"Hallelujah Chorus" flashmob fiasco.

"... as they burst into song, there were reports that the building's floor began to move and creak, and witnesses reported hearing popping sounds."

Settle in!

The table's all set up for you.

I love seeing these shoes get the respect and status of the Sartorialist presentation.

Dansko clogs.

(Buy them here.)

Arlen Specter accuses John Roberts and Samuel Alito of violating the oath they took at their confirmation hearings.

The former Republican, on the way out of the Senate, thinks this is worth saying:

"The Supreme Court has been eating Congress' lunch by invalidating legislation with judicial activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact finding and precedents...

"Ignoring a massive congressional record and reversing recent decisions, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito repudiated their confirmation testimony given under oath and provided the key votes to permit corporations and unions to secretly pay for political advertising — thus effectively undermining the basic Democratic principle of the power of one person, one vote...  Chief Justice Roberts promised to just call balls and strikes and then he moved the bases."

Bleh. You just disagree with the call.  I hate this sort of political posturing. It's not the massiveness of the congressional record that makes a statute constitutional. It's fitting within the Constitution.

Specter is acting as if the question at the confirmation hearing was: If we put a really, really huge number of words into the record, do you promise to let us do anything we want? And the answer was: Yes, of course. When I see a lot of pages, I always think, wow, that must be true.

Sit down on the plush white upholstery...

... and talk a while.

"Cornel West cries out to be Auto-Tuned."

(Clip chosen for highlighting by Bloggingheads.)

(I love the hand-gesture.)

"He bounds into a room... He doesn’t walk in, he explodes in."/"She’s such a force... She rocks back and forth on her feet as if she can’t contain her energy as she’s talking to you."

The story of their marrying is told in the NYT "Vows" column, but both of them already had spouses when they fell in love. So why did the NYT present their story as if it were something to be celebrated? Or is the "Vows" column more complex than that." Okay. First, let's look at some of the details of the story:

The connection was immediate, but platonic. In fact, as they became friends so did their spouses. There were dinners, Christmas parties and even family vacations together.

So [Carol Anne] Riddell was surprised to find herself eagerly looking for [John] Partilla at school events — and missing him when he wasn’t there. “I didn’t admit to anyone how I felt,” she said. “To even think about it was disruptive and disloyal.”

Ms. Riddell said she remembered crying in the shower, asking: “Why am I being punished? Why did someone throw him in my path when I can’t have him?”

In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.”

Before sleeping together, they told their spouses, and Partilla considered himself to be doing the "terrible thing as honorably as I could." Partilla then, as the NYT phrased it  "moved out of his home, reluctantly leaving his three children." Then he came back, then left, back and forth, feeling lots of "pain."

The pain he had predicted pervaded both of their lives as they faced distraught children and devastated spouses, while the grapevine buzzed and neighbors ostracized them.

“He said, ‘Remind me every day that the kids will be O.K.,’ ” Ms. Riddell recalled. “I would say the kids are going to be great, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives making it so.”

Riddell "came to realize" that her predicament "wasn’t a punishment, it was a gift." And in this framing of the tale, the heroine needed to "earn" the gift. How? By being "brave enough to hold hands and jump."

There are 139 comments over at the NYT, many of them very critical of the Times:

Why does the Times glorify home-wrecking? Is it a sign of our times that personal responsibility to one's spouse and children takes a back seat to selfish, self-centered love....

The notions of "Vows" has a deliciously ironic depth of meaning here - the ones they made, but the ones they felt less compelled to honor. I doubt very much there's not more than what is related here - What a rationalization as to why it's OK to "befriend" another family then break up two in one shot. "It was just love!" Methinks it's the selfishness that's big and noisy!

They not only broke up their own families. They broke up the big friendship that had interwoven the 2 families. The left-behind spouses not only trusted their own partner, they also believed that, together with that partner, they enjoyed a great friendship with a wonderful couple and their kids. All those memories of social times spent together are now to be understood in a new way.

Forbes has a story about the controversy:

In addition to strong condemnation from numerous bloggers and many of the paper’s own commenters, the article, as a first of sorts for the Times, invited a number of questions. Why were the ex-spouses of the newlyweds not mentioned by name in the story? Did the reporter call them for comment, as basic journalistic practice would dictate? Why did the Times open up the comment board when most Vows stories are off-limits? And above all, what were the couple thinking in telling their story in a space normally reserved for feel-good, soft-focus meet-cute tales?

