I'M THE PUNKY QB KNOWN AS ... AS ... ?  Now that everyone's aware of the NFL's problem with chronic brain trauma, more examples surface.  Former Bears/Eagles/others QB Jim McMahon told the Chicago Tribune this week that "Back then, it was just tape an aspirin to your helmet and you go back in. I've worked with some neurosurgeons and it's a very serious thing, man... My memory's pretty much gone. There are a lot of times when I walk into a room and forget why I walked in there. I'm going through some studies right now and I am going to do a brain scan. It's unfortunate what the game does to you."  McMahon is 51 years old.

SAVE THE BABY; TOSS THE BATHWATER: For my money, tonight's was by far the best Glee of the year, and maybe the best-written Glee I can remember. That's not to say that it was All the King's Men, but for a show that is usually as lazily written as this one, the fact that we were given a beginning, a middle, an end, fully shaded characters, plot movement, three stories with some or a lot of emotional resonance, all three of which played well against each other without being exact parallels, and a non-monstrous Will Shuester, plus a great fake-out with the score suggesting the thematically on-the-nose "Beautiful," but cutting into a mash-up that was very much not "Beautiful" -- frankly, I didn't think this was a show capable of putting together as cogent and likeable an episode as that one. [takes breath after run-on sentence] Also, Heather Morris doing the enthusiastic dancing.

It is no coincidence that all of that happened in an episode that was as light on Rachel, Finn, Rachel and Finn, Will Shuester's love life and rap career, and stunt casting as any episode in the show's run.

NO, THAT'S OUR FACTS.  OUR CASE IS WHAT WE DO WITH THOSE FACTS ... WE NEED TO GIVE OUR TRUTH THE DRAMA OF A LIE:  Yes, it's The Good Wife by way of Janet Malcolm, a show which asks you yet again to come for the political intrigue, but stay for the violent rodent sex.  Sure, Eli Gold's not as smart as he thinks he is (or is he?) and Lili Taylor's around to sing once more about the one who got away, but what I imagine we'll want to talk about is Michael J. Fox's fun role as a devious defense attorney.  It's a part which could have gone cliche insofar as we're so used to seeing comic actors play against type this way (thinking of Martin Short on Damages here) -- but still, as always, the writers here have one or two nice twists at the ready.  (Also, we may want to talk about the one who got away.)

NO, I HAVE NOT SEEN FAWKES: Having had a lovely trip out to Phoenix today, a few thoughts:

• As someone on Facebook already observed, the City of Phoenix's seal bears a creepy resemblance to the symbol of the Rebel Alliance.
• My flight out was fairly full and deplaning took forever, largely because folks had an excessive amount of carryon luggage with them, which had to be laboriously hauled out of overhead bins. I'm wondering how much of any recent increase in flight delays is indirectly due to the airlines' imposition of baggage fees. If the airlines weren't charging baggage fees, I suspect many of those bags would have been checked, and they'd be able to deplane and turn the plane more quickly, minimizing delays.
• I tend to allow plenty of time to get to the airport, which often results in me checking my bag pretty early. However, because of how airlines sort and load luggage, this backfires--the first luggage to get checked is the first luggage loaded, and winds up at the back of the cargo hold. Thus, it is the last to come off the plane and get unloaded, leaving the passengers who checked in first as the last to be able to leave the airport at the destination. Any good way to solve this?
  

SO I TOLD HER, WE'D STILL BE FRIE-ENDS....  Reunited in this very post -- NYMag's Adam Sternbergh profiles Jimmy Fallon as he continues "cultivating a distinct, and refreshing, strain of humor: the comedy of unabashed celebration," while the WaPo's Paul Farhi sits down with Tina Fey on the eve of her being awarded tonight the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, now being explained by the producers as "recognizing a body of work that is important to our culture... it's not an award for quantity, and it's not a career-sunset award. It's for a person whose body of work is defining of our time."

(No, I can't find video of the title sketch online.)

MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR: I finally got around to finishing Mockingjay last night, and now that an adequate amount of time has passed since the book's release, wanted to open up a thread to address two issues relating to the series:

• Judging from a lot of the chatter I've seen on the Internet, seems that Mockingjay is an incredibly polarizing conclusion to the series, with a fair number of folks who loved the first two books hating the conclusion of the series. Admittedly, Mockingjay is a considerable change from the first two, being even bleaker in tone, and a previously major character disappears from much of the book (and has a dramatic character change when he returns), but in most ways is a pretty natural conclusion to the series. I suspect a lot of the disgruntled fans are angry because the final volume has an unusually high body count, including several beloved characters, and because of how the romantic conflict in the series is ultimately resolved. That said, I did find the final 30ish pages quite rushed, as though Collins only had time to write an outline-y first draft in order to meet her deadline. This isn't Twilight, where (based on the overviews I've read) the final volume goes completely bugnuts (half-vampire/half-human child! Edward giving Bella a c-section with his vampire teeth!)
  
• There will, of course, be a movie, and casting is well underway. The kids are tricky not just because of the ordinary difficulty of casting young adults, but because the characters are not (at least for much of the story) remotely glamorous. In particular, Katniss has to have both the unerring ability to kill and deep reluctance about using it. Allegedly, a lot of folks want Lyndsy Fonseca (Nikita, and FutureTed's daughter on HIMYM), but she seems a little old. A name I haven't heard, but who I might be able to see working, would be Ariel Winter (Alex on Modern Family), but she might be a little too snarky.
  

I'm sure y'all have thoughts on the books and the casting--fire away

WHEN ONLY THE SECOND-MOST-AMAZING THING IS THE STATE OF PAT SAJAK'S COIFFURE:  A woman solves a puzzle on Wheel of Fortune rather quickly.  How awesome is it?  Well, look: in the near-eight years that this blog has been in existence, we've never had reason to link to a Wheel clip before now.

added:  Via an Althouse reader, Caitlin Burke explains how she did it: