Just another friendly reminder that 9:00 PM EST tonight is the deadline to enter (or re-enter) the 3rd annual Irish Trojan Bowl Pick ‘em Contest. Go Navy, Beat Utah!

UPDATE: Bowl season is underway! And so is the Bowl Pick ‘em contest. 90 contestants entered; you can view their picks by bowl or by contestant. The results will be posted here.

On quite a few bowls, the contestants are almost evenly divided. For instance, 48 of the 90 believe Texas will win the Holiday Bowl; 42 believe Arizona State will win. 48-42 margins also exist in the Insight Bowl (Oklahoma State over Indiana) and the Gator Bowl (Texas Tech over Virginia). In the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the split is 46-44 in favor of UConn over Wake Forest. Georgia Tech is favored over Fresno State by the same margin, 46-44, in the Humanitarian Bowl. And the contestants are split right down the middle on the Peach Bowl: 45 think Auburn will win, 45 think Clemson will win.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the most lopsided bowls, prediction-wise, are the Hawaii Bowl (Boise State 85-5 over East Carolina), the Papa Johns Bowl (Cincinnati 84-6 over Southern Miss), the Rose Bowl (USC 83-7 over Illinois), the Las Vegas Bowl (BYU 81-9 over UCLA… hahaha) and the Capital One Bowl (Florida 80-10 over Michigan).

Rose Bowl aside, the favorites in the other BCS bowls are Georgia in the Sugar Bowl (51-39 over Hawaii), Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl (73-17 over West Virginia), Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl (58-32 over Kansas), and LSU in the Mythical National Championship Game (63-27 over Ohio State).

– Official: Three dead at site of Florida chemical plant blast.

First, Santa gets pie in his face in Missoula, Montana… then, Santa gets groped in Danbury, Connecticut… and then, Santa gets cold-cocked in Spokane, Washington. (Hat tip: Scott Fort.) What next? Taking out Santa’s knee caps? Drive-by Santa shootings? I’ve heard of the War on Christmas, but this is ridiculous!

Yes, I know that the TypePad comment-spam filter has been going crazy lately. I don’t have too much control over the settings, but I did change one thing that I think will help decrease the incidence of both spam false-positives and unnecessary "captchas" (when you have to type a set of characters into a box to prove you aren’t a spammer). We’ll see if it helps. In the mean time, if you try to leave a comment and it gets caught in the spam filter, and you can’t get it to post, please e-mail me and let me know. I can restore it, but I may not notice it if you don’t tell me. (Even then, I can make no promises — at some point soon, I’m going to be away from my computer for quite a while — but I’ll do my best.)

If you haven’t yet entered the 3rd annual Irish Trojan Bowl Pick ‘em Contest (hey, come to think of it, I haven’t entered yet!), you (and I) have just over 32 hours left to do so. The deadline is 9:00 PM EST tomorrow, which is when people across the country will drop whatever they’re doing, sit down on their couches, turn on their TVs, and unite as one nation to watch the eagerly anticipated San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl between a team that notched its first win of the season against UCLA (Utah) and a team that won for the first time in 44 years over another team notched its first win of the season against UCLA (Navy).

Speaking of UCLA… hey Mike, how’s it coming on that car flag?

Er, so anyway, sign up now! And if you already made your picks but want to change ‘em, just enter again. The deadline is the same regardless; your last entry will be the one that counts.

"Bring wood and oil!"

It seems there was a fire in Dick Cheney’s office this morning:

The historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the
White House caught fire this morning, and D.C. firefighters broke
windows and doused the second and third floors with water in order to
extinguish the two-alarm blaze. …
 

[Witness Katie] Johnson said the smoke appeared to be concentrated in or near the ceremonial office of Vice President Cheney.

Oh, but it gets better:

[D.C. fire department spokesman Alan] Etter would not speculate on exactly where the fire originated –
citing both the early stage of the investigation but also a request for
discretion by the U.S. Secret Service.

It’s a cover-up, I say! A cover-up!! Cheney lied, buildings fried!!!

What was Vice President Cheney burning, you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? His weekly "ceremonial" kitten-and-puppy pyre (their cries give him strength!) caused a bit more smoke than usual this week, and now those nosy media and police types are sniffing around. They’d better watch themselves. If they get too close to the truth, Dick Cheney will shoot them in the face.

Britney Spears’s 16-year-old sister is pregnant… with John Edwards’s baby!!

Okay, I made that last part up. Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant, though.

All I want for Christmas is Ma Spears’s parenting book…

– Firefighters battle blaze in building on White House campus.

Dick Vitale will be out of commission until at least February due to surgery on his vocal chords.

Hmm… I’m going to bet on February 6 as his first day back. Why? It’s the first Duke-UNC game of the year.

