Well, maybe a little, but there’s no way it could’ve compared with the experience of being there in 2009, after so much hard work and intense focus.
I am, however, a little sad that I wasn’t able to be there so that I could replenish by supply of this:
Yes, I bought some in 2009, and yes, it was good — if it hadn’t been, why would I want more?
It’s all over the news and opinion feeds that Mitt Romney did not attend the inauguration, and as such was the first losing candidate in 24 years to skip the ceremony.
That’s technically true, but only technically. As Talking Points Memo notes:
But that’s not really fair. By my count, he’s the first losing nominee since Michael Dukakis (24 years ago) who didn’t have a current elected position in DC when he was running. Bush (92), Dole (96), Gore (00), Kerry (04), McCain (08). In other words, the other guys basically had to be there, as presidents, vice presidents or senior members of the Senate.
So slam that job-gobbling Mormon for all sorts of other things, but not this. This one’s not fair.
Someone has taken the time to document the 131 ways in which Dr. David Banner was provoked into Hulking-out during the run of the TV show.
Other favorites:
Via BoingBoing.
John Siracusa breaks down why the software in your TV blows chunks.
These production stills are a treasure. Actually, the photog in question apparently also shot for several other films — his sets include stills from several Aronofsky films.
Via MeFi.
Who knew punk ended up in Vegas, too? Jello Biafra and Horton Heat play Holiday in Cambodia at the fucking Hard Rock Hotel. Christ.
A Utah businessman has been bragging about firing two workers to avoid the costs of “Obongocare” — and states he chose those workers because of their support for the President last fall. All this, of course, despite the fact that the business in question is too small to be affected by the new law.
“Obongocare.” The mind boggles.
Source, per the bottom of the graphic, is Poorly Drawn Lines.
Performing, obviously, Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
(Hi, Frazer.)
From John Roderick, in conversation with John Hodgman:
It’s one thing to outlaw discrimination, an entirely other and much more difficult thing to end discrimination; one thing to raise taxes, an entirely other and much more difficult thing to persuade people that higher taxes benefit them. We have the harder job, and the onus is on us to do a better job. Conservatives base their appeal on greed and fear. If we truly believe that liberalism appeals to people’s generosity of spirit, we should be prepared to try harder and set a higher standard for ourselves than just shouting down the opposition. The Republicans own the tone of our national discourse now, and it’s a disgrace. High-mindedness is not naive, it is the soul of liberalism: an appeal to reason on behalf of justice.
No, seriously.
Sure, he’s still dead, but it’s important to remember just what a fucking loon he was.
Just go read. This woman and her office are proximately responsible for Aaron Swartz‘s death. They are government sanctioned bullies of the worst sort, emblematic of the excessive reach of prosecutors and law enforcement everywhere.
More at HBR.
Also, note that the supposed crime and charges were hogwash anyway. Seriously, I hope these people never get a decent night’s sleep again.
A Verizon developer outsourced his own job to China so he could have more time to surf the web.
Apropos of yesterday’s comment:
In the “girlfriend” category.
On one hand, we have AJ McCarron’s no-shit beauty queen girlfriend Katherine Webb — famously so attractive as to get ESPN’s on-air talent in trouble, and gain over a 100,000 Twitter followers over the course of the game. As we will see, however, it’s not her pulchritude that wins the day here.
On the other hand, we have Manti Te’o’s Stanford-grad companion. Lennay Kekua was famously and tragically struck down earlier this season by leukemia only days after he lost his grandmother, and the double loss became a key piece of his myth and narrative — and, indeed, of the “team of destiny” story increasingly told about the Irish this year, right up until last Monday night.
Te’o, unfortunately, loses this race by an even wider margin than the Heisman balloting, and not just because AJ’s gal is Miss Alabama. It’s not even that Kekua is dead. As it turns out, it appears she never existed at all. Pictures of her circulated in the media are of a completely unrelated woman who has never met Te’o, and is alive and well.
Manti Te’o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.
Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar’s office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.
The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te’o.
Deadspin’s story on this is long, but the reporting seems pretty solid, and paints a picture where it’s very, very hard not to see Te’o as part of the hoax.
There is no comment as yet from Notre Dame, Te’o, or his family, but this story is bound to get more interesting.
