Did you see Paul McCartney on "Saturday Night Live" last night?

Oh, that wasn't last night. That was back in 1993. Here's a report of last night's show, and here's the clip of him doing — of all things — "A Day in the Life." I don't think The Beatles ever did that live. It was weird having Paul sing the John part (as well as the comb-across-my-hair Paul part), and the last verse was replaced by the chorus of "Give Peace a Chance" — in case you didn't pick up on the tribute to John (a few days after the 30th anniversary of his death.)

"I wasn't really dead," says Paul, in that 1993 clip, when Chris Farley asks if the "Paul is dead" thing was a hoax. And now, Paul lives on, and poor Chris is dead. Chris was born here in Madison and is buried here, in a cemetery at the end of a street named Farley.

At the Blizzard Café...

... you can dust away the last of the snow...



... and peer into the cold sunset.

Bloomberg uses the quirk of phrase that shows he hasn't absorbed the most basic message of the Tea Party movement.

From today's "Meet the Press":

DAVID GREGORY: Do you believe the tax cuts have an actual stimulative effect on the economy?

BLOOMBERG: I don't think there's any question that they put more people -- more money in people's hands, and I think that the public will do a better job with more money in their hands to stimulate the economy than you will do with government programs.

GREGORY: But, Mayor, economists say, especially wealthier Americans don't end up necessarily spending money that they, that they keep through tax cuts. And look at the effect of the Bush tax cuts over a decade... what some have called a decade of, of futility, if you look at the number of jobs created.

BLOOMBERG: OK. But number one, some of these things are not connected, they just happen to have at same -- happened at the same time. And I think the more money you put in people's hands, the more they will spend. And if they don't spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs.

Did you notice the phrase? He uses it twice. Interestingly, David Gregory takes care to avoid it, so Bloomberg had a good prompt, but he used it anyway.

Tablescape with pizza.

ADDED: The red thing is a Ball of Whacks.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian has his tablescape, which contains an image of this page:



And Roger von Oech, the designer of the Ball of Whacks stops in.

It was 10 years ago today. Bush v. Gore.

The much-maligned Supreme Court decision came down, crushing the dreams of those of us whose hearts raced at the legal arguments that took the sound-bite form "count all the votes" and rankled at the other side's sound bite: "the votes have been counted... they've been counted and recounted."

Oh! How I wish I'd been blogging then. There were such interesting details every step of the way. Legal angles that could have been explained and examined. The reporting on the TV news was so biased and stupid. Things would have played out a lot differently if there had been legal bloggers picking through the fast-accumulating wreckage hour by hour. Instead we got those TV sound bites.

Have you noticed that you don't hear about "sound bites" — "5-second sound bites" — anymore? There's "viral video" now. Viral video and internet memes... and bloggers to call bullshit on mainstream media.

Ah, but what fun it would have been to have been calling the bullshit in the late autumn of the year 2000.

"In an effort to relieve her boredom, Julie proceeded to throw a glass out a window."

Am I the only one here who remembers listening to "The Anecdote of Horatio & Julie" on the radio, late at night, in the 1960s... WFMU?

What item of sports memorabilia sold for $4.3 million — a sports memorabilia record?

The original rules of basketball.

The two, signed typescript pages that set out the 13 rules were drawn up by the sport's Canadian founder, James Naismith, in 1891....

Naismith had written the rules to set up a new winter sport for boys at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was a physical education teacher.

The school had given him two weeks to come up with a new sport and he finalised it the day before the deadline, pinning the rules on a gym bulletin board.

Oh, and by the way...

At the same auction, President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of slaves held in southern states during the Civil War and was owned by ex-Senator Bobby Kennedy, fetched $3,778,500.

But that's not the original handwritten proclamation, which is in the National Archives. The Bobby Kennedy document is "one of 48 printed copies signed by Lincoln." Bobby paid $9,500 in 1964 for $9,500. Who knows how much of the $3,778,500 comes from the infusion of Kennedyosity.

Also at the auction, this guidon:

"Home Secretary Theresa May has confirmed there was 'contact' between the Duchess of Cornwall and one of the protesters who attacked her car."

"But she did not confirm reports the duchess was poked with a stick during student protests on Thursday."

Poked with a stick! The Duchess!

***

"The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets!"

"Will Barack Obama depart as President of the United States?"

You can bet on it.

"A blizzard warning continues Sunday in much of southern Wisconsin until 6 p.m...."

"... with north and northwest winds gusting up to 45 mph blowing snow across roadways, the National Weather Service said.... Wisconsin Emergency Operations Center in Madison... is advising everyone in the state to stay home Sunday...."



Okay.

IN THE COMMENTS: MamaM said:

28? 18 with another 10 under the surface.

Alert Alert: Bowl Deceptively Deep.
Recall Previous Loss. Recalculate

Ok, 36 at the most.

She's remembering last December's orange bowl challenge. I said:



(Extra info about the amazing bowl here.)

Mommy blogging.

The other side of.

"And so you look at something like the 17th century Brandenburg Gate and you think – oh my, how splendid."

"Until you think about who passed through its gates and why. And you can’t help but recall all things having to do with military strength and conquest. And how are you supposed to process it? Are you supposed to smile for the camera? Pose, and with a person making a Euro by imitating a German soldier? On this cold day there are several such 'soldiers' for you to choose from: from the wars of the past century, from the post war Soviet presence here – pick your poison. In the alternative you can stand next to a bear."

"I feel against the stupidity of my epoch waves of hatred that choke me.''

What calls a man to write novels?

"There's no satisfaction to any Madoff loser that the son committed suicide."

"It's just tragedy on tragedy."

ADDED: All the newspapers have to say that Mark Madoff hanged himself with a dog leash. It's like "all the papers had to say was that Marilyn was found in the nude."

When does a single a death detail become irresistibly mentionable?

If only Flaubert were still here, adding entries to his "Dictionary of Received Ideas." At "Mark Madoff," we'd have "hanged himself with a dog leash."

I see Flaubert has an entry for "suicide": "Proof of cowardice."

The window box in the blizzard.

Here's how those Japanese fishing net floats looked last July.

"Due to the blizzard and extremely hazardous travel conditions, we will not give the Civ Pro I exam for first year students today..."

Blizzard Day! Do you like that, when you've studied and you're ready to go, and looking forward to an afternoon of post-exam relaxation, and now — what? — more studying? Or do you get out there and build that snowman?