Gossip Girl "G.G." Reaction

Oh. Em. Gee.

That was my reaction after Monday night's "Gossip Girl", in which it was revealed that Georgina Sparks IS Gossip Girl.

Or is she?

The way I see it, there are three ways to interpret the final scene of "G.G.", which sees Georgina updating the titular site after playing a large role in wrecking Blair's wedding (which, much to my surprise, still went forward, but ended in tears nonetheless).

1. Take the scene at face value. Georgina is Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl is Georgina. 
2. Georgina isn't Gossip Girl, but took advantage of Gossip Girl's post-accident hiatus to hack into the site and take up the mantle temporarily.
3. "Gossip Girl" isn't a single person, but an identity that gets passed down through the years, like a Dread Pirate Roberts of the Upper East Side (and if you think I'm just making that comparison to also point out the inconceivably awesome "Princess Bride" reference from Wallace Shawn, well, you're right. But my point stands.).

In all honesty, scenario #1 seems highly unlikely. The series started with the characters -- Georgina included -- being juniors in high school, and by that point, the "Gossip Girl" website (in universe) was already well established. It's entirely possible Georgina could have started it while in middle school, but that doesn't seem plausible, even for a show like this.

The second scenario seems totally plausible, but unnecessarily complex, and wouldn't really require the big reveal like they had at the end of this episode.

The third scenario is the most likely, and fits best with the show's timeline. It's entirely possible that Georgina, having been exiled to Brooklyn, wanted to take revenge on her former friends, and somehow connected with the previous Gossip Girl to take up the mantle. 

More importantly is what this reveal means for the series out-of-universe. It was always assumed that the identity of Gossip Girl herself wouldn't be revealed until the series finale (hell, the line is the opening credits goes "And who am I? That's my secret I'll never tell."), but now they've gone and most likely brought out that big gun with about 10 episodes to go this season. It's obvious the show's ratings are down, so this could be an attempt to get things back on the right track, or an acknowledgement that a sixth season is far from guaranteed. Also, does this mean Michelle Trachtenberg's voice replaces Kristen Bell's going forward? Because as much as I love my Dawnie, I would not be in favor of that.

I WOULD be in favor of this Nate and Lola/RealCharlie story going forward, because that's going to create one special kind of awesome mess later this season. Also, I'd be in favor of the show dumping Louis as soon as possible. I rarely empathize with fictional characters, but I actually felt horrible for Blair when Louis was revealing why he went through with the wedding. It was the final step for the character into total evil douche mode, and at least when Chuck was a total evil douche, he was fun. Louis isn't fun. 

Composite NBA Power Rankings for Jan. 31

Pretty much every site on the planet does NBA power rankings these days. I even saw a set this week on a food blog. So obviously what the NBA blogosphere needs is another set of rankings.

Ah, but these are different. These are COMPOSITE NBA power rankings. Because who has time to read EVERY NBA power ranking out there? Not you, my busy, about-the-town reader. So I've taken a dozen separate rankings and combined them into a single 1 through 30 for your convenience.

Here's how this works: I've picked 11 representative weekly power rankings and two automated daily power rankings from around the web. I drop each team's highest and lowest ranking, then average out the remaining 11 rankings and sort the teams by lowest average. Dropping the high and low eliminates outliers and also mitigates any massive swings from Monday to Tuesday, since seven of the 13 rankings are published before Monday's games (Chris Sheridan's are actually published on Sunday) and the remaining six factor those in.

For full disclosure purposes, here are the 13 rankings included in the composite. If there's a major one you think I've missed, let me know and I'll be happy to add it, as long as it gets published on either Monday or Tuesday.

Sam Amico (FoxSports.com), Complex.com, Zach Harper (HoopSpeak.com), Kurt Helin (ProBasketballTalk), Matt Moore (CBSSports.com), Eric Pincus (Hoopsworld), Britt Robson (SI.com), John Schuhmann (NBA.com), Chris Sheridan (SheridanHoops.com), Marc Stein (ESPN.com), Tom Ziller (SB Nation), Jeff Sagarin (USA Today), John Hollinger (ESPN.com)

Now that the particulars have been sorted out, on to the rankings!

Composite NBA Power Rankings - Week of Jan. 31
1. Miami Heat
High: 1, many	Low: 3, Sheridan	Average: 1.55
t-2. Oklahoma City Thunder
High: 1, many	Low: 8, Hollinger	Average: 2.36
t-2. Chicago Bulls
High: 1, Sagarin/Hollinger	Low: 4, Stein	Average: 2.36
4. Denver Nuggets
High: 3, Stein	Low: 6, many	Average: 4.82
5. Philadelphia 76ers
High: 3, Sagarin	Low: 7, many	Average: 5.45
6. Atlanta Hawks
High: 4, Helin	Low: 9, Moore/Stein	Average: 6.36
7. Los Angeles Clippers
High: 4, many	Low: 12, Hollinger	Average: 6.73
8. Indiana Pacers
High: 5, Pincus/Stein	Low: 11, Sagarin	Average: 7.82
9. Dallas Mavericks
High: 4, Amico	Low: 12, Sheridan	Average: 8.18
10. San Antonio Spurs
High: 7, Sagarin	Low: 16, Pincus	Average: 11.18
11. Houston Rockets
High: 10, many	Low: 18, Hollinger	Average: 12.45
12. Portland Trail Blazers
High: 7, Hollinger	Low: 17, Robson	Average: 12.55
13. Los Angeles Lakers
High: 10, Robson	Low: 17, Sheridan	Average: 12.82
14. Utah Jazz
High: 10, many	Low: 17, Stein	Average: 13.18
15. Orlando Magic
High: 9, Complex	Low: 20, Moore/Stein	Average: 15.64
16. Memphis Grizzlies
High: 13, Stein	Low: 19, Moore/Robson	Average: 16.00
17. Minnesota Timberwolves
High: 11, Hollinger	Low: 19, Schuhmann/Ziller	Average: 16.18
18. Boston Celtics
High: 16, many	Low: 19, Complex/Sagarin	Average: 16.82
19. Milwaukee Bucks
High: 13, Robson	Low: 20, many	Average: 18.36
20. Cleveland Cavaliers
High: 15, Moore/Ziller	Low: 25, Hollinger	Average: 19.36
21. Phoenix Suns
High: 21, many	Low: 26, Hollinger	Average: 22.09
22. Toronto Raptors
High: 20, Hollinger	Low: 25, Amico/Sheridan	Average: 22.45
23. New Jersey Nets
High: 20, Sheridan	Low: 25, Complex/Harper	Average: 23.09
24. Golden State Warriors
High: 21, Harper/Hollinger	Low: 25, many	Average: 23.64
25. New York Knicks
High: 21, Amico	Low: 27, Stein	Average: 23.91
26. Sacramento Kings
High: 26, many	Low: 29, Hollinger	Average: 26.36
27. New Orleans Hornets
High: 20, Sagarin	Low: 29, Amico/Pincus	Average: 26.91
28. Washington Wizards
High: 26, Complex/Moore	Low: 29, many	Average: 27.45
29. Detroit Pistons
High: 28, many	Low: 29, many	Average: 28.55
30. Charlotte Bobcats
High: 30, everyone	Low: 30, everyone	Average: 30 (duh)
Average calculated after removing highest and lowest ranking

Interestingly, if we take the Tuesday rankings -- Harper, Moore, Robson, Amico and the computers -- out of the equation, the Thunder would have been the No. 1 team. However, their loss to the Clippers didn't hurt them too much, knocking them down just a spot (or a spot and a half if you split the difference on the tie with the Bulls). And while it's not surprising that OKC's lowest ranking comes from a Tuesday list, it is surprising that the same is the case for the Clippers (Hollinger in both cases).

