How Not to Run a Professional Sport

I don't know what day it will be when you read this, so I'll just ask this right now: Have the Sacramento Kings claimed that the NBA wants the L.A. Lakers to win their series yet?

If it hasn't happened, you know it will. It happens every year about this time, it's the new NBA tradition. The teams that lose the conference finals claim that the fix was in so that the NBA could get the two biggest markets or most popular teams possible so as to get the most ratings. It happened when the Knicks beat the Pacers in '99, when Portland mysteriously blew a big 4th quarter lead in Game 7 to the Lakers in 2000, and when the 76ers beat Milwaukee last season. Ray Allen and George Karl were the first to publicly accuse the NBA of such a fix, and they were fined so heavily, they've been pretty much muzzled since. Now, Sacramento loses Game 6 tonight to the Lakers because, among other things, Mike Bibby was called for a foul for getting run over by Kobe Bryant and almost getting his nose broken in the process. Regular season-- foul on Kobe, maybe even a flagrant. Game 6 with the Lakers trailing in the series-- Bibby's nose got in the way. Kings coach Rick Adelman has claimed there was something fishy about the officiating tonight, and for that he'll lose a sizable portion of his next paycheck.

In fact, when you think about it, it's easy to try to claim that the league had a hand in the events of the New Jersey/Boston series as well. Think about it; every time the Nets would jump out to a 20-point second-half league, somehow Boston always suddenly and "miraculously" came back to make it a close game. And we find out that because of that, the ratings are up big time for the playoffs! My fellow sports conspiracy theorists, I think I'm on to something here.

It didn't used to be this way, ya know. The NBA didn't have to tinker with the outcomes of playoff series to get ratings in the past. Oh, wait, I think they still did; that might explain how Charles Smith got hacked about a dozen times trying to make what would have been the winning put back in that Bulls-Knicks series in '93, and nothing was called. No Bulls in the finals means no Jordan means no ratings, after all. Now I know the Bulls fans will counter with the non-foul Scottie Pippen got called for on that Hubert Davis 3-pointer the next year, but here's my rebuttal: it was a makeup call, and Jordan was retired, so the NBA wanted the Knicks to win that year. Anyhoo, back to my point, we didn't worry about ratings before the last work stoppage. You remember that one, the owners' lockout that wiped out half the '98-'99 season and effectively killed most of the fan interest in the game (OK, Jordan re-retiring may have had a role, too, but I've got something here...) Just in case, you don't recall how that whole mess started, the players' union and the owners had pretty much reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement before the season, when suddenly, all the star players' agents got together, nixed the deal, and then broke up the union to form one where they would have more say.

So I hope you see where I'm going with this... a work stoppage, especially one that was as much of a sham as the NBA's last one, kills fan interest in the league to the point where the league has to fix playoff series to ensure bigger ratings (but the ratings are still well below the pre-lockout levels). Which brings me to baseball, where you apparently don't have to have a work stoppage to kill fan interest, you just have to talk about it. Attendance is down across the board at major league stadiums this year, and it's not just the weakened economy. It's the fact that we spent the last few months talking about contraction, lawsuits, and now steroids. It's the fact that the union may or may not have already set a strike date and baseball columnists everywhere are starting to resign fans to the fact that this season will end up just like '94: done early, no World Series, no sure sign of a following season. Now, of course, I said this back in October before the last World Series, but I didn't realize that it would be even worse than I thought it would be. Nobody then was thinking that the Expos and Twins would be contracted; hell, nobody was thinking that not only would the Twins and Expos survive an attempted contraction, not only would Minnesota be in first place, but Montreal would be at .500 and just 2 1/2 games out on June 1.

Not only that, but we damn sure didn't believe that even with the Twins and Expos in the race at this point, they would STILL be targets #1 and #2 for contraction. You see, it's simple to Osama Bin Selig, if you haven't held up the taxpayers for a new stadium lately, you don't belong in the league. See, Major League Baseball and its teams are hemorrhaging money, piling up debt, I mean look at the figures... oh, I see, you're claiming we're making record profits and you have numbers from Forbes magazine that basically say we're just blowing smoke and staging a PR campaign... this interview's over...

