Out of a sense of professional obligation (I teach a “Sci-fi and Fantasy” class and I knew nothing about the guy, outside of a few short stories and that movie) I agreed to review a biography of Arthur C. Clarke. I was being a dutiful teacher, but, at the same time, I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about a writer who has remained something of an enigma to me. In the end, I emerged enlightened and deeply interested in further exploring Clarke’s work. VISIONARY: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, by Neil McAleer, is more than a good biography: it is important book — a much needed addition to the existing canon of literary biographies, especially in a time when critics and scholars are finally accepting science fiction as a valid literary genre.

That said, I have, personally, never felt Clarke was much of a pure “writer” in the same way that a Bradbury or a Heinlein is (or was, depending which). Consequently, for me, the best characteristic of this biography is that McAleer — though obviously a strong admirer of Clarke’s work — crosses neither into phony attempts to cover up fondness nor into the kind of fawning praise that I have seen other literary biographers pour out. McAleer remains objective throughout the work, letting Clarke’s life speak eloquently for itself. Simply by virtue of the evidence at hand, even the skeptical reader is eventually convinced that Clarke was one of the greatest contributors not only to science fiction literature but to, literally, the scientific culture of Planet Earth. McAleer’s “show, don’t tell” approach is the wise one — the only effective one.

Instinctively, I think that a part of the biographer’s perspective on Clarke is echoed by a quotation he chooses to include from publisher Betty Ballantine:

Arthur mastered English. He was not a great big flaming talent as a writer, but he was brilliant. His mind was so clear and logical that he could take the English language and control it and use it to express the things he wanted it to do. He had a beautiful consistency and control.

That said, where Clarke was, in fact, “a great big flaming talent” (the other half of the biographer’s perspective) was in the area of scientific speculation. Sir Arthur had frighteningly prophetic (and inspiring) visions of the future, along with both a metaphorical and literal hunger for exploration of both the world that is and the world that might someday be. From his days as a young man on an English farm collecting the pulp sci-fi magazines from America, to the late London nights with his chums in the British Interplanetary Society, through his time as a successful author diving for the first discoveries of treasure in the Indian Ocean; from his seat of honor next to Walter Cronkite during the moon-landing of Apollo 11, through his later contentions that “space elevators” will someday become reality, we get, in McAleer’s book, the complete  picture of the man who was to become what many call “the father of communications satellites.”

Yes, Clarke was that important, and for even more reasons that the reader can discover in this book.

This biography is evidence of Clarke’s important contributions to scientific theory and of his instrumental role in turning certain of those ideas into reality. Too much commentary by the author would have dulled the clarion brilliance of the subject. McAleer lets Clarke’s dreams and accomplishments make their own case for greatness simply by gathering them all up in one well-written book. 

This is not to say that McAleer doesn’t make insightful observations and speculations about Clarke’s literary and personal development; he just never becomes a hawker trying to get the reader to buy into the famous man’s greatness. As any good biography should, McAleer’s book gives us a picture of the man — the real man, as opposed to the public image of the writer — that Clarke was: An intensely curious man with a true appetite for exploration; a man his friend Elmer Gertz called “convulsively funny… a Bob Hope of intellectuals;” a man of strong external confidence who doubted himself from time to time; a top-notch table tennis player; a man who believed in a positive view of the future and who objected to the darkness of the sci-fi around him; a vulnerable man driven to frustration by his friend and collaborator Stanley Kubrick; a thinker who became so immersed in work that he often didn’t remember his own writing process; a man who knew the universe around him better than he knew his own romantic needs; a man whose writing career was re-ignited by the advent of the word processor. A guy, just like the rest of us, in some ways, but way smarter.

It is quite easy for me to call this the best complete biography ever written about Clarke, because it is the only one in existence. But it is also easy for me to say that the only one we have is exhaustive and competently written. While I can’t guarantee that this book will be a roller-coaster page-turner for the average reader with a marginal interest in science fiction, I can say that VISIONARY: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke is a must-read for any serious fan or scholar of science fiction. While many writers of sci-fi are important only to their genre, Clarke had direct (and major) impact on science itself. After reading this biography, you’ll find it hard to make a cell phone call without tipping your hat to Sir Arthur.

I tip mine to Neil McAleer.

