The Dark Knight Doesn't Return

For years, fanboys have been looking forward to Frank Miller bat-projects. The Dark Knight Strikes Again was a disappointing pile of shit (especially on the heels of the legendary The Dark Knight Returns), so when Miller spoke of a more contemporary Gotham City graphic novel, once again people salivated with anticipation. And with good reason - the Caped Crusader versus Al-Qaeda. Miller said the elusive project is finally close to completion...but that the name and central character have changed. And DC Comics won't be the publisher.

"It's almost done; I should be finished within a month," Miller said. "It's no longer a DC book. I decided partway through it that it was not a Batman story. The hero is much closer to 'Dirty Harry' than Batman. It's a new hero that I've made up that fights Al-Qaeda."

Miller said the story will be set in a place called Empire City, another allusion to New York (just like Gotham). "The character is called The Fixer and he's very much an adventurer who's been essentially searching for a mission." Hmmm...kinda generic soldier of fortune, but go on... "He's been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He's been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it -- he does it to keep in shape. He's very different than Batman in that he's not a tortured soul. He's a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story." Well, crime-fighter-as-fitness-routine is different.

Despite his success with Batman and his 300 and Sin City properties with Dark Horse, DC executives were reportedly leery of Miller's plan to drop their globally recognized mega-property inside an Al-Qaeda vendetta fantasy. "I had a talk with [former DC president / publisher] Paul Levitz and I said, 'Look, this isn't your Batman,'" Miller said. "I pushed Batman as far as he can go and after a while he stops being Batman. My guy carries a couple of guns and is up against an existential threat. He's not just up against a goofy villain. Ignoring an enemy that's committed to our annihilation is kind of silly, It just seems that chasing the Riddler around seems silly compared to what's going on out there. I've taken Batman as far as he can go."

Miller feels the project that has arrived right on time, creatively speaking. "It began as my reaction to 9/11 and it was an extremely angry piece of work and as the years have passed by I've done movies and I've done other things and time has provided some good distance, so it becomes more of a cohesive story as it progresses. The Fixer has also become his own character in a way I've really enjoyed. No one will read this and think, 'Where's Batman?'"

The artist and writer said he will complete the book before he signs with a publisher.

What Took So Long?

"AAAAAALALALA ACTION! AAAAAALALALA ACTION! "

The trailer for Who Killed Captain Alex, described as “Uganda’s first action film” is likely to have you asking "wait, which one is Captain Alex", likely in the same breath as "WTF is going on?".

Uganda’s The Observer, had this gem from the producers:

“When we approached CPS [Uganda's Central Police Station] about the project, we were told that we [film industry] are not yet at that level. They could only provide us with police uniforms,” he says. “But we had asked them to provide us with helicopters, guns, tankers and access to army barracks. So we had to settle for the computer.”

It is understandably easy to acknowledge government’s safety and security concerns given that even trained personnel have had their own issues with guns. Moreover, production happened during the bloody September Buganda riots. Imagine the trouble Nabwama and company would be in, had they been issued with real guns!

The film features Gpuffs, Kakule William, Kabanda and Richard Ssebunya, not surprisingly unknown around the world - and in Uganda. Hard to believe that it only cost about $8 million...oh, sorry - that's approximately $3500 converted into U.S. dollars. A sequel is on the way according to Ramon Film Productions, and will have "ghetto president Bobi Wine". Yes, it will be hard to wait that long...

Make Me A Believer

Unlike Hollywood, the porn industry does not waste time when making sequels, and that means there's a new x-rated X-Files parody film headed your way.

It was less than a year ago when I first shared the story, but apparently it was a big hit with all the basement dwellers and nerds. For an adult movie, the production value is pretty high, and I blows my mind still how much Kimberly Kane (triple Best Actress - AVN, XBIZ, and XRCO awards) likes like Gillian Anderson.

Filmed last month in five days (that's a long shoot!) at a San Fernando Valley soundstage (naturally) as well as the high desert, the movie is chronically a prequel to the original and focuses on the original subject's alien conspiracy mythology. Does that even matter? Fans of the show will note the debuts of the Cigarette Smoking Man, Alex Krycek, Diana Fowley, Marita Covarrubias, and The Lone Gunmen, though regular perverts may not really get much from that. If a third Sex Files is produced - and I'm guessing that it will, given the industry is up to Big Wet Asses 18 - the film will deal with the alien invasion of 2012, as mentioned in The X-Files series finale "The Truth".

