If you’re a college-football announcer, what better time could there possibly be to start randomly talking about Britney Spears — confusing the hell out of everyone else in the broadcasting booth — than in overtime of the Georgia-Alabama game, right before the game-winning touchdown?

Thanks to Georgia QB Matthew Stafford and WR Mikey Henderson, I guess we’ll never know to answer to the question, "What is Britney doing with her life?" (Hat tip: Stewart Mandel.)

Also thanks to Stafford and Henderson, Alabama is no longer among the ranks of the unbeaten… and somewhere, some crazed Crimson Tide fan is thinking about registering FireNickSaban.com. :)

Anyway, the Thrilling Thirty-One is down to a Terrific Twenty-Three. After the jump, a look at how all 31 teams that entered the week undefeated fared.

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Frank J.’s Fred Thompson Facts are pretty funny. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) Yeah, it’s basically the same thing as Chuck Norris and Jack Bauer jokes, but still, funny. Scrolling down, I found the Harry Potter edition of Fred Thompson Facts, from back in July. Heh.

Someone just found my blog after searching for “Romulan Woman Having sex.” (Scroll down; this post is #10 on the list.)

Heh.

Since this blog (or at least some incarnation of this blog) largely made its national name during Hurricane Katrina, I thought it might be appropriate to provide my thoughts on the new series on Fox this fall, K-ville.

As you might be able to gather, K-ville is shorthand for Katrinaville, not an affectionate nickname for Knoxville.  The show is set in current day, two years post-Katrina New Orleans.

On the surface, it seems to be your garden-variety cops vs. bad guys drama, focusing primarily on officer Martin Boulet (Anthony Anderson).  Officer Boulet is a resident of the Ninth Ward, where he is the gung-ho leader of the "Let’s Rebuild It" movement.  Unfortunately for him, he seems to be the only one interested.

During Katrina, his partner punked out on him in the middle of crisis, and he’s been twisted because of that, too.  I’m shocked, really.  A cop, with a lot of stress and problems, in a TV series.  How novel.

His new partner Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser) is an ex-military man from Cincinnati.  Needless to say, this raises red flags with Boulet.  Talk about adding coals to a fire.  Give a man with trust issues someone new that he has to trust and let’s see what happens.

The initial story in the pilot is one that isn’t exactly new, either.  Evil corporate types trying to keep the Ninth Ward from actually being built back, so they can profit from the cheap prices on the dirt.

From a cinematographic perspective, the show looks a lot like Blackhawk Down or Syriana, with a gritty, grainy quality that makes it truly seem like a battlefield.  The scenes of NOLA in the show are clearly focused on the destruction from Katrina that remains uncleared.   

There are a number of opportunities to take jabs at FEMA et al., and in that way it ham-handedly makes its political statement.  This, like so much of K-ville, seems very forced and contrived.  I know it’s a work of fiction, but it just tries too damn hard to get to where it’s going for my taste.

Lots of shoot-em-up scenes, interspersed with post-Katrina wreckage,
capped off with the personal trials of Boulet, pretty much takes the
whole hour.  It could be an OK cop drama, but I don’t know that it’s going to hang around long enough to evolve into something really good.

Overall, it’s something like a C+ at best. 

Diane just told me they asked her to ask me not to blog anything about what happened in her appearance on Millionaire. Of course, being me, I already had. :) But I’ve now taken down the earlier post.

That’s really terrible management on Millionaire’s part, not to tell the “phone-a-friends” about the confidentiality requirement (or request, really) when they had us in a conference call this morning. I certainly would have adhered to it from the beginning, if someone had told me about it, but in the absence of any such guidance, of course I went ahead and blogged. Of course, most people aren’t like me, but still, in this age of YouTube and blogs, it’s prudent to assume that everyone is blogging everything unless and until they agree — in advance — not to.

Certainly, having blogged it, I was under no obligation to take it down, but I did so because I don’t want Diane to get in trouble. Still, the way they managed it makes me miffed at ABC; why should it be the contestant’s job to tell her phone-a-friends, after-the-fact, that they’re supposed to keep things confidential? That’s a really dumb way of managing things.

