For the first time in law school, it’s 8:00 AM and I’m in class.

“What an unhappy group of 1Ls you look like,” Professor Kelley just said.

What brought about this horrific turn of events, you ask? Well, Prof. Kelley revealed last Friday that, for reasons he cannot yet disclose*, he has to wrap up the course halfway through the semester, in early March. As a result, instead of a 9-9:50 class, ConLaw has become a 8-9:50 class so that we can cram in all the material.

So the good news is, ConLaw will be over in about a month. The bad news is, ConLaw won’t be over for about two hours.

And then I have class straight through until 12:15 PM. Four hours and 15 minutes of consecutive class time on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Ugh.

*Rumors on the Internets say that Prof. Kelley, who clerked for Justices Scalia and Berger and who worked on the Bush legal team in the 2000 Florida legal battle, is going to be appointed to a federal judgeship or some such thing. But as far as I know, that’s pure speculation, and I have no corroboration for it whatsoever.

UPDATE: Looking at the currrent list of federal judicial vacancies, one stands out: a seat on the Federal District Court of Northern Illinois, the only vacant seat on that court (or anywhere in the Seventh Circuit, for that matter). It has been vacant since April 17, 2004, and there is no nominee yet.

P.S. Kelley just referred to “my friend Miguel Estrada — you may have heard of him.”

Nation’s Leading Alarmists Excited About Bird Flu

Heh.

Here, tentatively, are my Top 5 Super Bowl ads:

1. FedEx (Burt Reynolds & bear)
2. Budweiser (thanking the troops)
3. Ameriquest (cat & pizza sauce)
4. Pepsi (P. Diddy in truck)
5. Lays (MC Hammer “can’t touch this”)

AdJab (from which I got the pic above) has the best blog coverage of the ads.

UPDATE: Anheuser-Busch won USA Today’s “Ad Meter” contest for the seventh consecutive year — but not for the feel-good support-our-troops ad, as I had predicted. Instead, viewers picked the Bud Light skydiving ad, which didn’t even register on my personal radar as a terribly funny or memorable one. Just goes to show, there’s no accounting for taste!

Second on USA Today’s list was the Ameriquest cell-phone/robbery ad, followed closely by the Budweiser support-our-troops spot. Then came Career Builder’s trifecta of monkey ads, finishing fourth, fifth, and sixth.

My #3 choice (and Becky’s #1), the Ameriquest ad with the cat and the pizza sauce, finished eighth. My top choice, the FedEx spot with Burt Reynolds and the dancing bear, was an unimpressive 16th!

Read the whole list, and accompanying article.

P.S. The least popular ad was one of Napster’s anti-iTunes spots. Score another victory for Apple! :)

Oh, and the GoDaddy.com “wardrobe malfunction” ad finished in the middle of the pack, with a 5.98 out of 10 rating, right behind Pepsi/iTunes and just ahead of some movie previews.

P.P.S. To watch the ads, click here, then click on the blue “Ad Meter” tab. You can watch 55 ads in all. You’ll need Real Player to view ‘em.

P.P.P.S. Here’s another site where you can watch the ads.

“I’m like Michael Moore, except I’m skinny, my jeans aren’t dirty, and God loves me.” –Ned Flanders, on the post-Super Bowl The Simpsons

It’s Patriots 14, Eagles 7 right now, early in the third quarter.

Best commercials so far: the FedEx dancing bear and the P. Diddy Pepsi truck.

Here’s a list of Super Bowl livebloggers.

UPDATE: Ameriquest ad with the cat knocking over the pasta sauce also very funny. :) Nothing terribly funny from Anheuser-Busch yet… but the troops being applauded in the airport was very nice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wins the USA Today Ad Meter for Budweiser, which would be Anheuser-Busch’s seventh straight win.

UPDATE 2: Here’s some comprehensive liveblogging of the Super Bowl commercials: first half, second half. … More here.

The Lays ad making fun of MC Hammer was funny, too. And I also liked the NFL “sun will come out tomorrow” ad. But I’m saying FedEx is #1 right now.

Eagles just tied the game, 14-14.

UPDATE 3: Patriots 21, Eagles 14.

UPDATE, 8:40 TO GO: Now 24-14.

UPDATE, 4:00 TO GO: Eagles ball, trying to drive down the field, not in the hurry-up offense for some reason.

