STEVE McNAIR, 1973-2009: Steve McNair didn't win a Superbowl, but he almost did, riding the Music City Miracle into the Superbowl against the Rams, where Kevin Dyson caught McNair's last-minute pass but fell just short of the end zone. Though famed for his toughness -- McNair frequently played through debilitating pain -- he also suffered an uncommon number of injuries that even he couldn't play through, and that left him playing at less than his peak when he wasn't on crutches. When perfectly healthy, though, he could dominate games, both with his passing (to a cast of mostly unheralded receivers, some of whom McNair turned into second-tier stars) and with a running style that was more brute force than fleet. McNair also devoted considerable time and energy to charity (even after his career ended), in the manner of a person who did it because he wanted to, rather than because it was expected of him. I don't know what went wrong that ended up with someone shooting McNair to death, but I regret more than a bit that a guy who worked as hard as he did in the NFL didn't really get a chance to enjoy his retirement.

GOT! TO! HAVE! A! CEL! A! BRA! TION! Happy Independence Day, everyone. I'm not going to try to top Isaac's rewrite of the Declaration from last year, nor do I have time -- there are sauces which need preparing for the mussels which Jen and Lucy are currently harvesting down Route Six (sausage/fennel/cream and fra diavolo, if you were wondering), and a large piece of meat in imminent need of grilling.

Today we think of all that makes America great -- baseball, Ray Charles, the First Amendment and the ice cream sundae (among many other things), but first among them are our dedicated soldiers who remain in harm's way. A good friend of many of us here, Major Evan Wollen, is in Iraq right now and for once hoping not to see any fireworks today. We honor his service today and every day, and look forward to his speedy and safe return.

Open thread.

GENESIS 4:9: The changes made in the film adaptation of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper are noteworthy, if just for large they are. Picoult's ending has been abandoned altogether, and replaced with something considerably more straightforward. In addition, the guardian character has been eliminated entirely, along with Campbell's romantic subplot, replaced by a judge with her own complicated backstory. Other subplots get truncated as well (in particular, the brother's subplot is almost eliminated), and a new subplot added involving a romance between Kate and another cancer patient, which, while genunely affecting, adds a troubling "romantic" overtone to a key choice Kate makes in the film.

The major changes are so noticeable because at the start, the film is slavishly faithful to the book's structure of rotating narrators, with every character getting a voiceover segment to explain how they see it, and big chunks of prose seemingly being recited verbatim. It's not very cinematic to do so, and the performers give it a good effort, but are unable to overcome that obstacle.

I'VE GOT FEET/FEET CAN DANCE/DO YOU WANT TO SEE ME DANCE/YOU DO? Not much to say about the SYTYCD results except (a) how random; (b) Kayla's group dance costume was the most comprehensive amount of fake nude I've ever seen on non-comedy network television; and (c) no matter how many shows ask me to listen to Kelly Clarkson, I still can't find anything interesting to latch onto there. Oh, and (d) take some time off, Tyce Diorio.

IN WHICH THE OCEAN'S NAME IS A BITTER IRONY: I learned something while catching up on Sepinwall's loving and compulsively enjoyable archival recaps of Band of Brothers, among my favorite seasons of television ever. Actually I learned a lot, but the one thing I wanted to share with you is that HBO has released a trailer for the long-in-coming follow-up to Band of Brothers, Hanks & Spielberg's The Pacific. Obviously there's already a lot of great recent material covering some of this ground already, from Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima diptych to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy, but it's not as if Band of Brothers lacked for prior art, and look how that turned out. I'm pretty insanely excited for this.

UH UH, NO, NO WAY, NOPE, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN: I don't know how much you'd have to pay me to get me to walk out into the glass box newly affixed to the outside of the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower, but I'm confident you don't have it on you right now.

YOU CAN STAND UNDER MY PARASOL: We're almost halfway through the summer, and, as far as I can tell, we haven't had a big summer song yet--recent years have been scattered:

2005--"We Belong Together" (#1 for all but one week of June-August), "Hollaback Girl" (#1 for all of May)
2006--"Promiscuous" (#1 for 6 weeks)
2007--"Umbrella" (#1 for 7 weeks)
2008--"I Kissed A Girl" (#1 for 7 weeks)

Apparently, "Boom Boom Pow" had held #1 for 12 weeks until getting knocked off by "I Gotta Feeling" this week, but neither of those are doing it for me. The rest of the Top 50 doesn't do much for me either. So whatcha got? Are you going with Jay-Z? The almost unhealthily catchy Cobra Starship/Leighton Meester pairing? Sadly, the iTunes charts are all akimbo due to Jackson-related dominance, so help me ThingThrowers, you're my only hope.