Anyway, Chuck Klosterman briefly profiles Agent Zero in Play, the New York Times sports magazine. This link is all over Deadspin, but it’s worth it to repeat here. You owe it to yourself to read about this:

Gilbert Arenas: What’s with that guy?

My Jerseys? It started when I was younger. I used to watch Dennis Rodman. He threw his jerseys off after he got kicked out the game. But the way everybody was fighting over it … When I was little I thought, “Man, if I ever make it to the NBA, that’s what I want my trademark to be.” You know, me giving away my jerseys. So, when I was at Golden State I gave away shoes because I got them free from Reebok. So I just ordered a whole bunch of pairs, signed them, and at the beginning of the year I threw a whole bunch of them out and at the end of the year I throw ‘em out. So when I signed my new deal, I just ordered a whole bunch of jerseys so that I can throw them out every day. It’s usually the jersey I wear in the game but sometimes, when I’m in the mood, I’ll throw about 10-15 jerseys out, you know, just to get them out.

I don’t get fined. I think I’m the only player who can actually take off something and throw it into the stands. Because all fans don’t appreciate it, they don’t want everybody throwing headbands and stuff, so I got the OK. I’m the only one who got the OK to do it.

Also, I highly recommend visiting this Web site right here. It’s called Wizznutz and it’s insane genius. Gilbert Arenas is great, just great.

Lord love you, Godfather of Soul.

Anyway, the deal with “Dreamgirls” the movie, from the buzz I hear, is that some American Idol contestant is just amazingly kick-ass with this showstopping song and how it’s so ridiculously incredible. That link above is YouTube, poor audio and grainy video, and I think it’s the most amazing song I’ve ever seen sung. How can that movie be any better?

Whatever, I’m a little concerned about this enthusiasm for musical theater. If I ever start talking about moving to Key West, please get me a 12-pack of High Life and the latest Barely Legal, stat.

Knicks/Lakers fight at the Forum in 1988.

It’s a “must-click” just for the 4:27 worth of Chick Hearn calling the action. Not only is this basically the same thing as Knicks/Nuggets from the other night, but it has the added bonus of being surreal, throwback era NBA. The “brawl” goes straight through a bunch of rich, old white guys sitting courtside and into the third row. Ushers and a fan or two get caught up in it. In the middle of all that – and this is so great – Chick Hearn just NAILS the broadcast. A minute and thirty into it, he’s summarized the whole thing, offered an opinion on who will get thrown out and then throws in the game score to put it all in context!

But Chick Hearn wasn’t the greatest basketball announcer of all time for nothing. Just before the three-minute mark, he makes a comment about how it’ll be a “fun trip into New York on March 9, won’t it?” The guy’s already got the info on when L.A. plays the Knicks in Madison Square Garden that season and announces it in a joking fashion.

Brilliant. Also, ‘Melo got screwed. Double also, the George Karl/Allen Iverson/Carmelo Anthony “axis of attitude” is going to be a riot - and cannot possibly work in the playoffs.

First, we go to The Los Angeles Times and reaction from Lakers beat writer Mike Bresnahan, who, in his story about the game, comes up with this little gem:

The Lakers wouldn’t lose, couldn’t lose to the hapless Milwaukee Bucks, but they did.

Mike Bresnahan, you’re a jag-bag. The Bucks were playing without two of their normal starting five – Bobby Simmons and Charlie Villanueva – and gave a chance to rookie gunslinger Ersan Ilyasova, but The Lake Show couldn’t quite overcome that “hapless” squad could they. Bresnahan, shut up.

Now, we’re on to the Los Angeles Daily News, for a game recap by Ross Siler, staff writer. Ross unearthed this gem from Lakers star Lamar Odom, who very nearly had a triple-double but was a little peeved about a fourth-quarter technical he received that Michael Redd turned into a four-point play. Said Lamar:

“That was a little frustrating,” Odom said. “I’ve got one guy on my back, I’m fighting for the ball. I got the rebound kind of clear. I guess the whistle went his way all night. He won tonight.”

That’s right, Lamar. If there’s one thing that the Milwaukee Bucks are known for throughout the NBA, it’s that in a close game, the refs are always going to favor a Bucks player. I mean, I can’t even count how many times through the years a Steve Javie or Jack Nies whistle has saved the Bucks in a tight spot. There was that time when … well, I remember in February of ‘97 at home against the Nets one night Ray Allen, uh … no, wait, I think in April ‘01 on the road against Toronto there was … hmm … I can’t count how many times Lamar because it NEVER FRIGGIN’ HAPPENS!

