…will soon find it more difficult to get Oregon driver’s licenses without proving they are in the country legally, if an executive order of Democratic Governer Ted Kulongoski goes through.

Naturally there are people who don’t want to see it implemented. After all, without valid licenses, how can these people who “carry the country on their shoulders” keep carrying it?

The people who indulge in this kind of rhetoric have, as somebody said, more nerve than a bum tooth. Go ahead, Gov. Kulongoski.

I applied to IU but was accepted to Butler early and never even auditioned at Indiana. If they’d had these guys back then I might have tried a little harder:

Thanks to Bumble.

I’m all for this. And that’s the first I’ve heard of it, so, yay, news for a Friday night for me. Let’s hope Chris Carter is okay with pretending like everything after and including the torching of the entire Syndicate in a warehouse simply doesn’t exist. I’m dubious about Amanda Peet, although it is amusing to me to watch a particular actor or actress jump through the hoops of several different writers with an established style (I last saw her doing Sorkinspeak on Studio 60).

As for the other movie mentioned in the article, I’m not at all down with that. I’m already pretending like nothing exists in Trek after First Contact. Why add more stuff that I want to forget to the junk taking up space in my brain?

I found out at Citizens’ Academy last night that one of the sons of Dick Van Dyke, Chris Van Dyke, was a Portland district attorney on the case of the I-5 Killer back in the early 1980s and still lives in the area, having started his own outdoorswear company after a stint at Nike. It’s only weird because I used to live thirty minutes down the road from Dick and Jerry Van Dyke’s childhood home in Danville, Illinois, though sadly I left Illinois for Oregon before the visit described in that page–I would’ve liked to have seen him at Bye, Bye Birdie with the high schoolers. I, um, played Rose myself back in high school.

Anyway, Dick Van Dyke and I also have the same birthday. Separated by 49 years, of course, but still. Weird.

A little vacation photoblogging. A casemate with cannon at Fort Sumter:

The same cannon (I think) from inside the fort:

And an empty casemate looking out to the ocean:

Well, no, I can’t, not really. Late, lamented show of mine, whither your tightly paced plots and even tighter dialogue? Your stars lost to Heroes and Moonlight and Private Practice, your writer and creator lost to … Big Shots, at least for a couple episodes, which almost makes me want to watch … almost.

But I can have this: Twelve minutes or so of what would have been the S4 pilot, with Veronica working at the FBI–school’s out, and not just for the summer. I guess this was the last-ditch effort to shake up the format enough to appeal to the execs. Alas, alas that it did not succeed. I’m not so sure about it in the long term, myself–skipped right over the rest of her college years to join what would almost certainly have been a shaky representation of the Bureau in the realism department? I don’t know. But this is right up to usual VM standards. Sigh.

Where did this come from? Who let him/her put it on the web? I don’t suppose it can do any harm, but neither do I suppose we’ll get a Mars movie out of it. Still, as ten minutes of nostalgia … it works for me.

(Via Whedonesque.org.)

We now return this blog to its regularly scheduled TV and whatever-else-I-feel-like-blogging beat. But it sure was fun getting links from Hot Air headlines, Patterico (with the excellent point that if Thompson’s successes aren’t worth reporting because they were fairly typical, why should his failures, also fairly typical, be different?), a grumpy but lovable See-Dubya, Ace’s headlines, and … Fred Thompson’s campaign.

Woo-hoo!

Tell the scum exactly how it lies, President Bill.

Not trying to take anything away from Bill, here, but isn’t it sad that so few of our current politicians are willing to do this that it becomes an occasion for major notice?

Update: Survey of Rachel Lucas says: Still a jerk. Though her word is much stronger and more appropriate. True enough, but the stellar cast of extra-big, um, jerks lining up behind him in his party who keep giving these malignant morons the time of day have worked their dirty inclusive magic often enough that Bill looks like a stand-up guy by contrast. What a world.

Man. I procrastinate reading Lileks for a few days, and this is what I miss:

… young idiots [drove] by and [shouted] obscenities at everyone … the gentleman at the next table whipped out a long thin bamboo tube and shot what appeared to be a sharp dart into the rear right wheel of the vehicle … the POP of the tire’s explosion was followed by two more, each punctuated by a sharp concise exhalation from the man at the next table … the vehicle had come to a stop, its driver too stunned to proceed, and by the time the driver regained his composure the fellow had opened the door and removed he youth who had shouted the obscenities to the ladies. He marched the youth back, and with the slightest pressure on his upper ear – a gesture that seemed to inflict a great deal of discomfort – he compelled the youth to apologize to the ladies, and empty his pockets to pay for the meal he had sullied with his vulgarities. Then he dispatched him with a kick on the seat of his trousers, but you could tell it was intended more for show than the actual infliction of injury. We rose in a round of applause, and thereafter amused ourselves watching the youths push their vehicle off to the side of the road. Shouts of “Get a horse” and “that’s right, lads, get your back into it” were laughingly proffered.

I hope Mr. Lileks forgives me for reprinting the heart of his story, but I’ve started three emails to him and abandoned them all as too fatuous, basically asking: “Are you pulling our legs?” So I guess I will just post the fatuousness here on the blog for all to see, instead.

Is he or isn’t he? He tells the story with what passes on the web for a straight face and gives no indication that he’s joking. But my basic experience of modern life inclines me to believe this is so unfathomably unlikely that I’m left … flummoxed. Not to mention that the “youths,” morons or not, would have had a good case of destruction of property to take to the police. Real or Not?

Verdict: Consult the laws of physics, Anwyn, you credulous girly girl. I’m going to credit it to Lileks having an Owl Creek Bridge moment, then.

…say Michael Jordan and his son Jeff, who begins his freshman year and will play ball for the Illini.

Congratulations to Chris and Christina on the birth of their little pilot! Personally, though, I’d like to hear from Christina on this claim of two hours, nineteen minutes of labor time. Swift recovery to Christina and lots of sleep to everybody.

Took The Little Bean, age four, to the local high school football game tonight, between the public high school (1-4 going in) and the Jesuit high school (4-1 going in). I saw a public HS twit with the following legend magic-markered (I guess it would be “Sharpied” nowadays) on his shirt: “We don’t need Jesus to win.”

I don’t think Jesus, or Jesuit’s star running back, liked that at all. Jesuit walloped the public school 42-zip.

It always gets me a little when pro sports guys, especially the equipment-clad NFL players, hug each other or take a minute to say something private to another guy after a game. Especially between members of opposing teams.

I guess it’s just a little heartwarming to see right up front in our culture the camaraderie teams engender for their participants. Puts me in mind of my TV Quote of the Week, from Bones. Übergeek Zack has returned from an attempt to make it in the military–he’s been shipped home from Iraq because he “failed to assimilate” and was “detrimental to a military team approach.”

Cam: You’re very good for our team approach.
Zach: The army psychiatrist told me that I should question why the Jeffersonian is the only place that I can fit in.
Cam: All due respect to the army psychiatrist, but that’s a hell of a lot more than some people get.