The West Wing is no more, but Friends is back. NBC will reportedly air four new, hour-long special episodes of the sitcom sometime next year.

“‘Technically’ is a lawyer’s word. Sort of like how Canada is technically a foreign country.” –Prof. Snyder (who quickly clarified that he was just kidding, of course)

A rather apropos quote, in light of today’s big election.

P.S. Now he just compared himself to Barty Crouch Junior. Heh.

On a weekend when football is supposed to be king, basketball sure did its best to steal the spotlight. First came college basketball’s Shocker Saturday. Now comes the NBA’s Scoreboard-Shattering Sunday.

It began at the Staples Center, where Kobe Bryant scored 81 points, including 55 in the second half, in L.A.’s 122-104 win over the Toronto Raptors. More here.

Bryant’s total is the second-most in NBA history, behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points on March 2, 1962. (Math nerds will duly note that the top two scoring performances in NBA history are consecutive square numbers.)

Then, as if 81 points by a player wasn’t a gaudy enough number, the SuperSonics and Suns did their best to top it at America West Arena. Seattle beat Phoenix, 152-149 in two overtimes — the highest-scoring NBA game in 11 years. Former UConn star Ray Allen hit the game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer.

“Barbosa, you lying bastard! You swore she’d go free!”

Wow. Reminds me of the day in baseball when Ricky Henderson broke Lou Brock’s all-time base-stealing record in the afternoon… and then, that evening, Nolan Ryan totally upstaged him, pitching his seventh no-hitter.

Attention Canadian voters: Please do not eat your ballots. Thank you, that is all.

P.S. More here. For an alternative view, visit the Edible Ballot Society. Heh.

They’re talking about this over at Fark, where I got the link form.

I’ll be honest… the only reason I’m linking to this story is so I could write that headline. :)

I realize I haven’t started a new caption contest in a few days… time to remedy that. But first off, the winner of the previous contest is, again, Casey: “After a long search, the world’s first all-chicken orchestra thought they had finally found a conductor who could be trusted not to eat the musicians…” Heh.

Now then… this picture is from the rehearsal, taken by Andrew, and it shows bridesmaid Kristy, left, and Becky’s sister and matron of honor Jen, right…

Thoughts?

Fox just briefly showed a live shot of the University of Washington marching band playing at halftime of the NFC championship game in Seattle. The Seahawks lead, 20-7, making this the first time the Husky band has played for a team with a halftime lead since October 1, 2005.

Washington ultimately blew that lead and fell to UCLA, 21-17. So if Seattle holds on and wins, it’ll be a rare treat for the Husky band… and if the Seahawks fall apart and lose, we’ll know who to blame. :)

(Sorry, David, I couldn’t resist…)

UPDATE: Seahawks win! Final score: 34-14. So it’ll be Seattle vs. Pittsburgh playing in Detroit two weeks from now for the Super Bowl championship.

Now the question becomes: which Trojan do I root for? Troy Polamalu or Lofa Tatupu?

Arrr, the U.S. is winning the war on pirates, arrr. (Hat tip: MumZ.)

Previous pirate posts here and here. And yes, I know piracy on the high seas is no laughing matter… but dammit, I like saying “arrr.” And besides, this time we caught the bastards, which makes it OK to laugh at them.

P.S. For the uninitiated, the title of this post is a JibJab reference.

The Vatican this day commenced “commemorative celebrations for the fifth centenary of the world’s oldest active military corps“, the Swiss Guard, with a special Mass in the Sistine Chapel and Thank-you blessing from His Holiness. (Fighting Fadduh Feeney, aka Joe Loy, guestpontificating. :)

I Like the Pikes. :) Halberds, to you. Incidentally, the contemporary answer to the kindly & avuncular ;> Country Joe Stalin’s renowned 1935 riddle “The Pope? How many divisions has he got?” is: One. This one ~ and a rather diminutive “division” it is too. “The Papal Military Corps, with the exception of the Swiss Guards, were [scroll Way down / ~ the gb] disbanded on 14 September 1970 under the Pontificate of Paul VI.”

It appears President Bush is joining the battle for book-club supremacy with Osama and Oprah. :)

The Canadian elections are tomorrow, and voters are expected to say that it’s time for a change:

Canadian political leaders on Sunday made one last cross-country dash on the eve of an election expected to oust the ruling Liberals, move Canada to the right and improve ties with the United States.

With polls showing a steady lead of 7 to 12 percentage points, the Conservatives sounded increasingly confident, though it looked like they would fall short of a majority in Parliament and have to depend on other parties.