Please, Redd goes for 45 on your ass and the refs handed it to him. A 4-9 team from one of the NBA’s smallest markets was saved by the refs. Sure, pal. And I thought this year you were off the drugs.

Anyway, it’s been a tough patch here for the Bucks, starting slow and seeing good players go down injured. Still, Redd is playing right now like the best guard in the East – well, maybe neck and neck with Dwayne Wade – so there’s hope. They gotta hang in there on this West Coast trip. Phoenix on Friday will be tough, but maybe they can steal one more and split the four-gamer, come back home and rattle off a couple wins. It’s too soon to consider this outfit “hapless,” because we don’t want to end up like Mike Bresnahan.

Oh, and with 6 seconds left and the Lakers down three, Kobe isolates Ruben Patterson, who pushes out No. 8, er, No. 24 several feet beyond the 3-point line. Kobe clangs the shot, Patterson gets the ball and ices the game with a free throw under 3 seconds left.

Bitch.

I’m not going to get into my favorite parts about it (the frat boy RV into religious revival sequence, if you must know), but there were two things that really stood out for me. Bear with me because this will seem kind of random. I’ll try pulling it all together.

1. Saturday night at the showhouse is friggin’ nuts, especially now that my work schedule has me living the isolated, overnight hours. We’re waiting in line to use the automated ticket machine, and I’m sort of overwhelmed by the number of people crammed into the Mayfair movie theater here in Milwaukee. While I’m waiting for the line to move, the mayor of Waukesha comes into another line (seriously!), a couple has a nasty argument about their relationship and everything that happens when they go to see movies and I scan the list of other films playing there. Don’t ask me why, but in my line-waiting boredom, I get this thought that the theater will somehow say we can’t see Borat, there was some kind of ticketing glitch, they’re sorry and we can see any other movie instead at no cost. Then, I realize after looking at the list that I’d decline the offer and just go home. Saw III? The Santa Clause 3? Who sees this stuff? Somebody does because it makes money. I don’t get it, but it leads me into my second point.

2. Borat is great to me because it’s 100 percent and then some against everything that is supposedly the good, encouraged norm in America. A few times during the movie, I thought about how ridiculous it is that this movie not only was made, but was playing for audiences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S.A. I think that is Borat’s greatest prank. Somehow, a fat, hairy, middle-aged, naked man is playing a featured scene getting gigantic laughs in a world where people could choose to look at that or Tim Allen in a fat suit pretending to be Santa Claus. The conventional wisdom is that Americans are inundated with entertainment choices and have become more specific and sheltered in their preferences than ever before or, perhaps, than ever could have been imagined. So, this past weekend, the most popular entertainment choice, dollar for dollar, was this fat, naked, hairy, middle-aged man’s balls getting shoved into the mouth of a British Jew portraying a fictional character who mocks the idiocy and insanity of countless American ideals. What a country!

The movie has no precedent in terms of appealing to a wide audience. Nothing that out and out bizarre has been done in my brief lifetime, at least. That recently retired Southern construction magnate who Borat thought was a “retard” is an actual dude somewhere. Those three drunk dopes from the University of South Carolina – whose lives are basically ruined for a minimum of two years now – are real dudes out there.

Anyway, I think the movie’s existence alone is part of the joke and it couldn’t have been pulled off any better. The pre-release marketing turned out to be brilliantly successful, but at its core, just getting that material onto a screen – any screen – in suburban America is something that still seems impossible to me. And I saw the movie! To think, all along I just figured people were waiting for the next Remember The Titans or something.

No wonder he didn’t fit in as the Brewers pitching coach. The guy had insight into goings-on that guys like David Hulse could just never really appreciate.

Click the link. Seriously. It’s worth it.

Here’s an interesting one. It’s Diana, the rookie fan vote winner, whatever that means. Now, you’re going to click this picture and you’re going to see a pretty good-looking 18-year-old, full-time college student, and you’re going to think, “Dude, you are wack for knocking Energee!”

