The Pope uses the I'm sorry if you were offended form of apology.

The NYT reports:

A top Vatican official said Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI “deeply regretted” that a speech he made this week “sounded offensive to the sensibility of Muslim believers.”

UPDATE: More:

The spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunnis, the Grand Mufti Sheik Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, said the pope's remarks emanated either from "Ignorance and lack of knowledge or were deliberately intended to distort Islam."

"Reason is the substance of Islam and its teachings ... Islam prohibited violence in human life. Anyone who wants the truth (about Islam) must take it from Islam's holy book, the Koran, rather than from a dialogue or excerpts," he said.

Sounds great. Good thing Benedict shook that message loose, because it hadn't been getting around enough. Really, Kabbani and others like him: Get your message out. Overcome the "ignorance and lack of knowlege"... wherever it may be.

Comments, comments, comments.

I'm surpassingly sick of this comments thread from yesterday, and I'm not even going to read all the commentary on other blogs. The immense tiresomeness is actually undermining my will to blog this morning.

I don't mind an intense, verbal fight about ideas, but this wasn't that. This was, every time you expressed a substantive idea, the answer was, essentially, "Stop looking at my breasts." (I'm picturing an SNL sketch based on that concept, and like the usual SNL sketch, it goes on way too long.)

So, yeah, well, just about the last thing on the face of the earth I'm interested in today is breasts. I'm sure some readers feel that nothing could ever get them to the point where boobs are boring. Me, I'm at the point where boobs are so boring that everything seems boring.

But I did want to put up a post before I get out of here and go try to reignite my interest in the world.

On the subject of blog comments, Dr. Helen has this post, about how people went too far in the comments after she wrote something on the subject of women, here. A woman had lashed out with sudden, physical violence against a man who'd been trying to pick her up in a bar. Her husband blogged about it, and the commenters there cheered. Dr. Helen said -- aptly -- that if the sexes had been reversed, we'd be vilifying the man. I can't help noting that when Helen's husband Glenn Reynolds linked to that post about the bar-fightin' woman -- with its photo of a woman wielding a baseball bat -- he also linked to me and said "This cluebat is actually even scarier than this one." Hey, use words, kids. It's scarier.

Ah, well, the commenters themselves are doing what they can with words, but they are just boring the hell out of me.

Not all the commenters, of course. There is a regular group of commenters here that's quite fabulous. They're in amongst the tedium in yesterday's thread. Try to find them. They're really clever. The prize goes to XWL for calling it "a tempest in a C-Cup."

ADDED: Glenn says: "[F]eminism has become nothing more than a subset of the Democratic Party's activist base.... It's all about supporting the right people politically, even if it turns you into a groper's support group. Which was, of course, the point of Althouse's post." Indeed.

Well, phony feminism, anyway. There is a real feminism to be revived, but it must put feminism first, and let the political chips fall where they may.

IN THE COMMENTS: XWL points out that I should have said he won the booby prize. Oh, it's so terrible to miss a perfect wisecrack opportunity like that! But a really nice thing is that the comments here have a much higher concentration of regulars compared to yesterday's slugfest.... Ah, hey, I can daydream again! I'm picturing a slugfest consisting not of brutish humans punching each other, but slugs having a nice party.



I'm doubtlessly influenced by my long, head-clearing walk, the last quarter mile of which took me through throngs of Wisconsin folk -- all in red T-shirts -- finishing up the tailgate parties, and slogging sluggishly over to the stadium. Stay tuned for pics.

UPDATE: Damn! I can't upload my pictures. Flickr is suddenly telling me I've used 100% of my bandwidth for the month, when just yesterday it had me at 12%. Has something gone haywire over there?

Hazy.

Taking the lake path:



Impression, sunrise:



Morning people, studying on the Terrace, here on the UW campus ...



... sailing off ...

Let's take a closer look at those breasts.

NOTICE: You are about to read a post that has been widely linked and discussed on various blogs, and I suspect that you are not inclined to read this post carefully or with any sympathy toward what I intended. So, I'm adding this note to make it more likely that you will understand what I am trying to say. First, I am writing from a feminist perspective, even though I am criticizing a feminist. Second, the "breasts" referred to in the heading are the drawings and photographs of breasts that a feminist blogger sees fit to decorate her blog with. I don't like that. Third, the real target of this post is Bill Clinton. I think Clinton betrayed feminism (and I hate the way many feminists have given him a pass). Fourth, this post is written in a humorous, cutting style. It's meant to hurt, but I am attacking public figures about an important issue.

