CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP WATCH: A report on the Saudi royal family's vacation in Spain, via The Indepundit:

The extravagant vacations of Saudi King Fahd and his royal retinue in Spain are disproportionate for a country suffering severe political and social problems.

The 81-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al- Saud, accompanied by nearly all of his children and family members and an entourage of more than 3,000, has been vacationing on Spain's Costa del Sol since August 14.

In the posh Mediterranean resort town of Marbella, 450 kilometers southeast of Madrid, he stays in his palace, a replica of the White House named "Mar Mar". Just the preparations of the palace for his visit ran to US$185 million. Luxury villas and 300 rooms in five-star hotels were rented for the rest of the royal family in and around Marbella.

Chic restaurants and jewelry shops have cheerfully prepared for the Saudi visitors, who spent $90 million on their last stay, in 1999. During this year's visit, which is to be one month longer than the last one, they are expected to spend as much as $300 million.

More:

Several Spanish media outlets reported that a British agency has provided a large group of women to accompany the Saudi men during their vacations in Spain, on two conditions: the women must be young and blonde, and must be replaced every 15 days.

Although prostitution is legal in Spain, procuring is punishable by law. Nevertheless, no authority or organization has moved against the British agency, even though the contract was made public.

"Mar Mar?" Or, specifically, a replica of the White House called Mar Mar? Jeebus. I'm appalled. And the dullards only wanted blonde hookers.

OFFICE OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: Two coffee pots, one decaf and one regular, each with about a half an inch of the brown fire liquid down the bottom, with both the burners turned off and no coffee in the lounge. This is the office I work in. There's a cold box of Dunkin Donuts coffee out there too.

MARVEL HATE: Stan Lee sues Marvel, Joe Simon sues Marvel. And then there was this important Dirk Deppey essay from the weekend:

On the 23rd of last month, current Marvel COO Bill Jemas attempted to defend his company's policy of no longer fulfilling re-orders on new books by claiming that A) it was better for Marvel's bottom line and B) that it would stimulate the moribund speculator's market, which would C) benefit forward-thinking retailers.

Bill Jemas is full of shit, and he's full of shit for the following reasons:

The policy is only better for Marvel's bottom line to the extent that the initial sell-through makes Marvel look better to both current investors and companies interested in buying out Marvel and giving it the same kind of safe-haven DC enjoys from AOL-Time-Warner. As recent sales figures show, once re-orders are factored into the equation DC Comics actually holds a slim lead over Marvel in overall dollars earned. If this is Jemas' definition of "better," I'd be interested in seeing what his definition of "worse" looks like.

The policy will only stimulate speculation to the extent that it's possible to convince teenage boys that tens of thousands of comics, all hoarded away by collectors, will ever accrue in value. Anyone with half a brain in their head can see the flaw in this logic. Anyone who lived through the last two speculator bubbles can see where all this is headed. You did read this far down, right?

Even if the speculators' market is again kick-started into existence, the reader demand necessary to drive up prices has a new damper preventing it from increasing the way it did in times past: graphic-novel collections. Say you're a reader wishing to collect earlier stories from your favorite title. In times past your only option was to buy expensive back issues, but nowadays you've got a second choice: buy the book instead. If the back issues cost substantially more than the book, which option are you going to choose? Moreover: with a brake like this applied to the speculator market, can anyone seriously forsee the value of said back issues significantly rising past the cost of a softcover collection? This is what I meant when I said earlier that I thought the speculators' market was a bygone era -- with a second alternative available, the only people speculators can realistically sell their "investments" to are other speculators. Something of a closed loop, don't you agree?

The policy makes comics retailing even more of a crapshoot than it already is; by forcing retailers to gamble on increased inventory rather than on what their experience tells them will be the maximum point of sell-through sales, Jemas is asking retailers to sit on an increasing backstock in order to improve Marvel's own financial fortunes. Eventually that backstock will pile up to the point where the retailers' ability to invest in new merchandise will be compromised by the capital already tied up in inventory. This has happened before. Twice.

