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It takes a big magazine to cause a body count.

Gotta admit, there's not a single web-only publication that can cause people to die when it makes a mistake. I guess you need a big magazine with editors and checks and balances and stuff to do that.

If I subscribed to Newsweek, now would be the time to cancel. But I haven't subscribed since I was in college. Looks like I haven't missed much.

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Long day, short post.

The last "Raymond" was OK- a reasonably amusing episode, with some personal resonance: the parts where the family was informed of Raymond's problems (and he wasn't) pretty much paralleled my situation years ago, when the doctors didn't exactly tell me how serious my illness was- they were telling my wife a much, much darker prognosis and they told me nothing. And then I turned out OK, and it was another family member who blurted out "hey, we thought we were gonna lose you there" at dinner one evening. I laughed when it happened on TV; when it happened to me, I went to another room and stared at the wall for a half hour. It's about as stunned as I have ever been.

But little harm, no foul, and I can laugh at it now. The rest of the episode was a typical "Raymond" installment, not their best but OK, one you won't mind seeing in syndication, which you will, ad nauseam, for decades. The Barones left TV fighting over food, and that's a good way to leave them. It wasn't the greatest sitcom ever, but it was usually pretty funny, and for a Jewish suburban guy from the Northeast, it was always relatable.

But it's no "Family Guy."

And now, the sitcom is once again dead, just as it was dead before "Cosby" and after "Cosby" and after "Cheers" and after "Friends" and "Frasier." Somehow, it keeps resurrecting itself. And if it can survive "According to Jim," it can survive anything.

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I gotta get my picture taken tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. I can't stand how I photograph, probably because I can't stand how I look, but that's a matter for years of intensive therapy. But there's a project that requires my photo, so my graven image will have to be committed to photographic form.

It's always tough, too, to decide what to wear, how to pose, all of that which might make me look like a prat. (Yes, I know, it's natural for me) When my picture was taken for a local alt-weekly last year, the sun was making me squint, so I had to put on sunglasses. And that's what ran, which got the requisite Bono references, and made me look like I was trying way too hard to look "cool." Believe me, i'm not trying to look "cool." I know I'm not cool. I revel in my uncoolness. But I still want to look reasonably presentable, and not like the dork with the cowlick and druggy expression that was in my school yearbooks.

And, no, I didn't keep those. I'd prefer to have all negatives destroyed.

Will I go with a suit or casual? Will my hair stay in place or shoot off in all directions? Will my eyes cross? Will the bags under my eyes be carry-ons or steamer trunks? All shall be revealed in due course. And when you see the finished product, be kind. I'm sensitive that way.

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Late again, too late to get coherent thoughts together.

It took me an hour and a half to get from Santa Monica to home- it shouldn't be more than 45 minutes, but I was in totally immobile traffic. Of course, it was 5:00, so there's an explanation, but it also explains why I can't imagine commuting anymore. But I've whined about that before...

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Got the official DVD history of the 76ers today, and it's interesting- typically of the NBA video productions, the set gives short shrift to the team's history before the 80's. There's the '82 Eastern finals- the "Beat L.A." game against the Celtics- and, naturally, Game Fo of the '83 finals, plus the Barkley 34 point game against the Bulls in '90 and the 2001 finals game 1 against the Lakers. And they throw in a previously released A.I. disc- yawn. The main disc, though, has the goods, the historical stuff.

That, unfortunately, is where there's not enough of the old stuff, perhaps because there isn't a lot of that stuff still around. The team history includes a stretch on the Philadelphia Warriors, who, it should be noted, are not the same team, then a blink-and-you've-missed-it Syracuse Nats segment, who, it should be noted, ARE the same team as the Sixers. There's nothing from the first season, just the "Havlicek Stole the Ball" clip you've seen before (several times on this DVD, in fact), and then a little bit- not a lot- about the legendary '66-'67 team, basically the same handful of clips repeated in several spots. There should be a whole hour on that year, but there are a couple of clips of the Eastern final against the Celtics and a few short clips from the finals against the Warriors. And then they fast forward to Dr. J and the good years.

The player profiles- labeled "The Great 76ers Players"- also display selective memory. Wilt, the Doctor, Moses, Barkley, the Answer, sure, and I always liked Mo Cheeks, too, but Darryl Dawkins, "great"? (He's the "host" of the set, so maybe that was a contractural obligation) If they're gonna put Dawkins and Cheeks in there, how about Hal Greer? Lucious Jackson and Chet Walker? Bobby and Caldwell Jones? Billy Cunningham? If you wanna include the Syracuse days, why not Dolph Schayes, who finished as player/coach in Philly?