Mrs Heathen and I (as well as our pal R.W.S.) got hooked on Jim Butcher’s urban fantasy series back in 2007, when I was traveling full time. I devoured and passed on the first eight books in a couple months of long flights and hotel rooms, and since then we’ve snatched up the new installments more or less as quickly as Butcher could write them — even as, we must admit, the quality of the stories became a little uneven.
The books concern a “wizard for hire” in modern-day Chicago named Harry Dresden; he works as sort of a paranormal PI, and some of those cases turn out to be connected to giant plots by evil powers (as is so often the case). The early books are pretty stand-alone, but starting around the 7th book or so, hints of a broader over-arching plot begin. By book 10 (Small Favor, from 2008) the self-contained stories are completely in service, one way or another, of the longer narrative.
As with any “multi-installment” series, staying fresh is an issue. Butcher has done a reasonable job with worldbuilding over the years, and hasn’t exactly painted himself into a corner, but for whatever reason the last couple books weren’t quite as much fun as the earlier ones (aside, maybe, from the body count in Changes). Our little Dresden fan club was pretty unanimous in a “meh” rating for Ghost Story last year, so it took me a while to snag the 14th and latest installment, Cold Days. (Fun fact: despite the plural title, aside from a handwaved introductory period, the action takes places within a single 24-hour day.)
Yeah, well, read it in about 2 days. Loads of fun, but it’s entirely unclear to me where we’ll go next — despite the fact that Butcher apparently plans for 6 or 8 more books before Harry’s story is done. Harry’s experiencing some pretty serious power inflation to go with the ever-higher stakes, but at least this time around it worked. I reckon I’ll stay along for the ride.
JWZ has posted information about the creepiest, weirdest kitchen ever. There is a milk jug with nipples. That lactates. I am not making this up.
Bad Lip Reads takes on the NFL, and it is lovely.
I’m not sure there’s a more insipid part of the astonishingly vapid pageant process than the Q&A, but at least it’s given us some serious comedy gold in the past.
This time around, it’s almost better; Miss Iowa, as it happens, was asked about the legalization of pot. In response, she was firm and clear in her belief that it should only be used for medicinal purposes, or recreation, but nothing else.
Glad that’s clear, Brainiac.
Over at RollBamaRoll, they’ve got some excerpts from a Notre Dame board during the game last week. It’s just delicious.
It starts with these three bits of hubris:
I have officially hit my breaking point on hearing about Alabama’s “superiority.” For 44 long days, I’ve put up with it. But watching every single ESPN talking head pick the Tide has finally pushed me over the edge. I want Notre Dame to come out and punch Alabama in the mouth – not just for us, but for every non-SEC team that’s been branded as “inferior” or “slower” or “less physical.” It’s time to end this damn streak, and it’s time for Notre Dame to sit atop the college world once again.
I think very few of us are really nervous. I know im not
still just can’t believe it, can’t believe this is the year, for those of us like me who haven’t been alive long enough to see the last ND championship, it’s been a long wait, yet after following this team all year, there is no doubt in my mind they win this game, no doubt.
Later, with the rout on, we get the best line:
Nick Saban with a month prep time would beat Batman
Oh, the sweet, sweet schadenfreude!
Mrs Heathen and I have been enjoying American Horror Story since last year. While it’s absolutely trashy television, it’s undeniably fun. What’s particularly inventive is that each season is its own unconnected story, and though actors return, it’s in completely different roles.
The first season, last year, dealt with a marvelously haunted “murder house” in present-day Los Angeles freshly inhabited by a troubled married couple (Connie Britton (Tami Taylor from FNL), and Dylan McDermott); Jessica Lange won an Emmy for her portrayal of the homeowners’ fallen belle of a neighbor. Lange, for her part, behaved as if there were no such thing as overacting, and it served the production well.
Season two is on now. We’re a bit behind (we have two unwatched episodes on the Tivo), but it’s no less enthralling. In fact, it may be MORESO simply because the creators — after having gotten away with a crazy haunted house staffed, in part, by the deceased and pregnant mistress of Dylan McDermott, the original homeowner’s wife (still sporting a head wound), a deformed and malevolent basement-dwelling monster, and some sort of sex ghost in a gimp suit — have decided to throw subtlety to the wind and really get weird.