What follows after the asterisks is the original post.

***

I wanted to elevate a discussion from the comments section of a post from Wednesday, you know the one with the photo of the Daou-wrangled bloggers posing in front of Bill Clinton? The first commenter, Goesh, picks up on my prompt -- "Let's just array these bloggers... randomly" -- and wisecracks: "Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?"

Eventually, Jessica from a blog called Feministing, shows up and says: "The, um, 'intern' is me. It's so nice to see women being judged by more than their looks. Oh, wait..."

Snarky but somewhat conciliatory, I say: "Well, Jessica, you do appear to be 'posing.' Maybe it's just an accident."

Jessica Feministing returns and says:

It's a picture; people pose. And I'm not sure I understand your logic anyway. If I "pose" for a picture (as opposed to sulking and hunching over?) then I deserve to be judged for my looks? I don't see anyone talking shit about the other bloggers smiling pretty for the camera.

Provoked, I decide to actually give her a small dose of the kind of judgment for brains she seems to demanding:

Jessica: I'm not judging you by your looks. (Don't flatter yourself.) I'm judging you by your apparent behavior. It's not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don't know why people who care about feminism don't have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist. So don't assume you're the one representing feminist values here. Whatever you call your blog....

Making this colloquy into this new blog post, I actually click over to Jessica's blog, and what the hell? The banner displays silhouettes of women with big breasts (the kind that Thelma and Louise get pissed off at when they're seen on truck mudflaps). She's got an ad in the sidebar for one of her own products, which is a tank top with the same breasty silhouette, stretched over the breasts of a model. And one of the top posts is a big closeup on breasts.

Sooooo... apparently, Jessica writes one of those blogs that are all about using breasts for extra attention. Then, when she goes to meet Clinton, she wears a tight knit top that draws attention to her breasts and stands right in front of him and positions herself to make her breasts as obvious as possible?

Well, I'm going to assume Jessica's contributions to my comments are an attempt at a comic performance, as was her attendence at the luncheon dressed in the guise of Monica Lewinsky. Lord knows we need more comical feminists.

Or are you going to say she's some kind of Karl Rove plant? Alternatives: She's a clueless fool. She's in it for the money. (And you know the blog money is all in the T-shirts.)

UPDATE: You know what? If you breastblog and someone calls you on it, just laugh. If you try to deny it, people will laugh at you. Case in point? The big comments thread herein. I'm not saying you should read all the stuff in there, even though some of it's funny (and it could be useful as raw material for a Women's Studies master's thesis), but really, denial is some serious quicksand. And thanks to Glenn for linking. Quoting the title of this post unleashed some serious Instalanche action. (I knew it would.) The most ever, actually. And late on a Friday! What are you going to do? Guys love breasts. I think Jessica knows that quite well. And I think for all her gasping outrage, she's thoroughly pleased to get this attention. And as for you chumps who spent the afternoon defending her... well, you're chumps. So am I for giving her the publicity.... but what the hell? It's Friday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This post has gotten a lot of links from folks who profess "puzzlement." I think a lot of this puzzlement is willful blindness to the criticism of Clinton.

Don't eat your spinach.

Strong women are dying this week.

First, Ann Richards. Now, Orianna Fallaci. Here's Michelle Malkin's tribute to Fallaci, focusing on her polemical last books. But let's remember her whole life. From the WaPo obit:

Fallaci set the pace for a daring life when she joined Italy's anti-fascist resistance as a teenager during World War Two, then showed the same fearlessness as a war correspondent.

She covered conflicts in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Latin America at a time when few women braved the front lines, and was shot and beaten in 1968 during student demonstrations in Mexico.

Later, she succeeded in fiction with novels including "A Man," inspired by her love affair with Greek resistance fighter Alexandros Panagoulis.

Her exchanges with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and other leaders, collected in her book "Interview with History," stood out for her provocative, uncompromising questioning.

In her interview with Kissinger, Fallaci needled the U.S. statesman until he agreed that the Vietnam War was "useless."

Kissinger later wrote that her interview with him was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."

Unplayable 45s I won't throw out, #2.

