My blog’s SiteMeter counter received its 2 millionth unique hit at 4:12:34 AM EST this morning, from a Cox user in Atlanta who found me by searching for Chrissy Popadics.

As I explained when I got my 1 millionth hit in October 2005, the count dates back to a somewhat arbitrary date, July 11, 2003, when I started using SiteMeter. (I’ve been blogging since April 2002.) Still, it’s a cool, even if arguably meaningless, milestone. :)

It’s appopriate that the milestone visitor was looking for my Ian & Chrissy post, since the ridiculous surge of people searching for the newly engaged Boise State cheerleader caused the 2,000,000-hit milestone to occur a week or so faster than I expected. Searches for Chrissy account for the vast majority of my traffic at the moment, and 18 hours after breaking 2 million, I’m already above 2,015,000, thanks to 18,115 hits today and counting — my biggest non-Katrina-related traffic day ever.

Anyway, in light of all this attention to the lovely future Mrs. Johnson, I’ve finally bowed to the inevitable and created a “Babes, Boobs & Sex” category. :) I went back and added a bunch of old stuff to the category, so there are 55 posts in there now, and counting (as I find more than fit).

Former President George H.W. Bush, 82, has undergone successful right hip replacement surgery, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, CNN confirms. Visit CNN for the latest.

Bush has decided he has the right to open our mail. If you or I did this, it would be a crime.

I have a few ideas what to start adding to your letters. Ahem.

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi has become the first woman to be elected speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Visit CNN for the latest.

This time it’s Hinduism. (Well, the Thai government as pertains to taboos concerning the representation on stage of Rama, one of the avatars of Vishnu.)

Lozo, responding to my post demanding respect for the Big East: “on the off-chance you’re a chick with a dude’s name, i would be more than willing to have sex with you in order to repay you for this entry. let me know if you have a free 30 seconds in the near future.”

LOL! Sorry to disappoint, but I am in fact a dude, and a married dude at that. I appreciate the compliment, though. And the laugh. :)

Well, that was ugly.

LSU 41, Notre Dame 14.

Worst loss of the Charlie Weis era, surpassing the 47-21 loss to Michigan.

Methinks the Robot Genius’s honeymoon is officially over. And the the 3-5 start next year won’t help. (Be honest. Penn State and Michigan are going to kill Notre Dame in Happy Valley and Ann Arbor, respectively, in September. #1-ranked USC will crush the inexperienced Irish at Notre Dame Stadium in October. And going 3-2 in the other five of ND’s first eight games would be a pretty decent record, all things considered. The last four games should be gimmes, but the first eight are absolutely brutal. Overall, it’s going to be a rough season. Hello, Meineke Car Care Bowl. If we’re lucky.)

Yikes. Not a good day to be a Notre Dame fan.

Remember those “9-3 is not good enough” towels? Well, 9-3 wasn’t possible this year, because we played 13 games. But 10-3 is basically the equivalent of 9-3, given the schedule. D’oh.

Still, thanks to Brady Quinn & co. for all the memories. And good luck next year to all the returning guys, my above-stated pessimism notwithstanding. Needless to say, I hope I’m wrong.

Go Irish.

P.S. On the bright side, as noted earlier, the #22-ranked Fighting Irish basketball team got its Big East season off to a good start with an easy win over Louisville. Who ever thought Notre Dame fans would be saying “thank goodness it’s basketball season”?

LSU’s 41-14 win in the Sugar Bowl gave Kevin Hauschulz the lead in the 2nd annual Irish Trojan bowl pick ‘em contest, and eliminated former leader Colin Pedicini and uscroger from any chance of winning.

With the International Bowl, GMAC Bowl and BCS National Championship Game still to come, five contestants are still alive to win: Hauschulz, Brad Miller, Bill Reising, Brandon Minich and Ben Sloniker. Full standings and scenarios after the jump.

(more…)

Dammit. It’s LSU 34, Notre Dame 14 at the start of the fourth quarter… and I can’t see the Tigers pulling a Michigan State. … And LSU just intercepted it, and ran deep into Irish territory. Dammit.

Post-game blogging will be lighter than usual, as I have to get to bed shortly after this one ends, because we’re getting up early for a trip to Tucson and the Kartchner Caverns tomorrow morning.

I’ll try to post an update on the pick ‘em contest, though. I can start working already on the write-up. “LSU’s victory in the Sugar Bowl means that…”

UPDATE: Apparently LSU intercepting the ball is “just the thing Charlie Weis didn’t want to happen,” and he’ll be especially concerned if they score another touchdown! BRILLIANT analysis, Terry Bradshaw. Good grief. Who gave this idiot a microphone?

I’m getting more than a thousand hits per hour right now, the vast majority of them finding this post directly from searches for “chrissy popadics,” the Boise State cheerleader who is now Ian Johnson’s fiancee. Insane! At this rate, I’ll get my 2 millionth hit in the next few hours.

As noted earlier, I’m #1 on Yahoo for that particular search. This is by far the biggest traffic boost I’ve ever gotten from a particular search-engine trend (as opposed to a link from another website or a mention on TV).

UPDATE: The future Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are the top “movers” among search terms on Yahoo, so I guess it’s not surprising that I’m getting such a ridiculous amount of traffic from being the #1 site for Chrissy’s name on Yahoo. But still, wow. 9,926 hits yesterday. That’s my seventh-biggest non-Katrina-related traffic day ever… and all because of a bunch of search-engine hits! Remarkable.

