I just checked out today’s newspaper front pages over at the Newseum, and guess what? It turns out Leanne’s Trilogy Tuesday story for the Albuquerque Journal wasn’t just in the Sunday paper — it was central feature on the front page of the Sunday paper!

Nifty layout, eh? And, yup, my photo is there:

Woohoo!

On Thursday night, I sent a mass e-mail to my friends and family, updating everyone on my life — including my plan to attend law school at Notre Dame. I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails back, including a wide range of reactions to my law-school plans.

My favorite response came from Lincoln Bandlow, a Los Angeles attorney who teaches media law at USC. His class was so great, it helped cement my decision to study law, and he eventually wrote one of my letters of recommendation. Anyway, he wrote in his e-mail, “When you are on your last final in your first year of law school and feel that suicide is a viable solution to your misery, I hope you will not blame me. :) Good luck!” LOL!

Others were less enthusiastic. Ed Cray, a journalism professor who helped recruit me to attend USC in the first place, wrote, “Nice to hear from you. And sorry to learn that you are ensnared in the clutches of the law.”

And Christine Perkins, my high-school English and yearbook teacher, wrote “I can’t believe you are studying law — are you sure you want to become one of THOSE people and not a teacher? Well, if law is the first step toward the Democratic nomination for President, OK, or if you will pursue a career in environmental protection, maybe . . . otherwise, what’s up? Has my most quixotic student become a Yuppie? Say it ain’t so.”

Heh. Well, for the record, I really don’t know what I’m going to do with my legal education. Maybe I will become one of “THOSE people” (i.e., work at some sort of big litigation firm); or maybe I’ll work for the government, or as a clerk, or at a nonprofit; or maybe I’ll get back into journalism (and strive to become some newspaper’s Supreme Court reporter?); or maybe I will someday pursue the Democratic — or Republican — nomination for some political office. Who knows? All I know for sure right now is, I want to get more education, and I really enjoy studying the law. Beyond that, only time will tell.

Tomorrow’s Monday Night Football game between the Chargers and Dolphins has been moved from San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium to Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium because of the insane wildfires in Southern California.

Here’s the full gallery of pictures from my train trip last weekend to Notre Dame Law School, the USC-Notre Dame football game, and Chicago.

In addition to the photos I already posted, some of my favorites are: a picture of Army parachuters delivering the game ball into Notre Dame Stadium; a snapshot of me in the John Hancock Tower, standing in front of the Sears Tower; and a foliage-filled photo of Horseshoe Curve in Pennsylvania.

That’s not all, of course. There are 85 photos in total. Check ‘em out!

(more…)

There were two X-class solar flares today, one each from the two Jupiter-sized solar flares currently moving across the Sun’s surface.

Neither flare was as big as the one that occurred on Wednesday. Still, they produced major coronal mass ejections, at least one of which (and maybe both) is expected to hit Earth on Tuesday, possibly leading to widespread auroras Tuesday night.

SpaceWeather.com has all the details, including this awesome picture of a solar prominence today:

As predicted, USC has jumped to #3 in both national polls, thanks to former #3 Virginia Tech’s loss to West Virginia and, in the case of the AP poll, former #4 Georgia’s unimpressive win over UAB.

What does this mean for the BCS rankings? We won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but at a glance, it looks to me like we’ll climb from #7 to #4. Ohio State’s poll average has only improved from 8 to 7.5 (-.5), while ours has improved from 4.5 to 3 (-1.5), so we gain a point on the Buckeyes there, and should overtake them (we trailed them by .63 last week). I think we’ll overtake Georgia, too, having gained a poll point on them as well, though that could be a bit closer (since we were .84 behind them last week). Florida State, on the other hand, improved even more in the polls than we did (-1.75 vs. -1.5), so barring major movement in the computer rankings, the Seminoles should be #3, and we should be #4.

For the second time in ten years, the Newington football team has a winning streak going.

The Indians defeated Maloney, 41-6 on Friday, a week after shutting out Bristol Eastern, 33-0. That’s right: Newington has outscored its last two opponents, 74-6!

I am pretty sure this is the first time the NHS football team has won consecutive games since starting the 2001 season with three straight wins. The entire time I was in high school, from 1995 to 1999, the Indians won a total of three games, and I do not believe they have had any other multi-game winning streaks since 1993.