The trailer is here, and I agree with Topless Robot - it will be disappointing if they don't call it The Sex Files 2: Fuck The Future. No release date has been set, but the film will come out later this year.

Courtesy of LAist, here's a gang of clickable thumbnails:

Shields Up!

One of the limitations to travel around the solar system is the threat of radiation, but scientists believe a thumb-sized magnet could produce a force field big enough to shield an entire spaceship.

The Sun is constantly shooting high-energy particles out, a solar wind that yields radiation over 1000 times more powerful than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Fortunately, our magnetosphere (produced by the planet's molten iron core) deflects the solar wind and protects from that radiation. It was thought a (prohibitively) huge magnet would be necessary to produce a similar result for a spaceship, but some Brits have determined much less is necessary to generate a magnetic field.

Because the solar wind is a plasma made up of charged particles, it also carries a magnetic field. When the two fields clash, since the solar wind's field is created by free-moving particles, it yields, altering its orientation to minimise conflict with the mini-magnetosphere's field. Positively charged protons have nearly 2000 times the mass of the negatively charged electrons, so the latter are much more easily deflected. The electrons stay at the surface of the magnetic bubble, while the positive charges penetrate further in. This separation of positive and negative charges generates intense electric fields up to a million times stronger than the magnetic fields that created them. Subsequent solar wind particles hit these electric fields and are strongly deflected. The result is a shielding effect far more powerful than the magnetic field alone might be expected to provide.

New Scientist has the details, and while there is concern that the higher-energy particles in space could blast through such a shield, Rutherford Appleton Lab (who made the discovery) is already in talks with NASA to determine the implications of their find.

2010 Version At Terminal 5

The Smashing Pumpkins (or, Billy Corgan and three other people) played earlier this week in New York. Holdover Jeff Schroeder (continuing in the James Iha role) joined young Jimmy Chamberlin play-alike Mike Byrne and Nicole Fiorentino, who fills the hot female bassist position formerly held by Ginger Pooley, Melissa Auf der Maur, and D'arcy Wretzky. They don't look the same, but at least the sound is.

SPIN magazine webcast the show and there's plenty of tracks uploaded.

Scamline, Featuring Glenn Beck

Goldline International is under investigation by both the Santa Monica City Attorney and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. There's also a separate investigation by Congress into the possible criminal practices. Not enough dubiousness? The firm has been the subject of an ABC Nightline News expose, as well as an investigation by a NY Congressman. Still not satisfied? It's biggest champion is Glenn "Douchepussy" Beck.

Illustrator Jess Bachman (most recently of Bailout Nation) explains it below:

T-Bombs

The txtBOMBER is a one-hand-guerrilla-printer. It's the size of a steam iron, and can generate text on any flat surface - especially vertical ones. It has seven build-in pens to "print" the letters and a micro-controller brain. According to its inventor, Felix Vorreiter, it only speaks German at the moment.

Most Excellent

On last week’s Film Drunk Frotcast, the boys were kicking around ideas, and came up with “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Inception.” They never made it past the title stage, and frankly (neither did an idea for a Food Network show called “Cakes on a Plane” - We gotta serve these motherfucking cakes to the people on this motherfuckin’ plane!). But through the power of the interweb, one of the Film Drunk followers took the idea and ran with it.

LA's Red Wing

The LA Kings announced that they signed a Russian LW for the upcoming season...and it wasn't Ilya Kovalchuk. Or their UFA Alexander Frolov (he's now a New York Ranger*).

Enter Oleksiy Volodymyrovych "Alexei" Ponikarovsky (that's Олексій Володимирович Понікаровський to you), who landed a one year-$3 million deal after his recent camapign with Toronto and Pittsburgh, where he scored 21 goals and 50 points. Ponikarovsky has scored at least 20 goals in four of the past five seasons, and is hoping to stay in the same town come next season. “I hope it’s going to be a long-term relationship after one year,” he said. “This was the first time I ever experienced the free agency process, and so it was both exciting and tough. I’m happy it’s over, and that I know the team I’m going to be playing for next season. It’s a young team playing great hockey. I’ve followed the team, how they play and where they are at, so I know it’s going to be an exciting year.”

