With the nation still reeling over last week’s celebrity demises, leave it to Sarah Palin to close out the pre-holiday period by dropping her own bombshell: Announcing her resignation as governor of Alaska, effective by end of July.

Where to start? For one, I’ll peg the over/under on the number of monologue jokes for David Letterman on Monday at 6. Plus one more mock-video piece after he gets behind his desk.

As for Palin’s motives, I believe her when she cites the harsh media glare, as she never seemed comfortable navigating that treacherous terrain (nor having her family used as a punching bag).

Do I believe that she’s out of politics for good? No. For one, her Political Action Committee (linked above) is still chugging along, so if nothing else, she’ll get to influence issues and voters via that outlet. Shedding political office helps her be more of the “maverick” she’s claimed to be. It also helps her distance herself from direct association with the other GOP govs who’ve lately disgraced themselves (you know who you are, Nevada and South Carolina). More logistically, she can wave bye-bye to Alaska and its fringe-iness, allowing her to move to California or wherever the conservative action is.

I can’t say how this impacts her future aspirations. Frankly, I always foresaw more of a Dan Quayle fate for her: Regular visits to the rotary club meetings, timely sniping from the outskirts, and generally a low-level presence on the political scene. As opposed to, say, Richard Nixon’s deft resurrection after his Presidential loss to JFK in 1960. If I had to bet, I’d still go with the former outcome for Caribou Barbie.

And, if all else fails, she can always embark upon the ultimate hockey-mom dream: Becoming NHL commissioner.

Something that’s not backed up by any verifiable facts, but of which I’ve observed enough instances to feel confident in declaring:

Yoga studios in New York City are always located on the second floor or higher.

Every time I walk by a building that houses a yoga joint, and that has a banner attesting to it, the location is always up a flight of stairs. I’m assuming that the rents are cheaper than the walk-in friendlier ground-floor locations. But every instance? Bikram or just regular free-form bendies? What gives?

If nothing else, the above (admittedly crappy) cameraphone photo at least proves that someone in New York is reading this blog. Specifically someone(s) at The Orchard’s offices overlooking Lafayette Street, who have a thing for decorative Post-It Noting of the windows.

How do I know they read my previous post on this NoHo sighting? Because that paper-pixelated “Pac-Man” used to be a peach:

Accordingly, I guess I’m wrong about that pixelated fruit being the bonus-points orange from “Pac-Man”. It’s actually The Orchard’s corporate logo, which, from the looks of it, is supposed to be a peach. That would make sense, as peaches do grow in orchards, while oranges grow in groves. (Although this Post-It creation could be doubling as both, just to fit in better with the “Space Invaders” alien and spaceship.)

So either I was right in the first place, and that really was an orange all along, or else they’re just screwing around. If they’re taking requests, the next oldschool blocky videogame I’d like to see represented is “Robotron: 2084″…

Not so long ago, I lodged the following complaint against the post-modern vampire, as personified in Twilight and the like:

Meaning enough already — what used to be fresh and inventive is now the tired norm. The romanticization of the dreamy nosferatu should signal the end of the line for this fantasy-fiction aesthetic. I don’t know that future vampire tales need to revert back to the Bram Stoker trappings, but a fresh reinvention is in order.

Naturally, my plea was roundly ignored, as the realms of fashion and pop culture continue to chug along on the fanged-undead kick:

“The vampire is the new James Dean,” said Julie Plec, the writer and executive producer of “The Vampire Diaries,” a forthcoming series on the CW network based on the popular L. J. Smith novels about high school femmes and hommes fatales. “There is something so still and sexy about these young erotic predators,” she said.

This generation of undead prowls high school hallways and dimly lighted dance clubs as menacing — and as seductive — as they have ever been. The June premiere of the second season of “True Blood,” in which Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, is reunited with her imperious fanged suitor, drew 3.4 million viewers, making it HBO’s most-watched program since the “Sopranos” finale in 2007.

Charlaine Harris has just published “Dead and Gone,” the ninth novel in her Sookie Stackhouse series, variations on Southern Gothic fiction on which “True Blood” is based. The publishing world has been intrigued by “The Strain,” a first installment in a planned trilogy written by the film director Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, about bloodthirsty predators run amok in Manhattan.