So, this time the setting is a bleak, mid-sixties Catholic madhouse. Here (obviously) we encounter a sadistic nun with a yen for caning (Lange, again), an escaped Nazi mad scientist, a doomed nymphomaniac, the inevitable trapped intrepid reporter (bonus: a lesbian!), the actual no-shit Devil, aliens, and — I shit you not — Al Swearengen in a Santa suit chasing people with a straight razor.
This episode’s blurb, by the way, is what drove me here to suggest you crazy perverts watch the show; Tivo and DirecTV describe it as:
A murderous Santa wreaks havoc on Briarcliff; Sister Jude faces off with the devil; Arden has a shocking encounter in the death chute.
Of course. And, given that we have four episodes to go, our expectation is that it’s only going to get MORE bananas.
Sleep tight, Heathen.
I don’t remember why this one ended up in the to-read list, but smart money says a glowing review somewhere. Let me just get his out there, then, so as (hopefully) to save someone else the trouble: Holy CRAP is this book ever a tedious pile of self-indulgent nothing.
Seriously. I haven’t been this disappointed by a book since the unaccountably award-winning Among Others last year, though the book itself has more in common with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (which I also hated) in its apparent pleasure in its own rambling, shambling blankness.
Avoid. Seriously. Thank goodness I have a decent palate cleanser on hand.
The Brazilian Treehopper is the goofiest weirdest thing you’ll see today.
Clinton/Biden 2016: Because Joe Shouldn’t Have To Move.
(For the purposes of comedy, we should should ignore that both are really too old to run again. At Inauguration Day in 2017, HRC will be about 68 and a quarter, and Biden will be over 72. Reagan, who was clearly too old, was two weeks shy of 70 in January of 1981.)
I didn’t think to look before, but this article points out something fantastic: in the most recent 8 years of Nick Saban’s college coaching career, he has won 4 national titles. When he plays, he bats .500. Not bad.
The other fun stat: Saban has won 27% of all BCS National Championships (4 of 15).
The SEC, of course, has won 9 of 15, or 60%. (The Big XII has 2; the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, and Pac-12 all have 1 each on the field.)
Merry Clayton has a voice that will melt steel. You probably don’t know her name, but you know her astonishing backing vocal on Gimme Shelter.
What you also don’t know is that, after the sessions for that record, she miscarried. The Stones were distraught, and gave her a portion of the song royalties. She also recorded her own version, which I strongly recommend you go listen to.
That is, of course, no surprise at all.
I’ve always found it astonishing that the private schools some of my friends attended started hassling them for donations while they were still making student loan payments.
On, and another winner, from the sidebar of that very page: Gorilla Sales Skyrocket After Latest Gorilla Attack.
The NFL draft is coming up, obviously. You may be exposed to many odd names as a consequence. I just want to make sure you’re aware that “Barkevious Mingo” is an actual, real defensive end who played for LSU, not a character from this Key & Peele skit.
Older dog teaches puppy how to climb stairs. No, I’m serious. Seen on Twitter.
If you have Chrome on your computer, you should immediately check this out. However, as noted in the disclaimer, please do not attempt to use this simulation for interstellar navigation.
(If you’re anything like me, this sort of reminds of you this famous short film.)
The national office of the Boy Scouts of America has taken the unprecedented step of reversing a local council’s Eagle award decision, officially denying Ryan Andresen the rank on the grounds that he is gay.
Advancement in the Boy Scouts is essentially automatic up until Eagle; you do your merit pages and whatnot, reach the requisite time in the prior rank, and you get promoted. Eagle is different; you have to complete a significant service project, and then go before a (local to your troop) committee for review. I always saw this step as a final check, so to speak, to avoid promoting fairweather Eagles not actually committed to scouting — resume padders or people otherwise unfit at the character level, I guess. My own committee had only one person on it other than my scoutmaster, if I recall correctly, but other councils may do it differently. In any case, it is that body whose decision is final. They forward the paperwork to some office, and your Eagle kit comes back to be awarded at the next Court of Honor.