[The FTC (implying that I am not as trustworthy as others because my review is written online instead of on paper) requires me to tell you that I was given my copy of "VISIONARY..." for free.]

What a ride! The Professionals is the kind of book that you get about 75% through, then you set it down because you don’t want it to end…then you spend the next hour looking at it, sitting on the table, until you can’t take the suspense and you grab the book and finish another chapter or two. I cannot wait for the movie.

Four friends, sit around and talk about their lousy employment options. Student loans, a degree in history and looking forward to a lifetime of jobs in grocery stores and coffee shops will make anyone desperate. Desperate enough to consider a life of crime — or at least a few years of it. Kidnapping — easy targets, reasonable ransoms, no violence — seems like a good option if you don’t get greedy. Or as long as you don’t kidnap the wrong guy.

Now, the kids are on the run from the good guys as well as the bad guys. One mistake and things go from bad to worse. It makes for a fabulous read that’s part caper flick, part high-speed chase and perfect for a action thriller. I raced through this on the train from Sheffield to Manchester, finished it on the flight to Atlanta. I really enjoyed it — it’s the kind of book that leaves you torn between wanting to know what happens and not wanting it to be over quite yet. It’s not really fun — these aren’t fun situations — but it’s a good thriller and one you should put on your TBR list. It’s also a story that I think would make a great movie. Someone ought to option this for a screenplay. I’d buy a ticket (and I know how it ends!). There is also a second novel in the works, featuring the cops from this one, state police officer Kirk Stevens, and FBI agent Carla Windermere.

For more on The Professionals, visit the author’s website, www.owenlaukkanen.com. My copy of The Professionals was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean. — HENRY V

John McCain in Washington state’s closed primary. Interestingly, by the time Washington rolled around, McCain’s fate had long been decided; however, I still voted for him. I respected him as an honorable man and an American hero with a  principled, bi-partisan and practical approach to things. I have some minor tweaks and twinges from my service – I have  no idea how someone as wracked with pain and trauma and injury as McCain is can be as active and aggressive as he is. Of course, he’s a bit sociopathic – but then, he was a fighter pilot and they all have their issues. McCain is a throwback to guys like my Dad and his generation. I’d love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him and just bullshit. It would be wonderful – he’s a man’s man.

But, I have spent a lot of the last five and a half years being pissed off at John McCain. He did something totally frivolous by selecting Sarah Palin; he compounded it by running to the right of his absurd opponent in the Republican primary for re-election to the Senate; his desire to be president had trumped country first when he rejected John Terry’s overtures to join the campaign on a national unity ticket in 2004 only to lust, LUST, after Liebermann and on and on and on. He endorsed Mitt Romney whom he is known to hate, which is just sad; he continues to oppose most forms of gay rights despite the best efforts of his wife and daughter to get him to think; he hasn’t raised unholy hell about Arizona’s drift to insanity whether with the Papers Please thing, the birtherism thing, and so on so much as drifted along on that current. He’s been a spoiled brat whining at Obama. What the hell happened?

A lot of times, when someone has a sea change in their personality, particularly an older and physically challenged man – and McCain has lots of those considering the torture in Vietnam, the cancers, and general stress – one might suspect a series of small strokes re-wiring the brain. Well, from the Maverick who went his own way representing the potential for limiting corruption in government through campaign finance reform and transparency, John McCain morphed into some sort of John Kyl ignoramus and Mitch McConnell corporatist clone. He didn’t embrace Ayn Rand, because frankly, the role of the patriot and soldier in her universe is to be a moronic tool of the wealthy. McCain isn’t a rocket scientist or a constitutional expert or a Stoic philosopher. HE’S  A GOODAMNED WARRIOR WITH THE FAULTS AND VIRTUES but HE’s NO ONE’S FOOL!

Now, a lot of the McCain stuff that’s emerged has been silly in some ways. McCain is not a reflective scholar personifying cool and irony. The guy boxed at the academy, he was a freaking Navy Fighter pilot. These guys, with a few exceptions, are impulsive, hot-tempered, kind of vulgar types, in the sense of being down to earth and gritty. They curse, tell dirty jokes, make fun of their friends and embarrass themselves, their wives and their kids in public. Politically correct, they aren’t.

