Ridiculous and outdated though they may be, the NCAA rules are still... well, the rules. You bend or break them at your own peril.

If you don't think so, King, try using that rule-begging-to-be-broken argument the next time you get dinged for going 50 in a 35 mph zone:

"But Officer, all I've done is break a rule that was begging to be broken, one so clearly wrong that any rational actor, faced with it, would shrug his shoulders and break it. I'm just being a rational actor, sir!",

... but can we get an editor to look at this page before it's posted, please?

One would think that someone so unabashedly anti-Hollywood as Cintra Wilson would spare herself (and Salon readers) the torture of having her offer juvenile, gag-me-with-a-spoon commentary on the Oscars.

Sadly, this was not the case. One can only hope that this will be considered in the future.

P.S. -- To the powers-that-be at Salon: bilious, negative criticism like this is made slightly more endurable when either the writer or the editor demonstrates some knowledge of spelling and punctuation.

I was in Mellon Arena on Dec. 27, 2000, when Mario Lemieux returned to the NHL. It was an experience like no other--crowds milled outside in the cold, waiting for the doors to open and staring up at the giant "66" projected onto the sloping roof of the old Civic Arena. When the doors did open, people flooded in and filled the seats in mere minutes. They wore Lemieux jerseys, they waved signs that read "Welcome Back, Mario!" They chanted "MAR-I-O" over and over.

When Lemieux took the ice for the pre-game skate, the crowd noise ratcheted up another level. When the time came to lower the #66 banner from the rafters, though, you could have heard the ice melting.

When Mario was announced-- "...and at center, number sixty-six, Mario... LEMIEUX!"--I thought it couldn't get any louder in there.

Until he set up that goal on his first shift.

Mario was pure magic. The sport of hockey and the city of Pittsburgh are better because of the Magnificent One.

P.S.

By the way, King, that game was against Toronto, not Philly.

Unlike some others who have responded on this, I am paying for this drivel (a decision I'll have to rethink, since I agree with a previous writer that Salon's quality is in decline as of late). And drivel is precisely what it is. Has there ever been a more self-involved yet utterly meaningless story written? It could have been summed up--much less painfully--as follows:

I am a dupe.

I know that I am a dupe.

I don't care that I am a dupe.

It's no big deal that I've been duped, since others have been as well.

Because I think it's no big deal to have been duped, it should not be a big deal to anyone else that they've been duped as well.

My husband is clearly much smarter than I am.

That this pointless blather was even considered a story is puzzling; that it was the TOP STORY is utterly ridiculous.