The Indianapolis Colts found themselves in such a situation this Sunday when they brought an undefeated record into a game against the inferior New York Jets. The Colts were only  2 wins away from a perfect season, setting themselves up for a shot at becoming the first team to go 19-0 and win a Super Bowl with a perfect record. Instead, head coach Jim Caldwell pulled most of his starters at half-time, ostensibly to “rest” them, remove the possibility of injury, and in the grand scheme of things, give the team a better shot of reaching the ultimate goal: a Super Bowl ring. I think Caldwell screwed the pooch and here’s why:

Rest? If you consider every game until the playoffs insignificant, fine, but don’t try to tell me that not playing a half of football 3 WEEKS before your first playoff game is going to make your players and better equipped to perform. The beauty of a successful regular season is that you get a “bye” week to rest before the first playoff game. One less half of football an entire 14 days before even that bye week? Yeah, I’m sure Peyton’s rotator cuff will thank you for that one. And if injuries are the concern and the game doesn’t matter, then why play your starters at all? Even in the 1st quarter? Risk of injury is inherent in every play of a football game. If your time can’t play in the face of that risk, then it’s not a championship team.

Then we have the “afraid to be great” factor. Opportunities for immortality and greatness don’t come around very often. The Colts’ players gave themselves an opportunity to do something no team has ever done before and carve out a unique and enduring place in the folklore of the league. How do you get 75% of the way to that immortality, and then give it up? For unsure and possible non-existent benefits? Teddy Bruschi was part of the only other team ever to approach this level and he is crystal clear that not resting the starters and going for a perfect record was NOT what led to the Patriots’ defeat in Super Bowl. As far as the ‘09 Colts are concerned, we’ll have to live with “what if”.

Most importantly, by sacrificing the last couple games, you lose the winning edge. Professional athletes must maintain a level of mental and physical intensity over the course of a season. It is usually the team that can best endure that grind that triumphs. When you are winning, you maintain that edge without even thinking about it because you are so satisfied with results. Taking your foot off the gas pedal definitely puts that edge at risk. Peyton Manning is a competitive monster and I’m sure most of his teammates are as well. But they are all human and suffer from the vagaries of complacency and relaxation just like anyone else. The Colts didn’t seem to be tiring as they continued to win and extend their perfect streak, so why put the winning edge at risk?

I’m a huge Manning fan and I will be rooting for them throughout the playoffs, but I can say with the utmost confidence that their result (win or lose) will have nothing to do with “resting” their starters for 2 quarters during Week 16.

An ex-model who was obsessed with maintaining her youthful looks has died  following surgery to make her buttocks firmer. Former Miss Argentina Solange Magnano, 38, was rushed to hospital with severe  breathing problems after the cosmetic operation. The mother of eight-year-old twins died on Sunday from a blocked lung artery after spending three days in a critical condition in intensive care.

Her close friend and fashion designer Roberto Piazza said the brunette had become obsessed with her looks as her successful modelling career approached its end. He said: ‘Solange was a girl who had everything. She lived the life of a  goddess, she was the envy of everybody. ’Now she is dead because she wanted a slightly firmer behind.

‘She died because of her obsession with beauty.’

Ms Magano, who was crowned Miss Argentina in 1994, previously had cosmetic  surgery on her breasts after the birth of her twins. Last Thursday she travelled from her home in Cordoba to the capital Buenos Aires for the buttock implants.

But she was rushed from a private clinic to hospital shortly after the surgery, a normally routine procedure called gluteoplasty.

Being outsiders, the good people at The Economist typically view America’s problems without the passions and prejudices that currently obscure our nation’s political discourse and allow it to conduct sophisticated analysis. This month they’ve done so again in regards to this deficit conundrum. Let’s get a few things out of the way right up front. Some of the typical deficit boogeymen are in reality insignificant to the cause of our deficit and any potential solution. Earmarks? Sorry, less than one-half of one percent of the annual budget. Bailouts? They hurt, but a lot of that money has been paid back, more will be paid back, and those were one-time charges that aren’t going to be appearing year after year until 2050. No, the real “giant vampire squids” wrapped around the face of our humanity are the entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Throw in exorbitant military spending and a host of misguided tax deductions and voila, you have our long-term fiscal nightmare.

