A Dad’s Best Friend.


Turns out Dubya talks more about his dogs these days than he does his daughters. Hmmm…maybe it’s because his dogs don’t get blitzed every weekend, and because they don’t seem to mind when he, ahem, “chokes on a pretzel” during an afternoon football game. As a prof of mine noted, any dog owner’ll tell you that if your dogs don’t freak out when you suddenly hit the ground, they’re just used to seeing you pass out in strange places.

Selective Service.

With trade winds blowing around the NBA, ESPN offers its final mock draft before the real deal tomorrow night. Looks like the Knicks may indeed pull off a legit big man in Maryland’s Chris Wilcox or (possibly) Brazilian phenom Nene, although I’d think “baby Iverson” Dajuan Wagner is still on their list too. Either way, I’m expecting NY to unload at least half their litany of undersized PF’s (Thomas, ‘Spoon, Harrington) and backup PG’s (Jackson, Ward, Eisley) sometime this summer.

Returning Fire.

Frustrated by the FEC gutting of campaign finance reform last week, John McCain promises to hold up FEC appointments in the Senate until a more reform-sympathetic panel is appointed. Turns out Dubya’s kept a ringer on the panel a year beyond his term, Democrat Karl Sandstrom, expressly for the purpose of stifling reform. (He appointed a new Republican to the FEC in March.) Hmmm…why am I picturing Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell in a smoke-filled room?

Card-carrying members of the public library.

Armed with the Patriot Act (what a wonderfully Orwellian name) signed by Dubya last October, the FBI begins scouring libraries to check “terrorist” reading habits. Good news for your local Barnes and Noble, I suppose, who’ll probably be selling a lot more copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook from now herein. I’d love to see a sample list of what books make the FBI’s red flag list.

Aw, yeah, baby.

There is a union now between the Two Towers, Orthanc and Barad-dur… Update: The new TTT teaser is available here, although you’ll have much better luck downloading it from Kazaa. (I did.) For those of you who’ve also been watching the flickery bootleg of the post-Fellowship preview over and over again, there’s not much different here (other than a Galadriel voiceover, slightly more Grima, and a few new lines.) Gollum’s clearly had more work done on him, though. You can see it in theaters in front of MIB2 July 3.