Yeah, I might be, but is that any more wack than Diana’s five cats: Bubbles, Velcro, Levi, Snip & Sparkle Bunny & my dog Rex? Now, if I’m reading this correctly, one cat’s name is “Snip & Sparkle Bunny” and another cat’s name is “my dog Rex.” Five cats … at age 18.

But, hey, look at her butt. Sure is something, hey? Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going with this … all NBA dance teams are inherently weird creations, but Energee is just beyond bizarre. Gussied-up Milwaukee women like “Steferella” just seem a better fit at Taylor’s or Three or something, not clad in shiny silver and purple and awkwardly gyrating during the first TV timeout.

I don’t expect any of you to actually read it, but if you clicked it once or twice it’d be good karma.

So, our good friend Chuck, master of all things nice, friendly, good and wholesome, has been caught up in this whole mess as his Web site was hacked, inexplicably, by some political operatives. Check it out by clicking this bad boy right here. This is what I found when I tried to check out The Life of Leisure on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m., so I saved the page in case the problem gets fixed in the next day or two.

I just don’t get it. I mean, Chuck, what have you done to anger supporters of Turkey’s movement to join the EU? Have you forgotten what France did to Algerians? Do you secretly support the French effort to deny Turkey access to the economic promise that could come from EU membership? And, why are you lying to cover for the French? Do you support genocide, Chuck?

The above photo is Alec on Fifth Ave in New York with international film star Breanna Foister, visiting from South Carolina.

And if you’re wondering how I was able to find that photo with that bit of information in it, well, we can thank this little slice of heaven right here.

So, I’m sitting up before going to bed tonight and my roommate set the TiVo for “30 Rock,” the new Tina Fey show that is a lesser “Studio 60” about, what is in no way subtle, a look behind the scenes of a show just like Saturday Night Live. Two things stand out:

1. The show has no real promise to be anything watchable.

2. Alec Baldwin will steal every single scene he is in, so watch it until it gets canceled.

Alec Baldwin’s first scene in the show involves him kicking down a sheet of wood in a high-rise office that is being renovated and responding to Tina Fey’s question, “Where’s Gary?” by saying, “Gary’s dead.” Later in that same scene, a corporate assistant shows Baldwin a series of three Post-It notes, and it is made clear each note is posing some kind of question. Baldwin responds to each note, in order, as follows:

1. “I’ll call her back. Is she at the White House line? Great.”

2. “Tell him I need a 4 a.m. tee-off time.”

3. “Five inches, but it’s thick.”

See, this “30 Rock” show that I just watched really stinks. It featured a tremendous amount of Tracy Morgan. It holds no promise. Baldwin makes the term “tour-de-force” woefully inadequate. He is so above and beyond not only the other characters but also the script, material, medium and genre that it is sick. The guy transcends the show, but it’s not quite enough. This thing is a stone stinker. It’s dead on arrival.

However, Baldwin flashes the reminder that America is missing possibly the best dry comic actor since Ted Knight. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? The guy is Ted Knight worthy. It’s not a direct comparison, but he’s the closest thing going today, I think. Lord love him. He’s great.

OK, I’m going to try and walk a really, really fine line here. The above picture was taken Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, in New York City as Alec Baldwin tried to cross a police line in New York City by the scene close to where Cory Lidle, most recently of the New York Yankees, flew his little plane into a high-rise condo and died.

My point is this, Alec Baldwin trying to cross a police line is inherently funny. It just is. There’s nothing you can ever say to me that would make me think otherwise. I don’t know the circumstances, but Baldwin looks kind of pissed off. Hey Alec, a guy just died in a plane crash – one that went into a building, no less. Still, I’m hardly displeased with Baldwin. He’s playing the Alec Baldwin character.

Which leads me into how the immediate coverage of this Cory Lidle thing makes me think America is playing a bit of a character, too. I’m sorry that Lidle’s wife and kid don’t get to have a husband and father anymore. It’s lousy and sad.

However, you know who never even got a chance to fulfill his life’s promise? To even get to a point where he could meet a nice woman and start a family? Joe Munz.

Munz turned 21 on Friday, and Tuesday night, Oct. 10, 2006, Munz was working his job as a delivery driver for Jimmy John’s sandwiches when he was shot to death while trying to do his job and deliver a crummy $5 sandwich in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood. Some god-damn punk shot Munz to death and took off. There are no suspects in custody.