But anyway, to those who saw my previous post, please don’t leave any comments revealing what you know. Such comments will be deleted. I’ll re-post the original post when the show airs (sometime in January, from what I gather).

My fellow Nutmegger and lifelong friend Diane Krause, formerly Diane Huffman (she got married over the summer), will be in New York City tomorrow for a taping of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? — and she’s asked me to be one of her phone-a-friends! I guess they don’t do the “fastest finger” thing anymore, so Diane will definitely be on the “hot seat” at some point between 11:00 AM and 7:30 PM tomorrow. From my perspective, the only question is whether she’ll call me or one of her other two phone-a-friends. It’ll depend on the topic of the question. Anyway, the show will air sometime in January.

Oh, and speaking of Millionaire, NDLS 1L Jaclyn Sexton will be on it this Friday and next Monday. (Hat tip: Lee Ann McGinnis.)

In other NDLS-related news, the late Ryan Rudd gets a mention in this article about an American Cancer Society benefit concert, Cure-A-Palooza.

Britney Spears is embarrassed. Meanwhile, TMZ is issuing an R.I.P. for her career. More here.

Meanwhile, the AP looks at the catty commentary about Britney’s figure and asks:

Did Spears, lest we forget a mother of two, deserve to be held up against the standard of her once fantastically toned abs, sculpted by sessions of 1,000 tummy crunches? Or was she asking for it by choosing that unforgiving black-sequined bikini?

More profoundly, in an age where skinny models and skeletal actresses are under scrutiny for the message they’re sending young girls, what does it say that we’re excoriating a young woman for a little thickness in her middle?

I’ll admit, some of the commentary on her appearance did make me squirm. That she would be called "fat," or "lard," or "like a house" — I don’t know if I’d call it "unfair," I’d just say its inaccurate. Utterly factually inaccurate. She’s not "fat." Good grief! … That said, whether she can pull off that particular outfit is an entirely different question, to which I daresay the correct answer would be a resounding "no."

The more pertinent issue, IMHO, is that she sucked. Sucked monkey balls, in fact (as the Loy family’s resident Britneyologist, Becky, would say).

The Law of "24"! (Hat tip: Joe Mama.)

I think this brilliantly conceived Georgetown Law class could start a trend at universities nationwide. Study of "24" could become a major, or at least a minor, all unto itself. Imagine the possibilities: The Theology of "24." (Is Jack Bauer a god, or merely a demigod?) The Philosophy of "24." (Who are we? Why are we here? How did Jack Bauer get to be such a freakin’ badass?) The Biology of "24." (How does Jack Bauer’s body sustain itself despite being constantly tortured and mutilated?) The Physics of "24." (Why don’t the laws of physics apply to Jack Bauer?) Etc., etc.

…and skankier than ever. (Not to mention, lip-sync-ier than ever.)

If you’re watching the VMAs on MTV, you know what I’m talking about. If not, I’m sure it’ll be on YouTube in like 5 seconds.

UPDATE: Here we go. Umm, NSFW? [UPDATE 2: The video has been yanked offline, presumably for copyright reasons. TMZ has a shorter clip; dunno how long it’ll last.]

Here’s a photo and some commentary.

Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and the rest of the Time Quartet, has died. She was 88. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

I read the books in middle school, but to be honest, I don’t recall much about them — though I do remember liking them. And I remember how one of them was centered around “mitochondria and farandolae.” When I subsequently learned that there actually are such things as mitochondria, I was fascinated… and disappointed that farandolae are fictional. :)

If you haven’t seen Team America, you won’t get it. If you have… enjoy:

Heh. That movie is really good, by the way. (The Bourne Ultimatum, I mean. Though Team America is good, too. Heh.)

Luciano Pavarotti is dead. He was 71.