Unintentional sexual innuendo of the day: “You know, it’s tough when you’re going down on a guy like that…” –Brian

UPDATE, 1:48 TO GO: Eagles score! 24-21.

UPDATE, 1:47 TO GO: Onside kick fails; Patriots ball. Eagles have two timeouts left. Basically, the Pats win if they can get a first down.

UPDATE, 0:55 TO GO: The Eagles are about to get the ball back, deep in Patriots territory. Can Donavan McNabb pull a Joe Montana?

UPDATE, 0:46 TO GO: Make that very deep in Patriots territory. They’re on the 4-yard line. So they need to go 96 yards in 46 seconds. “This would be the greatest drive in history.” -Joel

UPDATE, 0:09 TO GO: Patriots intercept it; Patriots win! YAAAY Charlie Weis! :)

IT’S OVER: Patriots 24, Eagles 21, final.

I think FedEx had the best ad. But I predict the Budweiser troop ad will win the USA Today Ad Meter contest.

UPDATE, 10:53 PM: Watching The Simpsons now. Woohoo!

Novac ranks the ads. He, too, gives FedEx the #1 spot. He puts Ameriquest at #2, not for the cat ad, but for the “you’re being robbed” ad. I guess that one just didn’t strike me as that funny. And I don’t remember the Bud Light “parachuting” ad at all.

Here’s some more ad liveblogging. Here’s a guy who says the Budweiser troop ad made him cry.

And AdJab has screenshots!

UPDATE, 11:16 PM: Here’s another favorite ads list. And here’s a comprehensive ad-by-ad summary from Fox Sports.

As a result of yesterday’s server meltdown, it appears that all posts since the morning of Jan. 29 have been permanently deleted from the MySQL database that serves as the back-end for my blog. :(

I have been able to retrieve some of them, in HTML form (not MySQL), from Google’s cache. Below is a (partial) list of deleted posts, in reverse chronological order. I will include links to whatever restored data I’ve been able to cobble together, and I’ll update the list as I find more data.

(more…)

Total Choice Hosting’s Server35 had a total operating-system meltdown yesterday, resulting in almost eight hours of downtime for BrendanLoy.com. They had to wipe the server completely and restore from backups. Supposedly they did a backup Friday night… but right now, as you can see, everything less than a week old has disappeared. Cross your fingers with me that they’ll eventually find the rest of that data. Alas, I have not backed up my blog recently, so it’s possible that everything from the last week is lost and gone forever.

For now, at least we’re back online. I’m going to work on getting the Bush-Lieberman kiss post back up, since that’s the one all my traffic is going to. Er, make that trying to go to.

I’ll also be saving whatever I can from the existing Google caches, before they disappear.

Attention fellow NDLS bowlers! If you were confused about your team’s ranking, you’re not alone. There is absolutely no statistical significance to the current order of teams. The way the bowling alley handled the first-week scoring was incredibly asinine, with the result that statistical rounding error determined the current “standings.”

It all revolves around handicaps, scoring averages, and odd numbers vs. even numbers. Let me try to explain.

(more…)

You’ve seen The Hug; now witness The Kiss. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… George and Joe’s man-love! (Click the image to watch a six-second, 568 KB movie file.)

Here’s a close-up movie clip (356 KB). Both clips courtesy C-SPAN.

Bush and Lieberman, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G… :)

P.S. Fun with Photoshop:

:)

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Ana! Welcome, Wonkette readers!

While you’re here, be sure to visit my homepage. For full State of the Union coverage, go to Page 2 and scroll down. And check out my fiancee Becky’s SOTU liveblogging, too. :)

Okay, that’s enough SOTU blogging; I have Legal Ethics reading to do, and much-needed sleep to catch up on. I’ll leave you with some more photos of The Hug:

It really was poignant. And to those on the Left (cough cough, Wolf Blitzer) who would imply or insinuate that it was “scripted” or “staged,” I say you’re far too cynical for your own good. Is it really that difficult to believe that a woman whose country was liberated by the U.S. military would genuinely want to hug the mother of a soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice in that effort to secure freedom for her people? Even if you opposed the war, surely you can grasp the sincerity of that moment. Must every pro-Bush moment be assumed to be a nefarious Karl Rove plot? Jeez.

Anyway… I’m out. Happy Groundhog Day to all, and to all a good night.