This is not only the most unplayable 45 I won't throw out, it is the most excellent 45 I won't throw out.



ADDED: Here's a shrine to the single "Substitute." And here's an article in today's NYT about The Who concert in NYC on Wednesday, which I hadn't noticed when I wrote this post. I'm not a fan of Who comeback concerts, and, in fact, my love for The Who is all about the pre-"Tommy" things, back when Keith Moon was not only not dead, but looked like he was just a kid.

The discord, among Republicans, over the detainees legislation.

Carl Hulse at the NYT highlights the problem this presents for the fall elections:

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president’s call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects — a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda — has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership....

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s approach....

Republicans concede that the fight among themselves is a major political distraction, particularly given the credentials of the Republican opposition, led by Mr. McCain, the former prisoner of war in Vietnam who was tortured in captivity....

House Republicans say the Senate plan is misguided and will hobble the American military. Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said it would lead to “the lawyer brigade” being attached to combat troops to counsel detainees.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said: “I just think John McCain is wrong on this. If we capture bin Laden tomorrow and we have to hold his head under water to find out when the next attack is going to happen, we ought to be able to do it.”

I think it is good for congressional Republicans -- however it affects them in the elections -- to think and debate independently of the President. And I wonder how much they really "concede" this is a "distraction" for them. It looked as though they wanted to spend this time distinguishing themselves from the Democrats and driving home the message that Democrats don't care enough about national defense. But if they'd all just gotten into line and done exactly what the President wants, it would firm up the Democrats argument that the congressional Republicans are just following the President, that they don't exercise any significant oversight, and that they've lost track of American values of fairness and decency.

For the Republicans to debate among themselves should make a positive impression on people: it shows that they aren't mere puppets of the President, that they are taking the entire controversy seriously, and that they are not merely suckers for every national security argument that comes along but are capable of weighing the countervailing factors competently.

The Democrats, it seems to me, have to convince us that unless they gain substantial power in Congress, important values will go unserved. You know those Republicans. They'll lunge blindly forward at every mention of the phrase "national security." But if the Republicans themselves demonstrate their ability to weigh all the considerations in a sophisticated and mature fashion, there's much less reason to want to empower Democrats, who -- we may fear -- will only undervalue national security and fall prey to excessive enthusiasm for protecting the enemy.

So I think that despite the discord among the Republicans, a contrast between Republicans and Democrats is being drawn, and it may -- perhaps unintentionally -- make Republicans more palatable to moderate voters in the next election. And then there is '08... and McCain is inspiring respect right now.

ADDED: The linked article is attracting commentary, some bloggers are stating opposition to the President's proposal, and some, like me, address the political dynamics. Rightwing Nuthouse says:

[T[he fact that the debate is taking place almost solely and exclusively among Republicans and conservatives says volumes about the cynicism and lack of courage on the part of Democrats in both houses of Congress.

It's hard to resists standing back and letting your opponents beat each other up, but, as I've said, you risk looking irrelevant or worse. Here's Matthew Yglesias:

[B]y relying on McCain et. al. to do the heavily lifting, Democrats are essentially denying themselves the possiblity of reaping whatever rewards may exist for standing up for basic decency and morality against Bush's depredations....

[I]f you worry that liberals are timid and easily frightened, well, then this is some fairly timid and frightened-looking behavior....

There's also the fact that it means something different when Republicans stand up to the President and when they back off a step from national security. The Democrats can't do the same thing. They've been opposing Bush for everything they can think of for the longest time, and they have a reputation for undervaluing national security that they would only call more attention to. So they're keeping a low profile, and, as Yglesias says, looking pretty timid and scared.

CORRECTION NOTED: A commenter shames me out of using "forefront" as a verb, a problem I'd never given one second of thought to before. The dictionary doesn't support it, and Googling "forefronting," I get only 10 hits. But it should be a verb, and maybe if I'd left it, I'd get to be the quote in the OED for "forefront" as a verb, if the OED counted bloggers, I mean, which it'd be a fool to do. Anyway, "front" is a verb, and "forego" is a verb. QED.

Blogger woes.

Something off about Blogger overnight. I hope it recovers soon.