LOUD NOISES Team of the Week (least consensus): Orlando Magic
The Magic had the highest standard deviation among the 13 rankings out of all 30 teams, and the widest range between their highest ranking and their lowest. That's no surprise for a team that has a relatively good record, but has looked awful of late.

SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW Team of the Week (most consensus): Charlotte Bobcats
All 13 rankers agreed the Bobcats deserved to be in the cellar, and this DeSagana Diop free throw is their proof.

Jersey Monday: Kevin Faulk

So here's a bit of piece of information you might not expect regarding my jersey collection: despite pretty much hating the team, I actually have five New England Patriots jerseys. I guess that's what happens when you collect jerseys and live in New England for 25+ years.

This Kevin Faulk jersey is the only authentic one among the bunch, and obviously at this point it's quite outdated -- though Faulk is still on the roster for Sunday's Super Bowl against the Giants. I don't always remember the exact story behind how I ended up with a jersey for a particular player, but this is one case where I do.

It was the summer of 1999, and my dad and I went to see a FIFA Women's World Cup game at Foxboro Stadium, the home of the Patriots. Before the game, we visited the stadium pro shop, where they had a wall of authentic jerseys, all of that year's Patriots rookies, all for $100. Even back in 1999, NFL authentic jerseys were generally in the $200 to $250 range, so being able to get one for $100 was a good deal.

But who to get? Being a Redskins fan, I didn't have any particular Patriots players I was fond of, and I didn't have any allegiance to any major colleges to sway me toward a particular rookie. I remember narrowing my options to first-round pick Andy Kaztenmoyer, seventh-round pick Michael Bishop, and Faulk. I ended up picking Faulk because he was Marshall Faulk's cousin, and I'd remembered him being pretty freaking fun to watch at LSU. As it turned out, Faulk's career was longer than Bishop's and Kaztenmoyer's combined, and though he's never been a star, he's been a part of three Super Bowl winning teams. There are only about three dozen players in NFL history who've won four or more Super Bowl rings and Faulk (along with Tom Brady and Matt Light) could join that group on Sunday.

Jersey Monday will continue every Monday until I run out of jerseys to spotlight. And since I’ve got more than 190 of them, that could be awhile.

#FreeSteveNash? It's Not That Simple

The "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns have been dead for awhile now, but anyone watching Friday night's embarrassing loss to Portland had to feel like the Blazers had dug up the corpse from the grave to beat on it a little bit more with a shovel. Phoenix, which had beaten Portland by 25 earlier this season, scored a mere 21 points in the second and third quarters... combined. The blowout was just the latest in a string of disheartening defeats for a Suns team that now has to face a stark reality: despite being just two years removed from a trip to the Western Conference Finals, Phoenix is in terrible shape as a team, and has all but locked up another trip to the lottery, even just 18 games into this abbreviated season. After Friday's loss, John Hollinger's Playoff Odds give the Suns just a 1.1 percent chance of making the playoffs, and even that seems more a quaint example of the anomalies of computer modeling than any kind of realistic hope.

In most cases, we would simply dismiss the Suns, taking time only to marvel at the occasional absurd blowout score and even more rare upset victory, but there's a cause being taken up by NBA fans centered around Phoenix: #FreeSteveNash. Steve Nash, the Suns two-time MVP point guard, is in the process of wasting a second consecutive season a team that is going nowhere. Nash has remained loyal to the Suns, even as the franchise has floundered around him, and unlike other superstars around the league, Nash has shown no inclination of demanding, or even politely requesting, a trade to a contender.

As it stands, Nash is one of 12 players in NBA history to win multiple MVP awards, and he's the only player in that group to never make a trip to the NBA Finals. In fact, if we expand the player pool to all MVPs, Nash is one of only two to win the award and not play on the league's grandest stage. The other? Derrick Rose, who clearly has plenty of time to rectify that. Nash doesn't have plenty of time, which is why the fan outcry to get Nash on a contender has reached a fever pitch this season. Fans aren't interested in seeing Nash play 32 minutes a night for a team that can lose by 32 points on any given night. And though he'd never say it publicly, Nash probably isn't very interested in that either.

So why is the #FreeSteveNash movement likely to fail? Well, first there's the question of exactly how many contenders would actually be interested in acquiring his services. It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and say "all of them", but the fact is the Bulls, Thunder, Clippers, Spurs and Mavericks have point guards they're satisfied with (though, personally I think the Mavs would benefit hugely from a Jason Kidd for Steve Nash swap, as may Dirk Nowitzki). Nash would be a huge upgrade over Mario Chalmers in Miami, but would he really fit with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, both of whom play their best with the ball in their hands? And what exactly would Miami give Phoenix anyway?

Yes, the Knicks would seem like an obvious fit, as do the Lakers, but that question of compensation comes up. Sure, Robert Sarver could be magnanimous, and give Nash away to a contender for practically nothing, but that's not how you build a successful basketball team, and, all moves made since Summer 2010 aside, that does remain the Suns primary goal (we think). So any trade Phoenix makes in which it gives up Nash has to do one of two things (and possibly both):

- improve the team in the long term in some way, either through draft picks or young talent.
- maintain or even improve the Suns cap flexibility heading into next summer.

That latter point complicates things, because Nash is already a free agent. If the Suns are prepared to move forward with a rebuilding effort without him, then they can just let him walk. Currently the Suns project to be about $22 million under the cap this summer (accounting for their eventual first-round pick and re-signing Robin Lopez), and could up that to about $28 million by using amnesty on either Josh Childress or Channing Frye. That's not quite enough to sign both Dwight Howard and Deron Williams, but it's close enough to get in the door and make an effort to get creative. If the Suns had to take back any serious contract obligations in a Nash trade -- something they'd almost be assured of in a direct trade with the Knicks or Lakers -- it could cause a serious setback to any rebuilding project. And while Nash's contract is considered one of the best bargains in the league, it's still the 11th-largest expiring contract out there, which means there isn't simply a Theo Ratliff floating around waiting to be flipped for him.

So, barring some creativity with a three-way trade, it looks like we're going to get another 40-odd games of Nash with the Suns, another season without a Finals berth, followed by his contract expiring at the end of June. At which point #SteveNash will be #Free.

Review: Angel & Faith #6 - "Daddy Issues, Pt. 1"

PLOT SUMMARY

Angel is at Highgate Cemetary, looking for a demon, when he smells blood across the way, leading to an insane person committing a series of gruesome murders. That leads to a flashback of Giles, going through his "final exam" at Watchers' Academy, which is taking place in Highgate Cemetary. He and his group of four other students are supposed to be hunting a vampire, but they come across a Lorophage demon instead. The demon kills Giles's four classmates, but he gets saved at the last second by his father and another watcher.

Back in the present day, Nadira and company nearly kill a human who thinks he is (and is acting like) a vampire. The human was driven insane by a vampire going by Mother Superior, who refused to sire him (per Harmony's rules). Angel and Faith realize their problems may be connected, and pay a visit to Alasdair Coames, who gives them some info on the Lorophage. Faith wants to head into action against Mother Superior, and they track her to a church. Angel and Faith bust in, bust some vampire heads, and meet Mother Superior, aka...

With Flip Out, Who SHOULD Be Coaching The Wizards?

The Washington Wizards have freed fired head coach Flip Saunders. That surprises no one. The team had obviously tuned him out, and as Henry Abbott details masterfully at TrueHoop, he wasn't the right coach for THIS Wizards team anyway.

No one has a problem with the Wizards cutting ties with Saunders.

Promoting lead assistant Randy Wittman to the head coaching job, and committing to him for the remainder of the season? Eh...

This is Wittman's third head coaching stint, and he's never really done anything at the previous two to prove that he's a quality head coach. In fact, among all coaches with at least 300 games coached, he has the fourth-worst winning percentage, behind (or is that ahead of?) only Sidney Lowe, Tim Floyd and Ron Rothstein. Lowe and Floyd went to the college ranks after their disastrous NBA stints, and Rothstein's last head coaching job came in the WNBA.