Or more specifically:

Using the CBO’s economic-growth and interest-rate assumptions, and assuming that Mr Obama’s last budget is implemented (for example, that his payroll-tax credit is made permanent and that George Bush’s tax cuts remain except for the wealthiest), a deficit of 3% of GDP in 2014 (instead of 4.2%) would stabilise debt at about 70% of GDP. That would require trimming more than 200 billion from the 2014 deficit and more than 500 billion from the 2019 shortfall. This amounts to a cumulative 1.2% fiscal contraction over three years, and about double that over seven.

Alright, which leafs do we decide to prune? Well we’ve got those haphazard old geezers called The Baby Boomers to take care of, with entitlements going from 10% of GDP (and nearly 40% of the overall budget) to 18% by 2050.  The health plan being enacted is painstakenly budget neutral, but that still prevents certain cuts from reducing the overall deficit instead of maintaining neutrality.

One sensible move on Social Security and Medicare could be to increase the qualifying ages. Life expectancy has increased, lengthening the era of a person’s productivity. Entitlements are in place to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, so I see no reason to allow people to begin collecting entitlements at the same age that they did when life expectancy was 10 years shorter.

On Medicaid, the Federal Government covers the overwhelming majority of payments, giving the states no incentive to cut down on costs. The Economist suggests switching to a system of block grants, forcing states to monitor their Medicaid spending and allowing wealthier states to carry more of the burden. This proved successful with welfare reform in the 90’s. Defense and “discretionary” spending account for 1/3 of the budget. Assuming Iraq and Afghanistan can be phased down over the next 2-3 years and discretionary spending is capped and indexed for inflation, we can carve $160 billion out of the deficit over the next decade, on top of whatever annual cuts are made to the military budget (not hopeful that will be a significant figure).

Now that brings us to the revenue side, taxes. Word on the street is that Obama has former Fed Chairman and stagflation-whipper Paul Voelcker cooking up a monolithic tax reform plan to be released at next year’s State of the Union. What can we be in store for? Maybe an end to bare-naked loopholes and deductions subsidizing self-destructive industries? The mortgage interest deduction and deduction of employer-provider health insurance do come to mind. I’m all for home ownership and a healthy housing industry, but there’s simply no justification behind such a massive deduction for mortgage interest. All it does is encourage more debt and I think we can all agree that the massive de-leveraging that is underway was long overdue.

Abolishing deductions for employer-provided health care, mortgage interest, capital gains on homes and state and local taxes would raise over $500 billion in 2014.

“Abolishing” might be a more radical term than the American economy can withstand. “Reducing” sounds a little more pragmatic and it does seem realistic that we can squeeze a couple hundred billion in savings from a reduction of these subsidies. A consumption tax (or Value Added, VAT, Tax) seems simple and effective, although I can’t imagine the next few years are when we want to start punishing any behavior that leads to consumer demand (other than debt, of course). Nevertheless, The Economist predicts such a 5% tax on consumption (excluding housing, education, and charity) would raise over $300 billion by 2014.

This is a greater problem than this humble blogger can solve and I’m sure glad we have smarter people than moi working on the solutions (uh, I hope). So on closer glance, tackling our deficit problem appears quite similar to Michael Corleone’s conundrum of killing Hyman Roth: “Difficult. Not impossible.”

Content creators have no shortage of troubling questions to answer, but media entrepreneur Edo Segal poses yet another one to them:

Media scarcity is dead. In the future my son will have a flash drive that he will pay $29 for that will have the capacity to hold all movies and music ever released by a major label, studio or tv/cable network. It will take 30 seconds to clone the data over the network to a friend who will pay $14.99 for a device with double capacity a year later. How does the media industry survive such a coming disruption?

I would rather not insult my readers by repeating the same tired buzzwords that have sank entertainment industry discourse  over the past decade (MONETIZE!), so all I will say is that the easier your media product is to digitally re-create (i.e., a MP3), the less valuable it will be in the marketplace. Creating value means creating unique experiences that have consumer appeal in real-time that cannot be copied and mass distributed (or at least have less appeal when copied and mass distributed). This is why live music tours have held up as a primary source of revenue (at least for the big players).

