The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive streaming with artist commentary on IMEEM. One of my favorite current band and has potential to be my favorite album of the summer (once I can get it on my iPod :)). Constructive Summer is a great summer anthem and there are a couple other instant hits for me on there. I just ordered the album today, so I’m hoping it will get here quickly.
asides
Jamie Moyer Change-Up Arrives At Home Plate After Long Journey. Great piece from the Onion. My favorite part is how the batter actually gets two swings off before striking out. I’m always impressed with how easily the Onion has translated their humor to sports material.
Tambor: Big-Screen Version Of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT ‘For Sure’!! Let the Great Experiment begin!! I loved Arrested Development’s entire run, including its finale but I couldn’t resist a few more hours with George Michael, Gob, Tobias, and Maeby. It’s hard to imagine this not being amazing.
Hansen, other Nike swimmers face big decision. Despite being sponsored by Nike, the company is allowing Brendan Hansen and other swimmers to wear competing swimsuits like Speedo’s LZR Racer in the Olympic trails since they are supposed to give a competitve advantage. It’s nice to know they have their priorities straight. On the other hand, if a suit does give a swimmer a competitive advantage shouldn’t swimming’s governing body ban it? Are Speedos different than steriods other than the health risk?
Today’s Moment of Zen: Stewart-Colbert on Hulu. A great day for democracy - now you don’t need cable or even a TV to catch up on the latest news. Last night’s episode was pretty great, I love the way he just tear’s into the ridiculous of TV news.
NY Times: Disney and Pixar: The Power of the Prenup. Pretty good story about the fruits of the Disney-Pixar merger. John Lasseter does seem to be making a pretty noticeable impact on the creative direction of the company and I love that they’re breing back cell-animated features. Interestingly, this story was sent around in of our internal ESPN newsletters, which normally focus on sports media.
Summer session takes on a whole new meaning at Caltech. Division III basketball school California Institute of Technology hasn’t won a conference game since 1985. That’s probably because most of the players are super students doing undergraduate research and are getting 4.0 GPAs in physics majors. Kind of flies in the face of “winning is the only thing” but its a fun story.
Washington Post: Redskins Cheerleaders Shake Up Cricket in Modest India. Usually anything involving cheerleaders makes me groan, but this is a great story. Perhaps this is outsourcing in reverse - India provides America with engineering, medical and financial talent and we’ll throw in the cheerleaders 
More on cricinfo.
Tennessee’s Lofton quietly faced and beat cancer. Just an amazing, must-read story that’s really well done. It’s easy to get cynical about ESPN, especially when you see it warts and all on a daily basis, but this story and one earlier this week about an opponents carrying an injured softball player around the bases washes over all that for me. It makes me a little prouder than usual to be working of the worldwide leader in sports.