GONNA TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, GONNA TRAIN IT GOOD: When I sat down to type this post on How To Train Your Dragon, I had started off by musing that if you don't have kids it's not essential viewing. I didn't think it was particularly brilliant, moving or funny in a way that grownups would appreciate ahead of more age-appropriate fare. But then I saw the 98% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and it reminded me just how hard it is to be this strongly competent in telling a coming-of-age tale slash war-on-terror parable which was good enough in the 2D upon which Lucy insisted, and I can just imagine how awesome in 3D what with the dragons flying and all. No, I don't understand why Scotsmen Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson were cast to voice the lead Vikings, but if you're looking for a solid animated adventure see this movie. As Lucy said, some movies for kids are good because they're funny, and some because they're cool -- and this movie is cool.

QUENTIN TARANTINO'S COMIC BOOK FILM: It's rare that a movie provokes as divergent a critical response as Kick-Ass has. Despite a 77% percent overall "fresh" rating over on Rotten Tomatoes, the negative reviews aren't just negative, but completely scathing, led by Roger Ebert's condemnation of the film as "morally reprehensible." Having seen the movie, I can see where Ebert comes from--one of the characters in particular is troubling--a young girl who's an unstoppable foul-mouthed vigilante, but I have trouble reconciling Ebert's condemnation of the film with his high praise for Kill Bill, the film's clearest spiritual forebear, with its stylized ultra-violence and candy-colored palate. Kick-Ass isn't for everyone (for certain), and it's certainly not for young children, but I think it's an interesting deconstruction of the comic mythos, and scores points for showing the impact of violence--this isn't a movie where people shrug off injuries, but we viscerally see and feel the pain, which, to me, is far less offensive than the cartoonish violence of so many action movies. If you're interested in the concept, it's worth seeing and making up your own mind.

BOBBY ABREU RUNNING INTO AN OUTFIELD WALL TO MAKE A CATCH: Intriguing baseball question posed by a WSJ article today -- given that there have been 173,383 major league games played since 1903, have we run out of things that have never happened before in a game which realistically could happen?

Among those black swans listed in the article: five home runs or three grand slams by a single player in one game; having a pitcher twice in one game throwing nine-pitch, three-strikes-per-batter "immaculate innings;" having all nine starters for a team hit home runs in one game; and two players hitting for the cycle in the same game.

"BEN WOULD NOT DO ANYTHING TO RUIN HIS REPUTATION": On March 4, something happened between six-foot-five, 241-pound NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and a 20-year-old sorority girl in the back room of a bar in suburban Atlanta. She says he forced himself on her over her objections. He told the bar's owner (according to the bar owner) that he was "messing around" with the girl, but stopped when she "slipped." There were only two people in that room, and my opinion about whose is the more credible story about what happened there should make no difference to you.

I just wanted to point out what the witness statements suggest about what happened before Roethlisberger and the girl went into the back room. According to multiple statements by the girl's friends -- helpfully collected over at The Smoking Gun, Roethlisberger bought shots in a VIP room of the bar for a number of women, including several sorority girls who he knew were under 21. Everybody seems to agree that the girl in question was so drunk that she had trouble standing up (remember, Roethlisberger himself told the bar's owner that he stopped "messing around" with her when she "slipped"). One of Roethlisberger's bodyguards -- an off-duty Pennsylvania state trooper -- then summoned the girl to an empty back room, where Roethlisberger soon joined her. When the girl's friends, recognizing that no good can come of going into a back room with a stranger while blind drunk, tried to get into the room to collect their friend, another Roethlisberger bodyguard, also a Pennsylvania policeman, blocked the door (according to at least two witness statements). When they said their friend was too drunk to be in the room alone with Roethlisberger, the security guard said (according to the same statements) that he didn't know what they were talking about, and continued to block the door. The friends sought the bar owner's help; he refused to open the back room to them, telling them that Roethlisberger wasn't going to do anything to hurt his reputation. Ten minutes after entering the back room, Roethlisberger left the room, and the friends soon found the girl crying.

I have no problem whatsoever with a celebrity employing security to keep overzealous fans, detractors, or curiosity-seekers at bay. I get that a person can attain a level of fame that makes it hard to have a meal, a drink, or an ordinary conversation without a paid buffer. When that security detail is used to prevent some sorority girls from looking after their falling-down-drunk friend -- giving Roethlisberger the benefit of the doubt, as a way of insulating a potential conquest from the reason of clearer heads, which a pampered athlete might disparage as cockblocking -- it crosses from protective to predatory. I want to be absolutely clear that I am not saying that Roethlisberger raped that girl -- I don't know what happened in the room, and I'm not up for a debate about consent and alcohol right now. I am saying that there is something morally wrong with using one's paid muscle to separate the weakest doe from the protection of the herd. Isn't this at least as bad as carrying a loaded gun in one's sweat pants?

And while we're on the topic, glad to hear that Sgt. Blash -- the policeman who called the accuser a "drunken bitch," complaining that "women can do this. It's bullshit but … we've got to do a report. This is b.s. She's making shit up" -- has resigned. I'm not sure if Blash made those statements before or after he and the other officers got their pictures taken with Roethlisberger's arms around them.

CNN SPOILS THE LOST FINALE: I'm frustratedly trying to get my wife and myself into Europe for a long-scheduled trip. Adam's bleak summation: "they let Smokey out of Iceland."

IF THEY EVER AWARDED A NOBEL PRIZE FOR "BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN STEALING A NOBEL PRIZE" ... this guy probably wouldn't win:

Stephen Beaulieu, 42, of Skowhegan, Maine - a disheveled drifter with champagne tastes - broke into Harvard University Professor of Physics Roy J. Glauber’s home overlooking Spy Pond in Arlington last month, slept in one of his beds, stubbed out a cigarette on a nightstand and stuffed his face with imitation lobster and smoked oysters bought with his food stamp card, investigators said.

... Beaulieu was arrested by state police Friday in Russell thanks to a $7.88 receipt from a Hannaford Supermarket in Saugus police found in Glauber’s house, which they say is from purchases made March 6 with Beaulieu’s Maine food stamp card.

Police, meanwhile, are trying to track down Glauber’s Nobel Prize for his work on the behavior of light, as well as a Nobel replica and a Spanish Academy of Sciences Gold Medal he has been unable to locate since the break-in.

"It’s unclear what a Nobel Prize would fetch on the street," the Boston Herald helpfully notes. I wonder if they tried asking these folks.

WE'RE GOING TO MAKE SURVIVOR HISTORY WITH THIS ONE TODAY, GUYS: Um, yeah. Next week can't come soon enough.

Also, Sandra likes Australian-themed casual dining steak restaurants.