On Inconsequential Things That Matter to Me (Thoughts While Ill Edition)

1. Every time I contract a cold or a sore throat or something resembling the flu, I'm reminded that Michael Jordan's flu game has to be the greatest single performance in the history of modern sports. I mean, Jordan was 34 years old during that game; I'm now 38, and I find it hard to imagine departing from my sofa when my temperature creeps past 99. I hate being sick. I hate being sick so much that I need all of my energies to focus on how much I hate being sick. I realize that Jordan is a pathological lunatic, but I still have no idea how Jordan was able to do that.

2. It makes me sort of sad that the guy who starred in Whit Stillman's Barcelona has been relegated to making appearances in Time-Warner cable advertisements--for that matter, it makes me sad that anyone has to make appearances in advertisements for a company that I consider tantamount to Al Qaeda--but at least it's not Chris Eigeman, who appeared in one of the great cancelled television programs of the 1990s, who essentially made Whit Stillman's career, and who starred in perhaps the funniest film of the 1990s. If there were any justice in moviemaking, Chris Eigeman would be a three-time Academy Award winner and Paul Haggis would be best known for exposing scientology.

3. I don't entirely disagree with this column.* But having spent the past couple of days consuming several hours of sports talk at a time, I do think this may be the most idiotic "controversy" of the past six months.

*Though in a way, I kind of do. I'd much prefer to watch a college football game than pretend national signing day existed. I think Pearlman missed a major point, which is that there is far too much rote arguing and pedestrian rumor-mongering about sports, and there is virtually no effort made to put these oft-inconsequential stories into some larger perspective.