In this world, distribution platforms are either your best friend or your worst enemy. Internet stripped media of its ability to create scarcity. Originally this was a positive as it forced record labels to stop charging $17.99 for a CD. Over time, of course, even the basic scarcity needed to create demand, and therefore value, has been worn away. Thankfully for the media world there is a little company called Apple. By established the the iPhone App Store, Apple has single-handedly created a new and thriving marketplace for media content. Who woulda thunk it??? A digital distribution platform where you can actually charge for content and consumers don’t necessarily mind paying for it.

As Segal puts it, the App store is a clean and consumer friendly eco-system in which media players can re-package content and either charge for it, or at very least have more control over its distribution. Very simple and based on early returns, very effective. Segal notes your friend and ours, Britney Spears, and her decision to premiere a music video on Twitter:

This drives people to Amazon or iTunes to buy the track but in the not too distant future it could be the start of much more than that. A complete experience will unfold that will be interactive and convert to new revenue streams. Not just a purchase of a track but of an app that pulls consumers into an experience and further promotes user engagement and virality. Media becomes a platform with a funnel of traffic and conversions to alternative revenue streams. All boosted by the frictionless billing that Apple has created in the App Store.

The App Store has resurrected the control of distribution that content creators once had too much of ($17.99 CD) and now have too little of (”hey buddy, can you transfer me your 10,000 iTunes tracks?”). The App Store is only the first step in a journey back from the precipice, but at least it’s a start.

You're tellin' me this guy wasn't born to write for Melrose Place?

Whoever you are reading this blog, I don’t know you. Well, maybe I do know you, but whether I know you or I don’t, I bet that you knew someone like Jon Caren during your adolescent days. Let me tell you a few things about Jon Caren. Life in the relatively upper-middle class hamlet of southwest Beverly Hills was cruising along pretty steadily until one day in 1991 when all of a sudden the powers that be got together and decided who was cool, who was popular, and who the girls liked. It may have been fate, it may have been luck, or it may have been the fact that he went through puberty abnormally early, but the guy who got annointed was Jon Caren. All of a sudden his charisma began filling the halls of Beverly Vista Elementary School and it just worked.

You know how cool Jon Caren was? He’d do stupid shit just to do it and see how many people would imitate him. And they did. One day,  the fucking guy decided to stick a neon bandaid on his shoe. Do you know how many kids came to school the next day with neon bandaids on their shoes? Do you? Now you’ve got to remember, this was the early 90’s. Acting like you stepped out of the Dre Day video and trying to be thug was valued at a premium. If you wanted to be at the top of a social pecking order, you most likely had to embrace inner city African-American culture like your name was The Honorable Elijah Mohammed. But Jon didn’t. He kept his pants only relatively baggy and pledged allegiance to the feel-good hip-hop of Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul at the expense of gangsta rap. In a nutshell the guy brought character and integrity to teenage shallowness and absurdity (I mean, not really, but kind of).

As anyone who experienced the electric vibe emanating from the 500 block of North Alpine could attest to, this kept going pretty much through the last episode of Cheers and past the OJ Simpson trial. Then one day…all of a sudden…out of the blue…. the guy quit the football and basketball teams, rejected most of his inner circle of friends and instead  joined the drama club, the dance team, and bought a Volkswagen Passat. It was a reinvention worthy of Madonna (or to a lesser extent, Mario Lopez). But you want to know something? It still worked. People even jocked the Passat! Who the hell else can drive a Passat and make it cool???!!!!! You’ve got to be kidding me!!!

Anyways, long story short, the luster eventually wore off as the guy camped out at a liberal arts college (from which I am technically banned from for life, but that’s another story) and spent the next 7 years grinding it out as an up and coming writer and closet Silver-Laker. Well now Jon Caren has popped his head back up as a vital contributor to another 90’s classic: Melrose Place. Jon recently staffed up on the show and is the credited writer of Tuesdays episode. This episode just so happens to harken the return of another 90’s treasure, Daphne Zuniga. No wonder they put this fragile episode in Jon Caren’s hands. I mean, if you can’t trust a guy who wears neon band-aids on his shoes, who can you trust?

Watch! This Tuesday! Or else I’ll roll you up in a blanket and throw you off a bridge.