So Wittman probably isn't going to turn the Wizards around. In fact, the organization probably isn't that interested in him doing so (as Ethan Sherwood Strauss explains, it's better to be horrible in the NBA than mediocre). But if the Wizards know they're bad, and know they're going to keep being bad, then why go with Wittman, who's such a boring, safe choice? Here are some options I would have rather seen in Washington, coaching this team to its inevitable last-place finish in April.

Gilbert Arenas
With his playing career at an possible end -- no team has shown even the slightest interest in bringing on the amnestied former All-Star -- Arenas could move into the next phase of his career: coaching. I'm sure his "play better or it's pistols at dawn" approach to motivation would produce surprising results.

Whoopi Goldberg
Sure, she's busy with "The View" these days, but I'm sure she could be persuaded to reprise her role as Edwina "Eddie" Franklin and take over a struggling Wizards franchise. If she could get Stacy Patton to pass the ball, surly she can do something with Nick Young.

Donovan McNabb
McNabb's brief time in DC didn't go quite as planned, so this would be a chance for him to re-write that chapter of his life. Plus, the former Syracuse point guard helped the Orange reach the national championship game in 1997, which is more success than the majority of the Wizards players have ever tasted.

Rick Perry
Now that his presidential campaign is over, the Texas governer might want to take a different position of power in Washington. As coach, he'd immediately have the Wizards get rid of Andray Blatche, Jordan Crawford and... ummm.... Ooops.

Gheorghe Muresan


Sam Cassell

OK, now this one is only half-joking. Cassell is currently an assistant for the Wizards, and has been for the past two seasons. He's not very far removed from winning an NBA championship with the Celtics, and has three rings from his playing career. He also played under some of the best coaches in the league -- including Rudy Tomjanovich, George Karl and Doc Rivers -- so he's probably picked up some things along the way. I don't know how respected he is by the current Wizards roster, but it's likely he'd probably be more respected than Wittman, who the team is likely to view as both a failure and a pushover.

Cassell seems like the kind of coach who could both lighten Washington's mood -- which has to be dismal these days -- and get certain lackadaisical players motivated. We're talking about a guy who helped lead the Timberwolves beyond the first round for the only time in franchise history and also was the spark for a playoff run with the Clippers (THE CLIPPERS!) so he's got some experience with taking hopeless situations and making them better.

Plus, at minimum, Coach Sam Cassell postgame press conferences would be AMAZING.

On Eddy Curry, Weight and Motivation

Eddy Curry made his Miami Heat debut Thursday night against the Lakers, playing in an NBA game for the first time since December 17, 2009. For some perspective on how long ago that was, when Curry last played in the NBA prior to Thursday, Blake Griffin had zero career NBA dunks, LeBron James was a Cavalier, Amar'e Stoudemire was a Sun, Carmelo Anthony was a Nugget, Vinny Del Negro was coaching the Bulls (Curry's opponent that night) and Kobe Bryant had a mere four RINGZ.

It's been a long road back to the NBA for Curry, who still has a long way to go toward being a productive member of a championship contending team. Curry had six points and three rebounds against the Lakers, but also looked sluggish -- and unsure of what to do -- on defensive rotations. Still, the simple fact that Curry found himself back on an NBA court is amazing.

Let's put away the weight jokes for a second, and focus on something else. It's easy to forget this, but in 2009, Curry had to deal with one of the greatest tragedies any person can suffer. His ex-girlfriend, the mother of two of his children, and his nine-moth-old daughter were murdered in Chicago.

I don't have children, so I can't even begin to relate to the loss of a child, but I can imagine that Curry -- who at that point in '08-09 had played just one game and would play just nine more over the next two and a half seasons -- didn't exactly have basketball at the top of his priorities list. The fact that the murder came just two weeks after Curry was slapped with one of the most embarrassing lawsuits in recent history probably contributed to Curry's general disinterest in the game.

Given his off-court problems, his ballooning weight and his general perception among NBA observers both inside and outside the league, Curry had ever reason to just walk away from the sport when he was bought out by the Timberwolves last March. He'd made more than $68M in salary in his NBA career, and though he reportedly had debt problems, he also didn't seem to be in line for an NBA windfall either.

Yet he kept at it. He tried to latch on with the Heat after being cut by the Wolves, but the team passed, basically telling him "you're too fat to play basketball. Lose a lot of weight and try again."

So, rather than sulk, he did exactly that. When he signed with the Heat, he'd already lost somewhere between 40 and 60 pounds, and he's lost an additional significant amount since the start of training camp. As someone who's battled weight problems my entire life (and is currently losing that battle very badly -- like "the South at Gettysburg" badly), I can assure you that losing as much weight as Curry did, even with a million-dollar contract in the balance, is not easy. Doing it when you've already been through so much personal hardship, and when your reputation among your peers and critics is all but already cemented, is even harder.

Fans focus on Curry's weight, because quite frankly it's right in front of us and it's easy to mock. From the day he entered the NBA, Curry always seemed to be out of shape, and two years away from the basketball court don't generally contribute positively to a person's physical condition. But the hard part is over for Curry. Now that he's achieved the simple goal of returning to an NBA court, he can work on improving his game, and getting to the point where scoring six points and grabbing three rebounds -- a stat line that happened nearly 24,000 times in the NBA between the last two times Curry has done it -- isn't cause for celebration, but is instead the norm.

Eddy Curry is never going to live up to the expectations that his No. 4 overall draft selection or his six-year/$60M contract brought. But he can certainly re-write the final chapter of his NBA career, and he seems to be on the way to doing it.

Modern Family "Little Bo Bleep" Reaction

Wednesday's episode of "Modern Family", "Little Bo Bleep" was controversial before it aired, because one of the main stories involved two-year-old Lily uttering a bleeped-out curse word (Note that on-set, the actress playing Lily was saying the word "fudge", so not to extend the controvery to the actress herself). The funny thing is the people who were demanding that ABC pull the episode probably hadn't seen it, and once the episode aired, it actually turned out to be one of the series' best and most true to life in terms of raising a toddler.

Lily's brush with profanity boiled down to this: she was saying "fuck" (and there's no need for me to bleep it here) because it made Cam laugh. She wasn't saying "fuck you" or "go fuck yourself" or even "what the fuck". She had no comprehension of the word's meaning, and there was no malice behind Lily's use of it. She just heard a word -- the show never got into where she heard it or placing blame on either Cam or Mitch for exposing her to it -- realized it made one of her dads laugh, and so she kept using it.

This isn't an uncommon occurence with toddlers. I remember when my niece first started saying the word "fork", it sounded a lot like "fuck". And my family would laugh when she said it, so she kept saying it. And like Mitchell tried to do with Cam, we tried to keep ourselves from laughing, knowing that was the only thing that was keeping up her frequent reptition of the word. Eventually we contained our laughter, and she eventually figured out how to say "fork", and she stopped saying "fuck".

Obviously in a sitcom universe, Lily was going to say "fuck" in the most inappropriate setting possible, which led to the funniest moment of the episode (non-Autotune category): a church full of people breaking out laughing when she said it right as a wedding was getting started (and again, she only said it because she saw Cam crying and wanted to make him laugh). Why was everyone laughing? Well, because it was funny, dammit. When you separate the word from its meaning -- as Lily has obviously done, since she has no idea of the meaning of the word -- it loses all its power and becomes a source of comedy, rather than negativity.

I'm sure even after seeing the episode, there will be some people who complain about a storyline that has a two-year-old uttering a profanity, but those are the kind of people who are just looking to stir up shit. In reality, Modern Family handled the storyline well, made it funny, and ended up with one of the best episodes of the season.

Gossip Girl "The End of The Affair?" Reaction

"Gossip Girl" returned after its annual month-long winter break last night with what I thought was one of the strongest episodes of the season, striking the right mix between resolving old stories and laying the groundwork for new ones.

