David Stern is horrendously misguided, Riot Watch! in Iran and tomorrow is a sad day for Beatles fans

- No and no, David Stern. First, no to your ridiculous assertion that within a decade there will be a woman playing in the NBA. And second, no to your implied belief that the level of quality in the ridiculous charity case that is the WNBA is high enough to produce such a player and thus high enough for people to give a crap about the WNBA. Stern, apparent paint-chip eater and current NBA commissioner, said in an interview recently he believes a woman could be playing in the league at some point in the next decade. Stern made his ill-advised, unrealistic comments and it took only a few days for the media to run them by the league’s current poster boy, Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James. Although I’m sure he appreciates the empire Stern has helped craft that has turned LBJ into a multi-millionare many times over, James isn't so sure that there will be a woman lacing ‘em up in the Association while he’s still playing. When asked about Stern's comments prior to the Bulls-Cavaliers game on Friday night, James wasn’t exactly backing up the commish. "Ten years?" James asked. "That's, like, right around the corner. [In] 10 years, I'll be 34. I'll still be in the NBA. I think 10 years is pushing it, honestly. I love all sports. I love watching the girls, especially in the Olympics. They're wonderful in the WNBA. They're great. It's a lot of great players. But 10 years, that's pushing it. I think that's pushing it." Another credible source on the issue was in James’ own locker room; forward Anthony Parker, whose sister, Candace, is perhaps the top women's player in the world at the moment. Surely he would back up his sister and support the ladies out there, right? Umm, no. Parker agreed with James. "First of all, I don't see why, other than to say a woman can do it," he said. "But for long term? No way. My sister is a good player and has great skill, but as far as making an NBA roster? No. She's 6-4, which is the average height of a shooting guard.” So unless Stern’s singular intent was to drum up interest in the WNBA (which would last right until the interested party actually witnessed more than five seconds of a WNBA game), his comments were dumb and unfounded at best and imbecilic at worst………

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Iranian authorities see the fury and indignation coming their way and they want no part of it. In an attempted preemptive strike, officials warned of crackdowns as they tried to head off possible protests today, when the country marks Students Day -- the anniversary of the 1953 killing of three university students by security forces. Public gatherings always take place to mark the day, but authorities fear that the gatherings that could turn into demonstrations against the June 12 elections that dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole, er, won legitimately. The bogus election sparked plenty of riots, police beatings, arrests and murders of prisoners on its own, but fanning the flames of dissent some six months after the fact would be a nice added bonus. The government is doing its damnedest to keep the lid on things by warning against demonstrations and prohibiting members of the foreign media from going out and watching any possible protests stemming from Students Day for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That’s too bad because Students Day is "observed as the symbol of Iran's struggle against tyranny and oppression," according to the semi-official ILNA news agency. There is no better day to make that stand in Iran than Students Day, which honors the memory of three students killed by the shah's security forces in 1953. Having yet another affront to speak out against only underscores the importance of the occasion and should remind all Iranians that as far as they may feel they have some in the past half-century and change, there is still a long, long way to go and their country is still run by an egomaniacal, overbearing, oppressive zealot who doesn’t give a damn about what they want, how they think or how they feel………

