Bruce Springsteen will continue his TV promo tour Sunday night on 60 Minutes. I believe this means we are now officially old. Bruce hammers critics of his political activity: “When people think of the Unites States … they don’t think of torture. They don’t think of illegal wiretapping. They don’t think of voter suppression,” Springsteen says on the show.
The Rolling Stones Bigger Bang world tour which just ended grossed over $500 million, the biggest box office total in the concert business history. Nearly 5 million tickets for 144 concerts over a two year stretch, far surpassing U2’s Vertigo tour total of $389 million. Just goes to prove that senior citizens have far more disposable income than any other age group, no matter what the economists say.
Landon Donovan won his fourth US Soccer Player of the Year award in a landslide today with 413 points, nearly 300 ahead of runner-up Tim Howard. While Donovan did lead the American national team in scoring this season and Howard had to split net time with Kasey Keller, Howard’s club results with Everton in the Premier League are light years ahead. The Toffees finished sixth in a far tougher league and qualified for the UEFA Cup while the Galaxy will not even make the playoffs in the MLS.
Fellow Liverpool FC fans, you can now have some fun at the expense of our manager with Fantasy Rafa, a free fantasy sports game where you try to predict what squad Benitez will turn out on any given day. Remember, this is a manager who named different starting XIs for his first 99 matches in charge. Bonus TV alert: The Reds match Sunday v. Tottenham is the only English game being shown live on Fox Soccer this weekend, with an early start at 7:00 a.m. PST.
FootieMap is a really neat use of maps and JavaScript to show the locations of teams in a few dozen of the top dozen pro leagues around the globe. If I have one quibble it would be the default size of the map, which is far larger than my browser window and difficult to navigate.
HBO launched a mini-series this week called Five Days, which tracks what happens when a mother and two young children go missing in the middle of the day. This is a British police procedural, co-produced with the BBC, that seems from the first episode to be in the ranks with or even above such personal favorites as Wire in the Blood and Waking the Dead. New episodes are the next four Tuesday nights but also through HBO On Demand or online, where you can catch the first now.
Sci Fi is everywhere after the success of Heroes. So far I’ve seen two episodes of Chuck and Journeyman and one of Bionic Woman (with the second on the DVR for tonight) and my preference is Chuck followed by Journeyman; BW seems to be going for the same tough modernization that worked so well for Battlestar Galactica which shouldn’t be surprising since the shows are both run by the same man, David Eick. Need to check out Pushing Daisies, which should be easy since ABC put it On Demand.
BillSaysThis 