The National Enquirer’s John Edwards affair rumor that’s currently the Drudge Report’s lead story is not actually new — though the claim that Johnny Boy’s alleged paramour is pregnant with his love child is a new and salacious twist. But the claim of an 18-month affair between Edwards and former campaign staffer Rielle Hunter has been a hot item in the blogosphere for more than two months, ever since it surfaced in the National Enquirer on October 10… and was, surprisingly, not picked up by Drudge.

Drudge did, however, link to Edwards’s public denial… of an affair Drudge had never previously mentioned. The denial wasn’t reported nearly as widely as you’d expect, though. The media at large, notwithstanding its usual tendency toward sensationalism, pretty much ignored the whole story. Hence, assuming this latest “developing” item from Drudge seeps into the MSM (as his lead stories usually do), this will be totally new information to a lot of people.

When the original scandal reports basically fizzled, there was much blogospheric talk — particularly by Edwards-Hunter gossipmonger-in-chief Mickey Kaus — about why Drudge and other media sludges weren’t running with the story. The chief line of speculation was that sympathy for cancer-stricken Elizabeth Edwards was holding the usual suspects back from their usual “release the hounds” mentality. Well that, and the whole conspiratorial liberal-MSM blah blah blah. (That doesn’t work for Drudge, though.)

Apparently, however, the prospect of a hidden love child was too much for Drudge to pass up. Either that, or bringing this scandal into the mainstream now, 16 days before the Iowa caucuses, better suited his not-so-hidden agenda(s). Either way, there is certainly plenty of room to question Drudge about his rationale for turning this National Enquirer story into a major headline when he totally ignored a previous story from the same publication about the same alleged scandal. It’s not like the Enquirer somehow magically gained credibility in the last two months.

The AP has a story today, linked near the top of Drudge, with the headline, “Romney Gets Tearful Recalling War Toll.” The lede reads:

Mitt Romney’s eyes filled with tears Monday as the Republican presidential contender recalled watching the casket of a soldier killed in Iraq return to the United States and imagined if it were one of his five sons.

This follows on the heels of Romney’s Meet the Press performance Sunday, in which he got teary-eyed while telling the story of how he wept openly — tears of joy, of course — when he learned in 1978 that the Mormon church had ended discrimination against blacks.

Both of these are perfectly reasonable things to get emotional over, but methinks Mitt needs to watch his public displays of emotion, lest he become another Ed Muskie. Somebody needs to tell him there’s no crying in baseball… or politics. The American people like their women unwrinkled and their men unemotional! (And their beer cold, their TV loud, and their homosexuals flaming.)

I know Brendan loves all things acappella, so Enjoy! :) 

Mike Huckabee was right: There is a God!

Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy “The Lord of the Rings.”

Jackson, who directed “Rings,” will serve as executive producer for “The Hobbit.” A director for the prequel films has yet to be named.

Relations between Jackson and New Line had soured after “Rings,” despite a collective worldwide box office gross of nearly $3 billion — an enormous success. The two sides nevertheless were able to reconcile, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) splitting “The Hobbit” 50/50, spokesmen for both studios said Tuesday.

“I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line,” Jackson said in a statement. “We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth.”

Two “Hobbit” films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three “Lord of the Rings” films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release.

WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!

(Hat tip: yea.)

P.S. If I recall correctly from previous rumors, the first prequel will chronicle the events of “The Hobbit” (including, I imagine, considerably more detail about the White Council driving Sauron out of Dol Guldur than is featured in the book), while the second movie will deal with what occurred in the 60 years between “The Hobbit” and “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

A lot of important stuff happens in that 60-year period, but to be honest, I’m not sure how you make a coherent movie out of it. However, with Peter Jackson involved (albeit not in the director’s chair), I have faith that it won’t suck. Anyway, after the jump, I’ve copy-and-pasted Wikipedia’s list of the events that occurred in that time period.

(more…)

– Aruban prosecutors office says the three suspects in disappearance of Natalee Holloway will be not charged.

Even if you don’t believe in Jesus.

Just awful. Huckabee’s Merry-Chirstmas-whether-you-believe-in-Jesus-or-not makes my stomach churn. I don’t know if I’m getting sick right now because (a) Huckabee doesn’t even mention that there are some people in the country who might not celebrate Christmas, (b) the message is sponsored by his campaign, and since Huckabee has taken public funds for his campaign, public dollars went to fund this ad, (c) the only thing Huckabee has going for him right now is his Jesus-invocation, so he thinks that this will make him more popular, (d) he somehow thinks that this is better than all of the other televeision campaign ads because he’s saying “Merry Christmas,” or (e) the only thing that “really matters” in December according to his ad is celebrating the birth of Christ.

… And now you all can tell me how wrong Jew-boy JLR is.