UPDATE: The Blogger status page reports that Blogger was down for about 30 minutes just now. If I hadn't gotten up so early, I wouldn't have noticed. It's funny that seeing an error page instead of my blog doesn't freak me out the way it would have two years ago. Seeing other people's blogs are out too makes it easier to take, as does being able to get to a page that shows all the old posts are really there.

The racially divided "Survivor."

Did you watch? I haven't watched "Survivor" since the first season, when I hit the wall of boredom at a competition over who could stand on a stump longest. But I was intrigued by the daring decision to divide the contestants into race-based teams. How would that work? In some ways, race is neutralized, because teammates voting against each other have only those of their own race to turn against. On the other hand, the team members had the burden of knowing that millions of people would be watching them and thinking about their entire race.

It was interesting the way the Hispanic team seemed to pull together right away and simply feel advantaged. The black team felt team spirit and actually stopped to do a cheer about how they were all black, but they didn't really pull together. Nathan interviewed that black people don't like to be told what to do, and two of the women got very close quickly, leaving the third woman feeling like an outsider. The Asian team took account of how they really weren't a uniform group. They were from different parts of Asia, and that mattered. The Vietnamese immigrant, Cao Boi, called attention to his outsider status: He really belongs with hippies. In the funniest scene, he cures another guy of a headache by pulling the "bad wind" out of his face and leaving a red mark. Meanwhile, on the white team, they catch two chickens and a woman called Flicka bumbles into letting them escape. And they're all scantily clad and really cold, so they form a "cuddle puddle" to sleep (and get sexual).

The challenge was complicated and way more interesting than standing on a stump, and it was pretty exciting. I liked the strategizing leading up to the council, and I liked the exile island and the way the exilee was chosen. So far, then, I'm hooked.

What do you think?

UPDATE: CBS has made the episode available on line here. So now you can't say you missed it but you have some opinions in general about what they've done, dividing people up by race. Well, you can still say you don't want to watch it, but you still have an opinion. And I'm not going to say you can't say that. CBS would like that too much. And I myself am known for having opinions on movies I haven't seen and books I haven't read. I've been criticized for it, and I've defended myself. Figuring out what not to put your time into is a very important skill, and explaining how you do it is worthwhile. I can totally understand shunning this show on general principle. In fact, I can totally understand shunning all reality shows and (even more) shunning all television. Personally, I watch less and less TV -- as I become more and more absorbed into the internet -- and a primary reason for watching what I do watch is that I enjoy blogging about it. By that standard, I loved watching the entirety of the political conventions in 2004, when they were really nearly unwatchable except in short doses, because it was fabulous raw material for blogging. Of course, that means that the mere fact that I'm blogging about a show can't be read as a recommendation that you ought to watch.

UPDATE: There are two law school grads on the show, both on the Asian team: Yul Kwon and Becky Lee.

A day in Madison.

Finally, it's sunny here in Madison, Wisconsin. Here's the view from the faculty library on the seventh floor of the law school:



Very lovely. But I'm going up State Street, and I'm not taking a laptop, just an article I need to read and write about. I'm going to take my seat right here.



At my magic table. Here's the view:



I don't know if looking up at that mish-mash of flyers helps me in any way, but I always seem to be able to get my work done here. I felt, as I approached this place, I'd get the idea I needed inside. Aha! I did. Afterwards, I cross the street to one of my favorite shops, where I buy six items of clothing -- one without looking at the price (I realize later). Checking, I see that it was $180. Is that the most expensive thing I've ever bought without even thinking to look at the price?

Heading back to the law school, I stop for a mega mango, and it's all gone by the time I make it back to the seventh floor....



...where I type out my handwritten notes and then this blog post.

Same day Supreme Court argument transcripts.

Starting in October! This is great news for us blogging lawprofs! Oh, the quotes we will mine! I'm beside myself with glee! From my point of view, this is much better than getting television coverage.

Unplayable 45s I won't throw out.

(The first in a series.)



ADDED: Sippican picks up the meme.

Ripping off Henry Timrod.

Or perhaps more aptly, making Henry Timrod famous. Here's the evidence that Bob Dylan took bits from Timrod's poetry to do the lyrics for "Modern Times." But Bob needn't worry. Timrod won't sue or even complain. He's from the mid-19th century (and was known as the poet laureate of the Confederacy). Should we feel bad about Bob?

