Here are the questions for this week's Friday Spies. And yes, I misspelled Nobel in the email. That's what you get for blindly following MS Word spellchecker. I beg your forgiveness if my spelling faux pas offended you.

1. What is the earliest movie you remember watching in the theater?

The Empire Strikes Back or The Fox & The Hound.

2. If you could strike one word from the English language, which
word would you choose and why?

irregardless - Goddang I hate when people say that one. Oh, you say it's not a real word? Well, it still needs to go away.

3. If you were a superhero, what would be your kryptonite?

Zippers. I can't work zippers to save my life.

4. Would you rather win an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, Golden Globe, Oscar, Pulitzer, or Nobel Prize? What work would you win it for?

I am undeserving of any of these awards, but it would be cool to win an Oscar for best original screenplay. I'd pen a story called "Blove at First Site" about two bloggers who fall in love ("blog" + "love" = "blove"). Ha! Like that would ever happen. Ha! No, my script would be based on the adventures of my brothers and me as young boys.

5. What is your catch phrase? Don't have one? Then make one up!

I'd like to go with an Eastwood line, either "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it" or "A man's got to know his limitations."

I should not find this belt buckle so amusing. But I do. Maturity was never my strong suite [sic].

The brutal days of the legislative session are now behind me. The madness ended at 1 p.m. yesterday. Should I have gone home and straight to bed? Yes. Did I? No. Why not? Long story. I did manage to hit the rack around 10 p.m. and slept until about 7:30 a.m. this morning. That's more sleep than I've had in a while, but I am recovering from the Sun-Tuesday, 42 hour work day. Today has been nice, though. Gone were the suit and tie and in their place I wore jeans and a t-shirt. I've done a little tidying up around the office, took off 2 hours for a haircut, and that's about it. Good times.

I've got another hour to kill and I would use that time to blog, but none of the topics I am working on have really come together. Say, that reminds me, I don't have a recipe for tomorrow, so if anyone has a request just drop me a line or leave a comment.

Thanks for listening to me bitch about work. Thanks for contributing post topics and such. Thanks for reading. I can't tell y'all what it means to have such a supportive group of readers.

I was reading slate's tv critic's commentary on Diane Sawyer's hour-long interview with Brad Pitt, in which Pitt tried to insist there were so many other important issues in the world besides gossip about his personal life, or even his new movie. Really, though, he's just fooling himself, as evinced by this passage:

Even in the remotest corners of Ethiopia, poor Brad couldn't escape the vapid chatter of the celebrity-interview junket; one little boy, after confessing that the first thing he thought about every morning was "food," shyly asked the actor this Billy Bush-worthy question: "In Ocean's Eleven, how do you feel like, acting with those people?"

Okay, that's either the most depressing thing you've ever heard, or if you're NDC, the funniest.

I almost titled this post "God Shed His Grace On Thee," because that statement from the kid in Ethiopia is so demonstrative of American cultural hegemony. (I didn't watch the interview, but one at least hopes that the kid's question to Pitt wasn't "Do you have any food?" because Pitt provided some assistance.) At a minimum, I hope it serves as a signal to other "cause" celebs that no one really cares about the celebs' opinions on their "issues," usually not even those you're trying to help. They just want the latest dish on "Brangelina," which is apparently the nickname the tabloids have agreed upon for the new couple, but which to me sounds like a Spanish fiber supplement.

[The following post is a weekly update from Feddie and Eugene, the authors of the Coalition for Darfur blog]

The big news regarding Darfur this week is that the International Criminal Court has formally announced that it is conducting an investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity in the region.

This investigation is a welcome, if belated step, but one that is also unlikely to have much of an immediate impact on the violence, disease and starvation that plagues the region.

The investigation is the result of a UN commission of inquiry that began in September 2004. Established under UN Resolution 1564, the commission took three months to investigate "violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, to determine also whether or not acts of genocide have occurred." In the report it issued in January 2005, the commission declared that genocide was not taking place, but that "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law" had indeed occurred. The report went on to recommend that the UN Security Council refer the situation to the ICC for possible prosecution.

In April, the Security Council did just that and turned over evidence gathered by the commission, including the names of 51 people suspected of punishable crimes. And now, two months later, the ICC has finally begun an investigation.

It has taken nine months from the time the Security Council authorized the commission to investigate the crimes in Darfur to reach the point where the ICC has finally launched an official investigation.

The ICC has only been in existence for three years and has yet to indict or hold a trial for anyone connected with either of its two other cases, despite the fact that the ICC began its probe of Uganda in January 2004 and the Congo in April of the same year.

Furthermore, the ICC statute itself contains a provision (Article 17) regarding "complementarity" that grants states the priority to try their own citizens for crimes that fall within the ICC's jurisdiction. The ICC thus has no jurisdiction over these cases unless it can be determined that "the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution." And making that determination is going to take time.