- Finally, the over-angsty drama of teen vampire romance has been dethroned at the box office. It rook a couple weeks, but the football drama "The Blind Side" rose to first place at the box office this weekend with $20.4 million and in the process, it booted behind "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" from the top spot. By dropping only 49 percent, “Blind Side” overtook the teen-girl-fueled power of “New Moon” and raised its cumulative total to $129.3 million. With a few more strong weekends, it should easily surpass "The Proposal's" $164 million total to become Sandra Bullock's biggest hit. As for "New Moon," it slid 63 percent in its third weekend and yet its $15.7 million take was still good enough for second place. It also pushes the film’s worldwide total to $570.1 million and counting. The star power of Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman carried the new drama "Brothers” to third place with $9.7 million. Family films held down the next two spots on the list, with "A Christmas Carol" (No. 4 with $7.5 million) and "Old Dogs" (No. 5 with $6.9 million) hanging tough after opening over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. A strong second weekend was needed for "Carol," which debuted in early November to a somewhat disappointing $30.1 million. It won't be a great weekend for any of the movies I just mentioned come Friday, Dec. 18, when James Cameron's "Avatar" hits theaters and blows everything else off the map. Some new releases got a head start on their downward spiral this weekend, including the heist movie "Armored," which bombed out for a sixth-place finish with $6.6 million, while the Robert De Niro holiday comedy "Everybody's Fine,” was even worse with $4 million for tenth place. Yet both of those debuts paled in comparison to the atrocious start for the horror comedy "Transylmania," which grossed an incredibly paltry $274,000 from 1,007 theaters for a per-screen average of $272, meaning that, at each theater, approximately 37 people attended "Transylmania" this weekend. That result is the polar opposite of how George Clooney’s new comedic drama "Up in the Air" performed in limited release, raking in $1.2 million from just 15 theaters -- an average of $79,000 per screen. It will expand nationwide in a couple of weeks, just in time for Christmas. As for next weekend, prepare for the reign of Avatar to begin………

- Say what you will about Sir Richard Branson, but the world’s most eccentric billionaire entrepreneur is proving to be extremely dogmatic in his pursuit of sending average (assuming they are also rich) people into outer space. Having conquered the worlds of music and cell phones, Branson has set his sights squarely on the final frontier and as of Monday, he believes he has the rocket to take people there. Branson on Monday unveiled the winged rocket his company developed in a ceremony in Mojave, Calif. All 300 suckers, er, space enthusiasts, who have given Branson's Virgin Galactic $20,000 deposits toward the $200,000 space-ride tickets were invited see SpaceShipTwo in its hangar. The first flight isn't until 2011, following 18 months of testing, and it will launch from a spaceport under construction in New Mexico. A second aircraft will carry the 60-foot-long SpaceShipTwo to 60,000 feet above the Earth, where "they will drop away and they will then go to 2,000 miles per hour in 10 seconds, where they get propelled into space," Branson said. A hybrid rocket motor -- still under development -- will reach a suborbital altitude high enough to reach the edges of space and weightlessness, also according to Branson. “Once in space, [passengers] will unbuckle their seats," he said. "There are enormous windows, which no spacecraft has had before, for them to look back at the Earth. They can float around and become astronauts." The cabin isn't exactly spacious, measuring just 90 inches in diameter. It seats six passengers and Branson seems to believe that the cabin is actually big enough for "lots of room for zero-G fun.” Branson will actually be aboard the first flight, along with his wife, mother and children. He and those who follow in his footsteps will only get to enjoy a few minutes of space tourism before heading back to Earth and landing in the same place it took off. In spite of the steep cost and brevity of the experience, nearly 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list for seats on SpaceShipTwo and its successors. Branson also hopes that the technology will lead to a new form of Earth travel, moving people across oceans and carbon-composite construction developed for SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first privately funded human flight to the edge of space. SpaceShipTwo is a reusable spacecraft resulting from the partnership between aviation designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, a subsidiary of Branson's Virgin Group. I don’t know how successful these space flights will be in the long run, but don’t count on me ever being on one of those birds to space, even if I had the money……….

- Tomorrow is a memorable day for music fans, especially Beatles fans. It’s the 29th anniversary of Beatles front man John Lennon being gunned down in front of his New York home, the Dakota by Mark David Chapman. December 8, 1980 was a sad, sad day and continues to be so even for those of us were not alive when the tragic shooting occurred. The day and the memory of Lennon clearly still resonates with fans nearly three decades later because fans still come to the entrance of the building, to Strawberry Fields in Central Park and to the scene of the shooting. This isn't to put the death of Lennon above the passing of any other person senselessly murdered by any means, but his music and ideology touched many lives and the world is a worse place with him not in it. I wish I could say I’d been alive when Lennon was in his musical prime and it would have been fascinating to see what route his life and career would have taken had he been alive still. Would he have become a sellout who went completely commercial instead of sticking to his activist principals? I’d like to hope that he wouldn’t have gone that route, but we’ll never know………