The style world, too, has come under the vampire’s spell, in the shape of the gorgeous leather- and lace-clad night crawlers who have crept into the pages of fashion glossies.

As silly as the vampirific trend is in books, movies, and TV, it’s doubly ludicrous when applied to fashion — and that’s an industry built upon the sublimely outlandish. To me, it comes off as nothing more than goth revisited, with maybe a hint of blood-red color. It’s ironically anemic in concept.

I guess this meme will have to run its course via overkill. But even without actually directly intaking any of its manifestations, the marketing osmosis I experience from this movement has already stricken me with bloodsucker fatigue. Somebody drain me, quick…

Yesterday was the commencement of the formal free-agency signing period in the National Hockey League, and it went off with a bang: A record number of players switched teams, with the usual long-term dollars committed with an eye toward salary-cap impact.

The detailed rundown is available from here to ESPN.com. Here are a few of the more notable player- and team-based developments from the first day of “Free Agent Frenzy”:

- Perhaps reflecting their state government’s fiscal paralysis, all three California clubs were unusually quiet. Not counting the Ducks and Sharks re-signing a couple of their own restricted and unrestricted free agents (notably Scott Niedermayer for Anaheim, along with their previous Draft-day trading of Chris Pronger to Philadelphia), those teams and the Kings made no moves at all. The inactivity was especially puzzling for LA and San Jose, who were both expected to revamp their rosters after disappointing 2008-09 seasons. Both teams are rumored trade-partner possibilities for disguntled Ottawa winger Dany Heatley, but otherwise, it looks like they’ll be picking from the second-wave UFA crop.

- The Habs made waves with their signings and trades, basically foregoing size for skill. This has set up Montreal for considerable ridicule for assembling a forward corps that averages something like 5′9″/170lbs (exaggeration, but not by much). I’d like to take an early stab at nicknaming this shrimpy group of Scott Gomez, Mike Cammalleri, and Brian Gionta: The Smurfs, hearkening to the common term for short-but-steady NFL receivers.

- Based on recent performance, it seems like the Oilers have upgraded in goal with Nik Khabibulin. However, his history indicates that he doesn’t elevate his game unless he’s got serious competition from his backup: That was the case last season in Chicago with Cristobal Huet, and similarly during his Tampa Bay tenure when John Grahame pushed him. Will youngster Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers be able to challenge for the starter’s role enough to keep Khabi on his toes? For four years? Doubtful.

- And speaking of the goaltenders… I’m really surprised that Scott Clemmensen couldn’t capitalize on his stellar substitute stint with New Jersey this year — to me, it validated his starter status. In fact, I was expecting Colorado to nab him and slide him into their vacant No. 1 slot. Instead, the Avs picked up journeyman Craig Anderson, and Clemmensen ended up replacing Anderson as Florida’s new backup behind Tomas Vokoun.

- There was a lot of grousing over several injury-prone players landing multi-year contract. In particular, Minnesota got flack for replacing one fragile winger — Marian Gaborik — with another in Martin Havlat. I would add that the nature of those long-term deals means that many of these players are going to become injury-prone if they’re not already. In addition, the Lightning seemed to get a free pass on this issue when they picked up Mattias Ohlund, who’s spent significant time on the IR during his career.

- On the local NHL front: The Rangers obviously made the most noise, with the preliminary salary-shedding of Scott Gomez to Montreal setting them up for the $37.5-million landing of Gaborik. Adding brawler Donald Brashear will also amp the excitement level at MSG. Comparatively, the Devils and Islanders laid low, notwithstanding New Jersey’s significant re-signing of their incumbent d-men Johnny Oduya and Andy Greene.

- Finally, I’m a little irked over the loose talk about the “cap hit” for each announced signing. In most cases, the dollar figures cited by TSN, Puck Daddy, et al are nothing but the simple per-year average of a contract, arrived at by simple arithmetic. Problem is, most of these big-money deals are either front-loaded or back-loaded, so the true cap hit in any given year is far away from the per-year average.