Considering that Khartoum has already begun to look at ways to exploit this provision and is openly rejecting calls to cooperate with the ICC, it is likely that, as Nat Hentoff noted, "It will be at least a year, maybe two, before the ICC even issues its first indictments."

We ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we attempt to raise awareness of this genocide and collect contributions for worthy organizations providing life-saving assistance to the forgotten people of Darfur.

I was IM'ing the other night with E. "Laramie" McPan, and in the course of it, I mentioned sweet tea. E. fires back, What IS sweet tea? Because that's not a question that can easily be answered in the IM forum (my initial response was simply "the elixir of the gods"), I decided to make a post out of it. Thanks, E., for the inspiration, and behold what thou hath wrought! As additional fodder, she sent along some more questions I will try to address in the course of this post. I'm not trying to usurp the other guy's recipe-posting duties, though, because this is about all I can cook, and I write recipes (and driving directions) as narratives rather than bullet points. First, let me explain how I make my sweet tea, which should get some of the details out of the way. Then I will discuss secondary issues. That way, if you want to follow along, you can start some tea and let it brew while you read the rest of the post, and drink a glass of your own when you praise me in the comments.

The first thing I do is put a teakettle of water on the stove to boil. I use a standard 2.5-quart whistling teakettle, filled about halfway or a little more. While I'm waiting for that to get hot, I get my pitcher ready on the counter. I put the sugar in first -- just pour it right in the empty pitcher. I'm partial to Dixie Crystals for no particular reason except when I see the bag the tune "Dixie Chicken" by Little Feat pops into my head. I use about a half-cup of sugar, but I just estimate it, and if it gets a little closer to 3/4-cup, I don't pour any back into the bag. More than 3/4 is going to be awfully sweet, and isn't recommended for novices. Get down to 1/4-cup or so, though, and it's not sweet enough for me. My Mom uses between 1/4 and 1/2, and that's probably a good place to start.

Then I get the teabags. I use the Lipton family size iced tea bags. (I've used Luzianne and some other brands, but I think Lipton is the best.) Now, the Lipton people say to use two in your pitcher, but I use three, because I like my tea strong. If you use two bags, your tea will be fine, though. They used to sell that tea in some size box that didn't divide by three (now it's 24 and 48), and I sometimes ended up with two bags at the end of a box, so two is fine. If you use just two, though, you should probably cut back the sugar some, too. Anyway, my technique is to hold the teabags by the little paper tabs and twirl them so the strings braid together and I end up essentially having three bags on one string. There's no purpose in this except that it's easier to pull one string than three. And it's fun to do. Hold on to those until you pour the water.

I don't always let the water come to a full boil. I like it to be steaming a good bit, though. Once the water is pretty hot, pour it in the pitcher over the sugar. Fill the pitcher about halfway with hot water. It is perfectly acceptable to hold your sugar until now and pour it into the hot water, rather than vice versa. I find it easier to "measure" and then dump instead of leaving it sitting on the counter until the water heats up. But either way, stir the hot water until the sugar dissolves. Some people will find it easier to do that if they pour the sugar as they stir. I just make sure I've gotten it all off the bottom of the pitcher. For stirring, I used to use a long wooden spoon until I snapped it over my brother's head in a fight. (Don't hijack the comments with a bunch of nonsense about sibling fights; write your own posts for that. We were just goofing around. He was snapping me with a towel while I made some tea, so I knew I had to move in close to eliminate his arming distance, a trick I learned from Red October. I moved in close and whacked him with the spoon and it broke.) After that I used a big dull butcher knife to stir, and he never again messed with me while I was making tea.

This step -- stirring the sugar into hot water -- is crucial to the making of good sweet tea. Sugar dissolves better in hot water than in cold. This is why I don't buy unsweet tea at restaurants that make me use the little sugar packets on the table. They serve it iced, and the sugar won't dissolve, so I end up drinking unsweet tea with sugar sediment in the bottom.

So, drop the tea bags into the pitcher of sugar water. Now comes the brewing, and the waiting. This is the step that non-tea drinkers don't get. I said something about making tea to a New Jerseyite friend, and she assumed I meant that nasty powder the consistency of Metamucil that is alleged to be "instant tea." Blasphemy! Oxymoron! Real tea takes time. Lipton says a few minutes, and indeed, your water will turn tea-colored pretty quickly. I like a lot of seepage to get that strong tea flavor, and I like to let the water cool down closer to room temperature. So I usually let mine brew around twenty minutes. Sometimes I forget about it and it goes even longer. Sometimes I'm desperate for the stuff and pull the bags after ten or fifteen minutes. I admit I have an unsophisticated palate, but I'm not able to tell a huge difference, except if you pull the bags too quickly, all you've got is colored sugar water. You need to leave the bags in long enough to be able to taste the tea. This will be a matter of taste, and trial and error, for you.

