...of blithering bullshit. To wit...

1. The PhD'd nitwits who "proved" that 10% more muscle mass translates to 50% more home runs should be seized and fed to lions. There have been many, many mediocre ball players on steroids, yet oddly enough NONE of them have hit major amounts of homeruns or even improved their own stats beyond a negligible amount.

2. "Strength equals length." Right. And "the bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin', or So. I. Have. Been. Told." Good God spare us all these misfitted miscreants who know jack-squat about hitting a baseball. I was lucky in that a lot of my friends in high school, guys I hung out with all the time, played on the baseball team and, as the years went by, got so good that by our senior year they won the local league championship. I was also lucky in that their coach - and my honors English Lit. teacher - was Leroy Sprinz, son of Joe Sprinz, who himself had played with DiMaggio on the San Francisco Seals back in the day. In other words, I learned a LOT just from listening and observing. And here's the deal, ding-a-lings: It was Bonds's entirely NATURAL physical abilities that got him all those home runs, not steroids. Put another way, if Bonds did NOT have all those abilities and did take steroids we would not be talking about him. Hell, we wouldn't even KNOW about him. Steroids do NOT effect manual dexterity, reflexes, hand-eye coordination, balance, physical grace or such learned skills as stance, bat posture and swing -not speed of, QUALITY of. So please give the great god Reality a fucking break, will you please?

3. The indictment of Bonds is a fishing expedition, and a miscarriage of justice. I don't give a shit what "documents" they found at BALCO, because if they had them the previous two times why did they a)offer Bonds immunity from prosecution and then b)fail to get an indictment. And you're wrong, King. Once empaneled a Grand Jury cannot be "renewed" after reaching a finding - in this case, voting not to indict Bonds. This current Grand Jury is indeed the second to go after him specifically, and although the first was "only" investigating BALCO you'd better believe they were eyeballing the various players who testified or less they wouldn't have felt the need to offer any of them immunity to begin with. Did I mention that many of my OTHER high school buddies went on to be attorneys?

I am stunned that no one - least of all Zacharek - has pointed out that the plot of this film is almost identical to "Casualties of War." It makes me wonder if all the claims about DePalma's mysoginy down through the decades might actually be true, because it would appear he is incapable of showing the horrors of war except through the rape and murder of a woman.

I've always believed that Sherwood Schwarz was a misunderstood genius. Who but a genius could come up with both "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch" in the course of one career? And I still think the only reason people are so hard on Gilligan is because Schwarz blew his budget in the second season on color film stock, and so could no longer shoot on location.

I've seen footage from waaaaay back in '74, when Chicago's local PBS station started pairing them up for half-hour dust-ups. Man, they would get pissed at each other! There were times where you'd sware someone was going to throw a punch. And then of course there was the fact that the footage I saw was of them reviewing "The Godfather II" when it was originally released! It was so cool to listen to two genuinely great film critics exchange observations about "this new talent DeNiro", comparing his performance in "Godfather II" to "Mean Streets", which came out in '73. Just astonishing.

I hope the strike ends soon, Mr. Gordon, for your sake and the sake of all writers in the industry. And I hope that you get the contract you deserve regarding aftermarkets.