A very dear friend contacted me recently about Austin City Limits.  I’ve always been a fan of Austin City Limits so I was interested.  And, to my amazement, it turns out her two sons, in an indie band called The Frontier Brothers, are competing for a "new artist" slot on a future broadcast of Austin City Limits.  I knew they were a serious working band (out of Fort Worth), but this news about this opportunity, and especially about them in relation to this opportunity, was new to me.  I passed the word on to friends who are music fans and to a few friends who trust me when I ask a favor of them.  And only one friend misconstrued this situation as something like American Idol. Austin City Limits is a long-running PBS program presenting well-respected, professional musicians.  And it seems it is offering an opportunity to working (but not nationally-known) bands to be introduced in a new band slot. This is so NOT American Idol.

I now go to the site each day (one vote per day being allowed) and I vote for this band.  I urge you all to check this out at the URL I am putting below.  (Actually, this URL will specifically take you to The Frontier Brothers on the band ballot, but it also gives you the page, The Sound and the Jury.)  You can sample their music (you can sample any of the bands’ music) and if you like their music, you can cast a vote for them (or for another band there).  One reason this particularly appeals to me is that this to me is so far superior to American Idol.  No ridicule, no comedy, no Not-Ready-For-Primetime bands. The Frontier Brothers is a serious working band making their bones in venues all around Texas and the Southeast, and this is a serious opportunity for them.  For all these bands.  And that matters.   

Check it (and them) out:  http://acl.mp3.com/feature/soundandjury/?band=THE-FRONTIER-BROTHERS.

Becky and I recently unpacked several of our boxes of books from South Bend — yeah, the unpacking process has taken a while :) — and filled up our bookshelf. I’m particularly proud of the “nerd shelf”:

Speaking of which, I recently re-read Half-Blood Prince, which I hadn’t read since the day it came out. I had forgotten a lot of its plot, so several things from Deathly Hallows suddenly make a lot more sense now. :) But I’m more perplexed than ever about one thing. So I have a question — but it’s after the jump, because it reveals a major Deathly Hallows spoiler. (I hear there are still at least 3 or 4 people out there who haven’t read it yet.) So… Warning: spoilers after the jump, and in comments.

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I’ve blogged a lot about Tommy Makem since his death two weeks ago, including a lengthy post explaining what he meant to me. But they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and in this case, an audio clip is worth about a million of ‘em. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Brendan Loy, at 3 years old, singing about moonshine:

source file

The song is “The Hills of Connemara,” and I know it’s probably bad form to call myself “cute,” but good lord, is there anything more adorable than hearing a 3-year-old sing, “Run like the devil from the excise man”? :) I had no idea what any of it meant, of course; I just thought it was a fun song. But there you go: if you thought maybe I was exaggerating when I told those stories about singing rowdy Irish songs in my early childhood, now you know I wasn’t. (And if you ever wondered why I took such a liking to “Rocky Top,” maybe that question too is answered: apparently I just like songs about concealing illegal alcohol from the authorities!)

The audio clip comes from an old cassette tape, recently dug up by my mom, of my parents and I performing Irish music in our living room for my Grandma and Grandpa Loomer and my Papa Loy — all now deceased — and my Uncle Robert, sometime in 1985. You can hear a lot of Grandpa in that clip; he’s the one who played an “A” for my mom before the song, who commented “the show’s getting better, Robert,” and who cheered loudly at the end. In this later clip from the same concert, of “Place in the Choir,” you can hear Grandpa again at the end, and also Papa Loy saying “This is good, I want to hear the rest of it” when I abruptly interrupted the song to comment on our previous performance. (Hey, what do you want, I was three!) Entirely aside from the nostalgia of the music, and of hearing myself as a little kid, it’s also really cool to hear my grandfathers’ voices again. :) Anyway…

Judging by my parents’ comments, it seems that that was the first time I ever sang along with them on “Place in the Choir.” Which is pretty funny, because it soon became one of my all-time favorites, and has always remained so — to the point where, when my mom busted out the guitar last week in the Adirondacks so we could sing a few songs in Makem’s honor, it was one of the first songs I suggested. We had some trouble remembering the verses, but here it is: the same song, by the same singers, 22 years later…

Heh!

P.S. It’s possible I was 4 years old, not 3. The tape is labeled “1985,” so I’m assuming I was 3, since I didn’t turn 4 until October 30 of that year. But it could have been late 1985, in which case I would have been 4. It’s also possible the label is wrong. But in any event, I was really young.