Outside the Beltway

GQ has a great look back at the 1992 USA Olympic basketball team titled “The Dream Will Never Die: An Oral History of the Dream Team.”

Physical fitness and weight loss infomercials have gone from promising ease to promising a grueling challenge. What happened?

Insult comic Don Rickles told a joke about President Obama being a janitor. Like most of Rickles’ material over the last several decades, it wasn’t funny.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi are retiring their “Car Talk” act after 25 years but NPR will keep the show running indefinitely by repackaging old clips.

Funny or Die gives us “The Wire: The Musical.”

Green Lantern is gay. The original Green Lantern. No, the other original Green Lantern.

Thirty-Five years ago, an adventure began.

Ilya Shapiro asks, “If luxury stadiums were hugely profitable, why would the savvy businessmen who own the teams let the politicians in on the windfall?”

Eugene Polley, the inventor of the first wireless TV remote control, has died aged 96.

The Oklahoma City Thunder is making their first trip to the Western Conference finals after ousting the Los Angeles Lakers in five games. Naturally, rioting and gunplay ensued.

Uni-watch is holding a contest for a redesign of the uniforms for the NFL’s Washington Redskins.

For years, I’ve used Loretta Lynn as an example of how fast societal mores have changed. It turns out that her marriage at age 13 may be a bit of myth making.

Larry Bird has been named NBA Executive of the Year. Is there any basketball-related honor he hasn’t won?

An object lesson in the problems with our intellectual property laws

Thomas Friedman is like a goldfish who only sees China, jobs, and the Internet.

Dish Network is offering customers a DVR that will skip commercials. I’m sure their content providers are thrilled.

Another bizarre conservative rant about the President.

The outpouring from my Twitter stream yesterday on the news of the death of Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, surprised me.

HBO’s Game of Thrones is violent and full of sex. Is it too much?

[FAIR WARNING: SPOILERS]

Another potential scandal in New Orleans.

Rex Huppke reports, “Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet.”

You’ve likely heard that Alabama’s 2011 football championship trophy was accidentally smashed last weekend by the father of one of the players. Now, as Paul Harvey would have said, for the rest of the story.

The commander of Fort Knox has canceled a Ted Nugent concert after the rocker’s recent rant about President Obama.

Pat Summitt’s predecessor stepped down as head coach to work on her doctorate.