What do I think? Yes, the players should be tested for steroids; the IOC does it, and what's worse, they catch people; baseball players should be held to the same scrutiny. Ken Caminiti admitting he juiced up during his MVP year should be to baseball what Ben Johnson getting caught in Seoul in 1988 was to the Olympics: a wake-up call. Yes, there should be a salary cap. Of course, a salary cap hasn't even been brought to the table by the owners lately, because they know that if they do, the players may just strike right then and there, and that's ridiculous. Unfortunately, the owners lost the moral high ground when Herr Selig insisted on trying to contract. Now, it's gotten more ridiculous; with the Commish about to achieve his goal of bilking Jesse Ventura and the good people of Minnesota to get a new stadium to replace the "aging" 20-year old Metrodome, he now claims that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays will then become Most Likely To Be Contracted. Does he have any idea how dumb an idea it is to put an expansion team in a city (especially after the last work stoppage) and then rip it right out four years later. He does have one thing in his favor; I don't think Tampa Bay even KNOWS they have a team yet based on the lack of fan support, so they may not even blink if the team disappears tomorrow. Who cares? Tell me how Gruden's gonna get the Bucs to the Super Bowl.

America invented basketball and adopted baseball as its national pastime, and you know what? We want to give up both of them, at least the professional ranks, anyway; we'll keep college basketball, even if some 60 or more high schoolers and college underclassmen just declared for the NBA draft (by the way, they DO know that there are only 58 picks, right?) We'll keep our football... American football, I mean (don't go thinking I suddenly want us to make soccer the national game, at least not until we move up to at least 31st in the World Cup). Why do you think that Arena Football teams are spreading like the plague? We want our football! We want to scrutinize our teams' offseason salary cap casualties and sit in sports bars and ponder who we'll take with our 7th-round draft choice. You know why? Because the NFL actually KNOWS WHAT IT'S DOING!!! The officiating is seldom likely to yield conspiracy theories (unless, of course, there is a "tuck" involved), and there is never an imminent threat of a work stoppage or contraction on the horizon. This is not just a lesson for Bud Selig and David Stern to take to heart, but the players unions of the NBA and MLB as well. We're sick of the games withing the games and the off-field bickering.

Now then, how do you think the Lakers will be handed Game 7? Rare traveling call as Webber drives for the winning hoop? Shaq is allowed to wrestle Vlade to the floor to clear the lane for Kobe? Where's Tom Clancy when you need him?

I'm as Mad as Hell...

Pardon me for the following paragraphs, but I've just suffered through one of the worst shows I've ever done in my career. As such, I need to blow off some steam tonight, and unfortunately there are a large number of people who will be on the receiving end of it, but in most cases they deserve it. I am sick and tired of having to open the paper everyday and read dumb statements and dumb opinions and dumb letters, and I am sick of trying to engage in conversations with several different types of people who just find ways to push my buttons. See if you can sympathize with me on some of these things...

I am sick of people who cannot think for themselves, and tend to follow misguided group thinking. Some examples are Democrats who all seem to use the same "talking points" when attacking this or that legislation, or fanatical listeners of Rush Limbaugh who swallow what he's saying whole without bothering to check sources or find proof. Conspiracy theorists would also apply. When confronted with something they don't understand, rather than trying to answer it with logic, common sense, and hard evidence or facts, they rely on conspiracy theories, ridiculous attacks and misguided accusations, or just good old fashioned name-calling. I'm sick of trying to put across a good point, often based on facts to a person, only to incur the following responses: "idiot", "moron", and worse.