The episode didn't pick up immediately after December's car crash cliffhanger, instead jumping forward to the "aftermath of the aftermath" as it was, which I thought was a good creative decision. Any savvy viewer knew they weren't killing off Chuck, so why spend a whole episode with his life in the balance when there are jucier matters to get to.

I do have to admit that at first the jump confused me; I thought the initial scene with Chuck and Louis in the rain was a Chuck dream sequence. But the flashbacks and Blair's eventual explanation to Serena of everything that had happened filled in all the gaps. A linear narrative might have made things easier to understand, but would have killed some of the intrigue with the Dan/Blair/Chuck storyline. Sometimes misdirections can work really well for this show (sure, they use them way too often, but when they nail them, like they did Monday, they nail them).

As much fun as all the Blair/Chuck stuff was in this episode, it's pretty obvious where that's going, which draws my interest away to other plotlines. In this episode, there were two in particular that I wanted to see more of -- or, more accurately, I'm looking forward to seeing more of in future episodes.

First, there was the whole Charlie aftermath. We learned that Charlie/Ivy went through with her plan to leave right after the accident, but didn't come completely clean with Rufus and Lily, who are still in the dark about her true identity. Lily tries getting in touch with Carol to talk to Chivy about coming back, but Carol's been evasive (which leads me to think she doesn't know where Chivy is either), so Lily hires a private investigator to find Chivy. Only, instead of finding Chivy, the investigator tracks down Famous Original Charlotte Rhodes (still living in New York) -- who Lily and Rufus proceed to dismiss as just a stranger who happens to have the same name. Only (DRAMA!) a scene at the end shows Famous Original Charlotte with a picture of her and Carol in her wallet, so she's the real deal. Don't think this is the last we've seen of her.

Then there was the big moment with Nate and his secret source at the end of the episode. He gets a text at one point telling him the paparazzi didn't cause Chuck and Blair's limo to crash, and he investigates. Turns out the brakes were cut. It also turns out that Blair and Chuck got in the wrong limo... NATE'S LIMO. OOOOhhh... who has it out for Nate? We don't know yet. But we do know who's got the dish FOR Nate... Gossip Girl (who, otherwise, has gone dark since the accident).

The best moments in this episode were definitely centered around Blair, whether she was sharing scenes with Dan, Chuck or Serena. But the best developments from the episode going forward were the B and C stories. Add it all up, and it makes for one great hour.

On the Celtics, Slow Starts and Defensive Inefficiency

After last night's loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Boston Celtics are just 4-8 on the season. Their struggles against Oklahoma City, and in general in 2011-12, led me to ask this question on Twitter last night.

Have we reached the turning point in the year where we stop calling what's happening with the Celtics "a slow start" and just call them bad?
— Adam Reisinger (@TheAkronHammer) January 17, 2012

The majority of the responses I got were in the affirmative, and I think I'd have to agree. 12 games represents 18 percent of this shortened 66-game season, which is probably beyond the amount of season we can reasonably label as the "start". More tellingly, start or not, this matches the worst 12-game stretch at any point in any season for the Celtics since Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen arrived.

What's more shocking about the Celtics stting where they are in the standings -- currently on the outside of the playoff picture and closer to the bottom-feeding Wizards than the East-leading Bulls -- is that in the "Big 3" era, the Celtics have been a fast-starting team. The Celtics opened 29-3 in 2007-08, 27-2 in 2008-09, 23-5 in 2009-10 and 23-4 last season.

Coincidentally, Boston's hot starts for each of the last three seasons have ended on or around Christmas. Last year, a Christmas Day loss started a 5-5 run for Boston after that 23-4 start. In 2008-09, the Celtics lost seven of nine, starting with a Christmas Day loss to the Lakers. In between, Boston managed to win on Christmas Day 2009, but then lost eight of the next 12 -- the same record Boston has over the first 12 games of this season, which started (as everyone knows) on Christmas Day.

But the calendar isn't the Celtics problem -- well, aside from the fact that the last number on the date keeps getting bigger, which means Boston's stars keep getting older. That plays into the real problem for the Celtics: defense. A suffocating defense was the trademark of Boston's teams for the last four seasons, never ranking outside the top five in the league in points per possession (defensive rating). This year, the numbers tell a different story.

Season	DRtg	Opp PPG	Win Pct
2007-08	1st	2nd	.805
2008-09	2nd	3rd	.756
2009-10	5th	5th	.610
2010-11	2nd	1st	.683
2011-12	21st	9th	.333

On the surface, things don't seem too bad for the Celtics. Boston is only giving up 92.5 PPG, 1.4 PPG more than last year. But scoring is down leaguewide, and Boston is playing at an even more glacial pace than it did last season (which was already its slowest pace of the Big 3 era). It's easy in this season to blame everything that goes wrong on the lockout, but Boston made a lot of changes outside of its core players, and those new additions had very little time to learn Boston's defensive system. The shortened training camp and reduced practice schedule also adds to any timing problems the Celtics may be having. That reflects in Boston's defensive efficiency, which is currently 21st in the league. To find the last time the Celtics ranked that poorly, you have to go back before the Big 3 era... WAY before. Boston finished 25th in the league in 1996-97, the year a tanking team trying to get Tim Duncan went 15-67.

This year's Celtics aren't going 15-67, for plenty of reasons. First, there aren't 82 games (obviously). More to the point, though, is Boston has too much talent to be that bad all season. The schedule hasn't exactly been kind to them so far this season. The eight teams the Celtics have lost to (counting the Pacers twice) have a combined record of 67-38, and their only truly "bad" loss came against the Hornets, on the back-end of a back-to-back (and as the end of a three-in-four stretch). On the flip side, Boston hasn't beaten a single team with a better than .300 win percentage, with its four wins coming against the dismal Pistons, Nets and Wizards (twice).

Before the season, I projected the Celtics as the sixth-best team in the East, which was lower than most people, but doesn't seem too far off right now. I definitely think Boston will improve from its current ninth-place position, but how much (or how little, to be more accurate) may surprise people. Nearly a month into the 2011-12 season, it may be time to reassess what we thought about this Celtics team, and accept that they are what they are: an aging team that will beat bad teams, lose to good ones, and end up somewhere in the middle of the pack.

So Who IS Buffy's Baby Daddy?

It's been a few days since Buffy Season 9 #5 dropped the baby bomb on the Buffyverse, and Dark Horse has confirmed both that Buffy IS pregnant (ruining my "it's still part of her dream" speculation) and that she doesn't know who the father is.

Now, just because Buffy doesn't know the father's identity doesn't mean that the creators of the book don't know. In fact, it'd seem pretty unlikely that they'd make a move like this without knowing exactly how it happened in-universe and where it's going. It also doesn't prevent us from speculating, which is what I'm about to do here.

First, while Dark Horse hasn't officially confirmed it (at least that I've seen), they've certainly leaned in the direction that Buffy got pregnant at the party seen in Issue #1. Putting aside how problematic that timeline is, that means we can eliminate a number of potential fathers. It's not Angel (or Twilight) and it's not any random person Buffy would have hooked up with in San Francisco between Issues #39 and #40 of Season 8. So we can narrow our candidates list to the males who appeared at the party at the start of Season 9.

So who are they?

Well, by my count, there are seven potential candidates from the party, not including the two police officers and other random unnamed partygoers. Rather than try and rank the likelihood of each candidate over the next, let's just take a look at each of them in alphabetical order.

Andrew

Review: Buffy Season 9, #5 - Slayer, Interrupted

PLOT SUMMARY

A haggard-looking Buffy, Xander and Dawn are fighting off a horde of zompires at Buffy's apartment building. They make their way to Buffy's apartment, but once they're safe inside, Buffy sees that Xander and Dawn have been turned. They attack her, but are staked from behind by The First Slayer, who tells Buffy "You are not The Slayer." Buffy realizes it's a dream and jumps at the First Slayer, who punches Buffy in the gut, causing her to wake up with real-life nausea.