Marvel's "no re-orders" policy, coupled with the proliferation of titles we've seen coming out of Marvel over the past few years, represents a cheap and sleazy attempt to recapture long-lost market-share by forcing retailers to buy more heavily into an ever-increasing array of titles. By printing more titles per month, Marvel undoubtedly hopes to squeeze some competition from other superhero publishers off the shelves. By eliminating re-orders, Marvel undoubtedly hopes to tie up money that might otherwise have gone to their direct competitors, which further squeezes them out of the game. The notion that this policy is in place for the benefit of the retailers is ridiculous -- the only people who stand to benefit from such moves are Marvel Comics and their investors. Even then, this policy actually screws Marvel in the long-term by adding instability to the very market Marvel depends upon to sell the bulk of their wares. If comics shops again start going belly-up in large quantities, Marvel loses retail outlets they'll still be needing years down the road.

Read the whole thing, it covers, in detail, three of the big comics events of the 80s and 90s: the speculator bubble bursting after the black and white comics explosion, the speculator bubble bursting with the 90s gimmick comics, and the distributor wars of the 90s. An excellent read if you need to know about comics industry history. And make mine Marvel.

NOT ALL MEMORIALS ARE CREATED EQUAL: Any suckas who don't think the Vietnam War Memorial is heroic enough or something, send them to Geitner Simmons. Via Donald Sensing.

LAKERS TWO-MAN ARMY: Blame Mitch Kupchak:

Jerry West took a front-office position with the Memphis Grizzlies over the summer, and in his first offseason managed to add two quality players -- Drew Gooden and Gordan Giricek -- to his team's rotation. It may not seem like a big deal, but that's two more than Mitch Kupchak has been able to find since taking over the reins of the Lakers from West three years ago.

While the players West brought to Los Angeles -- Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Derek Fisher, Devean George and Brian Shaw -- went about winning three straight titles, Kupchak's additions have provided precious little help.

That wasn't a problem as long as Shaq was around to carry the mail for the Lakers, but his absence has exposed all manner of holes in the rest of the roster. The team is now 2-5 despite the fact that Kobe Bryant is averaging nearly a triple-double.

By John Hollinger.

THE ACOMPETITIVE NATION: One thing I noticed at the last Olympics is the fact that India--the second-biggest nation on Earth--stinks at sports. So I'm reading all the iSteve articles and I noticed this:

Once again, however, the biggest loser in the Olympics was India. For the second straight Games, its one billion people brought home - a single bronze medal.

Indians just don't seem to care about any sports besides cricket. Even in field hockey, a game they ruled through the middle of the 20th Century, they stunk up the place again.

Perhaps Indians are just too cheerful, friendly, and polite to care much about winning at sports. Interestingly, their few sportsmen tend to come from the traditional warrior racial groups like the Sikhs. The British recognized that the Sikhs, along with the East Asian Gurkhas of Nepal, made the finest fighting men in South Asia. Sikhs remain the backbone of independent India's officer corps. Similarly, guys named Singh (i.e. Sikhs) hold about half of India's national track records.

It's long been theorized that militaristic nations should be best at sports, since sport is fundamentally training for and recreation from fighting and hunting. This correlation, however, has proved hard to test since practically every nation on Earth has a pugnacious history. Ancient nations that didn't like war tended to be put to the sword.

The most obvious exceptions: the peoples of India, who have repeatedly been the passive victims of invaders. So perhaps there is something to this old saw after all.

At the same time I thought the ultimate or the most universal form of competition would have to resemble a Bollywood musical. Universal in the sense that those musical numbers involve men and women in a weird form of mock sexual competition. That makes no sense...

TOWARDS A SHAQLESS LEAGUE: Steel O'Neal realizes his mortality in this Boston Globe article:

''I don't bounce back like I used to bounce back,'' O'Neal said. ''It's just one of those things. They know and I know I'm not the same person I was when I came into the league.

''I was 19 years old, and I could do anything. I never got hurt. But the sun doesn't always shine forever.''

In fact, O'Neal revealed last night, he can see the end of his career coming, and it could be much sooner than most Laker fans think.