Ponikarovsky has been called a solid two-way forward, and handled a significant offensive role in Toronto despite their poor showing over the last few years. He scored a career-high 61 points in 2008-09, including 23 goals. And in 11 postseason games with the Penguins last spring, he scored five points. “I’m 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, and I know what my game is,” Ponikarovsky said. “I have to use my size and basically go hard to the net—take the puck there, protect the puck in the corners and finish my checks, all the basic stuff that a guy my size has to do, along with scoring some goals and helping my team win.” He's like late season filler Fredrik Modin, but a decade younger and healthy.

The deal for Ponikarovsky still leaves the LA roughly $10 million under the salary cap, though there's not much left in the free agent realm. There's still trades to be made, and there is a possibility that a top scorer or defenseman could be acquired before the season opener.

* One other Russian, Artem Anisimov, plays on the Rangers. Perhaps they will run a line with the threesome of Frolov - Anisimov - Gaborik...the FAG line?

An A For The F

I remember when the name FCC made me think of puritanical censorship standards. But they actually came up with good policy regarding digital rights and technology.

The biggest splash yesterday was when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking” your cell phone legal.

Jailbreaking is "the practice of unlocking a phone so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by the manufacturer", and has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are Apple iPhones and are used on the (U.S.) T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers. Common jailbroken phone uses are to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone's SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

Estimated are that more than a million iPhone owners have jailbroken their phones. While technically illegal, no one has been sued or prosecuted for the practice - though Steve Jobs and company will void your warranty if they discover your iPhone was jailbroken. Apple fought hard against the legalization, arguing that jailbreaking was a form of copyright violation. The FCC disagreed, saying that jailbreaking merely "enhanced the inter-operability" of the phone, and was therefore legitimate under fair-use rules.

Basically, anyone can jailbreak or otherwise unlock any cell phone without fear of legal penalties, whether you want to install unsupported applications or switch to another cellular carrier. Cell phone companies will likely make it difficult for you to do this, but at least you don't need to saddle up to a carrier you don't want just because they have your favorite phone. In addition to the jailbreaking exemption, there were other positive announcements:

• Professors, students and documentary filmmakers are now allowed, for “noncommercial” purposes, to break the copy protection measures on DVDs to be used in classroom or other not-for-profit environments.

• Computer owners to bypass dongles (hardware devices used in conjunction with software to guarantee the correct owner is behind the keyboard) if they are no longer in operation and can’t be replaced. Dongles are rare for consumer technology products now, but industrial users should have a nerd boner.

• People (read:h4x0rs) are now free to circumvent protection measures on video games — but only to investigate and correct security flaws in those games. Sorry, computer software is not part of this ruling, just video games.

Not Quite Charm School

Timing Is The New Black

James Laver was a British historian of art and fashion design born on the cusp of the 20th century. This is the model he devised to depict the changing social perceptions of women’s fashion:

Indecent: 10 years before its time

Shameless: 5 years before its time

Daring: 1 year before its time

Smart: Current Fashion

Dowdy: 1 year after its time

Hideous: 10 years after its time

Ridiculous: 20 years after its time

Amusing: 30 years after its time

Quaint: 50 years after its time

Charming: 70 years after its time

Romantic: 100 years after its time

Beautiful: 150 years after its time

In Tastes and Fashion: From the French Revolution Until Today (published 1937), Laver wrote:

The modern young man can contemplate without emotion the entire area of the female leg and a considerable portion of the stomach. In the nineteen-twenties, for the first time in many hundreds of years, the female leg was exposed to general view. The bust, however, also for the first time in many centuries, was not supposed to exist at all, and women who did not mind in the least exposing their lower limbs would have been embarrassed if called upon to wear a deep decolletage.

In short, the female body consists of a series of sterilized zones, which are those exposed by the fashion just going out, and an erogenous zone, which will be the point of interest for the fashion which is just coming in. This erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever actually catching up. It is obvious that if you ever really catch it up you are immediately arrested for indecent exposure. If you almost catch it up you are celebrated as a leader of fashion.

Maybe it's because I'm in the business, but I find it interesting to look at theory behind it.

Dirty Horses

After a quick start from third on the grid, Felipe Massa led the German Grand Prix race, his best showing since returning from injury last year. And the only thing standing between him and victory was his teammate...and his team.

