Links, bitches, links

- Jim Caple on the Iraqi Olympic soccer team
This is where an asshole might say something like "Well, if only they'd played like that when Saddam was around, maybe Uday would have been nicer to them." But I'm not an asshole so I won't say that.

- Corvette ad pulled because of a few dozen whiny moms
Not surprised about whiny moms, but I continue to be amazed that, yet again, a Fortune 500 firm that is more than happy to trample on its workers and consumers loses its spine when it receives a few complaints over the phone. Seriously, they think kids might try to fly with their Corvettes? Would it have been better if the commercial showed the kid wearing a seatbelt, operating the vehicle at a safe speed, and taking all safety precautions? Where is the outrage over the Hummer ad showing the kid cheating to win a soapbox derby? Where, I ask! Outrage! I want outrage!

- Duke freshmen got their "free" iPods last week
Look, I love my iPod more than life itself, but if I'm paying $40,000 a year in tuition (well, that's my conservative estimate) to go to Dook of all places, I would expect, nay, demand a $300 freebie. Also, I'm waiting for the first report of a stolen freshman iPod. It's got to have high resale value - the engraving alone should make it a collector's item. Plus, the clickwheel seems pretty cool.

- You have got to be fucking kidding me

- New York Times review of Vincent Gallo's "Brown Bunny" (registration required)
This film is better known as "the worst rated film at this year's Cannes Film Festival" or "the one with the billboard showing Chloë Sevigny going down on Gallo". Apparently, Gallo chopped off a significant amount of self-indulgence and the film now runs at a very reasonable 90 minutes. Excerpt from the review:

Neither an atrocity nor a revelation, "The Brown Bunny" is a very watchable, often beautiful-looking attempt by Mr. Gallo to reproduce the kind of loosely structured mood pieces that found American and select foreign-language cinemas of the 1960's and 70's often at their most adventurous, with Monte Hellman's 1971 "Two-Lane Blacktop" the most obvious touchstone.

Like Mr. Hellman's laid-back masterpiece, "The Brown Bunny" begins with a race (Mr. Hellman's driver wins, Mr. Gallo's motorcyclist loses) and quickly tries for an air of cool detachment. But while Mr. Hellman's directing remains consistently detached no matter how hot the cars or emotional entanglements, Mr. Gallo is happy to lavish his lead performer with love, perhaps because in addition to serving as the director, writer, producer, editor and director of photography on "The Brown Bunny," Mr. Gallo is also the film's star.

Superb.

- Finally, no link, but USA men's hoops upsetting Spain? Who woulda thunk it? And Stephon Marbury didn't suck. Fantastic.