For instance, Marian Hossa’s trumpeted 12-year, $62.8-million contract with Chicago averages out to $5.23 million — except that it doesn’t. The reported front-loaded deal pays Hossa $7.9 million each season from 2009 through 2016, with declining annual salaries after that (making the older Hossa easier to trade or buy out by that point). Obviously, the Blackhawks carry a significantly higher salary cap figure for the winger in the immediate term than if the total sixty-two mil were more equitably spread out over the contract term. That’s sports biz!

So much for Day 1. From here until October, it’s fill-in-the-blanks time with the remnant free agents, a process interesting in its own right.

Maybe you heard that the King of Pop died last week. But that doesn’t mean that the music’s died — far from it:

“There are dozens and dozens of songs that did not end up on his albums,” said Tommy Mottola, who from 1998 to 2003 was chairman and CEO of Sony Music, which owns the distribution rights to Jackson’s music. “People will be hearing a lot of that unreleased material for the first time ever. There’s just some genius and brilliance in there.”

The releases, Mottola said, “could go on for years and years — even more than Elvis.”

Since Jackson’s death Thursday, there has been an enormous, almost unprecedented demand for the King of Pop’s music. Nielsen SoundScan said Wednesday that three of his records — “Number Ones,” “Essential Michael Jackson” and “Thriller — were the best-selling albums of the week, and 2.3 million tracks of his have been downloaded in the U.S. alone.

When a music star of Jackson’s stature dies, labels typically comb through their archives to pull out anything they can release. New compilations of recordings by performers such as Elvis, Tupac and Jeff Buckley are still released nearly every year.

Mottola, who has described himself as the “shepherd and gatekeeper” of Jackson’s catalog and is familiar with it better than anyone, said that for every album Jackson made — including classics like 1979’s “Off the Wall” and 1982’s “Thriller” — he recorded several tracks that didn’t make it onto the records.

I subscribe to the theory that unreleased material was put into the vault for a reason, i.e. that the artist didn’t consider it good enough for public consumption. So as much as I’d love to hear “new” music from MJ, I don’t think it’s fair to posthumously expose tracks and song elements that he didn’t see fit to apply a final polish to — in fact, it’s nothing but exploitative.

That said, it appears there was at least one ambitious project that Jackson was ready to release into the wild:

Two weeks before he died, he wrapped up work on an elaborate production dubbed the “Dome Project,” which could be the final finished video piece overseen by Jackson. Two people with knowledge of the project confirmed its existence Monday to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because they signed confidentiality agreements.

Four sets were constructed for Jackson’s production, including a cemetery recalling his famous “Thriller” video. Shooting for the project lasted from June 1 to June 9. Now in post-production, the project is expected to be completed next month.

It’d be nice if the vultures now picking over his estate stopped with the Dome Project, and let that be Jackson’s final creative legacy. Wishful thinking, I know, especially when there’s years’ worth of residual dollars to be made.

Matrimony seems to be the theme on social networks this week:

- “Married on MySpace” is an online video series that’s employing the tagline “witness the first MySpace wedding”, and which has been prominently advertised in offline media.

- Meanwhile, under far less formal and orchestrated conditions, prominent Twitterer Drew Olanoff proposed to his girlfriend via tweet (and she accepted).

I’m sure I’ll find similar wedding-belled permalinks on Facebook, Bebo et al. And if not, then they’ll crop up there soon enough.

Not that there’s anything unique about facilitating a lasting relationship online, given that socnets are primarily used for communication. But to have the same idea crop up back-to-back like that? Something tells me there’s a movement afoot to further legitimize the idea of “living” inside your favorite online hangout, to the point of exporting activities once considered strictly real-world. Same mindshare adjustment that dating websites had to achieve: Remember only 10 years ago, when it was considered strange to meet your mate via the Web? Nowadays, it’s commonplace.

The continuing rockiness of the print media business was underscored yesterday when Vibe Magazine, one of the more recognizable pop music outlets, announced that it was shutting down.