“After 13 years and four failed mandates, the era of Liberal arrogance is ending,” local candidate Michael Smith told a Winnipeg rally as he introduced Conservative leader Stephen Harper, who made stops in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia on Sunday.

It is the second election in just 18 months and the third since late 2000. The Liberals — who took power in late 1993 — campaigned on their fiscal record, reminding people the economy was booming and trying to portray Harper as an extremist who wanted to scrap gay marriage and abortion.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin, who spent Sunday in British Columbia before flying to his home province of Quebec, seems likely to fall victim to voter fatigue with the Liberals and a major kickback scandal that hit his government shortly after he took power in December 2003.

“Only a new government can turn the page on the past 13 years of scandal and inaction and get on with addressing the real concerns of ordinary working people,” Harper said. “We have an opportunity with a new government, and only a new government, to bring together East and West, English and French, city and country, new and old Canadians.”

Some polls suggest the Liberals will get their lowest percentage of votes in any election since independence in 1867, even lower than the 28 percent they collected in 1984.

3L Becky Austen (a.k.a. Aspiring Lawyer Nun), a Canadian citizen, is thrilled.

Troy Polamalu and the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to the Super Bowl after beating the Broncos, 34-17. They are the first #6 seed ever to reach the Super Bowl, having won road games over the #1, #2 and #3 seeds in the AFC to get there.

The Steelers will play the winner of the Seahawks-Panthers game in Seattle, up next.

NBC’s The West Wing has been cancelled due to declining ratings.

This isn’t exactly breaking news, but I just found out about it: Google Earth is now available for the Mac. Sweet! I am downloading it as we speak.

Speaking of cool Google-related stuff, this website is very, very cool. Among other things, it allows you to look at the path of any total or annular solar eclipse between 1970 and 2040, like for example the Aug. 21, 2017 eclipse that I’m counting down to at left (only 4,229 days to go!), on Google Maps (or Google Earth). You can also click anywhere in the eclipse’s path and view relevant data about local eclipse conditions.

Even cooler, are you wondering what part of the planet the space station is flying over right now? Well, you can track the ISS (and the Hubble) here. (Hat tip: Briandot.)

It just occurred to me check something that, in 24 years, I can’t believe I’ve never thought to check before: Was there an active tropical cyclone in the Atlantic when I was born?

The answer, according to Wikipedia and Unisys, is yes. Tropical Storm Jose was wandering the east-central Atlantic, several hundred miles southwest of the Azores, on 9:22 AM on October 30, 1981, when one Brendan Loomer Loy came into the world. Jose fizzled out over the ocean on November 1, and did not hit land. Track here.

Jose formed more than 24 hours before I was born, on October 29, 1981 at 7:00 AM EST. That brings us to the question that winds up producing the far more interesting factoid: what was the first tropical cyclone to form during my lifetime? Answer: Katrina, the first storm ever to bear that name. It formed in the western Caribbean at 7:00 PM EST on November 2, 1981 and hit Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane on November 5 before accelerating to sea. (So that makes it the first hurricane of my life, as well as the first cylcone to form during my life.) Track here.

“Katrina” was on the rotating list of storm names again in 1987 and 1993, but those seasons weren’t active enough to produce a “K” storm. But by 1999, we’d entered this new, more active tropical cycle, and the second Tropical Storm Katrina in Atlantic-basin history formed just off the coast of Nicaragua on October 29, 1999 at 2:00 PM EDT, just hours before my 18th birthday. (I wasn’t watching the tropics, but rather, was getting ready to leave for Disneyland with some friends from my dorm, including this girl named Becky who I had a crush on.) Katrina hit Nicaragua as a minimal T.S. and quickly weakened — though not before I had become a legal adult while it was still an active cyclone. Track here.

And then, six years later, came the Katrina we all remember, the monster hurricane that killed more than 1,300 people and devastated the Gulf Coast. The storm itself was unspeakably tragic, of course — but, meanwhile, the attention it brought to BrendanLoy.com turned me into a media mini-celebrity, which has been a long, strange, but mostly enjoyable trip. Anyway, perhaps it was this weather nerd’s fate, since the first hurricane of my life was named Katrina and I entered adulthood during the next Katrina, that the last Katrina would be a momentous event in my life! (I say “last Katrina” because 2005’s Katrina will be the last storm ever to bear that name, as it will be retired and a replaced with a new “K” name starting in 2011.)