I believe Hec was engaging in a "what if" flight of fancy.

Correct. There was no ITV fire.

When I was composing the piece, I was mulling over the fact that while Diana Rigg has had a very long, distinguished theater career I only really wanted to write about her iconic status with the Avengers. So I started with opening like, "I hope Dame Rigg will forgive me in bypassing her Tony award winning performance of Medea, but..." and then I just decided to flip it. Act like almost nobody had ever heard of the Avengers.

I spell this out not to kill the joke of it, but just because I think a lot of writing is really a series of problem-solving exercises. My problem wasn't just that I only wanted to talk about her work in the Avengers, but the opening was flat as originally conceived. It was more interesting to toss people into the Alternative Universe where Diana Rigg would be best known for The Worst Witch (which is itself, of course, very obscure).

Ah, Veronica Mars, all seasons, are available on Netflix streaming!! YAY.

I was just wishing they would be THIS MORNING and now they are!

I wish I had a million dollars....

Wasn't his argument against Ulysses actually "Well, *I* don't like it, so it's overrated!"?

It's more like, "Ulysses is overrated because James Joyce thinks he's all that. And he's so not."

However, if it's not a marriage thing, you're out of luck.

That must really, really suck for transsexuals. (not sarcasm)

What's weird about that list to me is that the book is about the 50 most overhyped things in history, which is total different than overrated in my opinion.

And baseball doesn't even come close to football as a world sport, even in Latin America (with the except of the Caribbean).

baseball doesn't even come close to football as a world sport, even in Latin America (with the except of the Caribbean).

Baseball's not *that* big in the Caribbean. The English speaking countries, of which there are a ton, would rather be playing football and/or cricket.

And baseball doesn't even come close to football as a world sport, even in Latin America (with the except of the Caribbean).

That's not the point. His argument was that the World Series was lame and misnamed because it doesn't involve world participation. However, participation by foreign born players in the Majors is at about 29%.

The Dominican Republic had the most with 88. It was followed by Venezuela (52), Puerto Rico (29), Japan (16), Canada (14), Mexico (11), Cuba (eight), Panama (five), Australia (four), Taiwan (three), Colombia, Curacao and South Korea (two apiece), and the Netherlands, Nicaragua and the U.S. Virgin Islands (one apiece).

participation by foreign born players in the Majors is at about 29%

That's really not the same as playing for your country. And how many of those players are Americans?

Baseball's not *that* big in the Caribbean. The English speaking countries, of which there are a ton, would rather be playing football and/or cricket.

Sorry, I meant the Latin countries (it's bigger than football in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the DR).

That's not the point. His argument was that the World Series was lame and misnamed because it doesn't involve world participation. However, participation by foreign born players in the Majors is at about 29%.

Actually, he said it didn't involve teams from more than two nations, not players.

His argument was that the World Series was lame and misnamed because it doesn't involve world participation. However, participation by foreign born players in the Majors is at about 29%.

But that wasn't the case when the World Series was named, I think. And it's still not a "world" series the way the World Cup is. It's the two winningest U.S. major league teams, is all.