Today, there’s news that co-founder Quincy Jones wants to buy back the publication and keep it alive. But note the approach:

“They [Wicks Group] just messed my magazine all up, but I’m gonna get it back. You better believe it, I’m'a take it online because print and all that stuff is over,” Jones told EbonyJet.com.

Jones sees a market for the magazine, especially in an online format, since Vibe magazine CEO Steve Aaron said the Web site was profitable.

Details are obviously sketchy at this early stage. But the “vibe” I’m getting is that Jones isn’t so much interested in saving the magazine that was Vibe — he primarily wants to keep the Vibe brandname going.

Because really, that name is what really holds the pop-cultural cachet. At its height, Vibe was the hiphop/soul/R&B equivalent of Rolling Stone, and was acknowledged as such. Toward that end, the Vibe brand was extended into areas beyond the magazine, notably as the notorious Vibe Music Awards — which, despite not being held in years, is still a familiar entity among music fans.

So yeah, I can see Quincy Jones lending his considerable reputation and resources toward preserving Vibe. But that preservation will be in the form of future Vibe concert tours, Vibe merchandise, Vibe music imprints — everything but a magazine, basically.

It went over well last summer in Manhattan, so they’re doing it again this year: NYC is shutting down swaths of city streets for running, skating, and biking.

In its debut last August, the program attracted about 50,000 bicyclists and pedestrians on each of its three days to a path from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street. This year’s events, announced on Monday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will take place on Aug. 8, 15 and 22, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

But this time, the outer boroughs get to join in the fun:

Citing a positive response to the program — an idea inspired by a recreational experiment in Bogotá, Colombia, that began in the 1970s — the city has expanded it to smaller stretches of the other boroughs on weekends throughout the summer. The program will reach 13 neighborhoods, although none of the additional street closings will match the size of the main Manhattan route.

The closings will be staggered. For example, five blocks of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, will be closed to cars and trucks the next two Saturdays, while a stretch of Van Duzer Street in Staten Island will be closed on Aug. 1, 8, 15 and 22.

Full schedule is on the City’s Summer Streets website. Looks like I’ve got a ready excuse for breaking out my rollerblades again (without lugging them all the way to Central Park).

For quickie reference, here’s the Google Map for the Manhattan route. The other boroughs can map out their own trails:

View Larger Map

If you haven’t seen the first marketing salvos for Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming flick Brüno, you will soon enough. The above photo of a taxicab rooftop-signage placement has been a common-enough sight in New York for at least the past month.

What I like about it, and indeed, about much of the movie’s ad placements so far, is the presence of those two little dots above the “u”. That would be the umlaut, an accent-like diacritical marking that comes in for some heavy derision in North America:

You think you’re so damn cool, huh? Just hanging out, chillin’, above all those vowels. You’re all, “Ooh, look at me, I’m a chic umlaut. I make girls’ names look modish, like Zoë and Chloë… God, you’re such a poseur, umlaut. You’re nothing but two measly dots. You’re a Eurotrash colon lying down. Nobody thinks you’re cool.

This is precisely the effect that Baron Cohen is going for. Because it makes only the rarest of appearance in English (I believe “naïve” is the only word that uses it, and it routinely goes without the double-dotting), its appearance is an instantly-recognizable signifier of foreignness — and snooty European (if not Scandinavian) foreignness, to boot. So not only does Brüno employ it in the very title of the film, but also plants that umlaut freely among the promotional language, like a comedic badge. Thus does the theatrical release date in July become “Jüly”, and so on.

This joke wouldn’t work if umlaut usage wasn’t already pretty trod upon on this side of the Atlantic. Despite being actually useful in Germanic grammar (basically, the mark is a space-saving substitute for a following-letter “e”, so “Brüno” can also be spelled “Brueno”), its most common manifestation here has been as purely stylistic embellishment for pretentious rock band names.

So really, Brüno’s wanton use of the umlaut is only reinforcing the established tradition of diacritical mis-marking in American pop culture. It’s a visual cue that we all pick up on, and laugh with. Which is the whole point of this type of comedy. It just so happens that, as a result, no vowel is safe.

