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We watched the "Bewitched" DVD last night. Not the TV show, the movie. (I disclaim any responsibility for picking that) Watching Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell mug and twitch their way through the awful script, a few things struck me:

1. Hollywood can't stop making movies and TV shows about itself. This has to stop. Hollywood thinks the rest of society is just fascinated with its inner workings. Not true. Not only can't anyone relate to the lifestyles of Hollywood, it's gotten to the point that people aren't even all that envious. Seems like a shallow, stupid life. But that point's been made.

2. Hate to say it, but Will Ferrell's not that funny. He does in this one what he's been doing in every single Will Ferrell movie, the pulling-of-faces, the aimless-ad lib-that's-supposed-to-be-cute scene with the babe, everything he did in "Anchorman" and "Old School" and every other movie he's done, and if it was amusing before, it's not anymore. Be gone with you.

3. There should be a Memory Protection Act: don't allow anything to be remade unless the writers, producers, director, and cast like and understand the original. "Bewitched" was a stupid comedy, but it was OUR stupid comedy. Nora Ephron (who from the looks of things must have never seen the original) didn't know what to do with the guileless, innocent humor of a bygone era, so she dragged it into her cynical world by making it not a remake, but a movie ABOUT a remake that turns out to remake the premise and retain it at the same time. How clever! How stupid! How unnecessary! Simple setup: Darrin marries Samantha, finds out she's a witch, wacky stuff happens, the end. Anything further isn't necessary. Ephron wanted to make her OWN concept- fine, but call it something else. Leave the "reimagining" to, say, the Batman movies. (And that's another story for another time)

4. No way in hell will I go see "Memoirs of a Geisha." (That's one of the approximately 6,327 trailers on the DVD) But then again, I though no way in hell I'd see "Bewitched." But I didn't pick it.

Fran also rented "Phantom of the Opera" and "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." She's on her own there.

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Memo to the people in charge of doctors' waiting rooms: in December, the "soft adult contemporary" radio stations you play on your PA system go all-Christmas music.

That sucks. It's bad enough to sit there listening to Kenny G and Celine Dion. When all you get are downbeat renditions of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "O Christmas Tree," it's unfreakinbearable. Stop it. Or go out and buy the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown soundtrack. Thanks.

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OK, not much time tonight other than to mention this: at dinner, we turned the kitchen TV on and put on "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on ABC, and it was in Spanish.

The set does not have SAP. The satellite receiver was set to English. The receiver in the other room had the show in English. This one was in Spanish. I have no idea why. I went to the other room again to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Still in English there. Went back to the kitchen, it was suddenly in English.

Something tells me I should take some time off.

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Dear Bill Plaschke: Judging by this morning's column, you and Grady Little need to get a room.

Yes, the King of the One Sentence Paragraph is happy with Little's hiring as Dodger manager. He's very happy indeed. Oh, what am I saying? He's behaving like a lovestruck schoolgirl, or Howard Stern's sycophantic callers ("Hey now, Grady, how's it goin', what's goin' on?"). (I might start calling him "Bill (Double A) Plaschke," but I don't know if anyone would get the reference) He's so excited, he even included a few two-sentence paragraphs. Some samples:

Ned Colletti can pump his right fist any time now.

In resurrecting Grady Little as the new Dodger manager, he hit a late-inning, backdoor slider out of the park.

Why, he's Tony LaRussa, Casey Stengel, Miller Huggins, John McGraw, and Jim Leyland all rolled into one and wrapped in Huckleberry Hound!

The Red Sox fans who tell you Little was a terrible manager — and there are plenty of them — will also tell you that Bill Buckner was a terrible baseball player.

Yeah, that same Buckner who had 2,715 hits.

I don't know what Red Sox fans Plaschke speaks with. I see him in the Dodger Stadium press box all Summer, and there aren't too many Red Sox fans lurking there, so he must talk to them in the off-season. Maybe he runs into Bill Simmons at Sushi Nozawa now and again. But the Red Sox fans I know don't hate Buckner for being a bad player. They don't even really hate him. They just hate what happened in game six of the 1986 Series. Can you blame them?

At least Red Sox fans hang around for the whole game.

Little took a diverse group and turned them into winners who, months after he was fired, became nationally known as "the Idiots." Then, of course, they finally won the World Series.

Little was 188-136 in his two seasons, cementing the attitude that carried them to that peak.

So in Plaschke's book, Little managed the Red Sox to the World Championship AFTER being fired.

Dude. We know you like the guy, but really, now. Give him credit for 188 wins, but 2004 was Tito's year.