''I always said when I wasn't winning championships, `All I want is to win one, then I can stop,''' Shaq said. ''But now that I have three rings, I want to get five. After I get five, I'm going.

''And, when it comes time to [write] my book, I want everyone to say, `He was dominant to the end.'

''Patrick Ewing was once a dominant player. At the end of his career, he's coming off the bench for Orlando.

''That's not how it's going to go for me. When I win that last championship, I'm going to say, `You know what? I'm done.' You won't ever see me out there, playing eight minutes a game, trying to hit short jumpers instead of dominating inside like I'm supposed to.''

My own enthusiam for the Lakers losing to the Celtics last night was tempered by the knowledge that it'd all be different if Shaq was out there. But I'm enjoying this unpredictable Shaq-free part of the season, and looking forward to a time when there isn't just one guy with such a huge impact on the rest of the league--or at least when said guy isn't on the same team with Kobe Bryant.

FUN: Is reading all the articles at the Steve Sailer site. I looove dat man. Here's his discussion with readers of his "Is Love Colorblind?" article.

THE TROUBLE WITH DAWKINS: His kneejerk, oppressive atheism is his least appealing feature, and leads me to think--maybe not exactly logically, more of a hunch--that his reductionism is wrong too. I dunno.

INTELLECTUAL ANALOGY OF THE DAY: Stephen Jay Gould is to evolution what Camille Paglia is to art. And you can make the same analogy with their two magnum opi, The Structure Of Evolutionary Theory and Sexual Personae. Yes.

NBA REALIGNMENT: Jack McCallum put his potential NBA-with-new-Charlotte-franchise realignment up and now I'm going to put mine up, because it's fun. Here goes:

NORTH AND EAST CONFERENCE

EASTERN
Boston
Cleveland
New Jersey
New York
Philadelphia

COMMENTS: This is a hard group to deal with because you know the NBA isn't going to break up the Knicks-Celtics-Nets-Sixers. I stuck in the Cavs.

CENTRAL
Chicago
Detroit
Milwaukee
Minnesota
Toronto

COMMENTS: These all logically fit together for me, kind of like the NFC Central or whatever they're calling it these days.

MID-SOUTH
Atlanta
Charlotte
Indiana
Memphis
Washington

COMMENTS: Every realignment plan is going to have some leap of logic, and mine is sticking these five teams together. Indiana is sandwiched between Mid-West and East and thus is squeezed south. There's not enough room for Washington in the Northeast so it goes here too. The other three are in the middle of the South. I think Indiana is culturally closer to the South than the Mid-West anyway, so here you go--my grand flawed beautiful Mid-South division.

SOUTH AND WEST CONFERENCE

GULF OF MEXICO
Dallas
Houston
Miami
New Orleans
Orlando

COMMENTS: I like this one, there's no absurd sticking of Florida teams in Eastern conferences that I hate. All of these cities are in the South geographically speaking but are not exactly what we think of as being "The South"--Texas is Texas, New Orleans in New Orleans and the Florida cities are transplanted Easterners. So here they are, pariahs dotted along the Gulf coast.

MOUNTAIN & DESERT
Denver
Phoenix
Sacramento
San Antonio
Utah

COMMENTS: The two bits of weirdness here are taking San Antonio away from the Texas teams and Sacramento from the California teams. But an all-California conference isolates either Portland or Seattle and thus cannot be done. Sacramento is the best choice to move to a different division, it's miles from the Bay Area but it might as well be light years. San Antonio is the furthest West of the Texas teams so Tim Duncan and company get stuck in here. It's a fun little small market division.

PACIFIC COAST
Clippers
Lakers
Warriors
Sonics
Blazers

COMMENTS: The Pacific coast becomes one big line of basketball hate. There's so much NBA history here--past glory (Warriors), past, present and future glory (Lakers), one of the all-time worst franchises in sports history (the Clippers) and one of the rare enduring NBA rivalries (Portland and Seattle.) I would love this division.