I am sick of people who write letters to the editor without thinking about what they wrote first, let alone checking facts. This would describe much of the anti-mall crowd during the whole Carousel expansion debate in Syracuse last year. More recently, it would describe a Baltimore Sun letter-writer from Towson, Md. who was distraught over the fact that after the 9-11 attacks, it took our president 12 whole hours to come up with an Oval Office address to the nation. It's her belief that instead of hop-scotching to secure locations to discuss strategy and find out exactly what happened, President Bush should have zipped straight back to the White House (which at the time was feared to be the target of the next hijacked plane) and gotten right in front of the camera, like oh, say, Bill Clinton would have done. My question is what would you rather have seen? The brilliant, calm, reassuring speech that our president gave the evening of 9-11, or a hastily-constructed soundbyte, built on only hearsay and preliminary, unconfirmed reports? I felt better that the president was on the phone talking to advisers and the vice-president, rather than the American people, because he was trying to get a handle on the situation. There will be more examples later...

First, however, I must also say I am sick of hearing people try to tie two topics together that have nothing to do with each other. In that same day's Baltimore Sun that had the aforementioned letterwriter (I would say what I really think of her, but that would make me a hypocrite after the whole "sick of people calling me names when I make a good point bit"), Thomas Friedman of the New York Times blasts Bush for, of all things, not using the surge of patriotism and volunteerism in the wake of 9-11 to pass the Kyoto Treaty. I'm confused... what does pride in your country have to do with ramming through an environmental treaty that nobody else in our anti-terrorism coalition will pass, that will severely damage our economy, and only has the support of a small minority? What's the argument here? "If we don't stop using fossil fuels, the terrorists have won?" This is like all the no-lifers who have consumed all their life's work into one issue. Most of the time, they're anti-abortionists. These are the people who would call whatever talk show I used to produce and find a way to relate whatever the subject of the day was to abortion. I'm sure many of them flooded the phone lines of America's talk shows after 9-11 and chanted, "If we don't ban abortion in America, the terrorists have won." I have said before in this column how I think that anyone who lets their views on one issue dictate their lives has a very distorted worldview. I just wish I didn't have to be constantly reminded about it...

Columnist Jules Witcover is someone who I have often disagreed vehemently with; he has this tendency to show hero-worship to Al Gore, and as such he likes revisiting the 2000 election and cheering for Gore's return in 2004. However, more and more often I find myself agreeing with things he says, mostly because he does sometimes make points that the majority of Americans agree with, and they're well thought-out. Well, in Wednesday's Sun, he assailed Hillary and the other Democrats who attacked Bush when they found out he might have had knowledge of an impending terrorist attack before 9-11. He said, "Only the most jaundiced would believe" that Bush knew the attacks were going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Mr. Jules Witcover doesn't get why 9-11 happened, none of us do, but he didn't make dumb accusations. Well, irony of ironies, on the opposite page, there was a letter to the editor by one such "jaundiced" individual who believed that 9-11 was indeed, Bush's fault. After all, he claims, they attacked the World Trade Center before, he should have known they would go after it again, and remember Harry Truman-- "the buck stops here". Therefore, Mr. Jaundiced writes, blame Bush. Today, I got to read another such "jaundiced" individual's opinion, this one being that the Democrats have every right to attack Bush on 9-11 because that's what Bush's fellow Republicans did to Clinton for 8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Republicans never blamed Clinton for the tragic deaths of over 3000 Americans (although Rush does put some blame on Clinton for 9-11, and some conspiracy theorists claim Clinton's responsible for at least Vince Foster...) Perhaps I should just quit reading the letters page altogether, reading foolish statements like these probably makes me more mad than anything else that happens in an average day.

You know what else I'm sick of? I'm sick of people using money as an excuse to complain. I can't tell you how many times during my Susquehanna years I heard, "I pay $26,000 a year, and...", often ending in a complaint. Hey, nobody put a gun to your head and told you to go there, you forked over the money cuz you wanted to, so in my eyes you have no right to complain. After all, in most cases, the people who bitched about this particular thing probably had their parents paying most of that $26,000. But it happens elsewhere, too. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a member at the YMCA where I work start his or her complaint with, "I pay (insert dollar amount here) to go here, and..." Again, nobody put a gun to your head, you paid the money because you wanted to, so you'll have to deal with some of the problems that come up. For anyone to try to use money as an excuse to not have to deal with the occasional hassle is just plain stupid. The only reason I would think someone would use that excuse is to make the person they're complaining to feel like the complainer is above them on whatever grand pecking order there is. Sorry, in my world, everybody's equal, regardless of how much money he or she makes or spends. You don't like it, fine, just don't expect me to deal with you in the way you want me to.