I, however, was not concerned. Why? No one else in the National League was exactly setting the world on fire. Look at St. Louis. Their line-up is pretty weak outside Pujols and Holliday. They have two beasts at the front of their rotation and the Dodgers were able to take one of them out tonight. Overall, they’re nothing too scary. Same with Philly. They have a dangerous line-up, but they didn’t exactly go streaking into the playoffs, as opposed to last season when they were really heating up and carried that heat to the finish line. The Dodgers have their flaws, but they match-up more than adequately with their top two NL challengers.

Let’s show some love to Jeff Weaver for a second. The guy has been a freakin soldier this year. Done absolutely everything the team has asked of him and his long relief has allowed us to get away with some shaky starting pitching. Couldn’t imagine where the Dodgers would be without him. He’s gone under the radar as do most former starters who wear out early and end up in middle relief. But good lord, he’s been a real gem this season.

Other than that, Game 1 of this series was eerily reminiscent of last year’s series against the Cubs. The Dodgers get electrified by a huge home run (Loney ‘08, Kemp ‘o9) and stay the course while the other team implodes (hitting batters with the bases loaded????). There are obvious concerns about the bullpen having to pitch 6 innings a game, but as Peter Gammons said, Clayton Kershaw throws as well as any pitcher in this league so hopefully he can give the pen some rest tomorrow. As long as we get some timely hitting from Kemp, Ethier, or Manny (who does appear to be hitting the ball harder) the Dodgers have as good a chance as anyone to make it to the World Series. It’s about damn time.

Nearly impossible to simplify the issue, but this is the best I can boil it down to: Should a talented and beloved artist who experienced and transcended unfathomable tragedy in his life be punished or held accountable for a crime in which the victim appears to be an at least somewhat willing participant after that artist has spent 30 years in exile? On one hand, you’ve got Polanski. The guy basically watched his parents get gassed in a concentration camp, escaped as a child and somehow made it to the U.S. where he became a wildly successful and well-liked director. He married a starlet only to find her butchered by a gang of psychopaths in one of the defining episodes of modern evil. Nearly a decade later he finds himself photographing a young starlet at the home of one of his movie star buddies whose home is known as a den of sleaze in the midst of an era of sleaze (the 70’s). The girl represents herself as “of age” and after some casual drug use (particularly casual as this was 1977) he has sex with the girl, only to find out that she was 13. He cuts a deal with the DA then gets word that the DA is planning on stiffing him and sending him to jail. He hightails it to France and lives the next 30 some-odd years in exile with an unspoken arrangement that if he stays Old World he’ll never get messed with.

Polanski supporters point vociferously to the many mitigating circumstances: Holocaust survivor, Manson victim, girl lied to him, she consented, victim has forgiven him, it’s been 30 years, he’s produced great art, he’s paid his dues, the guy is 76 for cryin’ out loud, etc. The other side ain’t having it. To them this is just another instance of a celebrity trying to use his fame and influence to stand above the law. In other words, they don’t give a damn how many Oscars he’s won, the guy committed a crime and he needs to be held accountable. Well, none of this is as simple as meets the eye. Highly regarded defense attorney Mark Geragos lays out the true nature of the situation and what the motivations and likely outcomes are. A few notable points:

Let’s not forget, Polanski cut a plea deal to one count of “unlawful sexual intercourse”, not rape. The DA never planned to prosecute him for more serious charges that could have landed him in jail for decades . The DA did, however, agree to let him off with a 42 day psychiatric detention and then appeared to back off the deal. There are numerous signs of prosecutorial overreach and abuse. Not to say that single-handedly justifies fleeing the country, but there were stark indications that Polanski was going to be made an example of.

Polanski may have been detained, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s coming back to the City of Angels. The Swiss Justice Ministry still must approve his release to the U.S. This could take months. In the mean time, chances are that Polanski and his supporters on the Continent will be making their voices louder than the American authorities. As Geragos says “One can imagine that Obama and Hillary may be a little more preoccupied with Iran nuclear programs and health-care reform rather than a 30-year old case that is likely to be dismissed if Polanski sets foot on U.S soil.” This puts the Swiss between a rock and a hard place, we’ll have to see how they react.

Bail is another option. If bail is granted, Polanski will have to remain in Switzerland, but he already has a ski chalet there, which he spends nearly every winter in (another of the suspicious ironies surrounding his arrest by Swiss authorities). This could delay the process indefinitely.

