Here’s the clip from that "Brendan, I am your father" Burger King commercial, kindly provided to me by Andrew Leyden.

source file

You can download that clip here or the whole ad here.

This would seem to fly in the face of all the rampant speculation among my NDLS friends that my dad is a pirate. It appears that, instead, he is a sith lord. :)

P.S. What’s a sith pirate’s favorite weapon? The Death Starrrrrr.

Via the Comedy Central website, here’s a sound clip of Jon Stewart’s very funny commentary last night on The Daily Show about the D.C. airplane scare.

I’m in CivPro, the last class of my first year in law school.

Of course, I have these three little things called “exams” before the year is actually over…

UPDATE: In a fitting accomplishment for the final class of the year, Dmytro just reached Level 34 in Tetris. He says it was about a half-hour game with 336 lines and 341,216 points. :)

UPDATE 2: Class is over… and Ms. Velte officially made it through the entire year without getting called on in CivPro! Mr. Aemisegger, too!

UPDATE 3: Tidmarsh is one of the best and most popular professors in the law school, so naturally, he got a hearty round of applause at the end of class. You can listen here (WAV, 580 KB).

Here’s a sound clip of the Basillica bells ringing after the announcement that a new pope had been elected. (WAV, 56 KB.)

And here’s a video of the (mixed) reaction in the law school lounge to the announcement that it was Cardinal Ratzinger. (AVI, 2,118 KB.) Screen shots below:

UPDATE: InstaBoost XXI! Welcome, Instapundit readers! Check out my homepage for full liveblogging coverage of today’s papal events, from start to finish. You may also want to visit my photo gallery of Notre Dame’s reaction to Pope John Paul II’s death (representative photo below), and/or my blog category featuring all my coverage of pope-related news over the last several weeks.

Finally, the truth can be revealed! My Constitutional Law professor, William Kelley, is taking a two-year leave of absence from Notre Dame Law School and going to the White House to become President Bush’s #2 lawyer!


White House Deputy Counsel William K. Kelley

This isn’t exactly breaking news, as I’ll explain below. But as of today, it’s no longer a secret, thanks to the Washington Post:

Another former aide to former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr goes to the White House staff. The new deputy general counsel is William K. Kelley, a Notre Dame law professor, clerk when Starr was on the appeals court and then clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. Kelley wrote the Monica S. Lewinsky report along with, among others, current White House staff secretary Brett M. Kavanaugh, but reportedly not the nasty parts.

(more…)

I got to see the President of the United States, live and in person today! Woohoo!


(Photo by me, taken from the nosebleed seats.)

Granted, about 6,000 others got to see him as well, and most of them had better seats than me…

…but still. It was cool! :)

If you scroll down the homepage, you can listen to my live audio posts from the Joyce Center — but alas, they’re quiet and relatively low-quality. Here are some much higher-quality clips, recorded by my digital camera:

Bush extols the march of freedom in the Middle East.
Bush introduces his Social Security plan.
Bush makes a funny remark about gambling away your private retirement account.
Bush clarifies his position on Social Security benefits.
Bush talks to a single-mom panelist.
The mom says “I do not believe” the existing Social Security system will survive; Bush responds.
Bush says most young people believe it’s more likely they’ll see a UFO than a Social Security check.
Bush has a funny exchange with a self-deprecating 24-year-old male panelist.

Here’s a photo of Bush’s reaction to the 24-year-old’s joke in the audio clip above:


Photo by the South Bend Tribune.

The photo above is one of many I’ve uploaded into my three galleries of Bush at ND: my photos, AP photos, and local media photos. (UPDATE: I just added a gallery of Indy Star photos.)

Chris, my former roommate, saw Air Force One fly overhead at our old apartment. That’s not surprising, I suppose; the standard flight path for incoming jets goes directly over Fischer. Still… how cool!

Meanwhile Scott Pollock, well-known as an archconservative in the 1L class, got to sit in the third row and shake hands with Bush! I’m jealous!!

