MAYBE I WON'T SAY TOO MUCH ABOUT THE PISTONS, ACTUALLY: Because what can you say? Everybody is picking the Lakers in six. If the Pistons win it will be some kind of miracle. We know the way the Lakers will play--Shaq will do his thing, Kobe his, scrubs will come out and make shots, etc.--but we don't know how the Pistons will play, but we assume it won't make much of a difference.

I did enjoy this bit of Lakers hate from Alan Paul in the Links yesterday:

Many people would take great glee in seeing Big Ben flexing over a sprawled out Shaq, or Tayshaun using those pterodactyl arms to pin one on KB. I mean, has there ever been a less likeable, less joyful great team? I have not been a Lakers hater these last years, but this team has pushed me over the edge. All the whining, all the bickering, all the sociopathic behavior, all the Big this and Big That. And while I'm at it, I'm sick of hearing Malone and Payton talk about how much money they gave up to come to L.A. First of all it was their choice. Second of all, Malone did not take an 18.5 million dollar pay cut as he keeps saying because no one was offering him 19.5 million this year.

Then again, today Lang brought out somebody who claimed the Lakers are fun to watch--which is, of course, an outright lie, so I think SLAM just likes to mess with us at this point in the season. Get us watching, what's good for basketball being good for SLAM and whatnot.

Turning to beer: A minor part of the laughability of the current Bud campaigns is those print/billboard/maybe-tv-too Bud Light ads that are a response to somebody else's ads--Miller Lite or Michelob Ultra--that say, basically, "HEY--all light beers are low carb! Drink ours because it tastes better!" And Bud is forced into this position because their product is flawed vs. other products in the same market niche--there are beers with less carbs than Bud Light. Wouldn't it be better for them to just ignore the carb-based advertising of their rivals? Or to cook up a lower-carb Bud Light? Perhaps this is their plan, but in the meantime, they're just admitting they have no good ideas for their products, just like their lizard ads reveal they have no good ideas for their advertising. There is a real sense of decline in the land of the King of Beers, methinks.

David Corn's new blog has quite the subtle URL. Yes it does. Via Matt Yglesias.

In the past week my mom found my old MF Doom album under the couch, which led me to see if he had anything else out and he did, as Viktor Vaughn, last year. Further Internet research has exposed two more albums under two more aliases: Madvillain's Madvillainy and King Geedorah's Take Me To Your Leader. Doom would make it a lot easier on his fans as far as buying his albums goes if he'd stick to one name, but then he wouldn't be MF Doom. Or then he would be MF Doom, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I wish I knew more about hip hop, because Doom gets pretty universal acclaim but he's also a really underground figure, which makes me wonder if he's just weirder than the rest of the hip hop out there. This is not a question I can answer, I who am in the mode of, "I don't know hip hop, but I know what I like. And I like this." I just wish I knew where the Viktor Vaughn samples from the album are from; Googling it only leads me in circles, back to the album, and not to whatever the source material is. If it is source material; it sounds goofy enough that it could be something Doom just made up and made sound like he was sampling some cheesy early 80s comic adventure show.

The MF Doom message board. It will provide me with answers.