Again, I apologize for turning this usually humorous and thought-provoking column into a full-blown pissed-off rant, but you know sometimes people just need to vent, and that's really what I created this for anyway. Right now, the column is not published, I don't hold it up to lofty journalistic or columnist standards, cuz I don't have to. So, it is what it is, and this week, it's about me being mad and sick and tired. Hope that doesn't rub you the wrong way...

The Occasional Political Rant

Well, we are less than six months from the all-important midterm Congressional elections, and I can only say one thing about what I see in the shaping political landscape:

Apparently, the Democrats don't want to keep control of the Senate.

I say this because it's only May, and they are already shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, with the chance of it only getting worse before it gets better. By November, they may be blowing off legs. First of all, the one Democrat who seems to be getting the majority of the press in terms of wanting to get elected is the one who isn't even in a race this year: Al Gore. Some members of the press and some columnists are pleading for Gore's return as the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, and some Democrats are bickering over the lack of attention their last presidential nominee is getting. They'll, of course, be quick to remind you that Mr. Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election; some, of course, still refuse to believe that Gore lost Florida, and conspiracy theorists seem to still be working hard to try to create new ways that George W. Bush "fixed" the election. More and more these days, we see stories about how Gore criticized President Bush's record on this and that, but it barely seems to put a dent in our perception of things and we don't really much seem to be letting Gore's views influence our opinions, and the Democrats demand to know why. OK, I'll tell you, and it might be hard for you to swallow, but take it with however many grains of salt you wish: Al Gore is no longer relevant. Al Gore ceased to be relevant the moment he stood before us all and announced, "It's time for me to go." At that moment, he joined the ranks of Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and all the other presidential hopefuls who lost their attempts at the White House.

Right now, the image of the Democratic Party unfortunately (for them) is Al Gore. The other image of the Democratic Party is a bunch of whiners. They've whined about how much attention and press President Bush is getting, even from CNN (forgetting of course that when their man was in the White House, CNN lavished so much attention on him that Republicans called it the Clinton News Network). When Bush got his tax cut, we were treated to days, if not weeks, of Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle whining about how we had just wrecked the economy (which oh by the way was already a quarter-deep into a recession). The grumbling that continues over the tax cut continues even today when Democrats whine about how the tax cut wiped out the projected surplus. While economic factors took care of a lot of it, the fact is it's a case of simple mathematics... there was a surplus, which is defined as an excess of tax money; there was a tax cut, which is defined as giving that tax money back to the people. Excess tax money minus tax money given back equals no surplus.

Now here's where I attack both parties. Not long ago, we were looking at a situation where we could actually break even on the budget this year: no deficit, no surplus. However, that evaporated when the stimulus package was rammed through by Bush and the Republicans. How ironic that the amount of the package equaled the exact estimate of how big the deficit would be. Then, the spending curbs instituted by Congress in the 80s under President Reagan (which is actually what paved the way for our finally turning deficits into surpluses) expired. There are no efforts underway to reinstitute them, which means it's time for Congress to start doling out pork like never before. They just dropped a $360 billion slab of bacon on the farmers of America; a totally unnecessary one. Now I understand the plight of American farmers, but these are tough economic times. We are barely starting to nose our way out of the recession, and it's been time for belt-tightening all around. The least we could hope for was that our government would do that too. However, that isn't the case. With no spending curbs and districts to win, congressmen are racking up the pork projects like never before. It's all about getting re-elected, and somehow these people think that if they don't "bring home the bacon", so to speak, that they can't just explain that the Congress tightened its purse strings like the American people have. The sad thing is they may be right; call us hypocrites.

