While I've been gone, it's been good for fraught closure:

• Conrad Black, who still doesn't have Napoleon's penis, getting found guilty.
• Cold Pizza ceasing to be Cold Pizza, but not without earning extra fraught.
  
• TV Guide's great plan to cease to make itself useful resulting in them putting themselves up for sale, in hopes of a bigger sucker. (They're not quite on the list yet, but it's clear they're circling the bowl.)

If I were greedy, I'd even pat myself on the back for sensing something early here.

It's entirely possible we're living in the golden age of fraught. Each of the four major sports has a crisis that could obliterate its credibility throughout the land.

• MLB: Steroids
• NFL: Vick
• NBA: Refereeing and corruption
• NHL: The sale of the Predators, which looks to be the problem of the Penguins squared, compounded by it being a prism through which one can see the failure of current league strategy.
  

I'd call it a perfect storm to let MLS in, but after seeing Once in a Lifetime, I'm more or less convinced adding Beckham is less 1975 all over again, than 1977.

So here we are, in the middle of some big crazy time.