What sets teams like McLaren and Red Bull apart from Ferrari is that both have dealt with the competition between drivers who both want to win, and done it without looking like scumbags. Yesterday, Ferrari not only played favorites, but did it in such an obvious, disgusting way that it clearly tarnished both the race results and the sport. On lap 49, Fernando Alonso "passed" Massa, and the seven extra points his finish earned him for the driver's standings (without changing their earned constructor's points) cost the team $100,000 in fines.

I lost respect for them after they way they bungled their roster and ousted Kimi Raikonnen. This year, Alonso has been even more insufferable with his crying and complaining, and if there's any less I can like them, that's where I'm at. I noted that Massa likely got resigned because he wasn't rocking the boat for Ferrari's new favorite son...guess he forgot his place and finally found his balls over the weekend. But rather than celebrate him returning to form, it was a smackdown.

In a tense and hostile news conference, Massa faced questions about whether he was now number two at the team while Alonso fended off suggestions that the win was as tainted as the one he took in Singapore in 2008 after Brazilian team mate Nelson Piquet crashed his Renault deliberately to help him. Massa said he had made the decision himself, saying he was struggling with the hard tyres, the radio traffic suggested a different story. "So, Fernando is faster than you," his race engineer, Rob Smedley told him. After Alonso passed him, Smedley added: "Good lad. Just stick with it now. Sorry." Smedley later said the Brazilian had been "very, very, very magnanimous". After hearing from both drivers and Ferrari team manager, the four race stewards found Ferrari had broken the rules. In addition to the fine, the team were referred to the FIA's world motorsport council, which can impose unlimited penalties.

Other team managers had little support for their rival. "I have to say that is the clearest team order I've ever seen," said Red Bull principle Christian Horner. "It's wrong for the sport. The drivers should have been allowed to race," he added calling the incident "a shame for F1". McLaren head Martin Whitmarsh refused to get drawn into the debate, saying he would speak to the team in private. Both teams lead Ferrari in points and have had to fend off questions about favoritism between their own drivers this season, but never has there something so obvious during a race.

Lotus head Mike Gascoyne said he had sympathy for Ferrari but the gesture had been too blatant. "There's always been team orders in Formula One," he said. "The bottom line is - if you are going to do it, do it far more cleverly than that". Dirty little secret or not, memories of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix were stirred up: Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Ferrari (surprise!) teammate Michael Schumacher win, and that notorious incident led to team orders being banned. Not surprisingly, Schumi "understood" his former employer's decision, but Barrichello cleverly stayed quiet on the matter.

Former Ferrari driver Niki Lauda, however, hit out at the team. “This was the most stupid thing I have ever seen from Ferrari," he said. "Why did they do it? They did not need to because the championship is alive for another eight races. Why could Massa not have a chance to win, a year since he had the accident that could have cost his life?" He also attacked Alonso for the manner in which he dealt with the press in the immediate aftermath of the race – when he denied that team orders had been used. "I've never heard a driver talk such bullshit," he said. "He has no character." Damn, son! I like me some Niki Lauda!

Ferrari big boss Luca di Montezemolo basically admitted to the team orders, and then called out critics for their hypocrisy, which is a stupid defense tactic. "I simply reaffirm what I have always maintained, which is that our drivers are very well aware, and it is something they have to stick to, that if one races for Ferrari, then the interests of the team come before those of the individual."

There have been several posts, criticisms and denials since the race, which show the scheme for what it is - pathetic.

• Alonso: I don't know what happened

• Formula One team orders never really went away

• Alonso: Risks would have been 'pointless'

• Massa: I can’t be happy

• Ferrari decides against appeal

• Alonso gets the win without the applause

• Massa: We don't have team orders

• Ferrari still insist they did nothing wrong

• Domenicali denies any wrongdoing

The Goon

I mentioned it slightly more than two years ago, but the film has finally come together.

Crap Farm

Glee may be rekindling the public's love affair with the cheesy "let me tell ya about it...in a song!" side of entertainment, but some ideas should just not ever leave the discussion stage. Can there be any possible good reason to mix Orwellian dystopia and showtunes?

Elton John and Lee Hall (who wrote the screenplay for Billy Elliot)are working on adapting Animal Farm into a stage musical. Hall said it took about two years to secure the rights for the project, and that he is now “deep into it, writing songs for pigs and other four-legged friends.” Look, it's great that Elton John's songs in The Lion King pushed the cartoon towards an easier Broadway transition, but sixty year old political allegory about communism and Russia? Who is the idiot who thought more people dressed in animal costumes doing soft shoe was necessary?