The Democrats have to be loving the free-wheeling spending, however; think about it, the higher Congress runs up the deficit with pork spending, the more they can try to blame it on Bush. However, some left-wingers are starting to suggest a solution to what looks to be no more than a year or two of deficits that will kill the Democrats' shot at keeping the Senate should they pursue it. They want to repeal the tax cut. Never mind that to do so would be, in effect, passing the largest tax increase in history on the eve of Congressional elections. They want Bush to wind up with egg all over his face for even daring to cut taxes of hard-working Americans (otherwise known as "the rich" to Democrats).

As much as I don't want to give aid and comfort to "the enemy" (me being a Republican, of course), I'll offer the Democrats a simple saying that has been repeated throughout time: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Let me take you back to 1993, right after Bill Clinton took office. The economy is just starting to improve and we're pulling out of the 1990-91 recession, and Clinton enters the White House and promptly raises taxes on everyone who makes over $30,000 a year, what currently stands as the largest tax increase in American history. The economy did not drop back into recession; however, it did come close to flat-lining over the next two years while Democrats in Congress gleefully spent the new influx of tax money and the deficit failed to drop. In 1994, the Republicans won the Congress, Clinton was forced to move his policies to the middle, and the deficit soon evaporated. Right now, we are in the same economic position we were in then, just pulling out of a recession. I will tell you now, Democrats: start advocating the repeal of the Bush tax cut, and you will lose the Senate in November, and lose big.

You've been warned.

Ozzy & Sharon vs. Ozzie & Harriet

The debate is on. Now that "The Osbournes" has become a runaway hit on MTV, the morality police are coming after Ozzy, Sharon, Jack, and Kelly, claiming that they are anything but the ideal family. A recent letter writer to the Syracuse Sub-Standard, errr, Post-Standard said that among other things, the Osbournes do nobody any good because they swear all the time and she even took a pot shot at daughter Kelly, reminding her that "Halloween is only one day a year."

You know how I feel about people attacking other people on the basis of their appearance and the things they choose to do to their hair, skin, and body; we went down this whole road a year ago during the Hellfest flap in Mattydale. Incidentally, this year's Hellfest will not be held far away from Syracuse like many figured after last year's stink. It will be at the State Fairgrounds, but it won't help the local businesses like it did last year; the Fair is a self-contained "little town" in itself, so the likelihood of the out-of-town visitors for this event venturing into Solvay for some good old-fashioned capitalism is not very likely (not that there's anything much in Solvay, anyway...) The point is I've established here that a dad with tattoos all over himself and a daughter with pink hair doesn't make a family deviant.

What about the swearing, you ask? What about it, I say. With the exception of a few cartoon-bleeped phrases (like #@$% or *&$+!), I have for the most part kept this column free of cussing. However, those who know me best know I curse like a sailor sometimes. That being said, I keep it reserved for the company of those who don't mind it and also do it themselves. I would venture up the argument that words are just words and why are some more offensive than others, but not in the Chambersburg YMCA or at Easter dinner with the relatives. It just so happens that this bunch of transplanted Brits happen to swear a blue streak around each other. They're comfortable with doing it around each other, I don't think they're doing any harm to anyone else by doing that. The fact that the MTV cameras are rolling shouldn't matter at all; after all, it's REALITY television, so why censor yourself from living your REAL life because there's the chance that 6 or 7 million people may watch this someday; it certainly didn't stop Ozzy from biting the head off that bat all those years ago.

The whole point of the show is that no matter what you may have heard or seen of Ozzy Osbourne, the truth is he's a typical dad of a typical family who does all the things typical dads do. Most of the appeal of the show is watching Ozzy trying to run a vacuum cleaner or replace the trash can lining. I laughed my head off when I watched him trying to microwave popcorn, and also when he went to get the rabid cat out from behind the mirror. Sharon was such a typical WASP housewife: "That's an expensive mirror! You're going to break it!" But, it's Ozzy Osbourne doing this! He's, as he put it in one episode, "the Prince of #@$%ing Darkness!"

