The Patriots Spying Brouhaha

One of the scandals of the early 2007 football season has been the revelations of spying by the Patriots. It's been dubbed CameraGate since it involves illegal videotaping during games. The Patriots videotaped the signals of the Jets during week 1; the league caught them and punished them.

The media was riveted by this story, but I somehow managed to avoid paying attention to most of the ensuing controversy. My primary exposure to the media hype has been through the writing of Bill Simmons, a Patriots fan who has been fed up with the way sports commentators have piled on the Patriots. I can see his point, but I have some doubts about his defense of the Patriots. For example, he said on September 17, "If this pattern of inappropriate behavior had been happening for six years, wouldn't they have been caught before Sept. 9, 2007?"

I thought the Patriots had been caught before illegally videotaping during games and had been warned not to do it anymore. They may not have been stealing signals earlier, but that seems unlikely. It would be nice to get clarity on this point.

Are Molly Shannon and Paulette Goddard related?

I watched the Charlie Chaplin movie Modern Times recently, and I was struck by the similarity between Paulette Goddard and Molly Shannon. They looked similar, and their characters acted similarly as well. Maybe it was the way the Gamin character in Modern Times danced and leapt wildly that reminded me of Shannon's characters on Saturday Night Live.

As for the movie, it was good though I didn't enjoy it as much as other Chaplin movies. The set pieces were pretty funny and well executed. However, the Little Tramp character was too bumbling to hold my sympathy throughout. The epitome of his incompetence was when he worked as a mechanic's assistant and managed to get the mechanic jammed into some machinery. I still laughed, which is probably what counts.

Bay Area Newspaper Stars

It probably doesn't make sense to have a newspaper column called Bouncer written by someone who doesn't work at a bar, but that's about the only quibble-worth thing about the column by Katy St. Clair. It's not the first thing I read in the SF Weekly (since it's in the back), but I'm less happy when I get to the back and discover it's not there. Luckily, it's there most weeks, and she usually has some interesting stories from visiting Bay Area bars. Sometimes, there is even pathos like when she talks about her autistic clients.

The Bay Guardian has a food section staffed by stars, Paul Reidinger and L.E. Leone. Their writing entertains and enlightens with wit, grace, and humor. Plus, they're both capable of writing about more than food, and often do, sometimes even while writing about food.