McCain might have been Naval royalty, and he was – but, the services tend to knock the roy- out of you and turn it into LOYALTY. Loyalty to friends, to comrades, to country, to belief. They sit around and drink and bullshit and tell silly jokes. They are impulsive, they speak and act before thinking. A lot of fighter pilots are assholes. A couple of Navy fliers told me how much they hated TOP GUN, largely because the portrayals were so true. McCain was probably a lot like Maverick; Stockdale like Ice.

Admiral Stockdale may have become a modern American Montaigne or Marcus Aurelius, but his very exposure to philosophy came by impulse while doing a graduate program at Stanford. He wandered into the philosophy department and got his mind bitchslapped by a different way of thinking. Stockdale personified detachment and coolness in a way that Aurelius did for Rome. There doesn’t appear to have been a lot of love lost between McCain and Stockdale; so what? Different generations, different backgrounds. And, by becoming a Stoic philosopher who actually practiced that philosophy, Stockdale transcends things. Stockdale walked away from the Citadel because he decided that they were crazy and he wasn’t going to hang on to that at the price of his soul. I suspect McCain would have gotten to the same place, but it would have been messier.

I suspect that McCain has been fuming over the Supreme Court and Citizens United for as long as it has been on his radar. It declared his signature legislative accomplishment unconstitutional and basically turned politics back to the 1850s. If McCain is reminiscent of any historical political figure, I suspect he reminds us of Teddy Roosevelt. TR wasn’t exactly smooth, but he was passionate, honest an didn’t shy away from fights. McCain, I suspect, has been somewhat muted, licking his wounds from 2008 and wondering why the hell he’s bothered. Not being a deep thinker, that was probably uncomfortable. Loyalty binds him, and he couldn’t really say what he thought about that ruling without slamming the entire system and the Republican ascendency. If John McCain gives you his word, he will deliver – couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t. So, he undoubtedly despises people like Boehner and Cantor and McConnell; we know he regards Willard as something he’d scrape off his shoe.

So, it’s time for one more fight. By joining Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island in filing a friend of the court brief supporting Montana’s claim to be able to control the flow of money into state politics, McCain is throwing down a gauntlet. We’ll see who picks it up; I suspect that a revisit to the case might easily result in a complete reversal; Roberts is concerned about the Court’s Reputation and both he and Kennedy could swing based on the experience. They underestimated the cupidity of the rich and powerful by several orders of magnitude – however, John McCain called it when the decision was rendered and he’s been relatively quiet about it. I wish he’d stood and applauded when Obama called the Court on that nonsense, but I can understand why not. But now, he’s being John McCain. For the first time since 2000, McCain is letting himself be McCain – Country First, Straight Thinking and Straight Talk.

Some of you may recall the catchy viral strains of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” which was popular on the Internet last year.

This year, journalist Jon Ronson visits “Friday” producer Patrice Wilson to conduct a viral experiment. Ronson’s theory is that journalists wield too much power in the subject/chronicler relationship. To subvert that dynamic, he submits entirely to the whims of Wilson.

The results, which are very funny, can be seen below.

Here is Ronson’s money quote:

…almost everything that goes viral goes viral because someone looks like an idiot in it…so it turns out that the way to control the Internet is to make someone look like an idiot. People like to watch that more than anything — more than the greatest art, the greatest culture, MORE even than watching things on fire.”

By the end of the Ronson/Wilson video collaboration, we see Ronson helplessly standing by a house plant as party-girl dancers frolic behind him. Prior to that, we witness the recording sessions in which Wilson sculpts Ronson into a viral star.

Recommended. (Also recommended: Richard Cheese’s “Friday” cover.)

WHY THE INTERNET IS AWESOME

I played in some bands in the 90s. None of them achieved much notoriety. But sometimes I find one of my long-lost bandmates in unexpected places online. That is the case below, where Kid Hustle plays a drug dealer on The Young and the Restless. To quote WFTC’s Daniel Kalder from a recent post at Ria Novosti, “Living is a strange business, gentlemen.”