Joe Munz was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who came here from Lodi, Wis. That’s a small town a little north of Madison, and by all accounts, the kid was a typical UWM college student: scraping hard at a couple of jobs to support himself in school, getting his studying in and trying to make something of himself.

There’s a really great “between-the-lines” part of that story I linked to above. A reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel went to the Jimmy John’s where Munz worked (a block from where I lived when I went to UWM) and the kids working there – and they’re all just UWM kids working there – told the reporter they weren’t allowed to speak to reporters. You know what I take from that? Those kids have a few thoughts about Joe they want the world to know, but they also have a few thoughts about the random violence in Riverwest and Jimmy John’s couldn’t deal with that getting out. That’s not OK, but it’s telling.

Working at a newspaper, we’re basically forced to keep the newsroom TV on a cable news station all night. You never know when The Big One is going to knock California right into the Pacific. So, all I saw Wednesday night was a parade of eulogies to Cory Lidle and the same footage of that burning condo playing over and over again. Larry King had a special show about it, and the constant message was: “Oh my god! This is so horrible!”

Yeah, it was. A woman and a 6-year-old boy lost a husband and a father. That’s horrible, no matter who the guy pitched for. But Joe Munz was shot dead living his life, not making a choice like Cory Lidle to do something many people told him was dangerous. (Do a Google search. The guy wasn’t exactly beloved for his hobby.) So, excuse me if I blurt out, “A-Rod should have been on that plane because then it wouldn’t have hit anything.”

I sympathize with the horrible loss Mrs. Lidle and her son must endure, but I feel outrage at the loss for the family and friends of Joe Munz. There’s enough senseless, no-explanation deaths that take place every single day in this country and world. We don’t need yet another dramatic over-reaction at a (semi-)celebrity’s death pounded into our faces by the tremendous reach possessed by people who would be better served pointing out the terrific flaws in our community, city, state, country and world.

My heart goes out to the Lidle family, but my anger demands swift punishment for whoever killed Joe Munz while he tried to bring somebody a sandwich.

It turns out at age 31, good ol’ Becks is no longer a starter for his club team, Real Madrid, and the England national team - playing qualifying matches for Euro 2008 (trust me, it’s a big deal) - has no spot for him. Not as a starter, not on the bench and not even close to something along the line of symbolic figurehead that could serve as a rallying point for the younger guys.

And to think, just more than three months ago he was the on-the-field captain for the nation that invented the game during the World Cup. Now, he’s shirtless with a milk mustache on the back cover of the latest ESPN The Magazine - and that’s it.

I mean, they named a movie after him. He’s the one guy - at least until Zidane head-butted that Italian dude, Marco Materazzi - that Americans could name who played world class soccer.

Now, nothing.

It was revealed recently Beckham has been a little bit down about the flameout of his playing career, so he called up Tom Cruise for some advice about how to handle getting trashed in the media. As you can imagine, this wasn’t exactly met with a sympathetic shoulder to cry on in the British media.

And, to make matters worse, his wife, Victoria Beckham, the former Posh Spice, has turned into an orange woman too eager to show some side-boob.

Wha’ happened?!

Apparently, the New York MLS team wants to give him a boatload of money to come over here and play a couple seasons. At the very least, I’d get tickets to see the Red Bulls (the team’s actual name) when they come to Chicago to play the Fire.

I might be mocking him, but he’s still got enough stroke in this world to move product. Four years ago it was more shirts and consumer goods than any athlete in the world. Next year, it could be some “Buy 1, Get 1” tickets in a soccer league many Americans, I’m sure, don’t know exists.

Whatever, Becks. What else you gonna do?

These people making fat and healthy six-figure paychecks to get flyover country to tune into the newest shows are earning most of their salary (I’ll never admit marketing execs deserve all their money). It took about 10 minutes for me to realize that I’ll have to start recording the show every week. It was that easy to snag me.

It’s not a bad show, but my first impression is it’s a little overly earnest. I mean, c’mon, it’s using the behind-the-scenes drama of what goes into making Saturday Night Live and throws in Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford owning the scenery and action. Who gives a rip about breadmakers in Missouri? You don’t have to concede “We’re all humans in this together” points on a show like this. I want to see how it plays out, but it hasn’t launched into one of my all-time favorites or anything.

But, so what, right? I’m going to watch it every week. And, I’m talking about … in one little corner of the Web. So, it looks like some L.A. asshole is earning his $475K per year, doesn’t it?