Alas, this two-game streak will almost certainly end next Friday, when #1-ranked, undefeated New Britain comes to town. (New Britain beat Maloney 89-0 a few weeks ago, and tore apart Platt 70-7 last week; that’s a combined score of 159-7 against the town of Meriden.) But then the Indians play Platt on Nov. 7, a game I intend to go to with some fellow NHS alums, and hopefully we’ll be able to grab our third win in four games. Wouldn’t that be something?

Looking back at my Saturday viewers’ guide for Trojan fans, we went 2-2 in the “root for USC’s non-conference opponents” category (thank you, Hawaii and BYU) and 0-4 in “root against USC’s BCS rivals.”

But at least the Trojans themselves kicked some serious Husky butt, 43-23. And when you combine that impressive win with Georgia’s unimpressive squeaker over UAB, I bet the Trojans will overtake the Bulldogs in the new AP poll later today. We should be #3 in the both polls, and no worse than #5 in the next BCS ratings.

Meanwhile, we were 2-1 in the “root for outcomes that are just generally good for humanity” category. Alas, Bowling Green resoundingly ended Northern Illinois’s undefeated season and crushed their slim BCS hopes. But the Marlins, of course, beat the Yankees, which is like a blow for the common man against the forces of oppression and evil. :) And best of all, wonder of wonders, Buffalo won!!!

That’s right, the Bulls of the University at Buffalo, who were solidly atop (er, abottom) ESPN’s most recent Bottom 10 thanks to the nation’s longest active losing streak (18 games), defeated Ohio 26-17 in Amherst, NY. Who knew? Oh yeah — I knew: “Every losing streak has to end sometime, and this is probably Buffalo’s best chance for a win this season.” Woohoo! I called it! :) Go Buffalo!

The Albuquerque Journal’s Trilogy Tuesday story is now available online — it’s in the Sunday paper, I guess — and as promised, I am prominently featured. Hooray! (Alas, a paid subscription is needed to read it. But I will excerpt below.)

And get this: I thought my New Mexico Madness story was pretty crazy on its own merits, but evidently it wasn’t quite crazy enough for the Journal. Leanne (the reporter) seems to have, um, embellished my tale a bit, or else she misunderstood a rather major detail. Either way, I’m apparently a more devoted LOTR fan than even I realized! See for yourself:

Some are as desperate to get their hands on “Trilogy” tickets as Gollum was to get his on that ring.

Take Brendan Loy. [Please. –ed.]

A “Lord of the Rings” fan since he was 5, Loy is quitting his job in New York and traveling to Albuquerque to see “Trilogy Tuesday” at Century Rio 24.

He plans to quit his job, fly to Phoenix, then drive with his girlfriend to Albuquerque, where he will spend a day watching Tolkien’s trilogy on screen.

LOL!!! So apparently I’m quitting my job just to travel to Albuquerque!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

But actually, if we assume for a moment that Leanne embellished my story intentionally (I’ll address the possibility of an honest mistake below), she really did it quite cleverly. If you read her wording very closely, most of what she says about me is technically correct. The embellishment is merely implied, not overtly stated.

“Loy is quitting his job in New York and traveling to Albuquerque” is entirely true, even though the implied causal link is not.

“He plans to quit his job, fly to Phoenix, then drive with his girlfriend to Albuquerque” — again, entirely true, although the implied causal link again does not exist, and the three events are not in a rapid sequence like a reader would likely assume.

“Yep, he’s giving his notice and making the 3,000-mile trip from New York to New Mexico, all for the sake of Hobbits and Elves” is also pretty much true, if one assumes that the phrase “all for the sake of Hobbits and Elves” applies only to the portion of the sentence that comes after the word “and.” In other words, although I’m not “giving [my] notice…all for the sake” of Trilogy Tuesday, I am “making the…trip…all for the sake” of the event. And I believe (though I’m open to being challenged on this) that that’s a valid, if somewhat stretched, interpretation of the sentence. Clearly most readers would assume that “all for the sake” applies to the notice and the trip, but it could apply to just the trip, since the notice and the trip are separated by the word “and.” So again, the embellishment is achieved through misdirection and implication, not outright fabrication.

There are some details that Leanne got plain wrong, or left out when they clearly should have been included. I looked for tickets in Phoenix as well as in various locations throughout the Northeast; I’m not flying to Phoenix, I’m taking the bus (I don’t think she asked this); I never said anything about driving anywhere in “at most, a day” (but wait, she didn’t attribute that to me, did she, so it’s not really wrong, is it?); and not all tickets east of the Mississippi were sold out (though this was probably just intentional hyperbole on her part).

