Weekend Reading Roundup (Perfection vs. Imperfection Edition)

I saw two things I’ve never seen in my life last night: A Phillies pitcher throw a perfect game (Halladay’s masterpiece, for which I sacrificed watching the Flyers to watch for an inning, will be replayed Monday) and then a walk-off grand-slam home run result in a busted leg. Seriously. Check it out…

Ouch.

All of which is to say the sports frenzy rendered me uninterested in deep reading today. That, and the 90-degree, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky day here in the 215. So, with the quickness …

— There is a Blackhawks curse.

— There is also a push to ban prepaid cellies. Cheaters and terrorists aghast.

— The head of the Philly FOP John McNesby fires back at the Inquirer for an editorial claiming the jury was right to find William Barnes not guilty of cop murder. Which they were. But, I can appreciate where McNesby’s coming from, and since I’ve always found him to be a decent dude, I won’t cry whining-wolf.

— Buzz Bissinger rethinks his stance on Mayor Nutter’s soda tax (which I’ve supported from the get-go. Just sayin’.)

— Frank Rich ponders Katrina vs. BP, and the political ramifications therein.

— Finally, in cross-media catfight news, and inspired by the Philadelphia City Paper‘s calling-out of the Philadelphia Weekly‘s cover story on local gun culture (I hope that’s an accurate assessment; I didn’t read much of either since, though I might’ve [more than] occasionally engaged in it, I was never big on my-writing-cock’s-bigger-than-yours when I worked at both), allow me to paraphrase a Friday Tweet:

The Philadelphia Daily News’ review of Sex and the City 2 was the absolute worst movie review I’ve ever read, and I read Charlie Dawg‘s think piece about Marmaduke. All personal fawning; not a single bit of legitimate insight. A couple examples:

Have you ever watched a movie sequel and immediately started jonesing for a sequel to the sequel? Neither had I before “Sex and the City.” I loved “Sex and the City 2,” enjoying every single campy, over-the-top moment.

It’s a crime that we have to wait possibly another two long years for the next installment to possibly come out. What’s up with that? It’s not fair. Stop the madness.

America’s love affair with SATC is nowhere close to ending. We need SATC. We crave the estrogen-fueled escapism it provides. The economy still is sputtering along. Some of us don’t know from one day to the next whether we’ll be getting a paycheck. We shop at Target. We hope and pray for the top honchos at BP to finally fix the gusher that’s fouling our oceans. But for 2 1/2 hours, SATC 2 takes you away from all that.

[M]ost movie critics have had a field day trashing SATC 2. Let them. As for the rest of us, we’re already anticipating SATC 3.

Oh, really? I think it’s more like, “Sane Americans are livid that money, energy and attention is wasted on this kind of shit. The world would be better off without it, and the people behind it.”

You should be ashamed of this garbage, Daily News. It makes me anticipate death.

Take that, tabloid.