You won’t know it when you read it but I left this edition of the Wednesday links to the last minute. Part of the problem was picking out who to lead this post with. A lot of people were impressed with Victoria Justice at the VMAs and who am I to disappoint?

As we all know, Star Wars is coming to Blu-Ray this fall. Naturally, George Lucas is going to make some tweaks to improve the films. However, his idea of improvements are very different from rational human beings. (io9)

Hurricane Irene wasn’t really the east coast apocalypse that was predicted. Instead, people went out and had some fun. For example, Times Square was the private playground for some Canadians. (Puck Daddy)

We all think of George Carlin as an angry, profane stand-up comedian but he wasn’t always like that. Here’s a look at the evolution of his stand-up over the course of his career. (SplitSider)

After the jump, Madden fever, Beyonce nearly breaks Twitter and craptacular TV theme songs.

College football season starts up this weekend. So that means it’s time for a hater’s guide to college football. (GQ)

Speaking of football, Madden 12 is out this week. In case you were wondering if you should pick up this year’s roster update, here’s a review by proper football folks. (Shutdown Corner)

Madden fever is always accompanied and/or preceded by a bunch of custom covers made by fans. If you want one for your team, here’s a collection of 72 custom Madden covers that don’t have the random Cleveland guy on the front. (Black Sports Online)

Remember that Ric Flair piece on Grantland that I linked to on Sunday? Well, Flair is planning on suing over falsehoods in the story. The problem is that those falsehoods are actually taken from the Nature Boy’s autobiography. (Deadspin)

Speaking of Grantland, they took an in-depth look at the effects different tennis court surfaces have on play. (Grantland)

Scientists have discovered the darkest planet they’ve ever found. Naturally, the good folks at the Death Star’s PR department want it called Planet Vader. (Death Star PR)

By now, everyone knows that Beyonce is pregnant. What you may not know is that Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement set a record for most tweets per second on Twitter. As if we needed another sign that society is a failure. (Tech Crunch)

Let’s close out with some video collections. First, it’s the ten most entertaining sports media clips. Yes, the Artie Lange moment is in there. (Awful Announcing)

Remember your favourite vintage TV show theme songs? Turns out most of the kinda sucked. Though I do protest the inclusion of the Night Court theme. (Uproxx)

Back to Hurricane Irene for a second. In honour of the hurricane, here’s a look at reporters getting blown over by hurricanes over the years. (Gawker)

I don’t have any good YouTuberry this week so here’s Living Colour performing Cult of Personality on Arsenio. Let’s face it, if you had a personal theme song, this would be a pretty damn good choice.