Pollock may have had a better view than most of the president, but everyone who waited in the long line got a good view of the protesters. They were standing on the other side of the street, yelling inane things. Here are a couple of my protest pics:

The turnout for the protest was actually quite good, so kudos to the organizers on that. But some of the chants were monumentally lame — such as, for example, “Hey hey, ho ho, privatization has got to go!” As Alan Gunn would say, you have got to be kidding me.

(Note also, at the beginning of the above-linked audio clip, you can hear a protester yelling to a counter-protester, “Get a real job!” So basically, that’s a liberal loser telling a conservative loser that he’s a loser. Classic.)

Oh yeah, there were three or four counter-protesters:

The most annoying part of the protest was the insistent chanting of “This is what democracy looks like!!!” I had to wonder if the chanters realized that the counter-protesters, and the people in line, are also what democracy looks like. I also had to wonder who exactly they thought they were talking to, and why. It’s not like anyone was doubting that “this is what democracy looks like,” so their constant repetition of that fact smacked of over-defensiveness. Methinks the protesters doth protest too much, as it were. :) Reminded me of John Kerry bitterly defending his patriotism, even though no one had attacked his patriotism.

Anyway.

So yeah, please check out all of my photo albums, and stay tuned for more; Nick plans to send along his pictures eventually, as well.

Best line from Bush’s speech on Social Security: saying people won’t be able to use their private savings accounts to roll dice. :) Here’s a shot of the mass exodus from the Joyce once we were finally let out.This message will expire on May 3, 2005

I went to see the Vagina Monologues with Becky on campus this evening. It was really good! There was a lot of talent on that stage, so the performance was excellent — and speaking as a male feminist who had never previously watched nor read the Monologues, much of it was quite moving, funny, or both. Kudos to the cast and crew, especially to NDLS’s Lisa Velte, a double-Domer 1L and a member of the “Vulva Chorus”:

Way to go, Lisa! Great job!

Patrick, you should have been there. The “moaning” scene would have totally alleviated your concerns about the appropriateness of the play. :) [sorry, couldn’t resist]

Anyway… after the performance was over, the play’s author, Eve Ensler, took the stage. Right-to-Lifers, you can unbunch your panties now; she didn’t say anything whatsoever about abortion. She did, however, poke fun at the whole controversy, saying, “Notre Dame…is really a vagina-friendly place, correct? I always knew it was, you know. It was just rumor, all I’d been hearing about.” Heh. She then commended the cast of the play for going forward despite all the opposition. Download an audio clip here (860 KB).

Ensler concluded with an eloquent exposition of the importance of the cause (804 KB), complete with a subtle dig, perhaps, at the “pro-life” crowd that had opposed her coming to campus: “If you dishonor a woman…you are basically dishonoring life. This movement is about honoring life, and holding it sacred in all its forms.”

You can view more pictures here. Also, stay tuned to The Observer, which will presumably have coverage in tomorrow’s paper, including of the controversial panel discussion, which I did not attend.

P.S. I was so tempted to subtitle this post, “Penis Brigades flee in terror,” but I reluctantly decided not to. :)

UPDATE: Here’s a South Bend Tribune article about protests against the play and Ensler.

UPDATE 2: The Observer has two articles: one about the protests and one about the panel discussion. Excerpt from the latter:

Following the panel, Ensler opened the floor for questions of students, faculty and local residents.

One pro-life activist said that abortion was the most widespread act of women’s violence and complained about Ensler’s failure to include a monologue about this topic. Ensler responded that she believes being forced to carry a child that resulted from a rape is an act of violence.

“I don’t think that there is any woman on this planet that has had an abortion and felt good about it,” she said. “I’m here to talk about violence against women. It’s not that I don’t honor [the pro-life] perspective - I just don’t share it.”

According to Ensler, a lot of the terrible acts that happen to women result from a lack of knowledge about their bodies. Most of the female rape victims she has interviewed, she said, had never before spoken about their incidents, due to the constraints their Judeo-Christian traditions place on them.