This isn’t the first time fans have found striking similarities between Mr. Dylan’s lyrics and the words of other writers. On his last album, “Love and Theft,” a fan spotted about a dozen passages similar to lines from “Confessions of a Yakuza,” a gangster novel written by Junichi Saga, an obscure Japanese writer. Other fans have pointed out the numerous references to lines of dialogue from movies and dramas that appear throughout Mr. Dylan’s oeuvre. Example: “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word” echoes a line from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

This time around Scott Warmuth, a disc jockey in Albuquerque and a former music director for WUSB, a public radio station in Stony Brook, on Long Island, discovered the concordances between Mr. Dylan’s lyrics and Timrod’s poetry by doing some judicious Google searches. Mr. Warmuth said he wasn’t surprised to find that Mr. Dylan had leaned on a strong influence in writing his lyrics.

“I think that’s the way Bob Dylan has always written songs,” he said. “It’s part of the folk process, even if you look from his first album until now.”

Well, theft itself is a traditional "process," but it would still piss me off if someone robbed me, either with a six gun or a fountain pen.

At least Dylan called an album “Love and Theft,” and he's repeatedly presented himself as a thief in various lyrics. To have Bob Dylan steal some of your phrases and the Dylan fanatics ferret out the connection he declined to tell us about is to get publicity you never would have gotten otherwise. You should be delighted, or, if you're dead, like Henry Timrod, we'll imagine you delighted, to have the grand old lyrics-master steal your words and send his listeners off to discover you.

Or do you think I'm ignoring principle and letting Dylan off the hook because I like him?

Special sections and hidden themes in the NYT.

I have the extremely well-established habit of reading the New York Times every morning and, in the last two and a half years, spotting what's bloggable (in my idiosyncratic opinion). Sometimes, like today, I keep a list as I read. Looking at today's list, all the stories have a gay theme. It made me think -- what? -- is it gay day for the Times? It's as if they have a new special weekly section, but they've distributed it around the newspaper instead of collecting it in one place. Hmmm.... what are the special sections on Thursdays? Fashion ("Thursday Styles") and decorating ("House and Home"). So, then, it kind of is -- stereotypically speaking -- gay day at the NYT. I've got to think the NYT is saving up gay stories and putting them on Thursdays. Anyway, let's look at the stories.

1. Here is the obituary for Tyron Garner, who died on Monday of meningitis. We remember the name of the man with whom he was arrested for violating the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law, because it is John G. Lawrence's name that is memorialized in the case name Lawrence v. Texas. The obituary tells the story of the arrest this way:

Shortly before 10:30, an unidentified man called the Harris County Sheriff’s Department and told the dispatcher that “a black male was going crazy in the apartment and he was armed with a gun.”

The caller turned out to be Mr. Eubanks, who told deputies he was jealous of Mr. Garner, with whom he argued that evening and had fought physically in the past.

Mr. Garner and Mr. Lawrence were then alone together in the apartment, fueling Mr. Eubanks’s rage.

Mr. Eubanks stood at the door when the police arrived and directed them to go inside, where, he said, a man was threatening neighbors with a gun. No gun was found, but the police entered with trepidation. Inside, a still-mysterious man on a telephone directed them to a bedroom in the back.

They shouted out several times and entered the bedroom. They said Mr. Garner and Mr. Lawrence were engaged in sex. One deputy said they continued obliviously for as long as a minute. Another deputy said they stopped immediately.

Why the deputies enforced the sodomy law, a rarity, is unclear, wrote Mr. Carpenter, who said he doubted that the officers actually saw any sex. He dismissed widespread speculation that the event was staged as a vehicle to test the law, saying that among other reasons, the men were too inarticulate for appearances in the news media.

Garner is described repeatedly as very quiet and unassuming. R.I.P.

2. Here's a story about the "revival" of activism against the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (datelined Madison, Wisconsin):

In August the gay rights group Soulforce opened a national campaign by recruiting openly gay people, including the three young men in Madison, who would have enlisted in the military if not for “don’t ask, don’t tell.” [As part of that campaign, two young people who were rejected as applicants on Tuesday at a recruitment center in Chicago returned there on Wednesday and engaged in a sit-in. They were arrested but later released without charges.]

The move to change the policy faces stiff resistance from the Pentagon and Republicans in Congress, who, in a time of war during a tough election year, have no longing for another contentious debate about gay troops. The House bill, introduced last year by Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, has picked up 119 supporters, but only five of them Republicans.