Anyway, those were probably honest mistakes. As for the broader change to my tale… I don’t know. I don’t quite see how she could have interpreted what I said in our interview, and on this website, as meaning that I was quitting my job just for Trilogy Tuesday… but then again, I have been known on occasion to express things in a way that’s clear to me, but not necessarily to others. :) So maybe she was confused.

On the other hand, if she did intentionally embellish my story through implication and misdirection, is that ethical journalism? I mean, this is basically just a fluff piece, so does it really matter? Well, I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t really want to wade into that debate right now. I’d rather just bask in my 15 minutes of New Mexico fame — which may stretch to 20 minutes, now that I’m the guy who quit his big-city job to visit Albuquerque, instead of just the guy who came in from Phoenix — and leave the Jayson Blair-ish questions out of it.

Leanne’s quotations of me, by the way, are accurate, I believe. I remember saying the words “I was distraught…I knew if I didn’t go, I would never forgive myself,” or words very similar to them, during our interview. She also quotes me later in the article as saying, “If you didn’t get your tickets the first day, you were pretty much out of luck.” I don’t specifically remember saying that, but I’m sure I probably did.

I don’t know yet whether or not the Journal printed any of my photos of myself with LOTR paraphernalia. There are no pictures with the online version of the article, but that may or may not mean anything.

UPDATE: Here is a portion of an e-mail that I just wrote to Leanne:

I just wanted to let you know, we may have had a little misunderstanding… or maybe you were just embellishing my story a bit, I don’t know. :) But either way, the fact is, I’m not actually quitting my job because of Trilogy Tuesday. I was going to quit my job anyway, and I was very probably going to move to Phoenix anyway. If I could have found tickets in the New York / Connecticut area, I might have altered the schedule of my move to Phoenix, or I might have planned a brief trip home in December. But the decision to quit my job was definitely made before the Albuquerque ticket purchase came along. I apologize if something I said confused you on this count. I just wanted to clear it up now, in case you had been confused and need to run a correction or something. Personally, I don’t think it’s a big deal, I rather like the version of my story that you wrote. :) But it does imply more of a direct causal link between Trilogy Tuesday and my other life plans than is technically accurate, so I wanted to make sure you know that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just remembered… earlier in the story, before I am identified by name, it says, “Some [fans] are planning cross-country trips. Some are paying wildly inflated prices for movie tickets. And at least one is going to quit his job in the name of his allegiance to Middle Earth and its inhabitants.” So that’s pretty explicit in making the connection between Trilogy Tuesday and quitting my job.

By the way, my actual explanation for quitting my job and moving to Phoenix (at least, as much of the explanation as I’m willing to divulge online) is available here.

HEY, GUESS WHAT?: Not only did they use a photo of me (well, a mugshot of my face, anyway), but the whole thing ran on the front page!!! Check it out!

I just got a new e-mail alert from SpaceWeather.com: “Earth orbiting satellites have detected a powerful X-class solar flare. Radiation storms and radio blackouts are possible.”

Congrats to those fantastic fish and their amazing ace, Josh Beckett. The Florida Marlins are deserving world champions.

But now we come to the question I’m really interested in: whither Joe Torre? For the last week or so, my fantasy scenario has been a Yankees loss in the World Series, followed by George Steinbrenner going insane and firing everyone, including Joe Torre, at which point the Red Sox will somehow lure Torre to Boston (after firing Grady Little, of course), thus ending the Curse of the Bambino once and for all. :)

That’s very unlikely, of course… but you never know. So let’s take it step by step. First, Torre needs to be fired. Could it happen? ESPN reports:

Throughout the organization, there is a wide assumption that Steinbrenner — now three World Series removed from his last championship — will have a Pompeii eruption. …

Almost all members of the organization expect that Steinbrenner will keep Torre, who has a contract through the 2004 season, but several executives won’t rule out anything. “Who knows with George?” said one official. “It all depends on how crazy he goes.”

Daylight Savings Time officially ended ten minutes ago. So if you haven’t already done so, set your clocks back one hour!

In some cosmic sense, I feel closer to Becky now. Most of Arizona never observes Daylight Savings Time, so until now, Becky’s time has been three hours earlier than mine since she moved to Phoenix. Now she’s only two hours earlier. :)

Interestingly enough, if I go to Notre Dame as planned and Becky stays in Arizona, she and I will be in the only two states that don’t observe DST — so we’ll always be two hours apart from each other, even as we switch back and forth in terms of what other parts of the country our clocks are coordinated with.

YAY!!!

I just went to an ATM and got my first “new” $20 bill, with the purty colors. :)