“Elton likes to have the lyrics done and have them in front of him so I’ll work on a batch before I give him anything to look at,” added Hall on the current status. Elton John also used to like naked men and drugs done in batches before him too. I don't think catering to his whimsy is worth indulging.

It would probably take another two years before the musical is finished, and now I'm actually hoping the Mayans were right. No producers or theatrical companies are officially attached yet, and no actors have been cast, so there is a chance that it dies like so many other awful musical theater projects. I will never stop loving the best sentence in the story (and perhaps modern literature), "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", but goddamn it if they're not trying with this retarded project.

This Samurai Should Commit Seppuku

I don't know if I want to live in a world where over 100 million Michael Cretu-produced records have been sold. Especially with such horrible lip / performance syncing (this is worse than Mexican television). He is like a shitty Euro-looking Richard Marx.

The Sound Of Paradigms Shifting?

"The music business historically has been built around albums...This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don't listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs."

Tom Silverman (chairman and CEO of Tommy Boy Records) and Eric Garland ( CEO of Big Champagne) made their own State of the Music Industry address as a sly way to introduce their creation, the Ultimate Chart. But the data they presented shows an industry in flux.

A shift from albums to singles They claim of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy - I find that to be absolute bullshit. You mean to tell me that 17,000 performers (and really more, because many of those were likely multiperson bands) don't know more than one person , and didn't convince them to purchase an album? I don't by it. More than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies, well, that I'm not surprised and makes more sense. One of my former instructors from the music business mentioned that 99% of the albums released don't recoup their costs to the record companies. Barely 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, and that's between physical units and digital album sales. Only 2% of new albums (tracked with Soundscan) sold over 5,000 physical copies.

They attributed the (per-song growth and) album sale depression due in part to iTunes and other online sales outlets selling every song as a single for 99 cents. "Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single," said Silverman, who feels setting the price at a tenth of an album's cost was a mistake. "It should've been a $1.99, and then we would've seen higher digital album sales because it would've been a bigger discount for buying an album." However companies like Universal Music have hit about 14% for complete digital albums sales, suggesting the $9.99 price is right with consumers.

Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter The new figure that is being looked at nearly more than sales are "FFF numbers" - an artist's friends, fans, and followers. All three websites are indicators of the reach that musicians have. On one hand the data show how extensive musical acts are saturating the public, but some of the info is inaccurate. Recently, Facebook forced most users to convert their profile favorites into "fan" data - and adding an act as a friend made the user a fan and didn't really indicate any consumer activity.

Google and YouTube more important than iTunes It wasn't Apple that was viewed as the most important name in music, even though iPods, iPhones, and iTunes are hot music portals. Looking at where people are listening to music—not even just looking at videos — people are turning more and more to YouTube, which they calls the "largest catalog of on-demand music on the Internet."

Internet radio Pandora is now the most popular Internet radio service, with a 52% market share, close to 60 million registered users, and more than 1 billion stations, as if we needed 492 Limp Bizkit channels. Overall, internet radio is still tiny, as Pandora represents under 2% of all radio listening, but let's not marginalize 60 million as a figure.

None of these things is a surprise to me, especially as a musician with some web savvy, but to the general public this may be news. I have been saying it for years how the industry has been fucking itself by pushing mediocre acts that don't have real talent or more than one or two songs, and for it's own ineptitude I'm thrilled at their continued implosion. But since they are only interested in sales, the growing singles market is their only real way to stay in the red, and it only creates more shitty music, and an album of garbage surrounding a decent track or two.

Color Me Sadd

Authorities say one of the singers from the 1990s R&B group Color Me Badd was arrested in Hawaii following a fight with his wife. And you thought you'd never hear that group's name again...

Honolulu police say Bryan Abrams was arrested after getting into an argument with his wife and throwing her across the room. Abrams was arrested on suspicion of harassment, and later released. For unknown reasons, Color Me Badd performed a concert in Honolulu last Saturday. Abrams was one of the founding members of the Oklahoma-based quartet. He wasn't the George Michaels looking one. Or the Wesley Snipes looking one. Or the Kenny G looking one. Don't pretend you can't remember their songs "I Wanna Sex You Up" and "I Adore Mi Amore".