And as much as this show is unscripted and designed to not follow any set plot line like a normal sitcom, the "reality" the show portrays has a way of falling into the typical sitcom conventions. It's Ozzy limping with a walking stick trying to chase his escaped cat around his backyard waterfall, yelling "SHARON!!!" (very Jetsons- "Jane, stop this crazy thing") It's Kelly bickering with Jack about an incident several years earlier where he accidentally shot her in the leg with a pellet gun. It's Ozzy going to get off his tour bus to go after the roadie who supposedly stole stuff from him and coming back on the bus not once, but TWICE to tell Sharon more of what he was going to do this guy if he found him and why he was going to do it. How many times have comedy writers decided, "Hey, let's have our 'Dad' do that"?

For all the people who have jumped on the "let's remind everyone Ozzy's evil" bandwagon, there have been some surprising people who have actually come to embrace the show and its patriarch. Ozzy was invited to the White House Press Club dinner, where President Bush spent a good part of his "monologue" for the evening talking about him, at one point listing off some of his more darker song titles, then adding, "Mom loves your music." Hell, even DAN FREAKIN' QUAYLE likes the Osbournes, because somehow they fit his vision of "family values", whereas "Murphy Brown", of course, did not (you try and figure it out, I can't).

If you're too blinded by the goth look and the tattoos and the different-colored hair to see the value of the Osbourne clan, then at least take this away from it; Ozzy is a dedicated father who cares about his kids and kicked drugs so he could be a better father. A lot of people who did what he did for less time than he did are no longer with us today, and kicking drugs is certainly not the easiest thing in the world to do. You can't ask Layne Staley if it is, because he didn't make it, and he's just the latest of many who didn't.

The only negative aspect of "The Osbournes", really, is the fact that like all unexpected runaway successes, it's now being milked to the point of overkill. Sharon Osbourne on People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. Kelly trying to launch a singing career. The fact that they asked for huge sums of money before agreeing to do a second season, which will take place in the British countryside instead of Beverly Hills because the house there has become such a tourist magnet.

It's like Ozzy himself said at the end of the season finale, "We're the bloody Osbournes, and I love it." Let him. Let us.

The Summer of the Sequel (Part 2)

There's this phenomenon you've probably heard of known as deja vu. It's when you're doing something and you get the feeling you had done the exact same thing before, maybe in another life, maybe in a repressed memory. I bring it up because I had to ask myself when I sat down to write this column, "Didn't I write this column before? I could swear I had written a column about a summer movie season filled with way too many sequels and bad ideas."

Then, through the cold medication-induced stupor I am in, it hit me: I did write this column before. Last year, right about the same time. Which means we, in effect, have the sequel of the summer of sequels. Pretty much goes along with the basic Hollywood philosophy-- if you've got a good idea, run it into the ground. And while you're at it, do it for a longer time, as Hollywood has taken a cue from the ever-expanding Christmas shopping season and done the same thing with the summer movie season. The first summer blockbuster, "Spiderman", opened today. May 3rd. Time was we had to wait until at least Memorial Day weekend for the first big movie. And if you technically want to say "The Scorpion King" - which not only was a sequel, errr, prequel (whatever) to the "Mummy" movies but also Rock-ed its way to a $36 million opening weekend - was a major movie of "summer blockbuster" caliber, then technically the "summer movie season" started in the middle of April! If you are afraid that this could inevitably lead to unlimited movie overhype all year round, fear not, because they have to keep a couple of months available for the movies that nobody goes to see, otherwise known as the "Oscar contenders".

Well, let's start with the flick opening today, the long-awaited "Spiderman" flick. This is one big budget, special effects-laden movie I might actually want to see, because when you're trying to bring a comic strip to like, taking the effects to cartoonish proportions is not only desired, but encouraged. While the duo who play the Web-Spinning One and his main squeeze (Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst) face the risk of going from indie film darlings to "It" Guy and Girl with the certain success of "Spiderman", these two are level-headed individuals who probably will handle sudden large-scale fame gracefully. And there's also the fact that Kirsten Dunst is well-deserving of her selection as one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list.