That BSA would rescind the decision of a local council here is enormous, and it shows precisely how much of a pawn of right-wing interests the group has become — and makes it clear that cries of “well, it’s just the national office that’s bigoted; my local group is fine!” are misguided. That the Mormon church is the single largest supporter of Scouting is a major part of this problem.
It’s a damn shame. My experience with Scouting in the middle 1980s was formative and valuable. There are no mini-Heathen to steer away from it, but the overt, bigoted, rightward trend has absolutely kept me from volunteering my time with local scouting groups, which is something I always thought I’d be happy to do. I certainly never thought I’d feel the level of shame for their behavior that I do now. Dammit, I’m from Mississippi; I don’t need another group acting all stupid for me to be ashamed of — magnolia-tinged shenanigans take up enough of my head-shaking as it is.
NYT: “Here is what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie.”
No, seriously. This is brilliant work, about Paul Schrader’s microfinanced The Canyons.
These guys are WAY more metal than your favorite band. Seriously.
Because they’re robots. No, seriously. Robots. The drummer has four arms. The guitarist has 78 fingers.
(Also, you have no idea how many Terminator themed headlines I avoided in writing this post.)
The truth — about SCORPIONS!
Found on Reddit; h/t to Jay Lee on Twitter.
At halftime, ESPN’s sideline girl interviewed Irish coach Brian Kelly:
Her: “Where do the fixes need to come in the second half?”
Kelly: “Uh, maybe Alabama doesn’t come back in the second half.”
Saban beats you, in part, by making you quit. This is some quit, right there, and there was still 30 minutes of football to be played.
“Hello, I’m Eddie Lacy.”
Roll Damn Tide. Best overheard line (from Reddit): “The Irish haven’t suffered like this since the potato famine.” A friend notes he saw another pithy line on Facebook: “They kept talking about Notre Dame having an SEC caliber defense. Unfortunately, it was Auburn’s.” ZING.
I’m just sorry we didn’t get the shutout. Best trivia-stat I’ve seen so far: AJ McCarron now has been on more championship teams (3, because he was a redshirt on the 2009 team that beat Texas) than he has losses as the starting QB (2: LSU last year, A&M this year).
Speaking of AJ, here’s his girlfriend and his mom (the girlfriend now has over 130,000 followers on Twitter after Musburger’s creepy comments):
So, yeah, back to back titles. But 3 in 4 years just means Nick is still pissed off about the 2010 team missing the mark, and God love him for it.
This game is particularly delicious, because Notre Dame is one of only two teams with what I’d call a statistically meaningful winning record vs. Alabama (more than 5 games), and are two of only three teams who are “ahead” of us by more than a single game. I broke this down before season started, but it’s worth updating:
Rice, obviously, is the other team that’s more than a game ahead on the series, which is hilarious — and also not likely to ever change.
Note this is a shorter list than the August version: we evened up against Michigan and Missouri in routs during the regular season. Unfortunately, it’ll be at least another 2 years before we once again have a winning record vs. the entire SEC — we don’t play Missouri in 2013. (Also, I removed Louisiana Tech — on the field, Alabama is 3-2 vs. the Bulldogs, but the source I used in August reflected a sanction forfeit that flipped it to 2-3.)
So anyway, Roll Tide Roll, and see you in August.
One more thing: RAMMER JAMMER:
(As a footnote, let me add that this site is a pretty great research tool. No idea who put it together, though.)
This is the best thing to ever happen on Twitter, period. Seriously. Check it out.
Via MeFi, we find this promo of a somewhat intense encounter with a polar bear. His real-time narration is a bit breathless, but then again he IS being investigated by a giant bear who would like to eat him.
Buried in this rundown of Richard Garriott’s Mayan Apocalypse party is this delightful paragraph:
Garriott, 51, who made his first million after developing the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) “Ultima” while in his early twenties, has become known for his ostentatious and theatrical gatherings that give his guests a chance to visit a live version of his virual worlds. His first big parties date back to the late eighties when he began hosting elaborate haunted houses. Perhaps his boldest bash was his Titanic-themed party in 1998—he decorated a barge as the doomed ship, loaded it with VIPs in tuxedos and ball gowns, and then made the vessel sink in Lake Austin, forcing his guests, including the then-mayor of Austin, Kirk Watson, to swim to shore.
That man knows how to live.