A European quest to secure a foothold in Africa’s vast energy resource supply has created an unfortunate English-language translation:

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn deal with Nigeria’s state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

That’s right, “Nigaz”. It’s missing a “g”, and no doubt the accepted pronunciation will be “nigh-gahz” or even “nee-gahz”; but basically, for American English speakers, we’re in NWA territory.

For further consideration of the branding shortfall, I couldn’t have said it better myself:

Apparently Gazprom, a Global 500 company with nearly 400,000 employees (no exaggeration) doesn’t have a single marketing person who speaks ENGLISH or is even remotely familiar with American slang. YO! Gazprom! I don’t mean to be dissin’ ya’ll, but Shizzle! What the hizzle??? Nigaz??? I might just have to shoot the five witcha, or at least sick the naming po-pos on ya. Again: Nigaz???? Have you NO skrilla to do some of that linguistic or cultural screenin’?? Were you guys crunked up when you thought of that name???

Represent, Russkies.

Judgement day for Bernie Madoff inspired this little tweet-joke from me, which I gladly reproduce here (any justification to blockquote myself):

At 150 years, I’d say Bernie got the penal equivalent of a run-on sentence.

I could extend this courtroom-grammatical motif by noting that, indeed, the judge threw the book at him. But I digress.

There’s a curious convergence of sociological research hitting the newsstream on this Monday, all having to do with generational readouts:

- The Pew Research Center reveals that American perceptions on growing older differ from the reality, particularly in just when old age begins (most say 68, but there are various milestones to signify the passage, including sexual/genitalial failure and lack of a Twitter account).

- Extrapolating from this Pew study, the Associated Press declares the return of the Generation Gap on socio-cultural issues — at least, one wider than at any point since the original young adult-middle age Gap from the Vietnam era.

- Finally, independently of the above, the American Academy of Pediatrics has determined that a big chunk of adolescents don’t expect to live to see old age, with this dead-by-35 crowd promptly dubbed “fatalistic teens”.

Taken all together, anyone living in the here-and-now can conclude that they either have no long-term future, or if they do, it’s a mundane one; and to top it off, the current lifestyle is isolated by a great attitudinal divide. It all shakes out as existence as usual…

“Too many barns and not enough horses” is basically how the major-league arena landscape in the New York City area shapes up:

Five major complexes — four existing and one planned — will soon be slugging it out within an area 30 miles wide.

At least two of the existing arenas already lose money, and experts say further casualties are almost guaranteed.

“Five arenas is not going to work,” said Mark S. Rosentraub, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. “I don’t think four works, even in a market as large as New York. There’s competition in every direction and there aren’t enough events.”

The five arenas in question all have their own issues:

In Brooklyn, the developer Bruce C. Ratner is racing to start construction of a $772 million arena for the Nets basketball team, even as Newark woos the Nets for its money-losing Prudential Center arena.

In New Jersey, the owner of the Devils hockey team, which abandoned the Izod Center in the Meadowlands to play at Prudential Center, wants Gov. Jon S. Corzine to tear down the Izod Center, in the hopes of eliminating a competing venue.

On Long Island, Charles Wang is pressuring local officials to approve his plans to rebuild the much-maligned Nassau Coliseum for his Islanders hockey team by hinting that the team might flee to Queens, or leave New York altogether.

Then there is Madison Square Garden, whose owners are starting a $500 million overhaul of the 41-year-old arena. The Garden’s cachet helps draw performers, but the arena has another considerable advantage: three major professional sports teams play there, leaving the Garden with fewer dates to fill than the region’s other arenas, which all play host to only one major sports team apiece.

This doesn’t even count the other large-scale stadia in the same neighborhood: Giants Stadium, Yankees Stadium, and Citi Field. They’re slightly different animals, in that only a very select few musical acts perform mega-stadium shows these days. Still, they provide an x-factor in the competition over non-music venues.

I’m not sure just how dire the situation is. For one, the Brooklyn arena situation is pretty close to collapsing. So I wouldn’t count on those seats even being built. From there, the Nets will have little choice but to move to Newark and rejoin the Devils as co-tenants in the same arena, thus filling out the Prudential Center’s dates. (The final domino to fall in that scenario is the eventual demolition of the Izod Center, which would be without a primary tenant.)