More importantly, just because Polanski was arrested doesn’t necessarily mean they are planning to send him to jail. The LA Superior Court  CAN in fact dismiss the charges. However, one of the pre-conditions to dismissal is that Polanski be in custody. As a fugitive, Polanski could not have his case heard. Now that he has officially been detained, he is free to make the case that due to the nature of the charges, his advanced age, the prosecutorial misconduct, the victim’s forgiveness, and the over-crowded California jail system, the charges should be dismissed with no further jail time. Geragos points out the interesting distinction regarding whether or not Polanski has to be in custody of the court that is trying him for his case to be dismissed. The judge assigned to the case says yes, but Geragos cites a recent decision by the California courts that a Japanese defendant was considered to be “in custody” after his arrest abroad and before his extradition to the States.

So Polanski’s arrest may very well just be a precursor to the formal dismissal of the charges and an end to this saga. In fact, there’s a very good chance he may finally return to the States one day a free man. Regardless, this is another episode in the fascinating saga of a fascinating man who as both a filmmaker and a fugitive for 40 years now has been a constant barometer of societal values.

Those who think we can’t support 1 NFL franchise conveniently forget that not too long ago we supported 2 of them. The shock of losing both teams so abruptly in a short time span in 1995 has left the city almost numb to the effect. Seriously, has any city EVER lost 2 teams in one year? From the same sport? It was traumatic. Since then we’ve had a steady stream of local billionairres, from Ed Roski to Eli Broad to Ron Burkle, throw together fancy business plans to establish a new team here, but nothing has materialized.

Personal anecdote time. Fall 1990. The Raiders still live and breath down by the Coliseum and have clearly established themselves as THE magnet for criminal activity and symbol of gang affiliation. From 1987-1993 you simply did not wear a Raiders Starter jacket east of La Cienega. You just didn’t. My father takes me to my first Raiders game to watch journeyman and scrub extraordinaire Jay Schroeder throw 5 interceptions against the Miami Dolphins. Now, a certain adult cartoon called “The Simpsons” had recently appeared as a cultural phenomenon and was in heavy merchandise mode (”Everybody, if you can, do the Bartman/Shake your body, turn it out, if you can, man”, c’mon, you know the lyrics). Anyways, I’m leaving the stadium and off in the distance I see some rif-raffers holding up “Simpsons” shirts and apparently peddling them in the parking lot of the Coliseum. Being the sucker for good branding strategy that I am (or was, at 8 years old), my eyes light up and immediately alert my father to my newfound excitement over the upcoming impulse purchase. As we get closer, I finally get to see the full image on the shirt….and it’s of Homer banging Marge doggy-style.

I can’t believe I didn’t buy it. Talk about an Ebay auction, that item would cause the server to short circuit. Back to the topic at hand: WHY DOESN’T LA HAVE A PRO FOOTBALL TEAM? Local sports entrepreneur and the man that Theo Epstein wishes he was, Casey Wasserman, joined Bill Simmons “The Sports Guy” recently for a fantastic pod-cast on the subject. Wasserman has built a first-of-kind sports management and marketing firm with its hands in nearly every relevant aspect of sports, so I’ll accept him as a qualified expert on the subject. After listening to the podcast, here seem to be the big hang-ups:

First and foremost, No Public Financing for A New Stadium.

The California electorate refuses to provide public funds for construction of a new stadium. Seattle residents took the same stand and saw their basketball team hightail it to that basketball heaven known as Oklahoma City. Lonestar residents were kind enough to provide Jerry Jones with $450 million to help build the new Cowboys stadium. New Yawkaz have fronted about $336 million to George Steinbrenner for the new Yankee Stadium. The prosepctive owner of the Los Angeles franchise will not have the luxury of such subsidies and risk mitigation. The new owner would have to cover that extra $300-$400 mil not to mention the interest on those loans. An extra $20 million in debt servicing here, some high yield constuction financing there, and all of a sudden…we’re talking real money! All in all, the state of California is just not good with stadiums. Sacramento has as garbage facility. So does Golden State. The Staples Center is a premium facility, but look, we had to have two teams share it for it to be built! There is currently no sports facility that even approaches being able to support a modern NFL franchise. And with no public financing for such a facility, the prospect of it happening is unlikely.