There you have it, the conferences bisect the United States with an imaginary diagonal line that goes from Washington to the northen border of Florida. I don't know how to do the playoffs, maybe the six division winners and the top ten teams after that in an NCAA-like cross-nation bracket. It would work for me.

NO CONTEST: Was the movie I saw last night on cable and it's notable for the high-concept casting of Roddy Piper, Shannon Tweed and Andrew Dice Clay in the same Die Hard retread which suffers from not having Alan Rickman as the bad guy (though the Diceman is still entertaining in this role) but Shannon Tweed is about a zillion times less obnoxious than Bruce Willis--so it evens out. Roddy mows down a bunch of people before he dies, I guess he had it in his contract that he needed a big body count if he was going to get pasted by Shannon Tweed twice during this thing. Plus there's Robert Davi in this too, and you might not know the name but you probably know the face--it's one of the classic bad complexion faces that you always recognize on teevee. A novel B-movie, though not as good as you'd think given the cast.

LATEST RIDICULOUS INTERNET TEST: Results are in:

Which Founding Father Are You?

I thought for sure I'd come up Jeffersons, but there you go. Via Ann Salisbury.

BELOW MEDIA RADAR: You know, if I didn't read War Liberal I wouldn't know that there's a practical tie in the Alabama governor's race.

LAUTENBERG WON: And all you hear on the radio is people talking about how Forrester was going to roll back abortion rights--as if he could. Cretins. Sheep. A pox on the people of my state, for not doing what the people of Minnesota could and throwing off septugenarian tyranny from the Democratic party's past. Dang it.

NBA LEAGUE PASS: The ultimate time-sucking vortex that I will love and hate over the next six months. I am now acquainted with all of the Golden State Warriors. I am a KING.

The Rockets are becoming my must-see team, I tune in initially to se if Yao Ming does something cool (he hasn't yet) and end up being impressed with the rest of the team. They're the youthful-promise team the Clippers could be if Rudy T. was coaching them.

WILDERNESS OF NATIONAL ENQUIRERS: The Top 100 Celebrity Trainwrecks of the 20th century. Via the DVDVR board. There are some good, atypical choices in there, along with the classics.

UPDATE: The R. Crumb entry:

R. Crumb is much like Woody Allen in that they are both undeniable geniuses, but they're both old cranky pervs with really skunky fetishes, who prattle on for hours about boring obscure blues musicians from the turn of the century and "fancy themselves a bit of a musician." In fact, R. Crumb and Woody Allen may be the same person. Have YOU seen them in a room together?

UPDATE UPDATE: Hey, Tripod stinks, so here's the Google cache.

NBA HAPPY STORY: A little bio of 29-year old Rockets rookie Juaquin Hawkins, who finally made an NBA roster after years of summer and foreign leagues.

ALL RIGHT WITH WORLD: Nets 4-0, Knicks 0-4.

DAWKINS VS. GOULD: Goodshit takes us to this TAP article by Harvey Blume on the loss of Stephen Jay Gould and the potential loss of his multi-levelled and non-reductionist point of view on evolution. Writes Blume:

Gould's science and literary style owed more to art and artists than to algorithms. His opponents' approach to art, on the other hand, is, as a rule, so doggedly reductionist as to sow doubts about their whole enterprise. It is painful, for example, to read Wilson, so often a superb writer himself, as he attempts to squeeze every artistic motif known to man into a few universals consistent with a genetic approach to human culture. Gould was concerned that human culture and history not be boiled down to code. There were times one felt that what offended him most about his foes was not the particulars of their argument but the relentless monism driving it. He called Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins, et al. hyperselectionists, pan-adaptionists and, when truly annoyed, out and out Darwinian fundamentalists. But sometimes he simply called them hedgehogs. The hedgehog, according to one of his favorite parables, knows only one thing and is determined to explain everything with it. Gould identified with the fox, which is a pluralist; Darwin was a fox, he said, and nature is, too.

It's a real good introductory article if you're curious about the whole Dawkins vs. Gould thing, though this one is written with a pro-Gould slant. Which I approve of.