HERE COMES TREBLE: This week, in the third round of the NCAA Tournament (go Huskies!), current favorite Kentucky plays Cinderella darling Cornell, in a battle of basketball tradition and expectations versus Ivy League stereotypes of varying accuracy. Despite the lame jokes you will hear from an oafish minority of sportswriters over the next several days, Ivy League basketball teams don't conduct practice in Latin and don't discuss calculus on the team bus. Most of the differences between Ivy League athletes (and athletic programs) and their powerhouse counterparts are of degree, not kind.

Still, the story at the ESPN basketball blog about Mike Coury, who went from starter at Kentucky to reserve at Cornell, is interesting. It's too simplistic, I think, to suggest that Coury's future depends upon the name on his sheepskin. It strikes me that being an ex-basketball player from Kentucky might open up more doors than being a Cornell graduate (I wouldn't know, being neither). And while Cornell might have a better undergraduate business program than does Kentucky, I tend to believe that the quality of one's program is less important than the quality of the student making use of it. But going from a big-time athletic program where many of one's teammates are not expected to graduate (or even to go to class) to a school where the basketball team exerts no influence over academic expectations -- that may not be such a bad move for a guy who actually wants to crack the books and who has no expectation of playing in the NBA.

...AND PATTON OSWALD AS DR. DEMENTO: I would so go see a full length Weird Al biopic.

DO IT, ROCKAPELLA! Jimmy Fallon salutes the theme song to Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? (And seriously, Fallon's turned into a nice surprise as a talk show host, with an odd sync to some of our more peculiar obsessions.)

NO, SHE IS NOT DRESSED AS WONDER WOMAN: Why, yes, there is a Sonia Sotomayor comic book. And yes, we've got two sets of sample pages (one, two).

I HAD NO IDEA A CHAMELEON'S TONGUE COULD DO THAT: So we're clear -- yes, you need to be watching Discovery's Life documentary series. While the promised hippo-on-hippo violence was a bit of a letdown (and I'm still not sure why the ibex gets our sympathy over the Redd Foxx red fox), the stunning visuals and footage compiled make this an absolute must-see, whether you have an inquisitive 6-year-old in the house or not. Perhaps this video of underwater worms and sea stars will convince you. Or a venus flytrap in action.

YOU REALLY LIKE ME: There are now six entertainers in America with higher Q Scores (favorability) than Will Smith, and the identity of one of them -- the one woman in the top ten -- truly stunned me.

JUNGLE LOATHE: Last night's Pacific, like I imagine most of the rest of the episodes of this miniseries, featured the kind of battle scene that had me gripping my armrests and gritting my teeth, even though I knew exactly how it would turn out. This week's battle was the one in which John Basilone earned both a Medal of Honor (I won't spoil for you whether or not it was awarded posthumously) and, I'm told, iconic status among every subsequent generation of Marines.

TPE mentioned to me that last week's episode didn't quite capture the scope or complexity of the battle for Alligator Creek. It's worth bearing that criticism in mind when mulling over Basilone's feats in last night's episode. On the show, we got 10-15 minutes of harrowing combat, with wave after wave of Japanese infantry trying to take the ground that Basilone held. Wikipedia (I know, I know), however, tells me that the point at which The Pacific picks up the battle came after Basilone and his unit had already been fighting for 48 straight hours, with only Basilone and two of his squad-mates alive and uninjured enough to fight. Then the few minutes we see are snippets of another 24 hours of fighting, including the period when Basilone alone held the bottleneck and kept 3,000 Japanese troops at bay. Yikes. Point taken, TPE.