The rule of thumb about an arena needing 200 booked dates to generate an operating surplus is telling. It means that the trend toward major-league sports teams demanding their own, exclusive barn (especially in the Sunbelt) benefits nobody but that team and its owner. The facility itself suffers from lack of use, which prompts demands for subsidies (zero rent, cash infusions, operating concessions, etc.) from the host city/county/state. And, of course, a glut of sports/entertainment seats without enough butts to fill them year-round. It’s a situation that screams for macro-economic oversight.

I had meant to mark the moment (or near enough) when my copy of Esquire Magazine’s 75th Anniversary Issue (October 2008 cover date), with the much-hyped electronic ink flashing cover, would run out of battery power and become inert.

The moment passed sometime last week, and somehow, I didn’t notice it. I must have been really preoccupied, because I’ve got the magazine perched on my dresser, amidst clutter but clearly the centerpiece of my daily mess. I guess I got so used to the constant on-off blinking of headlines over the past eight months that the animation no longer stood out for me. Thus, the cessation of that typographical motion didn’t faze me.

True to form, the lack of juice doesn’t mean the cover is now blank. All the type and small graphics are now frozen into place, looking much as they would on a regular printed page. They just no longer “move”. Key feature of e-ink.

Anyway. An eight-month lifespan for e-ink gimmickry. During that time, Amazon has pushed the display technology somewhat into the mainstream with the Kindle, presumably making hard-copy experiments like Esquire’s somewhat superfluous. I know that magazine hasn’t repeated this little experiment, despite having exclusive use of the application for 2009. A nice footnote in the history of publishing, but ultimately didn’t amount to much.

Yep, the cameraphoned photo above shows you a literal box of rocks. No call on just how dumb that is.

Actually, there are two more collections of caged stones just like this, out of frame (yes, even on the embiggened Flickr version). They’re positioned near the entrance of Flowers of the World, a hoity-toity type of florist shop in Midtown. I’m assuming the installation has to do with achieving some sort of commercial-retail feng shui effect.

Here’s a novel method of dealing with someone who’s blasting his/her iPod so loud that it’s audible to everyone else in the vicinity:

“Hey, mind if I listen?” the redhead said, and without waiting for a response, plucked the woman’s left earbud, placed it in her own ear, and began bobbing her head to the music. The iPod owner looked mortified. The car grew silent save for the blare. I looked at my wife, who had heard me rant about this so many times, she knew exactly what I was thinking: At last, someone was taking a stand.

Of all the daily discourtesies we endure as city dwellers, none to me is more irksome than headphone leak. You know, that treble-drenched drone emanating from iPods halfway down the subway car. What puzzles me is why people do not complain more often, why we don’t rise up in numbers and insist these people turn their music down, or else.

This protester was risking a possible ear infection by inserting an unknown earbud into her auditory canal, but that’s a small price to pay for making a stand. I guess.

Of course I’ve encountered this phenomenon before, many times. What gets me is when, improbably, I can hear someone else’s overflow leakage even though my ears are iPod-occupied. My fear is that I, in response, will up my volume, which will drown out the offending leaker’s noise but then create noise for others near me — a ripple-effect audio arms race.

Not that I’ve ever noticed dirty looks from fellow passengers over my volume. It’s hard for me to confirm whether or not I’m one of the offending leakers: Obviously, I can’t listen to myself, it’s awkward to ask a stranger, and I wouldn’t be listening on my iTouch when riding with someone I know. I guess if/when I encounter my first earbud-hijacking, I’ll know for sure.

I hit the subway station just before noon, and approached the turnstile with MetroCard in my hand, ready to fly through in usual fluid motion.

But of course, today was different, and I knew it. So after sliding my card through the reader, I broke stride just long enough to allow time to read the electronic readout for once.