The benefits justifying that increased cost are significantly reduced by NFL Revenue Sharing.

The NFL likes parity. It likes keeping podunk franchises like Green Bay competitive with the city slickers from New York, Chicago, etc. To that end, it has a revenue sharing deal that would make Fidel Castro green with envy. Teams share media revenue equally. The visiting team gets 40% of the stadium “gate”. A good chunk of the economic benefit of owning a team in a major media market like Los Angeles would flow back to the general pot, not to the bank account of the owner. So who is going to outlay that billion dollars to get a franchise started when freakin’ Jacksonville is scooping up the increased media revenue that you generated?

Scarcity of demand???

Not really. Once again, we supported two franchises, one would not be a challenge. Look at the demand for USC football. You don’t think a giant share of that would translate to a pro team? And USC, like any college, is limited in its appeal. Baseball cannot be considered a glamour sport by any stretch of the imagination and despite the McCourts the Dodgers have been breaking attendance left and right. You don’t think the city would get just as amped for a football team? It would be huge! Besides that, as The Sports Guy notes, Los Angeles represents one of the highest concentrations of both individual and corporate wealth. That is individual and corporate wealth that would love to snatch up expensive luxury boxes that would be a key feature of a new football stadium. Everyone also forgets that Los Angeles extends beyond Sunset Plaza. There are dozens and dozens of middle income suburbs with residents who are priced out of the Lakers games and love football. They would easily fill seats 50,000 through 100,000 on an NFL Sunday and would basically ensure that every LA football game is a sell-out.

So there you have it. Our cheap asses need to pony up $3.17 a piece and get this stadium built. It will make a guy like Ed Roski richer than a third world dictator, but how can you put a price on extending our ability to prove our cultural superiority?

This tourist trap was once the busiest restaurant west of the Mississippi, but has fallen on tough times. I guess having your left-overs wrapped up in a tin-foil sculpture of E.T. has apparently lost its charm. Turns out our old mayor Richard Riordan is one of the majority investors in Gladstones and has an interest in making strange bedfellows. Riordan has brought along nightlife impressario Sam Nazarian and his SBE Entertainment to manage and overhaul the restaurant. I guess good ol’ Dick Riordan got a table at Foxtail one night and was just so impressed he had to partner up with these guys.

Nazarianization usually address obstensibly high-brow fare such as celebrity chef restaurants and velvet rope nightclubs. So what will it mean for Gladstones, a place so intricately tied to my youth? Will there be strobe lights blasting out across the Pacific Ocean? Will Dean May be promoting the Androgyny Plus night at Gladstones? Can’t be sure, but all I know is, they better not screw with the clam crowder.

Of all the obvious synergies, theme park attractions are particularly interesting. Disney now has a broad portfolio of Marvel characters to integrate into their theme park attractions and create rides off of. Is Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride going to need to make some room for a Captain America moon-bounce? Not so fast. Apparently there is a corporate legal battle brewing that would make Tony Starks shudder.

Technically, Universal has a long-term licensing deal for Marvel characters which covers Marvel Super Hero Island at Universal Studios Orlando and Japan, along with the rest of the Marvel character stable. However, according to Nikki Finke, the Universal-Marvel licensing agreement is very narrow. Marvel has approval over the manner in which the characters are used (huge) and most of the characters are not licensed for full theme park use. For instance, maybe Universal can use the Incredible Hulk for Super Hero Island, but might not be able to use him as a “walk-around” character or have an “Incredible Hulk Store”.

Beyond that, with approval rights, there’s no way Marvel (as owned by Disney) will allow Universal to make use of new characters:

Privately, Universal execs told me they’ve got the Marvel characters “until the end of time if we want them” and used phrases like “in perpetuity”. But here’s the rub: a Universal insider tells me the theme parks only retain the existing characters it’s already made use of. Sure there are Spider-Man and Hulk attractions, but what about the bulk of the 5,000 Marvel characters? Are those Disney’s now?

You can bet the first time Disney has a hit movie based on Marvel character you’ll have Universal cart out a death squad of lawyers with contracts in hand claiming that they have the rights to stick them in Universal Studios. Which might actually make for a good movie now that I think of it.