I’m at LaFortune. With a half hour til Bun Run, I detect no sign thus far of an increased NDSP presence.

Spider-Man 3 managed somehow to overcome the devastating blow of a bad review on BrendanLoy.com :) and broke every record in the book on its opening weekend.

The Buffalo Sabres beat the New York Rangers, 5-4 at Madison Square Garden this afternoon, to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals against the hated Ottawa Senators. WOOHOO!!!

The series against the Sens will not begin until Thursday at the earliest. That’s Thursday, May 10, which would be fully ten days earlier than last year’s Eastern Conference Finals start date, May 20. I had previously assumed the Stanley Cup Finals wouldn’t be going on until Becky and I get to Knoxville, but it looks like they could well start while we’re in L.A. for Andrew and Bea’s wedding. If Buffalo makes it, hopefully the NHL won’t schedule a game during the wedding… :)

More importantly, if Buffalo makes it to the Cup finals and gets to 3 wins — putting them one win from the Cup — we’ve been saying that we fully intend to drive up to Buffalo, just to be in the city if/when they win the championship. Now I’m crossing my fingers that the schedule will make that possible! (We’ll be back in Knoxville on May 29.) It would probably help if the Sharks win tomorrow, sending their series with the Red Wings to seven games…

UPDATE: Well, for my purposes at least, this is good news:

NBC, which has The Players Championship golf on next weekend (which means no time for hockey) has told the NHL it wants a game a week from Saturday.

That means the NHL will have to work the schedule to ensure one of the remaining two series lasts at least until May 19, which means a Game 4 for that day.

That means there’s no possible way the Stanley Cup Finals could start before, oh, May 23-24 or so. Which means we’d almost certainly be back in Knoxville before any potential Cup-clinching win for the Sabres. (KNOCK ON WOOD FURIOUSLY.)

A.P. ~

PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, a blunt and uncompromising pro-American conservative, was elected president of France Sunday with a mandate to chart a new course for an economically sluggish nation struggling to incorporate immigrants and their children.

Sarkozy defeated Socialist Ségolène Royal by 53-47 percent with 85 percent turnout, according to near-total results. It was a decisive victory for Sarkozy’s vision of freer markets and toughness on crime and immigration, over Royal’s gentler plan for preserving cherished welfare protections, including a 35-hour work week that Sarkozy called “absurd.”

“The people of France have chosen change,” Sarkozy told cheering supporters in a victory speech that sketched out a stronger global role for France and renewed partnership with the United States.

…Royal’s program seemed more in line with the policies pursued under the outgoing Jacques Chirac — who is from Sarkozy’s own party, the Union for a Popular Movement. Chirac, 74, held the presidency for 12 years but failed repeatedly to push through reforms.

…Royal, an unmarried mother of four, would have been France’s first female president. Her defeat could throw her party into disarray, with splits between those who say it must remain firm to its leftist traditions and others who want a shift to the political center like socialist parties elsewhere in Europe.

Il faut tout lire (Translatory hat-tip: Leanna Loomer :).

PS (Dept. of Fair Warnings :) ~ Next up: Eire, May 24. / Seems there’s somesort of a McKerfuffle :> over Bertie’s personal Finances. Picky, picky :). Ohhh it’s goin’ to be Fierce ;].

Just two weeks ago, the average gas price across the country was $2.87 per gallon. Now, it’s $3.07, a new record.

The semiannual Zahm Hall “Bun Run” is scheduled for midnight tonight at the LaFortune Student Center, and it will reportedly go forward as planned despite a threatened police crackdown. “If the police do follow through with attempting to apprehend the naked perpetrators, it could be quite a spectacle, and one hell of a final Bun Run,” writes my source in Zahm.

The Bun Run is a longstanding Notre Dame tradition. On the Sunday night before the start of undergrad finals, a bunch of male students get naked — often covering their faces with bags or masks, and sometimes wearing creative yet revealing costumes (nudity! NSFW!) — and streak through a building on campus where many of their schoolmates are busily cramming for exams. (Of course, many students, especially female students, show up specifically to watch the Bun Run.)