Buffy retells the tale to Willow, who asks why she didn't ask any of the other Slayers if they had slayer dreams. Buffy admits that she's not in communication with them (save for Kennedy, who still blames Buffy for the breakup with Willow) and wonders what the First Slayer meant. Willow suggests she look in the Vampyr book Giles left Buffy.

Buffy pulls out the book, but quickly falls into another dream. The First Slayer points to a horde of zompires and the Scythe, broken and stuck in stone. The First Slayer says "Only The Slayer can pull the blade from the ground. You are not The Slayer." Buffy jumps at the First Slayer and tackles her to the ground. She turns into a faerie, at which point Buffy wakes up.

Buffy consults with Willow again, thinking her dreams are being hijacked. Willow says the only way she's going to solve this is in her dreams, so she comes over to watch over Buffy while she sleeps. Back in dream world, the faerie explains her presence (she'd witnessed the death of the Buffy impostor in S8 #5 and was there to punish Buffy, who the faerie thought was the impostor), and says that when she was planting the nightmares in Buffy's head, she found something Buffy needed to know.

The fairy and the First Slayer bring Buffy back to the scythe. Buffy tries to pull it from the stone, but she can't. Willow, however, can, and says it may be the key to restoring magic. She tells Buffy she needs to leave, and it may be a long trip. Buffy lets Willow go, the dream ends, and the faerie again says Buffy is not the Slayer. Buffy says she needs to wake up to tell Willow about the dream, but the faerie says that Willow already knows, and Buffy realizes that the goodbye in the dream WAS goodbye. Buffy wakes up and Willow and the scythe are gone.

Buffy runs outside to find her, but quickly becomes nauseated again. She has an epiphany, and when we se her coming home, she blows off her roommates and heads straight to the bathroom. Buffy's roommates say they know she's a slayer and they're not sure it's safe to live with her, but Buffy has bigger problems (highlight for spoiler): she's pregnant!

REVIEW

On Fourth Quarter Scoring, Clutch and Frustration

Depending on how long your memory is, and how much your opinions are shaped by recent events, this stat may surprise you:

LeBron James leads all active players with 6.7 career PPG in the fourth quarter.

If all you know of LeBron James is his failures in the 2011 NBA Finals, then you probably just do not believe that stat. But it's true. But it, like all stats, doesn't tell the whole story.

James's fourth quarter scoring average peaked in 2007-08, when he scored 8.6 points per fourth quarter for the Cavaliers. This was the year following Cleveland's Finals appearance, when the Cavs drastically re-shaped their roster in midseason, and they leaned heavily on James to pull out the 45 wins they did manage.

His fourth quarter scoring average dipped to 6.4 PPG the following season (impacted by a lot of short fourth quarters in Cleveland's 66-win 2008-09), and rebounded to 7.5 PPG in 2009-10. But last year, he averaged just 5.5 PPG in the fourth quarter, and this year, his 4.3 PPG average would be a career low. More tellingly, the Heat have actually been outscored in the fourth quarter when James is on the court (by a total of a single point in 57 minutes of action, but outscored is outscored).
Tuesday's overtime loss to the Warriors shined a spotlight on James's fourth-quarter struggles with the Heat, bringing the conversation back into the national spotlight. But it's not really fair to call them "struggles". That would apply if James was taking and missing a lot of shots, or turning the ball over constantly. Instead against Golden State, James reverted back to the form that led to questions on whether he was "shrinking" from the spotlight in the Finals.

Against Golden State, James's fourth quarter struggles actually had their roots in the third quarter. After a slow-starting first half, where he'd seemed generally indifferent to the outcome of the day, he was his usual dominant self coming out of halftime, helping Miami build a 17-point lead. Then in the final minute, he was 0-for-2 from the field (both on long 2s), with a turnover, plus another Miami turnover that came immediately following a James steal. In 60 seconds the Warriors cut the lead from 17 to 12, and frustration had set in for James.

During his career, James has responded to frustration in very different ways, depending on the situation around him. In the early stages of his career, he would get frustrated and go on the attack, sometimes trying to do to much, as if he had to carry his team single-handedly to make up for his mistakes (and, in a way, he did).

Towards the end of his Cavaliers career, frustration turned into a style of play that reached its pinnacle in the "Quitness" game: sloppy passes, long 2s and even longer 3s. To the casual observer, it would look like he was still trying to win, but he was doing it in a way that wasn't taking maximum advantage of his natural gifts. In 2009-10, 29% of James's fourth-quarter shots came from behind the arc, a five-point bump from his average in the first three quarters (obviously some of that is because of the need to shoot 3s in come-from-behind situations, but the 61-win Cavs weren't in a ton of those that season).

In Miami, a new "frustrated LeBron" has emerged, one who says, "here, you do it." James has always been a great passer in his career, and at times that's led him to be too willing to try and set up teammates rather than attack on his own. But, as observed at times in the Finals last season and in Tuesday's loss, when James gets into this mode, he goes beyond "trying to get his teammates involved" and into "keeping the ball out of his hands". He didn't attempt a single field goal in the fourth quarter against the Warriors, and most of his passes were around the perimeter, rather than to players moving toward the basket or open for a shot.

The reality is this is an entirely correctable problem. James is fully capable of conquering his moments of frustration and getting back into attack mode (and at least his frustration didn't result in an idiotic technical foul which cost the Heat a crucial point late in the fourth quarter like some people...). He's proven that time and time again, most recently in a game at New Jersey, when a couple fourth quarter turnovers and missed jumpers led to visible frustration, a definite change in body language, then an assist, and a pair of strong drives to the basket to put the game back out of reach. It's almost as if at the most inopportune times, James forgets that he's the best basketball player on the planet, and there's no one consistent thing to trigger a reminder of that.

(This is also the point where I should point out that we're not even having this conversation today -- or at least we're having a much more muted version of it -- if Udonis Haslem doesn't pick up that technical foul or miss a dunk, or if Dwyane Wade doesn't go 2-of-8 from the field in the fourth quarter or if either Dorell Wright or Nate Robinson play anything close to their normal selves.)

This isn't to say James should go back to trying to do everything like it was the 2007 playoffs, or even fall back on Hero Mode like he did against Chicago last spring. There's a happy (and, more importantly, "smart") medium between "doing everything" and "letting your teammates do everything" and when James finds that, he'll be fine. For all his failures in the fourth quarter, he's succeeded in that situation before, and he'll do it again. You don't become the league's leading fourth quarter scorer by never shooting.

Review: Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians (EP)

Over the last year or so, I've made a concious effort to broaden my music horizons. I'm not just randomly going out and listening to whatever I come across, but if someone recommends something to me, I'll give it a shot, even when I might have dismissed it in the past.

Sometimes, this has worked out very poorly. In those cases, I just delete the tracks from my iTunes library and move on. But other times it's worked out very well, to the point where something I might not have listened to at all two years ago ends up getting played on repeat for weeks at a time.

That's the case with the debut EP from Stephie Coplan and The Pedestrians, a five-song musical piece of perfection. The lead single, "Jerk" -- which has been getting some radio play in the Boston area and has a video available on YouTube (embedded after the jump) -- is probably the most mainstream alt rock (there's an oxymoron if there ever was one) of the five tracks, eschewing Coplan's quality piano work for driving guitars and drums. The song is catchy as all hell, reminding me of some late '90s Garbage (With a capital G, aka the Shirley Manson-fronted group) and though Coplan's vocals are more processed on it, they work with the song's driving quality.

