IT'S LIKE ONE OF THOSE NATURE SHOWS. YOU MESS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT, SOME SPECIES GET F--KED OUT OF THEIR HABITAT:   Scav Hunt requested it, and it is born: five seasons of The Wire, summarized in five minutes of clips from The Lion King.

DR. GAWANDE, WHO ARE YOU WEARING TONIGHT? The Oscars of the magazine world (National Magazine Awards) and food world (James Beard Foundation awards) were presented Monday night. (On Saturday, the Beard awards for books, journalism and other media were also presented.)

AIN'T NUTHIN' BUT A 'Q' THANG:  They've added 3000 more words to the official Scrabble dictionary, including qin (a Chinese musical instrument), innit, grrl, vlog, punaany, and thang.

LOSE LIKE A CHAMPION:  Part of why I recoiled from Joe Buck's "That is a disgusting act" lambasting of Randy Moss's moon shot is that such language properly should be reserved for the truly reprehensible, and not the merely cheeky. Which of course is to allow me to say that I cannot remember a more classless, unsportsmanlike, reprehensible set of actions in a sports event quite like the fourth quarters of the Mavericks-Lakers game yesterday, in which Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum committed fouls so flagrant that next year's suspensions (on whatever franchises they join next) will not likely be severe enough. Moreover, Isiah Thomas is now off the hook for most classless exit.

That's the easy part; any hack sportswriter could have told you that. The hard part is that this also ought to taint their coach's legacy as well. It's Phil Jackson's job to instruct his players to maintain their sportsmanship even in the face of another elimination road game severe ass-kicking, and to remove from the court those players who can't comply. If his orders were that Santiago not be touched, then he shouldn't have been in any danger at all; especially after the Odom ejection, it was Jackson's responsibility to figure out who could, and could not complete the game properly. His failure to do so should be remembered along with the thirteen NBA championships which he will carry with him into this retirement, and it would not be wrong for the NBA to fine him as well, and levy a suspension upon his inevitable return to the hardwood.

Just as bad, of course, we're stuck with Mark Cuban's punim for at least one more round.

WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY:  If you'll go back through this blog's archives you know how much coverage we devoted to thoroughbred racing back in the day -- that "express your love for Affirmed or Alydar in haiku form" post generated a record for comments at the time -- but as this RealClearSports slideshow of Most Diminished Sports reminds us, the Kentucky Derby ain't what it once was for most of America, nor are the Penn Relays, America's Cup, the PBA Tour, Indianapolis 500 or prize fights anywhere close to where they once were in popular consciousness. Is this an irretrievable decline? Or does Barbaro-mania suggest that any of them could come back at any time -- it just takes the right star?

I did watch the Derby with the girls on Saturday; as my father did for me and Todd, we each drew slips of paper with numbers 1-20 on them to have a rooting interest for The Fastest Two Minutes In All Of Sports. But I cannot imagine taking them to a track to actually watch horse racing in person as I did several times as a kid -- the word "unsavory" comes to mind.

KELLYCLARKSON! Oh, there were moments during tonight's Amazing Race finale (kudos to Luke's t-shirt at the map, and the incident occasioning the post title), but as Linda Holmes tweeted: "I enjoyed you, Amazing Race, but you don't know how to build a race anymore. That was an appallingly designed leg."

The tasks simply didn't provide the level of challenge which any episode of the show is supposed to provide, and especially the finale. What was the degree of difficulty? Where was the physical effort or memory test? the task that required patience?

What I treasure in this show is when it rewards skill. Tonight's ep didn't, with one exception I'll leave to below the fold. Yes, we have a winner, and it wasn't unjust, but it wasn't justified either. It just happened.

ORCHESTRAL MANOUEVRES IN THE DOCKET: The Inquirer's Peter Dobrin surveys the troubled state of the Philadelphia Orchestra, fearing the worst: "A great orchestra is a rare and perishable thing. It takes decades to make, just months to ruin."