You Know What Else is Lame? Arc de Triomphe 2.

Man, how incredibly depressing it was yesterday to stand with a bunch of other people and watch them tear Jack's beanstalk down. It really felt like the end of an era. Oh, I know the new beanstalk they're going to put up is supposedly going to be ten times nicer, but a sixteen-screen movie theater with stadium seating, forty shops, a food court, and underground parking don't make a great giant beanstalk. What makes a great giant beanstalk is the history of the thing. The old one might have been creaky, it might have smelled weird when it rained, and you couldn't fit more than a couple of hundred people in it, but it was the first one, and it's where it all happened. No one had any naming rights to it, there wasn't some big fight in the city council over it, it didn't provide any jobs. No, the magic beans just dropped one day and up it went, and the next thing you knew, a legend was born. There's something nice and simple about that. I'll bet you in ten years that the kids who watched them demolish the beanstalk yesterday won't even know there even was a first one. If Jack were alive today, if he hadn't gotten mauled by that gay polar bear (and you can send me all the links to the video you want, I am not going to watch it, you sickos), he'd be really sad today to see that big empty crater beside J.C. Penney's. Well, I guess we'll see in the fall of 2009 if the new beanstalk is worth spending $319 million in taxpayer money. For that kind of cash, the Ruby Tuesday in this thing had better have a dog wash in the back and a working waterfall behind the salad bar.