Jersey Monday: Corey Maggette

Unlike my NFL collection, my NBA jersey collection isn't really "complete." There are seven teams -- the Bobcats, Pistons, Warriors, Grizzlies, Hornets, Raptors and Jazz -- for whom I don't have a jersey (8 if you don't count the Sonics as representing the Thunder).

But even with that being the case, most of my recent NBA jersey purchases have involved updating a team I already have, rather than filling a need, and that will likely be the case when I get a new Clippers jersey to replace this Corey Maggette on, which is currently my only representative of "Lob City".

Maggette spent eight seasons with the Clippers, and I got this jersey toward the end of his stint with the team (as tends to be my luck with jerseys). This is now his fourth season since leaving LA, first for Golden State, then Milwaukee, then Charlotte, so it could be argued that if I was a bigger Corey Maggette fan, my NBA jersey collection would be slightly more complete. As it is, I can't really rock a Maggette Clipper jersey when it's four teams old and LA has Chris Paul and Blake Griffin on the team.

Jersey Monday will continue every Monday until I run out of jerseys to spotlight. And since I’ve got more than 190 of them, that could be awhile.

Young Guns Replacing Over-The-Hill Gang For Heat

Think back 18 months or so. The Heat had wrapped up their offseason championship rally, and faced the task of filling out the roster around LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Mario Chalmers was already on board, and the Heat quickly moved to re-sign Joel Anthony and Udonis Haslem and add Mike Miller. Those players made up the core of the team, not just for 2010-11, but going forward as well, as all but Chalmers were on multi-year deals.

But at that point, the Heat were also capped out. Any other players added to the roster were going to have to come on minimum salary deals, and so the Heat started signing players, with a disturbing trend developing quickly:

- July 17: signed Zydrunas Ilgauskas (age 35) to a one-year deal
- July 19: signed Jamaal Magloire (age 32) to a one-year deal
- July 19: signed James Jones (age 30) to a one-year deal
- July 20: signed Juwan Howard (age 37) to a one-year deal
- July 22: signed Carlos Arroyo (age 31) to a one-year deal
- July 29: signed Eddie House (age 32) to a two-year deal
- Oct. 23: signed Jerry Stackhouse (age 36) to a one-year deal
- Nov. 23: signed Erick Dampier (age 35) to a one-year deal
- March 2: signed Mike Bibby (age 32) to a one-year deal

Meanwhile, players like Kenny Hasbrouck, Patrick Beverley, Da'Sean Butler and Mickell Gladness were cut by the end of training camp. The only player who could have been reasonably classified as "young" on the Heat bench was second-round draft pick Dexter Pittman, who was more project than player at that point.

On some level, the Heat's roster strategy made sense. The expectation for the season was to win a championship, and each of the signed players provided something of a known quality. But they also came with a known ceiling. Anyone who'd watched the 2009-10 Cavaliers knew what Miami could expect from Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and it wasn't much. The same applied to Magloire, Howard, Dampier and the reanimated corpse of Jerry Stackhouse. Additionally, because everyone was on a one-year deal, there was little hope of bench continuity from 2010-11 to 2011-12.

As it turns out, that latter point worked to Miami's benefit. It became clear as the season went on that the over-the-hill gang strategy wasn't good for the team, either in 2010-11 or long-term.

So in 2011-12, the Heat reversed course. Gone were Ilgauskas (retired), Magloire (signed with Raptors), House (cut), Stackhouse (reanimated again on the Hawks bench for some reason), Dampier (unsigned) and Bibby (now with the Knicks, HA!). Jones, who proved useful, and Howard, who proved immortal, were kept around. Veterans Shane Battier and Eddy Curry were added, but filling out the 15-man roster are rookies Norris Cole, Terrel Harris and the aforementioned Gladness, who stuck out of camp this time.

Cole is a traditional rookie, drafted out of college and signed to a first-round pick rookie contract, and under team control for up to five seasons. But Harris and Gladness are a different story. They represent the kind of player the Heat ignored last season to their detriment: undrafted players who were missing something in their game coming out of college but who'd worked on their game in the NBA D-League and just needed a shot. According to all observers at the Heat's training camp, both of them worked incredibly hard to earn their roster spots, and the Heat rewarded tehm, rather than keep a retread like House and re-sign a veteran big man like Dampier.

So far, the move is paying off. Gladness has seen very limited minutes, but so have all the Heat centers, as Miami uses Haslem and Bosh in the middle as part of a more up-tempo offense. Harris had already been impressive in what little action he'd seen early in the season, but broke out in a big way with 14 rebounds, including seven on the offensive glass, in Miami's triple-overtime win against the Hawks.

While the triple-OT win probably said more about the Hawks than it did about the Heat, it's clearly the kind of game Miami couldn't have won with the roster it had last year. Imagine instead of Cole and Chalmers combining for 69 minutes, the Heat had Chalmers and Bibby (or, God forbid, Arroyo and Bibby). Which of the ancient bodies the Heat exhumed on a regular basis would have been able to step up and play the 44 minutes that Harris played? Even Battier, who played 49 minutes -- just two shy of his career high -- is a huge improvement over a 36-year-old Stackhouse or 35-year-old Dampier.

Last season, the Heat got exactly six 20-point games from players outside the Big 3 in 82 regular-season games (so 7% of games played produced a non-big-three 20-point performance). This year two members of the supporting cast, Cole and Chalmers, have already cracked 20, in just eight games played. That's 25%. On the rebounding end, the Heat got five 12+ rebound games from the "little 12" in 2010-11 (6%). This season? 3 in 8 games (37.5%).  Simple math tells you this year's supporting cast better, and though small sample size plays a part, it's clear the Heat have a more energetic bench this year, once that's capable of exceeding expectations, rather than living down to them.

At the outset of this season, the NBA trumpeted that a record number of D-League alumni were on opening day NBA rosters, and that's not a meaningless statistic. Teams are starting to realize the value of filling out your bench with players with potential -- like Harris, Gladness or the Hawks' Ivan Johnson, who managed to become a cult hero in his 21 minutes of action Thursday night -- rather than tapped-out veterans. There's always a fear from coaches that these kind of players will make mistakes that come from inexperience, but older, near-washed-up players will make just as many mistakes from simply not being able to execute anymore. On the flip side, there's always the potential for young players, particularly those that have been working on improving their game in the D-League for two or three years, to surprise you.

This isn't just a bias found in coaches and GMs. This past summer's #NBARank project saw the incoming rookie class and barely known second-year players ranked far below their washed-up veteran counterparts (for one specific example, Cole was ranked 413th, while Bibby was 307th and House was 297th). This speaks to a natural human tendency to fear the unknown. We may know that Bibby is washed up, but at least we know his ceiling and floor. Cole, coming into the season, was an unknown quality at the NBA level. Sure, he could have been exactly what he is -- a dynamic scorer who gets a little too aggressive at times -- but he also could have been a complete disaster. We just don't know. As bad as Bibby is, he's safe. Cole was risky. But the word "risky" isn't a synonym for "bad".

There's always going to be a place in the NBA for a former star like Tracy McGrady to try and reclaim his glory -- and actually do a reasonable job of contibuting, like T-Mac has done -- but the league is clearly moving in a direction where younger players with D-League experience will be given chances, and that will only increase as more teams get directly involved with D-League ownerships and partnerships. And maybe eventually it'll mean players like Brandon Costner or Anthony Mason Jr. will get a spot on the Hawks bench instead of Zombie Stackhouse.

Desktop Girl of the Week: Nina Dobrev

Two quick notes to kick off DGOW in 2012. First, I'm going to try to do my best to make this a weekly feature again, after it just about disappeared at the end of 2011. Second, the feature, when it does run, will now run on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays.

So, who better to kick off the move to Thursdays than the queen of The CW's Thursday night lineup, Nina Dobrev? If you're not familiar with her, she stars in the dual role of Elena and Katherine on "The Vampire Diaries", which is a really good show, despite its target demographic.