After Epic Records shockingly decided not to renew the band's recording deal, Color Me Badd officially disbanded in May 2000. Since then, one of them married a former American Idol contestant, another released a solo album that features contemporary hip-hop/rap material with gospel and soul music (ugh), and one lives in Cincinnati, Ohio and works for a local insurance company - like it matters if I told you the names...

Many recall the unexpected tragedy of 2001, when Bryan Abrams released a solo album entitled "Welcome to Me" (no thank you). Further grief came in 2007, when Abrams participated in the VH1 reality show "Mission: Man Band", though I swear is a gay pron title. And for your historical round up, three quarters of the band reunited for the "DirecTV Gameshow: Rock and a Hardplace" hosted by Meatloaf. I'm not making that up, but it sounds so ridiculous, you'd have to question it.

Multiphysics

Lobsterbation?

(Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9464, 11 March 1921, Page 2)

It Never Ends

So yesterday, a small tear was shed about losing Ilya Kovalchuk in the roller coaster courting of free agency...but the saga WILL. NOT. END.

The NHL stepped in and voided the 17-year supercontract between Kovy and New Jersey, citing improprieties in the structure that deliberately created a lower salary cap hit. And why is that important? There's a great explanation by Rich Hammond about how salary and salary cap really factor into deals which clears up a lot, but there's also the glaring tilt in salary - here's how the payout would have been:

2010-11: $6 million
2011-12: $6 million
2012-13: $11.5 million
2013-14: $11.5 million
2014-15: $11.5 million
2015-16: $11.5 million
2016-17: $11.5 million
2017-18: $10.5 million
2018-19: $8.5 million
2019-20: $6.5 million
2020-21: $3.5 million
2021-22: $750,000
2022-23: $550,000
2023-24: $550,000
2024-25: $550,000
2025-26: $550,000
2026-27: $550,000

The contract represents a $6 million annual cap hit for the Devils. There is a no movement clause through the 2016-17 season and a no trade clause from 2018-19 through the deal's completion. Kovalchuk can be traded between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018.

Sure, you pay a player more when they're in their prime, but the deal has Kovy on ice when he's 44 years old...and he's no Chris Chelios in terms of stamina or Gordie Howe in longevity.

Kings-centric blog Jewels From The Crown immediately and clairvoyantly questioned the signing, and called for an investigation of the 17-year deal with the Devils:

If (Commissioner) Bettman isn't going to draw the line in the sand here, where is the line? Why not have it be 23 years, until Kovalchuk is 50? Thirty-three years, till he's 60? Obviously, Lamoriello (NJ's GM) has made the calculation and decided that 17 years is the farthest he can push the Bettman without forcing him to void the deal. But Chicago made that calculation on the Hossa deal and decided a deal that took Hossa to age 42 was as far as they could go, and they got themselves an investigation. I know that's meaningless, except to say that the Kovalchuk deal has at least earned itself that much.

And this was the one that broke the dam, as Yahoo! Sports NHL concisely points out here.

So now, The NHL Players Association has five days to file a grievance and the contract would be considered dead until an arbitrator's decision is announced. If there's no response from the NHLPA, then after five days the contract is dead and it's back to the free market. Interestingly, Devils GM Lou Lamoriello openly admitted he was not a fan of the deal and that the NHL "shouldn't have these", and it's worth adding that New Jersey's VP of Hockey Ops, Steve Pellegrini, worked for the NHL as their "cap regulator", meaning that he understands everything there is to know about the collective bargaining agreement - so this should have cleared.

A source "familiar with NHL contracts and the CBA" told ESPN.com that they can't see how the NHL could win its case -- that the deal circumvents the collective bargaining agreement -- if it went to court. What's to stop a team from signing a player to a contract that takes him into his 40s, the source said. There is no language in the CBA to prohibit that, they pointed out. But this may be the crackdown from the league to close the loophole of recent deals tendered to players like Roberto Luongo, Chris Pronger, Marc Savard, Marian Hossa and others preceding Kovalchuk's deal. The result, if it works in the NHL's favor, would limit the length of contracts and solidify language governing the range of payments acceptable within a contract.

If the contract is killed, what happens next? Will teams return to the frenzy now that the league has officially chilled the long-term, front-loaded contract frenzy? And what team will take a run at Kovy knowing he'll want the max dollars allowable ($11.5 million) along with a long term?