So Long, Big Fella.

The Knicks honor their 15-year man in the pivot as Patrick Ewing’s 33 is retired tonight at the Garden. Despite the diatribes by Jordan-jocking naysayers like David Halberstam, Ewing was truly one of the greats, along with Hakeem the best center of his generation. If Johnny Starks hadn’t stunk up Game 7 in ’94 or if David Stern hadn’t gotten suspension-happy in ’97 after PJ Brown (of the Heat) attacked Charlie Ward, we wouldn’t even be hearing all this no-title nonsense every time Pat’s name comes up. Ah well…I just wish Ewing could’ve finished his career in NY. However bad he looked in those last two seasons in Seattle and Orlando, he could’ve brought more to the Garden every night than Glen Rice and Luc Longley ever did…and we wouldn’t be saddled now with overpaid, underachieving players like Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. At any rate, so long, big fella. It’s your night. Update: Thanks to some triple-double heroics by Spree, the Knicks won in double OT on Ewing’s night. Other than the somewhat tacky gift of a 2003 Humvee, a nice night all around.

Bad news and Good news.

Harry finds out directly from PJ what’s been holding up the rumored Return of the King trailer. Says M. Jackson, We’re not doing a ROTK trailer for the end of Two Towers like we did last year. The reason is that the TT extended DVD has been so complex this year, it would have taken too many resources away from trying to get that finished. The FOTR extended cut had 35 extra CG shots – the TT extended cut has over 150.” Ah well. The waiting is the hardest part, but at least it sounds like more Ents and more Gollum are in our future.

Friendly Fire.

Having appeased the DNC over the weekend, the Democratic field now set their sights on John Kerry, the current frontrunner. Intriguing to note that the former Gore cronies, like Edwards communications director David Ginsberg, have access to all the potential oppo research done for the 2000 veep decision…looks like the real nasty mud’ll be flying sooner rather than later.

How to be Good.

Much to their chagrin, political party ops and fundraisers go to “school” to try and figure out how to navigate (around) McCain-Feingold. It’s kinda sad how many reps are quoted as saying variations of “Wow, if I had known this bill was really going to stop us from getting all that money, I never would have voted for it.”

Ducttapegate.

Follow the money…as it turns out, a six-figure GOP donor stood quite a bit to gain from Tom Ridge’s recent hawking of duct tape. (Via Medley.) Of course, if this type of thing had happened during Clinton’s watch, Dan Burton would have already opened a House investigation by now.