ON THE PLAYLIST THIS WEEK

• “Booties,” Bad Rabbits
• “Ene Alantchi Alnorem,” Mulatu Astatke
• “Kids of Tragedy,” Suzi Quatro
• “Lose My Breath,” My Bloody Valentine
• “Sweeter Than Candy,” the Gap Band
• “There’s a Storm Comin’,” the Standells
• “You Remind Me of Something,” R Kelly

POSSIBLY RELATED AND/OR UNRELATED CONTENT PLUS ASSORTED MISCELLANY

• Bill Cosby on Drums
• Gingers Do Have Souls!
• Iconic photo of Clyde Stubblefield
• “Mental Revenge,” by Waylon Jennings (1966)
• Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal Feud on the Dick Cavett Show
• Raquel Welch Sings “I’m Ready to Groove” (1965)
• Rick Moranis as Dick Cavett Interviewing Dick Cavett

Audio Files is published sporadically and whenever possible.

“There’s a wild and crazy man inside of there just waiting to come out.” – Mrs. Romney on her husband

I used to watch Mitt Romney and think, “He’ll make a fantastic villain on Dexter.” (Maybe not one to hold our interest for an entire season – he’s no John Lithgow – but definitely a two or three episode arc.) Either that or he could be in American Psycho 3 – yes, there was already a sequel and it starred Mila Kunis – as the new Patrick Bateman: perfectly attired, great hair, then he opens his mouth and it gets weird. Indeed, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign often seems to be less about taking the White House than dropping as many subtle clues as possible he’s actually a serial killer. (I’m almost positive Christian Bale quips, “Corporations are people, my friend” before attacking the hooker with a chainsaw.)

Now I take that back: Mitt Romney is no Patrick Bateman. Mitt Romney is Prince Joffrey. Both born rich and destined for power. Neither with a knack for handling the common man. And each of them with a line that cannot be crossed.

For Game of Thrones‘ Joffrey: You don’t hit the king.

For America’s Mitt: You don’t use blonde highlights.

It’s time to ask ourselves: will Mitt Romney make more sense if we stop thinking of him as a human being… and start thinking of him as character from George R.R. Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice?

Fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones watch the show for reasons lofty (with its numerous major characters, dense plotting, and often quite sophisticated musings on the nature of power, it covers ground that only The Wire previously dared to tread) and less so (you see vaginas frequently). At the beginning of the series, Joffrey is a teenage prince and, like most teenagers both of royal and non-royal blood, he’s an entitled twit. Nevertheless, I thought, “Eh, I’ll give him a chance. After all, this is a show where people evolve in surprising ways and even seemingly monstrous characters are capable of small acts of decency.”

Bad call on my part, y’all. We soon discover Prince Joffrey’s actually been on his best behavior and, once he ascends the throne, reveals himself to have some very strongly held ideas on how a king should conduct himself and tends to express these thoughts through torture and whining. Time and time again on the show, Joffrey makes assertions about how things should be. He expects these standards to be blindly followed, no matter how much suffering they cause.

Turns out Mitt was much the same way when he was Joffrey’s age. While a senior at his private high school, he noticed a younger transfer student (and presumed homosexual) “was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye”, which was a “different look than sported by other students.” Seeing this boy, Mitt smiled and said, “It’s nice to see a lonely young man who’s been struggling to fit in here is at last confident enough to express some of his individuality”, then went off to join a Civil Rights march.

Just kidding, it made Mitt cry out, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” So Mitt got together a group of boys and they ambushed the offender, pinned him down, and then Mitt took a pair of scissors and repeatedly clipped his hair. The young man was, understandably, unnerved. Mitt never got in trouble, though the school was quite strict. (They later expelled the transfer student for the crime of smoking a cigarette; it should be noted the boy stupidly failed to have a father who was the millionaire governor of Michigan at the time, like Mitt’s was.) Many of the other boys were sufficiently traumatized by holding down a defenseless teenager as he begged them to let him go that in the coming weeks and even years they apologized. Mitt himself did not do so but, upon the publication of the story, announced, “I don’t recall the incident but I am seeing the reports and I will not argue with that.”

To recap: during one of the most tumultuous periods of our nation’s history, Mitt decided, “I have just got to do something with those bangs!”, which may be the gayest thing a human being has ever done.

This incident in itself really isn’t a big deal, because teenagers in general are horrific little people and many of them become less intolerable as the years pass. Additionally, it occurred during the 1960s and, if the show Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s that people were stupid back then, with their love of butter and drinking and LSD trips. (Particularly Joan’s cuckolded husband – you’re a doctor and you can’t count to nine months?!?) Even so, it’s hard to read about Mitt’s hairstyling experiment and his complete lack of remorse and not think, “That is so Joffrey, especially the part where he totally fails to learn anything from the experience!”