But I realized while watching the DVD that my memories are to a great extent of that slack period, and there's one wonderful artifact, worth the price of the whole set, on there: the 1975-76 highlight film. It's a terrible print, with vertical lines abundant, soft focus and a wobbly soundtrack, but there, for the first time since I sat mid-court eleventh row at the Spectrum on a chilly winter night, were the Sixers of Coniel Norman and Harvey Catchings, Clyde Lee and Steve Mix, the hopeful days of George McGinnis and Doug Collins and the future behind the improbably-coiffed Dawkins and Lloyd Free and Kobe's daddy. There's Fred "Mad Dog" Carter getting loose against the powder blue Buffalo Braves- I might have been at that very game, come to think of it- and McGinnis getting past Cleveland in those Marquette-style Cavaliers unis. Catchings blocks John Gianelli's attempt at a hook shot, Collins forces Frazier to botch a pass to Monroe. That's Bill Campbell narrating and the big "76ers- the Team of the Year" banner at courtside, Gene Shue with improbable hair and test-pattern shirt, the Flyers' then-fresh Stanley Cup banners overhead, the embarrassingly dated bad '70's production music...

...and they were mediocre, really, a team clearly improving- after 9-73 in '72, there was nowhere else to go- but still not yet there. But that's the team I remember best, even more than the really good teams, the finalists and the '83 champion. Well, OK, I do remember '83 pretty vividly, but a lot of that blurs over the course of several years. Maybe it was the long drive with Dad down the Turnpike to the Spectrum, the red-white-and-blue star-spangled, truly '70's uniforms, the hopefulness and walking into the building with the O'Jays' "I Love Music" blasting on the PA, Dave Zinkoff barking "CUNNNNingham!" and "CarrrrTERR!" Whatever it was, it's there on the DVD, in that one segment, plus a wonderful bonus at the end, when Campbell touts the addition of four new (ABA) teams and the pending visits to the Spectrum of Julius Erving (shown being guarded by Bobby Jones, then a Denver Nugget), Artis Gilmore, and David Thompson.

I'd have liked to see more of the early days- you'd think there'd be more, considering that there's a picture of Greer on the box in that half-red '65 jersey. But I'm happy- for about 20 minutes, I was 15 again.

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I surprised myself the other day when watching the Sixers DVD. As I previously wrote, I was enjoying the '75-'76 highlight film, remembering what it was like to actually be at some of those games at the Spectrum all those years ago, when I remembered my kid self and what I would have thought it would be like 30 years later. Back then, I would have done anything for season tickets- I would have even been ecstatic if all games were on TV, but they weren't. And if you told me that 30 years hence, I wouldn't even WANT season tickets, I'd have called you crazy.

Here we are, 30 years down the road. I'm privileged enough that I could, if I really wanted to, spring for a pair of season tickets for the Lakers or Clippers. Maybe they'd be upstairs, but, hey, they'd be season tickets for the NBA.

And I still love watching NBA games.

And I have zero interest in buying season tickets, whatever the cost.

How did that happen?

Part of it is the basic process of aging- priorities change, you get married, you have a mortgage, you work, you realize that you don't really want to spend 41 nights at the arena when there are other, more important things to do, like, maybe, sleep. But a large part of it is just that I really don't want to donate any part of my income to the owners and players of the league, because they really don't care about me. Sure, it's entertainment, and entertainment costs, but if they offer lousy seats at exhorbitant prices, ridiculously expensive (and bad) food, outrageous parking prices, ear-splitting music... well, you get the picture. And for a lot less money, I get the League Pass on the Dish and there they are, all (okay, most) games, in my living room, where I have better and cheaper food, a better seat, free parking, control over the sound, and absolutely no guilt that I'm not watching an early season Clippers-Bobcats game although I paid for it.

Really, actually going to games is becoming an unappealing prospect. And when I get a plasma HD panel, there'll be no reason to go up to Staples Center. Or leave my house.

In fairness, the few NBA games I've attended in the past few years- strangely, they've been in Miami and Washington, not here- have been nice experiences, but I paid little or nothing for them. And if someone GIVES me tickets, I'll go to some games. But if you'd told my teenaged self that there'd come a day when I could afford season tickets and wouldn't even want them, I'd have been speechless for a month. You can go to any game you want and you don't? What is wrong with you?

With age comes wisdom, kid. Save the money, buy the HDTV. Basketball looks great in HD. And you can always turn down the volume when Stephen A. Smith comes on.

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This week, one individual was photographed against his wishes. The result: an international uproar.

Another individual was also photographed against his wishes. The result: silence from the international community.

Saddam and me: unwilling models.

Here's what dimwitted me doesnt quite understand: Saddam was responsible for the death and torture of countless innocent people. Someone released a photo of him in his underwear. Apparently, the two offenses are morally equivalent, or at least plenty of people seem more offended by the photos than anything Saddam did as dictator. It was the same with Abu Ghraib: well, yes, the prisoners may have been murderers, but they were HUMILIATED! How BARBARIC! Release these poor oppressed solus immediately!

No, I'm not saying Lynndie et al. did the right thing, nor did I really want to see a fat hairy guy in underwear- I see that in the mirror every day. But, somehow, embarrassing pictures have become the worst thing you can do to someone. And if that's true, I have a legal claim of some sort for those publicity shots I had to get done. So do Rob Lowe, Dr. Laura, and Pamela Anderson. I'm thinking class action here.

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