The show returns tonight, after an extended (scheduled) hiatus, a typical move for CW shows, but one that I think really kills the flow of a series like TVD, which tells an ongoing story from episode to episode.

Dobrev has pretty much been in full TVD mode for awhile now, with little else on her plate, but Canadian viewers may remember her from her run on "Degrassi" from '06 to '09, just before she made the move south of the border (the Bulgarian-born Dobrev was raised in Canada from the age of 2). She did have a supporting role in the Leighton Meester/Minka Kelly project "The Roomate", and will have a larger role in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", coming out later this year.

For now though, you can see Dobrev every Thursday night, and I highly recommend you tune in. Come for the Elena, stay for the Katherine.

• Nina Dobrev on IMDB
• Follow Nina Dobrev on Twitter
• "The Vampire Diaries" Official Site

As always with DGOW, I’ll provide a widescreen (1680x1050) image for downloading. If you want to see past DGOW, then just check the archive album.

Charmed Comic Review: Issue #17 - "Family Shatters"

PLOT SUMMARY

Paige arrives in Salem to find Sarah, but Cole is blocking the door. They argue for a bit, then Paige orbs her way in. Patience/Prue sees her, tells her Sarah isn't there and says Paige has to leave. Paige grabs Prue (I'm just calling her that from now on, for ease of reading) causing a shockwave that sends both of the, flying across the room. The shock also sends Piper and Phoebe's powers out of control, creates an earthquake at the manor and sends the kids powers (even the bound ones) into overdrive. Meanwhile Leo doubles over in pain, then gets dark-orbed out of Magic School.

Cole, Phoebe and Xoop converge on the manor, where Piper is trying to clean up. Cole tries to explain the situation with Paige and Prue, but Phoebe wants to know why Cole is there (and why Piper knew about him and didn't say anything). Back in Salem, Prue and Paige have a TK fight,, with Prue gaining the upper hand. In San Francisco, we see the effects of Piper's "mega-freeze" are spreading, and they're still not interested in listening to Cole. Leo, meanwhile, has been trapped by Rennek, whose powers are increasing. And he needs Leo's help.

Prue tells Paigemwho she is, but Paige doesn't believe her, because she doesn't look like Prue, and she "attacked" Paige. Prue explains the blast want an attack, but their powers affecting each other, and they need to get the manor to see how it's affected Piper and Phoebe. Paige orbs them to the attic, where she sees that the BoS accepts Prue, so she's not as skeptical.piper and Phoebe still don't want to listen to Cole, so they decide to check the book. Paige gets ready to introduce them to the mysterious blonde, but they recognize her right away based on her soule as Prue.

REVIEW

Gaming The All-Star Game Vote

NBA All-Star ballots were released today, which is something of a joke, since we're between four and six games into the season. Still, as Henry Abbott of TrueHoop points out, the balloting - and who appears on the ballot -- isn't really that big of a deal, since fan voting only determines the five starters for each conference, and those are basically set in stone.

Or are they?

A few years ago, an Internet campaign attempted to get little-known Canucks defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick into the NHL All-Star Game via a write-in vote. Despite not appearing on the official ballot, Fitzpatrick received 550,177 votes, missing out on a starting spot by just 22,892 votes. So, could something like that happen in the NBA?

Well, taking a look at last year's voting, the minimum number of votes to make the cut as a starter was 1,146,426, which is what Yao Ming got at center in the West. The second guard spot in the West went to Chris Paul with 1.28 million votes and the second forward spot in the West went to Carmelo Anthony with 1.3 million (the corresponding totals in the East were 1.91 million for Derrick Rose and 1.67 million for Amar'e Stoudemire).

That means for a "joke" candidate to get enough votes to secure a starting spot, he'd need to get somewhere between 1.2 and 2 million votes. Including today, there are 27 days left in All-Star voting, and each voter can vote up to once per day. If our goal is to get Candidate X up to 2 million votes, then we'd need at least 74,074 voters voting daily to get to that level.

But do we?

In my testing today, I was able to vote for the All-Star starters in three separate browsers all on the same computer. When I finished voting, each one indicated that I couldn't vote again for another 24 hours, but that didn't stop me from voting in another browser. In theory, I could vote in up to 10 browsers a day (spanning multiple computers and mobile devices), and if all our joke voters did that, we'd cut our needed roster down to 7,408.

If we could get that many people -- or even the initial 74,000+ estimate voting once daily -- there's a chance we could get an entire roster of joke candidates on the roster. But that'd be dicey. We should really focus on getting a single player in, which narrows things down nicely. Take a look at that voting for the second guard spot in the West. Last year, Chris Paul got in with 1.28 million votes. Now, we can assume that Paul's vote total will increase this year, both from his higher profile in LA and natural year-over-year voter increase, but even if we lower our threshold to 1.5 million votes, that means we only need 5,556 people voting for the same Candidate X ten times a day to get a completely undeserving player into the All-Star Game as a starter.

The key is picking the right player. As much as I'd like to galvanize the entire NBA blogosphere behind the "Make Joel Anthony an All-Star Starter" campaign, that'd be by far the biggest challenge on the board, since he's going up against Dwight Howard, who's likely to get the majority of the real All-Star votes at East center and an additional boost from playing the game in front of his hometown (for now) crowd. With the boost to CP3 and the intractability of Kobe Bryant, West guard might be a little harder.

Then there's West forward. Last year's runner up, Carmelo Anthony, is in the East now, and there's a lot of players behind Kevin Durant -- specifically Pau Gasol, Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, Dirk Nowitzki and even still Tim Duncan -- who are going to get enough legitimate support to split the vote.

But who's the candidate who is totally undeserving of an All-Star nod in the group of 24 West forwards on the ballot (and we should stick to names on the ballot, since write-in voting can get messy). Michael Beasley would be hilarious, and was my first choice. But upon a closer inspection of the ballot, there's only one way to go. That's right, it's time to give World Peace a chance.

If enough bloggers, DDLers, Twitter followers and random fans make it their mission, we can vote the former Ron Artest into the All-Star Game as a starter. Don't let 2012 be the year the world ends, let it be the year we find World Peace in Orlando.

(Oh, and while you're voting for World Peace, if you also want to vote for Beasley, Kyle Lowry, Ricky Rubio, DeMarcus Cousins, Nick Young, Anthony Morrow, Kris Humphries, Andray Blatche and Joel Anthony, please do. That'd be an All-Star Game I'd watch.)

Review: Angel & Faith #5 - "In Perfect Harmony"

PLOT SUMMARY

Harmony and Clem show up at Angel and Faith's and want to hire Angel as a private investigator. Someone is blackmailing Harmony with a tape of her siring a human, which is against her "rules", and if the tape got out, it could ruin her and throw the fragile vampire status into chaos. Angel and Faith reluctantly agree to help. They track down a group of vamps, but it turns out to be a false lead. They continue the investigation by asking Harmony who might want to hurt her personally, but she's more focused on her career -- and even offers to help Angel with his PR. Angel and Faith decide to just take action and hope that leads them somewhere, but it doesn't. Finally Angel suggests leaking the tape before the blackmailer does, to get out in front of it. Clem steps in and says that's a bad idea and he can make it go away, at which point Angel reveals that Clem IS the blackmailer. He wanted more money from Harmony, but he also loves her. He thought he could fake a blackmail attempt and save her from it, becoming her hero, but she went to Angel & Faith before he could get to the second part of the plan. Harmony forgives him, and gives Angel her PR agent's image rehab plan as thanks. Angel tosses it and walks away. Faith gives it a longer look, but then also follows Angel off into the distance.