“We did this because we just wanted one honest account of how this happened for our sakes and for our kids’ sakes,” Riddell told me. “We are really proud of our family and proud of the way we’ve handled this situation over the past year. There was nothing in the story we were ashamed of.”

Riddell says the backlash is “sort of surprising to me. I think people are focusing a lot on the negative, but there was a lot of positive.” But, she notes, “we’ve had a lot of people say to us how brave we are to do this, how commendable it was that we were as honest as we were.” 

The things people will say... to your face.

So did the story’s author, Devan Sipher, seek comment from the exes?... [A] Times spokeswoman says, “We do not comment on the process of editing and reporting including who was and was not contacted for interviews related to a specific story. The Vows/Wedding column adheres to the standards of the Times.” The paper’s Weddings/Celebrations editor, Robert Woletz, did not return a message; nor did the exes, who, like their former spouses, both have high-level jobs in the media industry. (In both cases, the first marriage was also written up in the Times.)

That's all very complex. But I'm happy with the notion that the Times writes up marriage stories because they raise interesting issues. Happy families are all alike. Who wants to read about them?

"U.S. population grew 9.7% in the past decade to 308,745,538, the slowest rate since the Great Depression."

CNN emails "breaking news."

ADDED: So who gains and who loses congressional seats?

By that new count, Texas will gain four seats, Florida will gain two, while New York and Ohio each lose two. Fourteen other states gained or lost one seat. The gainers included Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina and Utah, and the losers included Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts and New Jersey....

Mr. Obama won eight of the nine states that are expected to lose seats, including Illinois, New York and Ohio. And of the eight states that were expected to gain one seat or more, five were carried by the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

While Republicans will see their biggest and most lasting political gains in the House of Representatives, the landscape for the next presidential race will add another layer of complication to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. The battleground state of Florida, which he carried in 2008, will become even more critical to his efforts to win a second term and to Republican attempts to defeat him.

"You know what 'Survivor' is like? It's like marriage with the guarantee that you will divorce."

Things overheard at Meadehouse. 

Wait. It needs some tweaking. It's like marriage with the guarantee that you will divorce, and one partner will get all the assets.

"That snow outside is what global warming looks like."

"Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong. But the data reveal a chilling truth."

When everything is evidence of the thing you want to believe, it might be time to stop pretending you're all about science.

"Manchin stands by skirting votes."

Stands by skirting.

Are you distracted by language the way I am? Stands by skirting... It's like...  sits by pantsing... runs by shortsing....

And... while I'm at it... Manchin is a good name for a powerful masculine character. The feminine equivalent might be... Ladyfingers.

Secretary Ladyfingers sits by pantsing.

"In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: ... And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy."

A book title... on the list of things readers have bought via my Amazon portal...

Now, I'm doing a search inside that book — it's by Adam Corolla — and — what can I look for? — shorts! What does Corolla have to say about men in shorts?

When the Patriot Act cam back in the news in 2005, every single one of my faggoty, lefty Hollywood friends squealed like a stuck pig. "I don't want the government eavesdropping on my e-mail exchanges or listening in on my cell-phone conversations." Everyone had their cargo shorts in a bunch over it. I was the only one I knew who was like, "Hey, Agent Double-O Douchebag, if the government intercepts any of your e-mails all they're going to find out is that you're not funny. And how about spending a little less time worrying about the government and a little more time focusing on your narcissistic disorder, the one that leads you to believe the government actually gives a shit about you."

It's dangerous for a comedian to do a riff about how other people are not funny. He'd better be seriously funny at that point or he's asking for it.

Anyway, cargo shorts... wear them, guys, to walk toward the future in which you will all be chicks.

"The Pledge to America released by House Republicans in September of this year included a commitment to 'require every bill to cite its specific Constitutional Authority.'"

"To implement this proposal, the Transition Team and the Elected Republican Leadership are recommending a change to standing Rules of the House to require that each bill or joint resolution introduced in the House be accompanied by a statement citing the specific powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the proposed law."

Madison, Wisconsin is the best city for men... and Plano, Texas is the best for women.

I know.... What the hell?

At the Monochrome Café...

... all the trees are black, and the sky is gray.

"For me, I will often see a calendar in my head, and it's usually a month at a time."

"When I hear the date, it's like my brain immediately goes to a position on a calendar and once I locate it, I see what happened instantly."