Monday Medley

What we read while remembering Mother’s Day, we swear…

• An in-depth look at President Obama’s handling of Syria.

• Stephen Hawking joined the academic boycott of Israel, opening himself up to predictable attacks from the nation’s defenders. But will Hawking’s support of the boycott send a message to Israel about the occupation?

• You’re probably using paper towels wrong.

• Breaking down a classic and polarizing episode of The Simpsons.

• An inside look (kind of) at Draft Day from Chuck Klosterman.

• Matt Walsh on Veep and the future of UCB.

• On Michigan’s emergency-manager law and whether or not it disenfranchises the poor.

• Who is the highest paid public employee in your state? Probably a football coach.

• The CIA really did edit the script for Zero Dark Thirty.

Unabated to the Quarterback: The NFL Draft

A few years ago, I tried to force one of my friends to watch The Masters. I tried to explain how watching a major golf tournament was different from watching any other sporting event, with the way the leaderboard constantly evolved and, by Sunday night, you laughed at yourself for thinking a few hours before that Y was going to win when X had it in the bag all along (and this doesn’t even mention Z, who looked like a shoo-in a day earlier).

His ignorant response was that none of that was interesting at all, and that since the constitutive shots of golf themselves lacked suspense, drama, or an opposing force, you might as well just look in Monday’s paper to see who won.

This argument, of course, can hold for a lot of sporting events—provided we don’t find their constitutive elements all that exciting. Any real sports fan, then, should dismiss such a specious objection.

Except when it comes to the NFL Draft.

Monday Medley

What we read while going undrafted once again…

• Alex Rodriguez is “clutch” now, so we have to come up with new crimes for him to commit, like violating the age-old rule about not stepping on Dallas Braden’s mound. This inspired The New York Times to revisit all of A-Rod’s old sins. John S was going to respond to this nonsense, but Joe Posnanski, as usual, said all there is to say.

• Speaking of things that anger John S, Joni Mitchell blasts Bob Dylan in this interview with The Los Angeles Times.

• Josh doesn’t really like cupcakes, but maybe if he ate them here he’d be more amenable to persuasion that he does.

• Alicia Parlette, the copy-editor who detailed her battle with cancer for the San Francisco Chronicle, died last week at 28.

• Sometimes, it’s funny to look back at poor predictions, like Tim’s that the Celtics would be crushed by the Heat, or The Awl‘s that differentiated Ke$ha from Lady Gaga by writing, “Ke$ha, on the other hand, is a version of Gaga-lite, but in a good way. She is sort of edgy in that she puts on weird eye makeup, but she also just wears vintage-looking t-shirts and jeans when performing on national television. As opposed to donning some weird Gareth Pugh leotard while standing on top of a blood-draped ladder that’s in a coffin set on fire, or something.” Yeah, I don’t think David Cho can stand by that paragraph after last Saturday night. Sorry, Dave. (P.S. NPR did something on Ke$ha a while back that referred to her “near-perfect SAT scores,” which really makes us wonder what NPR’s standard for “near perfect” is these days.)

• Yeah, we see them more as a Wild Card team than a division winner.

• Headline of the week: Overwhelmed by Law School, 2L Declares for NBA Draft (he’s probably just testing the waters, though). At least he doesn’t have to worry about the logistical issues of the just-completed NFL Draft.

• Speaking of the law, here’s the best profile we’ve seen of Supreme Court short-lister Diane Wood.  Wood, at 59, is the oldest candidate on the short-list, but older may actually be better.

• Another reason to hate Phillies fans…

Monday Medley

What we read while worrying about the fate of Last Call with Carson Daly….

• The final season of Lost is coming up in three weeks. The trailers aren’t giving anything away, but ABC’s promotional poster indicates it’s going to be heavy-handed and laden with symbols…for a change. This premiere is so highly anticipated that even Obama is changing his schedule for it.

• As Shayne Graham and Neil Rackers reminded us this weekend, kicking can be huge in the playoffs. Michael Lewis tackled the importance of NFL kickers in 2007.

• The New York Times 36 hours travel series has gone just about everywhere, but now they go to a shocking new location.

• NPI-favorite Aziz Ansari did an interview with NPI-favorite Animal Collective. The interview promises to be an NPI-favorite.

• Another NPI favorite, Charles P. Pierce, now has his own blog over at Boston.com (h/t to the blog of another sportswriter we enjoy, Michael Weinreb).

• Alan Sepinwall discusses the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons. He does a good job putting the whole series, from the endearing early years to the regrettable later seasons, in perspective.

• If John S keeps giving films the Avatar treatment, we’ve got no shot of cracking eFilmCritic’s “Whores of the Year” in 2010 (although John was not the only one to feel that way about Cameron’s latest).

• We must have barely missed the cut of this list…

• Somehow, this gets even better after the subhead, “Jaguars may have to trade up to get Tim Tebow.“

Athletes Are Bad People

ESPN ran two stories yesterday about Michael Crabtree and his contract situation. For those unfamiliar, Crabtree was selected tenth overall, by my own San Francisco 49ers, in last spring’s NFL Draft, but he has not, as of yet, signed with the team.

The dispute stems from the fact that the team feels that Crabtree should be paid like the second wide receiver taken in the draft (i.e. slightly less than what the first receiver selected, Darrius Heyward-Bey, got paid), which he was. Crabtree, however, feels like he should be paid like the best receiver taken in the draft, which he was.

Now, I don’t intend to dwell on this particular dispute, since Bill Simmons addressed it in his inaugural “Miller Lite Great Call of the Week,” and the only person criticizing Crabtree now is the less-than-respected Scoop Jackson.

But I think it’s interesting that someone like Crabtree can have his character and intelligence questioned for employing, essentially, his only bargaining tool. The fact that Crabtree is refusing to sign and play for the 49ers is being interpreted as a sign that his inner circle is nefarious and that he is not a “team player.”

This is a ridiculous double standard that athletes are held to. The contract rules that many athletes play under, particularly in the NFL, are incredibly unfair.