“We have a choice now to keep ourselves blind … or to live in the dangerous, messy, uncomfortable world of the truth,” said Ensler. “I would argue that the way violence happens is because people don’t talk about things.” …

Although Notre Dame is one of only six schools that strongly oppose the Monologues, according to Ensler, she said that she appreciates “just the fact that this discussion is happening [at Notre Dame].”

“I really respect everyone who [asked questions] today,” she said.

He may not have gone “to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House!!!,” as he and his supporters once hoped, but Howard Dean did win an election in Washington, D.C. today: he’s the new Democratic Party chairman.

In a rather brilliant attempt to shore up votes from his skeptics, Dean promised that he wouldn’t run for president in 2008 if elected to the DNC chairmanship in 2005. I’m not sure there’s anything to hold him to that promise, but I suppose it’s better than no promise at all. :)

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, here’s an MP3 of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (7.4 MB, 16:14).

Becky and I were just on the radio, responding to a listener survey about the Orange Bowl, on 101.9 FM in Amarillo, Texas. I called in, explained that we’re a pair of USC grads traveling across the country, and predicted a close USC victory. (Becky said “Oklahoma sucks” and predicted a 60-0 win by the Trojans. :)

Here’s a (not entirely high quality, but oh well) audio recording (1.1 MB) of the station’s broadcast of our call.

In addition to invading the airwaves, we also had a little fun with the lego table at Burger King in Portales, New Mexico:

We may have lost our flag, but we’re still making our mark. :)

We’ll be in Oklahoma in a little over an hour. It’ll be the 49th state I’ve been in, tying Becky. It’ll also complete the Lower 48* for me, something Becky hasn’t yet accomplished. (I’ve never been to Alaska; she’s never been to Louisiana.) Woohoo!

*I’ll pre-empt Mike’s inevitable comment by noting that there’s actually nothing “lower” about the Lower 48 — what I really mean is, the 48 continental states. :)

P.S. Interesting weather ahead? Let’s hope that “pink” zone stays north of I-40!

UPDATE: We’re out of the precipitation, for now.

Happy New Year!!!

2005 has arrived here in Gold Canyon, Arizona! (Audio-blog MP3 here.) Becky and I celebrated with a milk toast, then stepped outside to see whether the fireworks in Tempe, which we were watching on TV, were visible from the Zaks’ front yard. Sure enough, we could see them — and we could also see four other fireworks shows throughout the Phoenix Valley! It was awesome!

Anyway, here’s hoping that 2005 is a happy, healthy and prosperous year for all you BrendanLoy.com readers! And here’s a photo from Times Square earlier:

More photos here and, more generally, here.

It’s still Dec. 31, 2004 here in Gold Canyon, AZ, but we rang in 2005 just over a half-hour ago when the ball dropped in New York. (Audio-blog MP3 here.) Now, everyone has gone to bed except Becky and me — we’re the lone holdouts waiting for the New Year to actually begin here in Arizona. :) Anyway, here are some pictures of our midnight 10:00 PM champagne toast:

More here (just scroll down). There are also some more newly uploaded miscellaneous winter-break photos here, plus Insight Bowl pics here. (Note: wedding-site tour pics have been deleted at the request of Becky, who wants the beautiful scenery of Gold Canyon Resort to be a surprise for our guests when next December rolls around!)

I’m watching the ASU commencement webcast. They’re doing the Ph.D. recipients now, so I assume the Master’s recipients will be next.

UPDATE: The Ph.D.s are done. But they’re doing the J.D.s now. Stupid law students! :) Apparently there’s only two of them, though. Hooray!

YAY!!! MASTER’S CANDIDATES!!!

ASU President Michael Crow: “By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Arizona Board of Regents, on the recommendation of the faculty of Arizona State University, I hereby confer upon each of you the appropriate Master’s Degree and admit you to all its rights, honors, privileges and obligations. Congratulations.”

Hey, I think I saw Becky!

Anyway, YAY!!!!!! Becky is officially a Master!!! :)

UPDATE: Becky was awarded her M.A. degree at 10:55 AM MST (12:55 PM EST). Here’s a sound clip.

Here’s a sound clip (648 KB) of the last 60 seconds of Brokaw’s final Evening News.