There’s more. Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton wrote a helpful piece in which he observed the strange phenomenon of Mitt’s forced chuckle during campaign appearances:

“Listen to his laugh. It resembles the flat ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ that appears in comic-strip dialogue balloons. But worse – far worse – it is mirthless. Mr. Romney expects us to be amused, although he himself is not amused. Freeze the frame, cover the bottom of his face with your hand, and study his eyes. There’s no pleasure there, no amusement.”

Happily, the Washington Post article notes there has been at least one time when Romney was genuinely full of pleasure and amusement: it occurred when he led a virtually blind teacher into a door. (Get it? It’s funny because the guy couldn’t see the… classic Mitt!)

Mitt Romney has been aggressively seeking the presidency since at least 2006. When his presidential campaign imploded in 2008 – according to the book Game Change, the low point came when he entered a men’s room and discovered fellow candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee laughing and bonding over how much they disliked Mitt as a person before circle jerking (the book doesn’t explicitly say this, but it’s strongly implied) – he barely skipped a beat, setting his eyes firmly on 2012. Mitt has put out a book, endlessly toured the nation, and spent millions and millions of dollars so we can not only know but like and even love him.

Yet the more we learn, the more distasteful he becomes, as if a mad scientist had watched the 2000 presidential race and mused, “What if I created a man with the entitlement of George W. Bush Jr. and the charm of Al Gore?”

At this point I should note that I in no way mean to suggest Mitt is as monstrous as King Joffrey: to my knowledge Mitt has never been with a prostitute, much less forced one to torture a second. Mitt has also shown himself to be capable of personal growth, as during his campaign appearances he encounters people with all sorts of unflattering hairstyles, yet resists the urge to have staffers pin them down while he shaves them. Finally, he had a much better upbringing than Joffrey, as Mitt is almost certainly not the result of incest.

But it’s worth remembering that before he took the throne, Joffrey was more off-putting than evil and there was, yes, a chance the crown would force him to connect with his better self. (Hell, maybe he still can, though with two episodes left he better do it soon.)

Mitt Romney the former Massachusetts governor and Mitt Romney the current presidential nominee contradict each other on so many issues (notably health care) it’s understandable that many of his harshest critics are fellow Republicans, because the only belief they know for certain that Mitt holds dear is that he should be in the damned White House already.

When Mitt enters it and finally can ignore the whims of us voters for a little bit, what will he reveal himself to be?

I’m not certain, but I’m already giving up my highlights.

The curtain rises on a dingy office. It could be the 1980’s: a man sits silently at an ancient computer screen and pushes buttons but nothing happens.  In frustration, he rifles through a box next to the computer, and finds there a copy of  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. He begins reading aloud –  and gradually, without undue artifice, other co-workers come and go and assume various roles. Our original Office Man becomes Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, while his colleagues provide other dialogue. Thus adapted to the stage, the short novel unfolds over six hours like a brilliant origami of the layered contradictions in American life.

Prompted by friends’ word of mouth, I recently caught one of the final performances of “Gatz” at the Public Theater in New York. “Gatz,” by the theater company Elevator Repair Service and directed by John Collins, is a marathon performance (with two brief intermissions and a dinner break) of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It  left me immersed in Fitzgerald’s bittersweet vision of 1920’s America, a blend of enchantment and repulsion, and moved once again by the sheer elegance of his prose and novelistic architecture.

The storyline of Gatsby is violent but otherwise unspectacular, even dreary – and that may be part of the  point. A tawdry tale of reckless wealth and dashed hopes, it almost recedes from view at times, like a low raft propelled along by the soft lulling swells of Fitzgerald’s prose. But the underlying themes are forceful and interfused: wealth, dreams both shallow and deep, and social class in 1920s America; the power of the past and the lure of the future, men and women, city and suburb, Midwest and East.

Carraway, as the narrator, observes his neighbor, Jay Gatsby (née Gatz, hence the title of this production) pursuing the American dream at his mansion on the ritzy north shore of Long Island. Gatsby has money – he’s a bootlegger with unsavory connections – and a “restrained counterfeit of perfect ease”; but  he fails to regain the ultimate prize: former heart-throb Daisy Buchanan, who is now married to Tom, a vulgar aristocrat. Tom has a lover, there are trips back and forth to New York City, things go wrong and then terribly wrong.  But in the end, surveying the wreckage (Gatsby is now dead along with his killer, the jilted husband, and the man’s wife) Carraway retains a certain awe and respect for the poseur Gatsby.