Republicans, Republicans... spare me. The Democrats aren't gay rights heroes on this. There are 201 of them in the House, and you know they have constituents who are more likely to want the policy changed, so it's less politically risky for them. I'm not impressed by either party on this issue. [ADDED: Captain Ed links to the NYT article and states his strong support for allowing gays people to serve in the military.]

3. Next, "Is This Campus Gay-Friendly?" A few days ago, I heard a street preacher try to alarm the passing students with the news that Madison is the "Capital of Lesbianism," but nevertheless, my campus is not mentioned in the article. The article reports on the book “The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students," and I wonder how well the book does at really finding the places that are truly friendly to gay people:

Jeremy Marshall, a 20-year-old junior at Duke University and the president of Duke Allies, a student organization for those who support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, said he was surprised Duke was listed among the top 20 friendliest schools.

“I don’t think Duke has warranted that position yet,” he said. “We were ranked one of the most homophobic schools in 1999,” by Princeton Review.

Mr. Marshall said he believes tolerance will improve eventually, but he was unhappy with the funding to Duke Allies this year and said that homophobic slurs can still be heard on campus.

The school has several gay awareness programs that make it look “good on paper,” Mr. Marshall said, yet “the real challenge is changing the hearts and minds of students.”

Googling, I see that UW did end up somewhere near #20 on the Advocate's list. I think we'd be much higher if it weren't for some issues at the state law level, which must have affected how we were scored on the 20-factor checklist.

4. This isn't directly a gay story, but it's on my list of things I found interesting, from one of the articles in the fashion section: "a men’s suit of heavy blue shirting with an 80-inch-drawstring waist." There's a photo on the second page of the article. Of course, a skinny guy is modeling it, but the text of the article indicates these pants would be useful for a man with some "body flaws" to hide. I can't really picture a fat guy in 80-inch waist drawstring pants that purport to be part of a suit. If there is one thing that hides a man's body flaws, it's the traditional suit, with unobtrusive pants. This thing on a fat guy would not only keep him looking fat, it would make him look crazy.

CORRECTION: Sorry I had 1, 2, 3, 5 on those items all day. There actually was a fifth item on that list I referred to, but it didn't fit the theme and it became the next post. Hence the foolish numbering! That was not some "hidden theme" of innumeracy or some inside joke. Corrected.

"Project Runway."

Well, a lot of things happened tonight, but in the end, exactly what you knew would happen happened. Kayne got eliminated. Something was missing at the taste level. We'd been told that ten times. Another thing I knew -- once they said there would be some special guests -- was that they'd be bringing back eliminated contestants. Do I have ESP or was that obvious? When Heidi called for the entrance of the first mystery guest, I knew it was going to be Vincent. And I knew he and Angela would be sent off once again, since they had to win to stay, and they weren't going to win. And when they gave the home viewers a chance to vote on which contestant they'd rather have seen return, you would have been safe betting any amount of money that the answer was going to be Alison. And it wasn't suprising that Michael made one of the nicest dresses and also took time out to help another contestant (Kayne).

So what was surprising? It was surprising that Laura acted so weak. Her confidence was shattered, she'd been blindsided, she was so terribly tired. She cried. But it wasn't all weakness. She had the strength to bully Angela, really to try to play a mind game on her, telling her she didn't deserve another chance. And Laura made the prettiest dress and won. It was a tad surprising that Angela dealt with the requirement to use all the fabric by stuffing lots of leftovers into a purse, that she tried to justify it as needed to puff out the purse, and that Heidi pointed out the purse in question had rigid sides and what was in it had no effect on its shape. It was kind of surprising that the tattoo boy, Jeffrey, finished in the bottom two, though not the slightest bit suprising that he survived. The judges swing back and forth with him. They either like their rock and roll boy, or they wonder why he is always the rock and roll boy. Well, I like him, and I even liked his goofy cocktail dress with plastic leg casings. So what if we keep getting Gwen Stefani?

Then there was the highlight of the night: Michael Kors imitating Uli, saying, in her German accent: Well, I live in hot wezzer. Clearly, they are sick of Uli's Miami mentality, and the smart bets say she's going home next week. The final three are Michael, Laura, and Jeffrey. And Michael wins.