THERE WERE NO UTENSILS IN MEDIEVAL TIMES, HENCE THERE ARE NO UTENSILS AT MEDIEVAL TIMES. WOULD YOU LIKE A REFILL ON THAT PEPSI? Today's NYT Magazine asks whether jousting is America's next great extreme sport. I say that if it doesn't involve battle on flying ostriches which release eggs when you hit them, it doesn't count.

IT WILL BE CHANGED....FOR GOOD: Allegedly in the running to direct Wicked: The Movie Musical? J.J. Abrams, James Mangold (Knight and Day, Walk The Line), Ryan Murphy, and Rob Marshall. Somewhere, there's a Glee fan erupting with the idea of Lea Michele (who could sing the part) as Elphaba and Dianna Agron (who couldn't) as Galinda. And while Chenoweth and Menzel were great in the original production, I think Rent taught us well that this is perhaps not a wise choice for characters who are supposed to be quite young. So, who do you cast (Nikki Finke's commenters seem to push heavily an Anne Hathaway/Amanda Seyfried pairing), and who should direct?

CLIFF LEE TWITTER TRADE RUMOR CHRONOLOGY:

6:45 a.m.: Cliff Lee for Wilson Ramos and Kevin Slowey "all but done"

7:43 a.m.: Cliff Lee for Justin Smoak "just waiting for the ink"

8:53 a.m.: Cliff Lee for Jesus Montero, David Adams "just waiting for parties to agree on third prospect"

10:40 a.m.: Cliff Lee for Jesus Montero, David Adams, Zach McAllister "a done deal"

11:33 a.m.: Cliff Lee and Jose Lopez for Jason Heyward, Julio Teheran, Mike Minor, Christian Bethancourt, Adam Milligan "would be done already except the parties misunderstood which Peachtree was the street where they were meeting to sign"

12:00 p.m.: Pujols and Hafner, Kearns, Peralta, LaPorta, Santana, Redmond, Wood to Seattle; left arm and torso of Cliff Lee to St. Louis; remainder of Cliff Lee returns to Cleveland, trade "only needs union approval"

12:58 p.m.: Cliff Lee for Stephen Strasburg, John Wall, Alex Ovechkin, 13% royalty on all McNabb jerseys retroactive to February 2010, Naval Observatory "a complete irreversible lock"

1:12 p.m.: Cliff Lee for eternal souls of baseball fans under age of 60 plus permanent drilling rights in all US coastal waters and ANWR rights through 2510 "just waiting for formality of agency, devil approval; already greenlit by heaven"

WHAT IS THY BIDDING, MY MASTER? Just stumbled across this walking back from lunch yesterday -- The Vader Project, one hundred identically-sized Darth Vader helmets customized by renowned contemporary artists which have toured the world since 2007 and are on auction in Philadelphia at noon tomorrow. It is useless to resist. The catalog is here.

THAT EXIT TOWARD THE DARK SIDE LEADS YOU: Yes, you can now have Yoda, Darth Vader, and C-3P0 direct you on your TomTom. (And the videos are awesome.) Han Solo voice arrives in August, and will explain to you how to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

SOME ENCHANTED EVENING, YOU MAY GET CHLAMYDIA: While the world still waits indifferently for the Jim Carrey-Jake Gyllenhaal remake of Damn Yankees, along comes word that South Pacific will be returning to the screen with "a tougher, more realistic retelling of the same classic story of two very different people whose love for each other transcends their enormous cultural differences."

Anyone want to participate in the casting or rewriting? Or should we just sit back, assume that they'll let Matthew Morrison reprise the role of Lt. Cable, and hope that "tougher, more realistic" doesn't quite mean we're getting the graphic realism of HBO's The South Pacific.

WE WITNESSED: There are at least four different types of failures we can discuss regarding last night's LeBronathon:

1. The failure of LeBron James to choose the Chicago Bulls, which would have placed him in a better position to win championships.
2. The failure of LeBron James to control his narrative here, leading him to be seen (so far as I can tell) as a heel in all this rather than an eager athlete hoping to win, as this Bill Simmons tweet notes with the appropriate sports entertainment reference. (Though would any selection other than Cleveland lead to this outcome?)
   
3. The failure of ESPN in delivering the news in the first ten minutes of the show as promised, leading instead to the basketball equivalent of an Idol results show.
4. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert's open letter to the fans as Comic Sans FAIL.