The last few pages of Gatsby (which the actor-narrator of “Gatz” – having tossed his copy of the book aside – recites from memory) contain some of the most lyrical passages in American literature. They comprise a coda to the story, as Fitzgerald steps back from the Gatsby saga.

Carraway decides to leave his own girlfriend and return to the Midwest, and he ruminates on what it is like to be a Midwesterner (Fitzgerald, Carraway, Gatsby) in New York. Then he focuses on where he is: in front of Gatsby’s empty house, as autumn comes over the North Shore. The green light still burns at the end of Daisy’s dock across the way, still  beyond Gatsby’s reach.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly an lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.   And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes –  a fresh, green breast of the new world.  Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house,  had once pandered in whispers to the last of the greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

The final paragraphs are there for all to read and re-read, reminding us that dreams of the future are conditioned by our past and our destinies:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I left the theater at 11:15 p.m. in a daze, subdued by the story but also deeply contented. How lucky we are, I thought, to have mirrors like this to hold up to ourselves and our culture. What a miracle a work of art can be, speaking across generations, as Huck Finn and Moby-Dick and Gatsby do, as do so many lesser but still great works. They have the power to possess us – I felt possessed as I left the Public Theater – and also to give us a reciprocal sense of possession and place.

How lucky to be in New York on this cool May night,  just for the chance to see Gatsby so brilliantly adapted to the stage. Because possessing and being possessed by works of art is something that binds us together, amid much that does not, invites us to grow, and helps to explain who we are, which  is about as good as it gets.

I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 34-A: While directors of automobile commercials will continue to be permitted to cast the ubiquitous “slightly-graying-youngish-but-not-old man” in order to send a message of a certain level of maturity which doesn’t preclude the ability to woo and subsequently satisfy multiple women several times each in one evening, said directors may no longer instruct these actors to drive the car whilst wearing a self-satisfied and slanted “knowing smile.” The Emperor has found that every car commercial made in the past twenty years has contained an exact duplicate of this smile and he has had quite enough. (Worse, such a smile implies that the character in the car knows everything about everything and, as anyone who is likely to avoid the Imperial Dungeon of Eternal Woe knows well, only the Emperor himself has this quality.) Further, that smile is downright nauseating. Directors shall find another way to induce the impotent sheep in the purchasing world into buying a car–some method other inspiring them to say: “I will be like that handsome and no-doubt sexually successful guy who knows everything, if I drive that car.”

The Punishment: Violating directors (and, what the heck, the actors, too) will be forced to have dinner with Rush Limbaugh. Twice.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning

The NBA playoffs started a few weeks ago, and the second round is more than half over. There has been plenty of drama, and much of it has recently been focused on the Miami Heat, as expected. Once the Heat assembled its current roster before the 2010-2011 season, adding LeBron James and Chris Bosh to a team that already had Dwyane Wade, the expectations for this bunch went through the roof. They are currently being severely tested by the Indiana Pacers, a team that was given little chance coming into the series. The drama of the games themselves is great, but most of the theatrics have been off the court.  I have little patience for any of it, honestly.

After the Pacers won a thriller to take game two and steal home court advantage, the team had a very brief celebration on the court before Indiana forward David West herded his teammates to the locker room. I guess he didn’t do it quickly enough, though, as Dwyane Wade mouthed off about it in a post-game interview, suggesting that the Pacers must not have expected to win. Considering the scope of the so-called “celebration,” Wade came off as a sore loser, which is exactly what he was at that point. If you don’t like seeing the other team celebrate, beat them.

Game three was a runaway win for Indiana, as the Heat were really never in it after the first quarter. Lance Stephenson, a guard for the Pacers, made news by making a choking gesture after a missed free-throw by LeBron James. It was certainly not a very sportsmanlike move, but it was nothing all that shocking. Stephenson even apologized the next day, saying that he never should have done what he did.  Miami forward Juwan Howard took exception anyway, however, and confronted Stephenson before game four. The two had to be separated. Everything about this particular story is irritating, really. Neither of these guys has been playing much at all in this series, so we should not need to talk about them. The part that grabbed me about it, though was this: who knew Juwan Howard was still in the league?  Isn’t he about 700 years old by now?

