The worst thing about "Semi-Pro" is that, now that someone has made a comedy about the ABA, I doubt if anyone will ever make the movie that the ABA really deserves.

I was a kid in the early 70s, growing up in Louisville, and absolutely worshiped my Kentucky Colonels. The year they won the ABA championship (`75, I think?), they were by far the best team in basketball. In Louisville, Indianapolis, and maybe one or two other markets, ABA basketball was the real deal, a legitimate challenger to the stuffy, gasping NBA.

But unfortunately, most of the teams in the ABA were poorly-run, fly-by-night operations relying on silly gimmicks to try to fill arena seats. From the little I can glean from reviews and trailers, it sounds like "Semi-Pro" concentrates on the more "colorful" side of the ABA's short life, and probably only mildly exaggerates it. Some seriously crazy shit happened, and I highly recommend Terry Pluto's terrific book "Loose Balls", which is an oral history told by the players, coaches and other participants. (Bob Costas got his start doing play-by-play for the Saint Louis Spirits!)

Thirty years later, I'm still angry that John Y. Brown was too much of a pompous ass to cough up the money to get the Colonels into the NBA, and the pain flares up when I see a former ABA team like the Spurs dominate the "establishment" teams. The short, colorful life of the ABA deserves a real movie.

Oh, and to anyone with a disparaging word about Stephanie, go to hell. Steph, I adore you. Anyone who liked "Masked and Anonymous" is OK in my book.

I guess I'm easy to please as far as "Lost" goes but, even when it's gotten a bit slow, I still think it's fascinating. I don't expect to have any real "answers" anytime soon, and that's okay because more ingredients get thrown into the pot to make the whole stew even more interesting.

It can be dangerous messing around with "time travel" and/or the space-time continuum stuff, but it is adding another layer to the whole thing. Someone mentioned Desmond's visions, or lack thereof - maybe it is/was due to the popping in and out of time he was experiencing? Maybe the weird activity on the ship is being caused by some kind of "Philadelphia Experiment" type of vortex thingamajig?

Now, when I'm watching, I'm wondering WHEN a particular scene is happening - do we REALLY know that something is a "flash forward"? Is it a reality that may or may not end up actually happening, depending on how other events on the continuum play out?

Do we really know who the "Oceanic Six" are? Seems to me like a lot more than six people make it back. Let's see: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sun, Claire's baby, Sayid, Michael, Walt, Ben - that's nine right off the top of my head who are seen off the island in various "flash forward" scenes. Did Jin make it off, only to die later? If he died on the island, did Son somehow transport his body home? What happens to Claire?

I'm betting we'll learn all this eventually, just not for a while; I'm including the polar bears, smoke creatures, and all the other weird stuff - we'll get answers in time.

What I want to know - four-toed statue? WTF?!?

we all seem to be a little geographically challenged today. Slint was from Louisville, not Lexington. I'm trying to think of significant musical acts Lexington has given us, and I'm stuck at Richard Hell.

sorry, but I disagree, Lynx. I'm convinced that this woman meant exactly what she asked: she was talking about that piece of cloth, and the little metal pins that some people wear representing it. That's what she cares about, like a "Christian" who places more value in the cross than they do Jesus's teachings.

I'm no longer amazed and dumbfounded by the way people worship the symbol rather than what the symbol represents. If what the flag represents really was what was important to her, she wouldn't have asked the question the way she did, and she wouldn't have based her obvious disgust with Obama on the fact that he refuses to kow-tow to the fascist bastards who try to browbeat us all into submitting to what is little more than patriotic porn.

That woman is probably beyond hope. She is Sean Hannity's wet dream. I'm sad for her, and I hope the number of people who feel like she does hasn't grown so large that our electoral process is beyond hope, too.

Or, maybe you were being snarky?

yeah, and peanuts aren't really nuts, so I'm gonna have to call up the grocery and tell them to pull all those cans of "mixed nuts" off the shelf.

Jesus, people. Lighten up. "Monkey" is a humorous, light-hearted word. "Ape" is not. "Monkey" is a better choice in some contexts, like in the subtitle of this review. This isn't an article in Scientific American.

I can think of plenty of examples of the failure of the American educational system. Unless you're involved in zoology or some similar scientific discipline, this isn't really one of them.

"Japanimation" is the perfect word to use when describing the really crappy Japanese cartoons of my childhood, of which "Speed Racer" is a prime example. To call that cartoon "anime" is really an insult to the artform.

As another writer alluded to, even as kids we knew that "Speed Racer" really sucked, even worse than "Scooby-Doo". Yeah, we watched it - it was a cartoon, and it came on every day after we got home from school. But dude - it was so bad, even worse than "Ultraman," which at least was live action. (Sorta.)