Seriously, I'll look at the coming season with an open mind, and I'm sure Grady Little is a great guy and deserves all the chances in the world to make this work. But this is not like hiring Joe Torre, or- cough- Mike Scoscia. This is more on the Charlie Manuel level. I hope it works, if only to make the ballpark more fun next season, but I think I'll stay away from the manager's office when Plaschke comes around. Some things should be done in private.

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Yesterday's item took a shot at the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke for getting all warm and gooey over the Dodgers' new manager Grady Little. And today, the opposite, from Fox Sports' Kevin Hench:

Merry Christmas, Dodgers fans. That's not a lump of coal in your stocking, it's your new manager, Grady Little. Trust me, you'll wish you got the lump of coal.

Oh, Red Sox fans are laughing, all right- they remember that Little's problems were deeper than not knowing when to pull Pedro:

I totally agree that Grady should not be judged solely on what happened on the night of October 16, 2003. He should be judged also on all the mindless moves he made over the course of two seasons in Boston that contributed a. to a team with the 2-3 finishers in the Cy Young balloting missing the playoffs in 2002 and b. to a team with a solid starting staff and a record-setting lineup finishing six games behind the Yankees in 2003.

And he goes on to remember specifics, like pinch-running for Papi or Manny and taking said bats out of the lineup when needed two innings later, or failing to anticipate the opposing manager's counter-moves to his strategies. He makes a persuasive argument that Little's, um, little. And he notes that Little's fans have used the Pedro incident to obliterate any memory of all the other mistakes he made- now, he's a good man unfairly maligned for one mistake instead of a guy who couldn't make the right move if you wrote it out for him.

The sports world is full of coaches who get a lot of slack despite boneheadedness that boggles the mind. Take last night's Sixers-Bucks game. At the very end, the Sixers are down two with 0.9 seconds left and having to go for a 3. Someone has to inbound it and get it to the guy you want to take that shot. Now, with the Sixers, that's obviously Allen Iverson, with Korver as a second option. 0.9 seconds to go, remember, enough time to inbounds and immediately shoot. WHo do you want to get the ball? A.I. Where do you need him? Beyond the line, on the court. Where would you absolutely NOT want him? Making the inbounds pass, because he can't be the shooter.

Guess who Maurice Cheeks had inbounds the ball?

And then Milwaukee coach Terry Stotts took one look and waved Andrew Bogut over to guard the inbounds pass. Seven foot Andrew Bogut. Massive Andrew Bogut.

What did Cheeks do?

He left Iverson to try to inbounds the ball. And you don't even have to think to guess what happened next.

Anyone talk much about Terry Stotts? Nah. But Mo Cheeks is widely considered a fine coach, a respected coach, because he's a nice guy and the players like him. And Grady Little's a nice guy and the players like HIM, too.

Feel free to bet on whether the Sixers will win a championship under Cheeks, or whether the Dodgers are ticketed for the Series under Little.

Let's be clear on something here: with the right players, Arlo the Wonder Llama could coach a team to a championship. And with a lousy roster, Bear Bryant could lose every game on the schedule. But all else being equal, a lot of coaches and managers seem to have trouble with the Xs and Os but manage to get a pass from the press and public.

Funny, though. I remember a few years back when the Phillies had one of those guys. He was popular with the players and a nice guy, but he was a nonentity for game management and untimately couldn't win with some decent talent. They fired him. Then he went somewhere else, replacing a guy a lot like him, and won it all despite the same questionable game moves. Now, if Grady Little goes to a bar in New England, they'd throw beer at him. If Terry Francona goes into a bar in New England, he probably never has to buy a drink. It CAN happen.

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This was in my mailbox today:

A couple of things:

1. My name is not Manuel Conceicao.

2. I do not live in Kurrajong Heights, Australia.

Other than that, no problem.

The street name and number, redacted here, are not the same, either, but close. But that's all that's even close to the same. Everything else- name, town, postal/zip code, COUNTRY- is different. And thre's air mail postage on it. Yet the USPS, for some reason, decided that this letter belonged in my mailbox.

I'm not sure what to do, return it to the post office (where it'll likely just show up in my box again) or what. I guess I'll drop it off and see what happens. But it's good to know that the U.S. Postal Service is on the job.

And my REAL mail's probably in Botswana by now.

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While perusing the Chanukah section (basically, three small shelves) at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, we found "beyond." Meet Harvey Magilla:

Clap, or cough, or make loud noises, and Harvey "dances" to "Hava Nagila" for you. I expect that they also sell a little Devout Christian doll that boogies to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" when you make a noise. Whatever, it's the perfect gift for the anti-Semitic members of your family.

They also sell the Jackie the Jokeman Joke Master Jr. jokeboxes, in case you really want to alienate your loved ones.

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