Witches over Mexico

A local UFO club and an astronomer are at odds about what is in this video.

Germany gone craven!

Tom Cruise may be able to film a movie there after all, despite previous reports that Germany would say "nein" because of Cruise's strident Scientologist views.

Was Tony Soprano whacked?

Bob Harris makes a strong case for it in this entertaining analysis.

Fun with Jehova's Witnesses

Shortly after getting out of the shower this morning, just after my wife had left for a meeting, I'm in my bedroom about to don my work togs (don't picture it, you filthy monkey). I hear a light tapping at the front door, and assume it's my wife having forgotten something, like her keys. So I wrap my towel around me and open the door to find a pair of besuited African American gentlemen. Carrying copies of Watchtower. So, wanting, for everyone's sake, to cut the conversation as short as possible, I blurt out, "We're Buddhists." I look down at my damp, half-clad corpus. "NAKED Buddhists."

They left without incident, looking like they probably wouldn't want me joining them in the afterlife, anyway.

Recording death

Rolling Stone magazine, itself on a slow spiral of irrelevancy, recounts the decline of the record store. Tower is more or less dead, and about 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003.

Related posts and links here and here.

Follow-up: House proposes to cut funding of VP office

Rahm Emanuel Ups the Ante, sends message to Cheney that if he doesn't want to be considered part of the Executive branch, he shouldn't get funding through the Executive branch.

This Washington Post series is a must-read as well.

I loves me a good Constitutional crisis!

Possible Dullard Feat of Strength

Go to a yoga class in the middle of Times Square.

Just what is a Dullard Feat of Strength? Borrowed and modified from the mock holiday Festivus, it's an act that mixes the brave with the naive, the bold with the corny. Each Feat of Strength presents its own challenges and rewards. It's done as a group; part of the challenge is participation.

Here are some examples of Feats of Strength that we've done over the years:

• Rode on the ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier

• Zipped around Key West on personal watercraft

• Visited the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum in San Antonio, Texas

• Went rafting on the Nantahala River in North Carolina

• Hiked up the switchback-heavy trail of Mount Si, near Seattle

• Ate garlic-flavored ice cream at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California

Cheney: Vice President's office is not part of the executive branch

Most. Lawless. Administration. Evar.

This is actually a huge story. Cheney is trying to get around having to provide copies of emails to the National Archives. And you know there's a damn good reason for that.

It's never the crime that brings 'em down. It's the cover-up.

Paul, Ringo, Yoko, and Olivia Harrison to on "Larry King Live" Tuesday

I'm hoping it'll be a cage match.

The unbearable nonsense of being Bill O'Reilly

Keith Olbermann, with an assist from Arianna Huffington, sticks it to Bill O'Reilly in this "Countdown" clip.

Their analysis, however, isn't really necessary. O'Reilly's words are enough. The segment really shows that O'Reilly is a parody of himself as he rambles on about non-news while downplaying the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He even had a segment about the danger posed by bears — that's Stephen Colbert's schtick! And Colbert is a parody of O'Reilly. Doesn't O'Reilly get that?

Hillary Soprano

Hillary Clinton goes "Sopranos" as her campaign's song contest concludes. The winner? Not Journey, but this song by Celine Dion.

It is, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo asserts, "truly too horrifying to contemplate." At least Bill looks pretty cool in the casual shirt.

UPDATE: The Dion song was originally written as an ad for Air Canada. Blame Canada, indeed!

Possible Dullard Feat of Strength

Go on a shark safari in South Africa, including a plunge into the underwater cage to see the great beasts up close.

I (heart) Applebee's

Restaurant accidentally serves a margarita to a 2-year-old.

Women we <3

Janeane Garofalo