Good news: Notre Dame’s basketball team beat Louisville by 16 in their Big East opener. Mike Brey earns another reprieve from being criticized by yours truly. :)

Bad news: Gonzaga is getting absolutely freakin’ destroyed by Virginia. This would will be the Zags’ fourth straight loss, dropping them to 9-6 heading into WCC play. Yikes. Um, do I need to start worrying about whether they’ll get an at-large berth if they don’t win the conference tournament?

Oh, and there’s also a football game going on. GO IRISH!

Notre Dame trails 14-0, thanks to Brady Quinn’s nervousness and awful play this far, Charlie Weis’s fake punt call (genius!), the whole team’s lack of discipline (hey, Jeff Samardzija… getting a first down and moving backwards is AWESOME), and the fact that LSU is, um, better.

Or, if you believe the folks at the Blue-Gray Sky, the Irish trail 14-0 because of the refs. Riiiight.

Thus far, quite embarrassing.

Gooooo Irish. Stoppppp sucking.

UPDATE: David Grimes makes an awesome catch, and it’s 14-7. Woohoo!

UPDATE 2: Fumble! Woohoo again!

I’m going to stop liveblogging for the moment and just watch, but there’s more liveblogging here.

UPDATE 3: 21-14 LSU at halftime. The Irish had tied it at 14-14, but then LSU got a huge TD with less than two minutes left.

It’s not over, and that’s good. But I feel like Notre Dame is an outclassed team lucky to be this close. I hope I’m wrong. But I’ll be pleasantly surprised if LSU doesn’t blow this open in the third quarter.

UPDATE 4: “It feels like Notre Dame is dominating this game”? Give me a break!

Memo to Fox commentators: STOP PRAISING BRADY QUINN. BRADY QUINN IS HAVING A BAD GAME. Terry Bradshaw’s commentary about how “poised” he is was completely ridiculous, given how shaky and nervous Quinn was in the first quarter (which Bradshaw himself acknowledged 2 minutes later, with no hint of irony). Quinn’s first touchdown pass was a poorly advised throw into a double coverage, and he was incredibly lucky that Grimes made an incredible catch. Granted, he should have had a touchdown pass on the throw that hit Samardzija on the helmet, so that kind of balances out. But he also threw an interception into double-coverage that was wrongly overturned on replay, in addition to the interception that’s on the record book. And he threw a ton of passes into the ground (not always intentionally), at his receivers’ knees and ankles (not always under pressure), etc. For heaven’s sake, his completion rate is 11 for 25. He is not playing well. The only reason Notre Dame is in this game is the surprising success of their running game. I suspect LSU will adjust its defense and take that away in the second half, so Brady will need to play much better if the Irish are to have a chance. I hope he does. But praising him for that first-half performance is crazy.

The game is Exhibit A for what annoys people about the Brady Quinn hype. When he makes a bad play, nobody on the Fox broadcasting team criticizes him for it. When he makes a play that indicates bare competence, they praise him. When he makes a good play, they act like he just parted the Red Sea. As much as I’ve criticized him, I like Brady Quinn (I’m wearing a green Number 10 shirt right now); it’s more in reaction to this sort of ridiculous, over-the-top nonsense that I tend to emphasize the negative. When good players play like crap, the announcers should acknowledge that fact, regardless of the player’s name or the team they play for. Cripes.

Of course, this game is also Exhibit A for why Fox should NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER be allowed to broadcast a college-football game, ever again. The commentary is inane, the “analysis” is either obvious or self-contradictory, and… cutting away to a band member doing pushups during a running play??? That had to be a new lowpoint in sports broadcasting history. Seriously, college-football bloggers need to organize a fundraising drive to add to whatever the network bidding against Fox is offering next time around.

A lot of people are searching for Chrissy Popadics (a.k.a. Boise State hero Ian Johnson’s fiancee), and I’m #1 on Yahoo for that search. Overall, searches for Ian & Chrissy are accounting for more than 25% of my traffic at the moment. Heh.

Please?

P.S. Two tidbits from The Blue-Gray Sky that suggest the first quarter is the key to tonight’s game:

#1: “As Weis studied and analyzed the five losses he has suffered as a college coach over his two years at ND, he discovered what he felt was a correctable common flaw. ‘With the exception of the USC game last year, I thought it came down to us being tight at the start of the game,’ Weis said. ‘I can promise you one thing, I don’t know how we’ll play (against LSU), but we’re not going to be tight at the start of the game.’”

#2: “[LSU quarterback JaMarcus] Russell is…used to getting off to a hot start. In the first quarter of games in ‘06, Russell completed 79% (!) of his 1st quarter passes, had 8 TDs, 0 INTs, and, oh yeah, LSU outscored teams 122-20. ND will have to figure out a way to get Russell out of his comfort zone early on.”

This game could be over by the opening whistle of the second quarter. If it’s not, that’s very good news for the Irish.

Earlier this morning, on the first day of classes in the new year, a student was shot and killed at Foss High School in Tacoma, WA. Reports indicate three gunshots were fired, and although a group of students were in the area only one student was hit leading to speculation that this was a targeted act. Police later apprehended the alleged shooter in a neighborhood a number of miles away. The school was immediately placed in lockdown and students were later bussed to another local high school.

Foss has approximately 1700 students in grades 9-12. Reports via local radio have indicated that there are no metal detectors in use at Foss.