BLINK: THE MOVIE, STARRING YAHOO SERIOUS AS MALCOLM GLADWELL: A "Moneyball" movie? With Brad Pitt? Interesting as it is what Billy Beane did with the A's, I don't see a dramatic arc that works here. Unlike the Indians in Major League, you can't end it with the trip to the post-season. Moneyball didn't produce anything but a series of first round exits for Oakland.

And what's the pre-credit, subtitled denouement? "Oakland would eventually saddle SF with Barry Zito, who stunk up the house for a year-and-a-half"?

AND THE ORDER OF THE SPHENICS: Spoiler alert: If you are about to read any 700+-page books of genre fiction, you might want to skip this post.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Pre-teen boy, blessed or burdened with abilities beyond those of the ordinary humans among whom he lives, enrolls in an ancient institution that is part school, part cloister, and part fortress, where over almost a decade he learns traditions that are thousands of years old, studies the arcane lore of his chosen field, and develops the unusual faculties that set him apart from the people outside his school's walls. Though he is a less-talented student than many of his friends, he is somehow annointed, to the chagrin of some of his more capable peers, as a key figure in the fight against a shadowy enemy that threatens not just his school, but the entire world. With some misgivings, much luck, and no particularly spectacular insight, and with the help of his friends -- including a know-it-all fellow student, a band of trained fighters, a surrogate father later killed by the enemy, and a wizened mystic who sacrifices himself -- he manages to defeat the threat and find love along the way. It's a fun read, even if the author needs an editor who will trim unnecessary detours and lengthy digressions into esoterica that appeal only to the author's more obsessive fans.

That book, of course, is Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsAnathem, by Neal Stephenson. Like I said, a fun read, albeit a bit less freewheeling than The Baroque Cycle and a bit more creaky than either that trilogy or Cryptonomicon. I'll leave my second-greatest complaint -- behind the few hundred pages of socratic dialogue -- for the comments, where hopefully someone else has read this and can feel free to join in.

NOW SOMEBODY ELSE KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT HOW IT FEELS TO LOSE SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH ONE CARES DEEPLY: I've had my disagreements in this space with the good people of Oklahoma, most of whom are not directly at fault for the fact that they've ended up with the NBA team that was stolen from Seattle. But one thing on which even the Oklahomans seemed to agree is that Aubrey McClendon, the vice-douchebag to Clay Bennett's douchebag-in-chief, is an impressive douchebag.

McClendon is in the news again this week. He leveraged himself heavily to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of shares in his own company, Chesapeake Energy, as it rode energy prices to a high of $74 a share in July. Then something something economy (sorry for the technical jargon there), and the next thing McClendon knows, Chesapeake is trading at $12 and his lenders make a margin call, forcing him to sell 95% of his holdings, awesomely right before a 31% bounce.

Now, the guy still has a $42 million stake in Chesapeake (and presumably has other holdings as well), so even apart from his douchebaggery you probably wouldn't feel sorry for him. But he does seem to have downgraded to "fabulously wealthy" from "NBA-owner wealthy" in a few short months, and that's something, right? So here's hoping McClendon is going to have to sell his share of the Team That Is Dead To Me so that he can keep paying his landscaper and manicurist and anti-gay rights interest groups, preferably to some out-of-town millionaire looking to pave the highway to a different NBA-less city.

OR HE'LL MAKE YOU HIS MARE: Applications for the Evil League of Evil have all been received by Bad Horse, and none may be better than that of Tur-Mohel. They all need evaluation, so let the games begin. (via sconstant)

UNBELIEVABLE!!!! Tonight's win by the Red Sox, down by seven runs with two outs in the bottom of the 7th, must surely rank among the most epic comebacks in ML history (other than those 4 games in 2004!). Mercy! J.D. Drew comes through with the winning hit!

Read all about it here.

Also not to be missed is Bill Simmons take on the game. I'm not the one to judge this, but it seems to me that Simmons' analysis is much more even-handed than usual.

COME ON DOWN: I've been watching more of Survivor: Gabon than I expected, mostly because equatorial Africa is brilliant in HD.

Too early to really figure the dynamics as yet, but the fact that the Immunity Challenge was a giant wicker game of Plinko was okay in my book.

YOU MAY NOT LIKE THE LOCAL CUISINE: I don't know whether I was feeling punchy or what, but I laughed more at this episode of Grey's Anatomy than I have over the course of the last five or six episodes put together. Dermatology! Bailey goes to Africa! Izzie gets to be the girl in the saloon because of her cheeseball million watt smile! George will give Duncan anything he wants for the rest of his life! Hand massages! This was why we all liked Grey's to begin with -- the right amount of funny and the right amount of soapy stuff and the right amount of serious. (Headlined by George reminding us that he actually is awesome.)