THAT CHARLES BARKLEY INTERVIEW: I don't think it's online anywhere, but you can get what was left on the cutting room floor here. Choice snippets:

"The only team in my era that could beat the Lakers with Kobe and Shaq was the 1985-'86 Boston Celtics. First of all, Robert Parish couldn't stop Shaq, but he would make him work on defense. Then they'd come back with Kevin McHale and make Shaq work harder. Dennis Johnson could body up and make it hard for Kobe. And McHale and Larry Bird would absolutely kill the Lakers forwards."

"ESPN has made the game a highlight reel, and it's been a detriment. If you make three spectacular dunks that's all the fans see. Dunks or flashy plays -- that's what kids today think of as good basketball because ESPN tells them that. Kids have no fundamentals, and, worse than that, they have no coaching. Any kid who becomes the star of his AAU team gets no instruction because the coach is afraid to coach him. That is screwed up."

My fave, as a Sixers fan:

"If I'm lucky enough to go into the Hall of Fame, I'll go in as a Philadelphia 76er. I don't think I was always treated well there, but you should go into the Hall with the team you had your best years on, even though I was the MVP in Phoenix."

Watching Charles last night on TNT made me think of what Ken said about Howard Stern in his response to me, in particular this part: "The show has a raw honesty completely unheard of in any form of media, and it's incredibly refreshing." You could say the same thing about Barkley on TNT. Or I, at least, would say it.

Ken sticks by his Howard-love and so does Jeff Jarvis. Ken adds: "Okay, the show's still largely made up of topless dancers and the retarded, but it's slightly more complicated than most people think." It's definitely complicated, and I would never want to match wits with Stern myself. If Stern is a painter, topless dancers and the retarded are his brushes, the American radiosphere his canvas. Ah yes. I'm not saying I don't like him, just pointing to the fact that his mode involves tearing apart people who don't realize how goofy they are. Trying to train the cold eye of armchair psychology on the Stern phenomenon, is all.

Meanwhile it seems that what should really be in every market is jazz radio stations. I love mine.