And sure enough, there it was: $2.25. Not the usual two bucks even, which I’d half-hoped this particular station would still be charging. An extra twenty-five cents really isn’t that big a deal, and I knew that, even if the MTA screwed up and had kept a random station on the old fare, the mistake would be corrected soon enough, and I’d eventually be paying the full nine-quarters for my near-daily rides on the No. 6, or F, or any other line I happen to need. Still, it all adds up, and even though it could have been much worse, I could do without the jacked-up transit costs.

But then, as I boarded the train, I got an up-close look at the prettiest Indian woman I’ve ever seen on the 6. And I promptly forgot about the extra coin I had to drop to get that view.

Not content to be merely loud and mindless, director Michael Bay felt that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen needed one more distasteful touch: Offensive African-American racial stereotyping, in Autobot guise.

The reason for the uproar are Skids and Mudflap, two robots designed as compact Chevys, fight each other, and are forced to admit they can’t read. One in particular has a gold tooth but producers aren’t saying which one.

AP Film Critic Christy Lemire described the bots as ‘Jar Jar Binks in car form.’ Harry Knowles of “Ain’t It Cool News” went one step further, encouraging his readers not to see the film…

“They don’t really have any positive effect on the film,” Tasha Robertson, associate editor at The Onion.com, said. “They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up and talk about how stupid each other is.”

Interesting that the headlines describe these two characters as “jive-talking”. Because to me, that conjures up forebears that are less Star Wars, and more Airplane!. To wit:

I will say that the sole funny moment from the ill-conceived Airplane II: The Sequel was when Jive Dude Number 2 shows up, and he’s improbably still “talkin’ jive” into the mid-1980s…

When does the number 32 actually equal 1? When that 32 represents the number of team franchises in the National Football League, and that 1 represents the hoped-for legal exemption the league hopes to achieve regarding select business dealings:

At the heart of the matter is whether the NFL’s teams constitute 32 distinct businesses or a single entity that can act collectively without violating antitrust law.

The case is important to other professional sports besides football. The National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League both filed friend-of-the-court briefs siding with the NFL.

Notably absent is Major League Baseball, which has an antitrust exemption thanks to a 1922 Supreme Court ruling.

“Member clubs of the NFL have no independent value, no purpose, indeed no meaningful reason for existence but for their participation in the league itself,” the NFL argues. It cited a ruling in an antitrust challenge involving the NBA, in which an appeals court wrote, “A league with one team would be like one hand clapping.”

This is completely self-serving, because the NFL and the other major-professional leagues switch themselves off on this argument as it serves their purposes at any particular moment. The economic benefits in assuming single-entity operating status is obvious when it comes to striking merchandising and licensing deals. It’s less obvious, but just as lucrative, when leagues fall back on the autonomous-team model. For instance, when a particular franchise plays hardball with its home city for a new arena, the league office usually cedes authority (not to mention blame) on the matter to that team owner. Yet when the resolution typically results in a sweet new stadium deal, the ripple effect benefits the rest of the league by raising the bar for future facility rights.

Basically, the NFL and the other leagues want it both ways: The protections of single-entity status to fend off pesky lawsuits, but the option of morphing back to a collective of independently-operating clubs when convenient. Business as usual, pretty much.

I never thought I’d lament the absence of rumor-mongering and mostly-clueless talent assessment, but that’s exactly the void I’m feeling heading into the 2009 National Hockey League Entry Draft, which starts tonight.

I mean, it’s been extremely quiet all week. All that’s cropped up is an iffy Phil Kessel-for-Tomas Kaberle trade proposal from the Bruins to the Maple Leafs, and scattered speculation about the chances of the Islanders not picking John Tavares first overall. No other wheeling-and-dealing in bids to move up or down in selection order, or to tinker with rosters before free agency hits next week.

I know why I’m feeling shortchanged: Comparatively, NBA teams completed a flurry of transactions before and during their entry draft yesterday, including the trading of marquee names like Shaquille O’Neal. NHL teams are more constricted by the roster-based hard salary cap they operate under, but still, why should hoops fans have all the fun?

I suspect the hockey world will see a buzz of activity starting right about now, before the Draft begins at 7PM in Montreal. But it’s been a dull lead-up.