Finally, after falling behind by 10 points early in the third quarter on Sunday, the Heat roared back to win game four and even the series at two games apiece. LeBron James had an epic game, with 40 points, 18 rebounds, and 9 assists. Unfortunately, following the game, my Twitter feed came alive with comment after comment to the effect of “where are all the LeBron haters now??” This is such a tired argument. I will freely acknowledge James’ skill as a basketball player. My dislike of him has nothing to do with his ability. Yes, I have heard the refrain of “he’ll never win a championship” numerous times, but the people defending LeBron are missing the point. I, and many others like me, dislike him almost entirely because of “The Decision,” the television special from July of 2010, during which he announced that he would be “taking his talents to South Beach” and signing with the Heat. The towering arrogance it took to put on that dog-and-pony show was enough to put me in that “hater” camp forever.

I am rooting for the Pacers to take the series. I still expect the Heat to move on to the next round, and they showed in game four that they still have it in them. If nothing else, I hope we can manage to finish the matchup with a minimum of additional histrionics.

Bad sports, continued:

2) Philadelphia Eagles tackle Jason Peters suffered a huge setback in his recovery from Achilles surgery this week, as he managed to tear the Achilles again during a fall. A device he had been using to allow him to walk apparently malfunctioned, causing the fall.

3) Brett Lawrie, a third basemen for the Toronto Blue Jays, lost his mind after being called out on strikes by umpire Bill Miller on Tuesday in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays. The player spiked his helmet to the ground in anger as he walked back toward Miller. Unfortunately for him, the helmet bounced and actually hit the umpire. Lawrie was ejected from the game and was subsequently suspended for four games by Major League Baseball.

4) Jonathan Vilma, the linebacker for the New Orleans Saints who was recently suspend for the entire upcoming season for his role in the bounty scandal that rocked the football world this offseason, has sued NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for defamation. Vilma continues to deny any involvement in the scandal, and says that Goodell has permanently damaged his reputation.

5) This was weird and scary. Tampa Bay Rays second basemen Will Rhymes was hit in the arm by a pitch from Franklin Morales of the Boston Red Sox in the eighth inning on Wednesday. As he headed toward first base, Rhymes collapsed and fainted into the arms of coach George Hendrick. Reports are that it was adrenaline that caused the issue, and there appears to be no significant injury.

6) In the midst of the NCAA Softball playoffs, the University of Florida suspended three of its players for the remainder of the season for an undisclosed reason. Despite this, the Gators managed to win on Saturday and move on in the playoffs.

Good sports:

1) NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird added another huge accomplishment to his incredible resume. After winning the league Most Valuable Player award three times and winning Coach of the Year once, Bird, now President of the Indiana Pacers, has now won the league’s Executive of the Year award. Amazing.

2) Rhein Gibson, an Australian golfer, shot a 55 at the River Oaks Golf Club in Oklahoma last week, tying a world record set by Homero Blancas in 1962.

3) Last week, I took New York Giants defensive end Osi Umneyiora to task for his repeated attemptts to essentially use “girl” as a derisive term. Sarah Spain, an anchor for ESPN Chicago, had the same idea and lambasted the football player. To his credit, Umenyiora issued a thoughtful apology, indicating that he understood why his comments were wrong.

4) Surprise Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another showed Saturday that maybe his victory in the Derby should not have been so much of a surprise, as he won the Preakness in dramatic fashion. He will now move on to the Belmont Stakes, attempting to become the first Triple Crown winner in over 30 years.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

10. Your guidance counselor gave you a booklet on how to operate a fryolator

9. In History Class, you identified Roe v. Wade as “Two ways to cross a stream”

8. On the true/false test, you answered every question “C”

7. In your high school yearbook, you were voted ‘Most Likely to Appear in Next Year’s Yearbook”

6. Nobody believes the dead hooker in your locker was planted there by the Secret Service

5. Every paper you handed in was limited to 140 characters

4. During your Computer Science final, you were caught Googling yourself

3. The last time you picked up a book, before you finished it you ran out of crayons

2. You’ve been in the tenth grade since the first Bush Administration

1. You were caught cheating – with the principal’s wife
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.