REVIEW


Covers


Issue #4 had my favorite Steve Morris cover of the run so far, but he tops it with this one. It's so easy to focus on Clem looking sad that you lose sight of the heart balloons, obscuring what could otherwise be a giveaway for the issue's major twist. Harmony is in vamp face, but smiling, striking a balance between threatening and fun, while Angel's facial expression and stretched body give the impression that he doesn't want to be near Harmony in any way. Rebekah Isaacs's alternate cover plays with Harmony and Clem in classic British imagery (the Union Jack in the background, Harm as royalty on British currency, Clem in the traditional Buckingham Palace guard uniform). For the second consecutive month, Faith gets shafted from the cover of her own series, which is the only reason this set of covers doesn't get a 5.

#LeaguePassAlert: Top Games for Jan. 2-8

Through one week of the season, some obvious trends have developed in terms of which games you should be watching on League Pass. The success of the Heat, Thunder and Bulls makes them a must-watch pretty much every night. The Ricky Rubio-led Timberwolves, as expected, have become must-see TV, even if they just got their first win on Sunday. And the Wizards and Nets are toxic, and to be avoided unless the only alternative is watching "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" (or Lamar Odom's sad season so far with the Mavericks).

So as we head into the final week of the NBA's League Pass free preview, here's your guide to take advantage of the best viewing opportunities

Monday, Jan. 2

Hawks at Heat, 7:30 ET
The Heat are 5-0 and coming off a 39-point destruction of the Bobcats yesterday. The Hawks had the day off on Sunday, and are an impressive 3-1 on the season. This is easily the best game on Monday's slate.

Monday's national game: Thunder at Mavericks (8:30 ET, NBA TV)

Tuesday, Jan. 3

Trail Blazers at Thunder, 8 ET
I swear, I'm going to try to not make this all Heat and Thunder games, but they've got some really good non-national TV match-ups this week and Tuesday is a limited slate anyway (6 games, 2 on NBA TV).

Tuesday's national games: Hawks at Bulls (8 ET, NBA TV), Rockets at Lakers (10:30 ET, NBA TV)

Wednesday, Jan. 4

Pacers at Heat, 7:30 ET
Gah! Another Heat game. But this really is the best matchup of the night (the only one with two teams with winning records entering the week), and the Heat could be primed for an upset, playing their third game in four nights. Also, you should probably clear your late schedule for the Lob City appearance on NBA TV -- which is easy since it's the only 10:30 game of the night.

Wednesday's national games: Wizards at Magic (7 ET, NBA TV), Rockets at Clippers (10:30 ET, NBA TV)

Thursday, Jan. 5

Mavericks at Spurs, 8:30 ET
If for some crazy reason you don't want to watch the two national TV games, then I highly recommend you check out this all-Texas battle. The Mavericks have to turn things around at some point, right?

Thursday's national games: Heat at Hawks (8 ET, TNT), Lakers at Blazers (10:30 ET, TNT)

Friday, Jan. 6

None
Hey, it's the first ESPN doubleheader since Christmas day. Watch those games!

Pacers at Celtics, 7:30 ET

OK, in all seriousness, if you don't want to watch the national games, Pacers-Celtics should be pretty good. Boston is healthy now (well, except Jermaine O'Neal, but we all expected that), and Indiana has been sneaky-fun to watch so far this season.

Friday's national games: Bulls at Magic (8 ET, ESPN), Trail Blazers at Suns (10:30 ET, ESPN)

Saturday, Jan. 7

Bulls at Hawks, 7 ET
Nuggets at Spurs, 8:30 ET
These are two really good games, but they'll overlap, making it difficult to watch both in full. I'd recommend tuning in for the start of Bulls-Hawks and gauge it as it hits the second half. If it's a good one, stick with it, then catch the end of Nuggets-Spurs. If it's not, flip over early.

Saturday's national game: Bobcats at Pacers (7 ET, NBA TV), Bucks at Clippers (10:30 ET, NBA TV)

Sunday, Jan. 8

Magic at Kings, 6 ET
Grizzlies at Lakers, 9:30 ET
If you skip the national game entirely, you can catch both of these games. The intrigue level on Magic-Kings depends heavily on what happens with the DeMarcus Cousins situation over the next few days, but Orlando has been pretty good -- and pretty watchable -- so far this season. Then the Lakers play host to a Memphis team that's kind of in shambles right now.

Sunday's national game: Spurs at Thunder (7 ET, NBA TV)

Jersey Monday: AJ Green

Thanks to the convergence of both January 1st falling on a Sunday and the NFL regular season stretching into January, the "traditional" January 1st bowl games are being played today, January 2nd (and, of course, thanks to the BCS, a couple of those "traditional" games won't be played until later this week).

One of those bowl games, The Outback Bowl, will feature the Georgia Bulldogs, who just happen to be one of the few college football teams for which I own a jersey.

I picked up this AJ Green replica jersey at the Georgia campus bookstore when I was there last February, after Green had declared for the NFL Draft. Despite the fact that all officially licensed college jerseys are sold without names on the back, this was readily identified by the bookstore as a Green jersey, and as such had been slashed to 50% off since Green wouldn't be returning for another season at Georgia.

Georgia didn't noticeably change their uniforms this season, so there's no reason the bookstore couldn't have held on to all the Green jerseys and sold them in 2011 as jerseys for freshman DB Chris Sanders -- well, except the fact that no one's going to buy a jersey of a freshman DB who only played in two games and recorded two total tackles on the season.

Of course, this exposes the hypocrisy of the NCAA's jersey marketing. Officially, this is just a Georgia jersey that happens to have the number 8 on it. But everyone knew it was a Green jersey, which made it more valuable when they were selling it while he was with the team, but making it less marketable once he was gone. I'm not really sure what the rules would be about Georgia stashing all their leftover Green jerseys for a few years, then breaking them out as "throwbacks" at full -- or even marked up -- price, but I'm pretty sure Nike wouldn't be happy with that.

Adding to that is the irony that Green was suspended in 2010 for selling his own jersey, an actual game-used one, but the Georgia store was making tons of money by selling the same jersey, just without the five letters on the back. Go NCAA!

11 for '11: Personal Experiences

When I sat down to write this post, I had a lot of trouble narrowing down all the things I did this year to 11 bullet points. I took plenty of out-of-state trips (both for business and pleasure), saw a lot of in-person sporting events, went to four different comic book conventions and took in more live concerts than I had since college.

Even after mashing some of the events together and ending up with 11 I was really happy with, I still had a hard time ranking them. How can I compare the week-long experience of San Diego Comic-Con with a two-hour Britney Spears concert? Conversely, how can I expect three days in Baltimore to match the energy level of one night Watching the Throne? So in the end, I scrapped the ranking entirely and I'm just listing my Top 11 chronologically, which is why they're not numbered. But trust me, there are 11.

- "The South Beach Diaries"

I chronicled my week-long trip to Miami to see four Heat games (and buy an iPad) pretty well back in March, but one of the things I left out was that for three of the four games I went to, I had the same seat, one directly in between two longtime Heat season ticket holders. The two couples knew each other pretty well, and when I first showed up for the Heat-Bulls game on Sunday afternoon, I was just the latest random interloper who picked up a single-game ticket in a really good seat. When I made it back the next game, they recognized me. My ticket for the Lakers game was somewhere else in the arena, but when I returned to that familiar seat for the Grizzlies game on Saturday, both of the men sitting directly next to me joked how they'd missed me for the previous game. We also joked about me sitting in that seat being a jinx, since the Heat had lost to the Bulls and Blazers to start the trip. Fortunately it wasn't, and I ended up saying goodbye to my friends for a week with a blowout win over Memphis.

- Boston Comic Con & Rachel Platten/Lucy Woodward Concert

This wins the fortuitous timing award for the year. I had been planning to go to Boston Comic Con for a while before the show, and I'd wanted to see Lucy Woodward in concert for years. As it turned out, she was in Boston the weekend of Comic Con. As great as the convention was, the concert was definitely the high point of the weekend, taking place at the incredibly intimate setting of Cafe 939, which was one of the coolest concert-going experiences of my life.