We took that one step further in Alabama, and played it after dark.  Called it "Nightball."  Kept at it until well into high school...

Hah... very well done, Dave, and that's from an Auburn grad.  As an old LSU guy once said to me (at Fritzel's in the French Quarter), "All us Tigers got to stick together!"

No need to go back that far... the position switches of the Old Gray Nag regarding the word "filibuster" over the past 20 years alone are enough to give anyone a serious case of whiplash.

I had the same reaction.  At this point, I'm guessing Pinch Sulzberger is having to put "total lack of self-awareness" as a job requirement when he hires his editorial page minions.

This has absolutely nothing to do with your post, Rob, but having just taken the Charles Murray "Bubble Quiz," I wanted to take this opportunity to say:  44.  Eat your arugula-grazing heart out.

(Grew up in a small Alabama town, worked for the Air Force, currently work at an aircraft factory, plus whoa-Nellie, Waffle House!  So many opportunities for cheap extra points...)

Fair enough:  I am not interested in the "World Cup."

Three words from my teen-hood in the 80's:  Bottle Rocket Wars.  And we didn't need no steenking safety goggles...

So you're saying they should surrender, right?

If even remotely accurate, that's pretty horrific stuff.  I have a hard time imagining how (or why!) anybody would willingly put up with any of that.

When I was in grad school at Texas 20 years ago, I was a "house mother" for a small fraternity.  I got the job partly because the fraternity's national office wanted to clean the place up, and I'd just graduated from what was at that time one of the model chapters (at Auburn).  The month before I moved in at UT, the fraternity in the house across the street was kicked off campus (and several members indicted) for stuff not terribly dissimilar from what's described in the op-ed. 

The house I was working in never had problems anywhere near that grotesque, but they did have a culture of treating pledges like indentured servants.  As a result, any given pledge class hated everybody older than them, and were hated in return by the next incoming class(es).  We finally got the point across that this was a lousy way to build a lasting organization, and they were pretty successful (and stayed out of trouble) for some time after that.

Giffords has been the topic of several conversations I've had over the past week or so (coincidentally in the first case, I don't think she'd been in the news much prior to yesterday).  The unanimous reaction, across partisan and/or ideological lines, was (before the announcement), "It'd be for the best if she didn't run/stepped down," and afterwards, "Good for her."

Not counting neighborhood lawn-mowing or car-washing, my first job was sales clerk at Starship Records (long since RIP) in Enterprise, Alabama, making $3.35/hour.

To prevent theft, Starship had all the store's cassette tapes (kids, go look it up) stored in racks under plexiglass sheets.  The customer would point to a tape, and I would raise up the plexiglass from the other side of the rack and retrieve it.  Because the tapes were oriented for ease of reading on the part of the customer, I had to learn how to read the titles upside-down...

Funny you should say that... after Jack Ryan (no, not that Jack Ryan) dropped out of the Illinois senate race in 2004, the local GOP tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Mike Ditka to run again this obscure state senator named Obama.  Da Coach eventually declined, after a couple of weeks of what the blogosphere (yours truly included) dubbed "Ditkamania," leaving only the hapless Alan Keyes, who was easy pickings for The Messiah.  Prior to his bowing out, more than a few pundits in Chicago figured Ditka as the only guy who could derail Obama's election to the Senate.

So really, this whole situation is ALL DITKA'S FAULT...

I have no intention whatsoever of watching (or, pace Claire, reviewing) this particular movie, but one point relative to Mollie's post does spring to mind:  the British driver's test in the 1960's was notoriously difficult.  My parents both had to pass it (Dad was in the Air Force, and they were stationed in the UK in the early 60's) and the resulting horror stories echoed through most of my childhood.  I want to say my mom--a Phi Beta Kappa who was not, as far as I can recall, a poor driver--took two or three attempts before passing.  Personally, I'd be glad for any help I could get if I'd had to take that test...

The real question is, "Will anybody notice?"  Outside of New Hampshire (where he spent most of his time campaigning for the votes of people who aren't, you know, Republicans), Huntsman barely registers with the electorate.  Now that I think about it, it's a wonder the guy didn't have Occupy yahoos camped out in his campaign offices.  One glance at Huntsman's poll numbers will tell you that he epitomizes "the 1%."

Meh.  The more of these movies Jackson makes, they more I'm convinced that they're far less adaptations of Tolkien than they are monuments to the director's ego.

Thorin Oakenshield, Durin's Heir of the Longbeards has a goatee and a Fu Manchu?  Really?!?

I second this emotion.  You really can't have too many SCTV shout-outs, in my humble opinion.