As I understand it, there are currently two active Bun Runs: the Zahm Hall Bun Run at LaFortune (which has its own Facebook group) and the Alumni Hall Bun Run at Hesburgh Library. Here’s a YouTube video of a previous semester’s Bun Run at Hesburgh. Again, warning: nudity! (obviously)

Also, as noted in an earlier post, here are some photos of a previous LaFortune Bun Run: 1, 2, 3. (Again, nudity! Duh!) And here’s Kristin’s eyewitness report of the event last spring.

From what I’ve been told, campus authorities have traditionally tolerated these streak shows, focusing their energies on preventing students from blocking the exits rather than on apprehending the streakers themselves.

However, the Internets tell of past crackdowns (apparently Keenan Hall did a Bun Run throughout the 1980s and 1990s until a crackdown in the late ’90s), and it appears another one is coming. A letter to the Observer last week reported that Zahm residents were warned on April 29 that “members of Notre Dame Security and Police (NDSP) are going to start apprehending individuals who are seen partaking” in the Bun Run.

I’m not certain whether NDSP has similarly threatened the men of Alumni Hall, or even whether an Alumni Hall Bun Run at Hesburgh is scheduled for tonight in the first place. (If you know any details about that, please let me know!) But the men of Zahm Hall are definitely planning a midnight Bun Run at LaFortune, as usual, according to my Zahm source. “From my understanding, NDSP’s threats haven’t altered the time or location,” he writes.

I don’t normally go out of my way to see naked men :) but I’ll make an exception in this case, especially in light of the possible showdown with campus police. I’ll be there, camera and cell phone in hand, to report on what happens. So, stay tuned. (If anyone wants to be a BrendanLoy.com stringer and report on any events as they might happen at Hesburgh, let me know!)

NOTE: This post is substantially modified from the original version, which was broken up into multiple updates, and thus rather disjointed. The original version can be seen after the jump.

(more…)

With a win today in Game 6 at Madison Square Garden, the Buffalo Sabres would advance to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they would face the Ottawa Senators — the team Buffalo defeated in the semis last year, the team the Sabres famously brawled with back in February of this year, the team Buffalo fans love to hate.

The Sens knocked out the New Jersey Devils in five games, wrapping up the series last night, and they’re looking pretty fearsome. But I’m glad they won; getting to the Cup finals without having to play Ottawa would have cheapened it, somehow. Just like the Red Sox needed to go through the Yankees, the Sabres need to go through the Senators.

First, though, they need to finish off the Rangers… and it would be very advisable to do so tonight, instead of waiting until Game 7 in Buffalo on Tuesday, because that way they won’t head into the Senators series exhausted from a seven-game marathon series, while the Sens have been resting up. No doubt Ottawa will be rooting for New York tonight. (As will the NBC commentators, but that’s another story altogether.)

Game time is 2:00 PM. It’s on NBC. Box score will be here. Bfloblog open thread here.

LET’S GO, BUFF-A-LO!!

UPDATE: It’s 4-2 at the start of the third period. All four Buffalo goals were in the second. Here are Rick Jeanneret’s calls of all four:

source file

As you already know if you’re a Drudge reader (or a news watcher generally), the town of Greensburg, Kansas was completely wiped out by a half-mile-wide tornado Friday night. The aerial photos are incredible. For example:

Something like 95% of the town’s structures were damaged or destroyed, and eight people (out of 1,574) died. Alan Sullivan echoes my sentiments: “It’s amazing the death toll wasn’t higher — people in Kansas know what to do when the big one is bearing down.” That, and I guess they all have basements.

No official estimate of the twister’s strength has yet been announced, but Dr. Jeff Masters says, “[P]hotos I’ve seen of the destruction show damage consistent with EF4 winds (168-199 mph). It is possible the storm was an EF5 (winds more than 200 mph).” The Weather Channel’s Dr. Stu Ostro has more.

Also, here’s a YouTube storm chaser video from a different tornado caused by the same system earlier on Friday:

In other weather news, Brian Neudorff looks at the possibility of Subtropical Storm Andrea forming next week. Technically, hurricane season doesn’t start until June 1, but a storm in May would hardly be unprecedented.

UPDATE: The Greensburg tornado was officially an F-5 (or, to be technical, EF-5) and was a mile-and-a-half wide. Holy crap.