However, as big a deal as "Spiderman" is, this movie did not have long lines of no-lifer cybergeeks waiting outside the theatre for the past few weeks. That (dis)honor, of course, goes to "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones", which opens in two weeks. I guess this would be the sequel to the prequel. George Lucas apparently tried to make a genuinely good movie this time, at least that's what people insist he has done; turning Samuel L. Jackson's Mace Windu from an intellectual to the Jedi equivalent of a bad motha(shutyourmouth) is a good start. That's what I get from the trailer anyway: I mean, he makes his "I'm gonna smoke yo sorry ass" face and says "This party's over"; that means BMF, right? The hell with stereotyping, I want to see Samuel L. Jackson playing BMFs! Well, I can't tell you for sure if he is or not, since nobody knows much about what really happens in the movie yet, but Mr. Lucas had no problem with all the leaks flying around about a hot off-screen romance between Natalie (Queen Amidala) Portman and Hayden (Anakin "Don't Call Me Vader" Skywalker) Christensen. Oh by the way, nothing happened between them, but the resulting buzz actually has people outside the regular Star Wars flock wanting to see this movie. If Episode II improves on Episode I's billion-dollar worldwide gross, then the effort will have been worth it. On the other hand, when you're trying to follow up on what is widely perceived as a billion-dollar grossing "flop", it's kinda hard to believe this is going to be the smash that the first three were. Will I see it? Probably, though I will not repeat the opening night experience I had with Episode I.

Later in the summer, we get two more sequels worth seeing: "Austin Powers III" (a.k.a. "Goldmember", unless the Bond people change their mind and block it again) and "Men In Black II". Any Austin Powers film is worth seeing, especially when they cast Beyonce Knowles as the female lead. Now, I'll admit I did not see the first "Men In Black"; I will probably have to before the second one comes out to get an idea of what I'm looking at, but from the preview I can tell it should be pretty good, especially Will Smith's line about his original artificial valet being "a black guy, but they kept pulling him over."

Well, there's the bright lights, now onto the parade of crap that will saturate movie screens from June to August. I mentioned the "Scooby Doo" movie at the end of last year; obvious Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Fred and Daphne joke aside, there's not much else to watch this for. "Spiderman" being the exception, you really can't take a cartoon, make it a live-action movie and expect it to work, even when you make the star a computer-generated cartoon dog. Interesting casting move, however, getting Linda Cardellini of "Freaks and Geeks" fame to play Wilma.

I will not go to see "Minority Report", starring Tom Cruise for one simple reason: I am SICK of all these movies that are set in the future depicting the future as some dark, scary, Big Brother-controlled mess where it's always nighttime and The Man is coming to kill you. "Escape From L.A.", "The Running Man", and the "Terminator" movies pretty much covered everything you need to know about these movies; hell, "Logan's Run" probably took care of all of it 25 years ago! Enough already!

And then there's the sequel that should never have been made. Last year, I gave the prize to "Jason X" (a.k.a. "Friday the 13th, Part 10"), which was so bad apparently that they had to move its opening all the way to a couple weeks ago so it could actually have a decent opening. This year, staying in the horror genre, "Halloween: Resurrection" wins hands-down. I mean, is there a more obvious title for a horror-movie sequel than "Resurrection". It's pretty clear when they make a new "Halloween" that they're bringing Michael Myers back; otherwise, it's NOT a "Halloween" movie. They should've taken the hint a few years back when the 20th anniversary sequel, "Halloween H20" flopped.

So there you have it, a summer season with (as usual) no original ideas to it. Luckily, though, they somehow manage to come up with enough sequels and copied ideas to get us through every year. What will summer 2003 bring (besides the "Incredible Hulk" movie-- see, another copied idea already)? We should know soon; after all, that summer movie season will probably start right after Christmas.