PITY THE FOOL WHO DON'T CLICK THIS LINK: Add Mr. T to the list of Wrigley Field Seventh-Inning-Stretch All-Stars.

CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH! Spurred by the fact that Lee Child has a new book out (and yes, they are highly addictive)--Jack Reacher vs. Chuck Norris. Who ya got?

C-O-M-M-E-N-C-E: This morning, the 293 contestants in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee will each sit in front of a computer for a 50-question exam, of which 25 will count. One point per word, combined with a possible +3 points for each of the words they'll be called upon to spell on stage tomorrow, and from that maximum possible of 31 points the top ~50 spellers will proceed to ESPN on Thursday. You can try last year's version of the written test here, and only thereafter can you peek at our analysis of last year's version. Tell us how you did.

[Live video of tomorrow's rounds is only available on ESPN360.com, though there's also the text-based version on the Bee site. Folks have asked me if there's a way to work around restrictions on access to the ESPN site, but for a number of reasons that's not the type of info we'd discuss here.]

In the meantime, and throughout these days, Twitterfolks to follow include @scrippsbee, blogging spellers Tussah Heera and Hannah Evans (along with her older brother, Five-Timer Matthew Evans, tweeting @yesiamawordnerd), speller-dad Loren Halvorson as well as the all-important #bee09 hastag, and do get to know your Philadelphia-area spellers. We'll have today's written test posted as soon as it's available.

e.t.a. CNBC's Darren Rovell surveys his favorite bio tidbits of the spellers. ("He is the puppet team leader at his church."; "He is quite the advocate for coffee, ramen noodles and burritos"; etc.) Also, see blogs of spellers Santos DeBarros, Anja Beth Swoap, Amy Gormley, Julia Denniss, Rahul Malayappan (who's 8!).

REVERSE FEMMULLET: Can I please add Jon and Kate Plus Eight and all things related to it, including, but not limited to, discussion of Kate's hairstyle, to this list? It can replace Hugh Jackman, because, after all, Hugh Jackman is Wolverine.

ANOTHER TURNING POINT, A FORK STUCK IN THE ROAD: I've never linked to my friend Howie Klein here before -- as most of his blogging these days is political, which is the context in which we know each other -- but I dropped him a line tonight to thank him for his previously-unknown-to-me role in Wilco's album Being There back when he ran Reprise Records, and he pointed me towards his rave review today of Green Day's latest, and it's worth a moment of our time.

He calls 21st Century Breakdown "in some ways it's the band's best ever, their most mature, the fulfillment of all the promise they've always had. It's the best record of the year so far, and possibly the best of the new decade. There are no weak cuts." And then, after much talk about the state of Warner Music as a corporate concern, he reprints this recent quote from lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong regarding the band's ambition:

"Maybe that's the reason most people don't go for it," he says. "You can scare yourself with ambition-- having the audacity to want to be as good as John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Joe Strummer. There has been so much great s--- before me I feel like a student: Who the f--- do I think I am."

"But you have to battle past that," he insists in his rapid fire punk chirp. "It's the people who are overconfident who are the ones putting out the biggest piles of s---. If you're at that place where you're working hard but don't feel like you know what you're doing anymore,then you're on to something."

Part of what has always drawn me towards U2, and made bands like Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins and Public Enemy so attractive in their respective heydays, was that level of ambition and audacity. Each band believed (and U2 always believes) in its obligation to capture and dominate the cultural moment with something bold and big.

And now, for the second straight album, Green Day apparently has attempted the same -- and through punk, of all things. I once called Green Day "the Jim Edmonds of rock and roll" (Kingsley said they were the Curt Schilling of rock) to acknowledge what appeared to be a late-career leap from Pretty Good to HOF-level, but this doesn't feel like late career any more; these guys are all my age, and they're not close to done. I'm excited to download 21st Century Breakdown; we're due for a little Greatness again, aren't we?

THE ASHTRAY SAID YOU WERE UP ALL NIGHT: A few weeks ago brought the sad news that Jay Bennett, formerly the secondary creative force in Wilco, had fallen on times so hard that he was suing his former band. Yesterday, via Adam, came the even grimmer news that Bennett died in his sleep early Sunday.

Bennett joined Wilco as a multi-instrumentalist (replacing Max Johnston, Michelle Shocked's brother). He quickly added a second songwriting sensibility, sugaring Tweedy's acidic tone. Unlike some famous songwriting duos (Lennon/McCartney; Tweedy/Farrar), though, the Bennett-Tweedy partnership was at its best when it was a true collaboration. You can hear Bennett in "Shot in the Arm" and "Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway (Again)," but you can hear Tweedy too, and even a song like "My Darling" (which apparently was Bennett's alone) works mainly because it's so perfect for Tweedy's voice; it sounds strange without him. I loved Summerteeth, the album for whose sound Bennett was most responsible -- heresy of heresies, I like it better than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It's too bad that Bennett and Tweedy never could bury the hatchet after their messy breakup, and it's too bad that Bennett never seemed to recover.

"AT THIS POINT FARRAH HAS TO DIE. IT'S THE ONLY COVER LEFT FOR HER": Stay classy, People Magazine.

[That said, okay, I watched the NBC special, and I largely agree with Alessandra Stanley's critique -- I especially thought it glossed over the health issues presented by all the transatlantic flights. Between the documentary and Elizabeth Edwards' memoir and publicity tour, we're at an interesting cultural moment presenting the question of whether it's possible to question the public choices made by people dying from cancer, or whether it's just rude or inappropriate to do anything other than honor and respect their decisions. I don't have an answer.]