating HUGE problems. Because Shiny obviously rushed production on this non-gem, it makes me hope that inscrutable Ion Storm is really being perfectionist when they push the release of Deus Ex 2: Invisible War out over and over again — I wouldn’t want to be this disappointed again.
FROM THE “IF IT WORKS, BREAK IT” DEPARTMENT: Jim Carrey has a new movie, where he plays an ordinary schmoe to whom God hands off the reins one day. In the movie, God tries to contact Carrey’s character, Bruce, by leaving a phone number on Bruce’s pager. Problem? The number God leaves–God’s callback number–is a real number, rather than one with a non-functioning 555 prefix. So people are calling to talk to God.
The question is, why? The convention that you don’t use “real” phone numbers in the movies or in TV is a rule of simple decency. If you use a seven-digit phone number that might be in service somewhere, it will be in service, and you are guaranteed to subject some poor sod to many many obnoxious phone calls. This is simple: act according to custom and it costs you nothing. Act according to whim, and you torture people. No wonder people think Hollywood types are self-centered jerks.