An aside while our tea is brewing. McPan asked, At what age do you'uns in the south begin drinking sweet tea? As long as I can remember, although longtime readers know that isn't way back. I probably started as soon as I stopped drinking milk with dinner. Drinking a lot of it, and drinking it any hour of the day or night, probably started in high school. Like all addicts, I'm always thinking about my next fix. It is not irregular for me to pour the last glass out of a pitcher, and drink that while the next pitcher is brewing. There have been times in my life (mostly when I was living with other tea drinkers) that I would use two pitchers -- one brewing while we drank from the other -- pretty much in a constant rotation. I'm not that bad anymore, but I like to have some on hand.

Let me now tackle a few of McPan's other questions. Would you consider other sweeteners [besides sugar] such as honey?, and relatedly, Would you consider sugar substitutes such as Splenda? For me, the answer is no, although again, it's a matter of taste. I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, and the quantities I would use are lab-rat levels and hence potentially dangerous. I haven't tried Splenda, but I'm curious about it. I don't know if I want to spend the money on it, though, if I don't go for it. I will report back if I take that plunge. In a similar vein, E. asks, Doesn't all that sugar give you cavities? I'm sure it doesn't help, so I do my best to brush and use floss and a flouride rinse. For the record, I think I've only had one cavity in my life. But sugar will do it. I know many non-drinkers I met at Duke who said real sweet tea like Bojangle's made their teeth hurt.

I know some people who put honey in hot tea, but I don't drink hot tea. I don't drink any tea besides ordinary old sweet tea, actually. That sort of addresses another of E.'s queries, Are there variations of sweet tea, such as mint sweet tea or peach sweet tea? The answer to that is yes, especially at restaurants, such as the Cheescake Factory's raspberry tea. Not all of the fruity teas are sugared, though.

Mint is a common addition to sweet tea, to flavor it and cut the sweetness, but lemon is far more common. It's so common, in fact, that I will usually specify "sweet tea with no lemon" if I'm ordering it in a place I don't know. I don't even like the little seepage that drips in the tea before I can pluck the wedge out at the table. I like my sweet tea pure and uncut. My Mom does like lemon, and will sometimes even get the "Arnold Palmer," a mix of tea and lemonade. It's not my thing, but some people like a little tart to balance the sweetness. But even a place like Bojangle's will usually serve sweet tea with a lemon wedge in it, so be advised.

As you may have deduced from the time stamps on some of my posts, I like my tea with caffeine. McPan wonders, Is there such a thing as decaf sweet tea or is it like decaf coffee, i.e., not as tasty due to the chemical treatment to take out the caffeinated part? Yes, they make decaf sweet tea. I don't mind it too much, although I can taste a slight difference. Tea doesn't have as much caffeine as coffee, and after all these years, I don't have any trouble drinking tea even right before bed. People who are especially susceptible to caffeine's ways should be okay with a glass at dinner. But the caffeine in sweet tea won't get you going in the morning as well as coffee would (I don't drink coffee, but I hear this is a common usage), although you might get a sugar rush depending on how sweet yours is. The good news is that if sugar gives you headaches, caffeine is a treatment for that!

Have we let the tea brew long enough? I think so. Remove the bags from the pitcher and toss them or compost them or whatever you do. Fill the pitcher the rest of the way with cold water. Now you're done! Pour the tea in a glass over ice, hang a lemon wedge or mint sprig on there if that's your thing, and enjoy. E. asks, How long does sweet tea stay good in the fridge? Believe me, it's a problem I rarely have to deal with. You should be good for a few days (I'd say four, give or take) before it will start to turn on you. That's obviously going to depend on sugar content, but two people can drink a pitcher in plenty of time.

Okay, to sum up: Heat water and pour into a pitcher, mixing with sugar. Add tea bags, and let it brew for a while. Remove bags, fill pitcher with cold water, drink, enjoy. Easy. I know that recipe isn't precise, but playing with the variables and figuring out your own taste is fun.

A final question from E. McPan: Why is it better than any other old tea? Why is our Sun better than any other old star? Why is one's husband better than any other old man? Why is one's God better than any other old diety? It's just a matter of faith and devotion and dependence and identity and love, and it can't be explained any better than that.

Back in December, I wrote about Taiwan's parliamentary elections, which I thought were worth watching because the pro-independence party (the "pan-greens") were poised to take a majority and cause all kinds of trouble with mainland China. A China-Taiwan squabble isn't exactly something we need right now. Anyway, the mess was averted when the nationalist "pan-blues" pulled out a surprising upset come-from-behind victory.

Today, the Taiwanese National Assembly enacted sweeping constitutional changes which will probably have the effect of reducing the crisis level and letting the Chinese and Americans breathe easy for a while. (Other coverage here and here and here.) Among other changes, such as cutting the size of the parliament in half, the new constitutional provisions will make it quite hard for Taiwan to declare independence and anger the Chinese.

In order to pass a constitutional amendment, the initiative would have to be approved by three-fourths of the assembly, and then a majority of the people in a referendum. Of note is the requirement that the "majority" rule means a majority of the eligible voters, not just those voting. (I have no data on election turnout in Taiwan, so I can't say how divergent those numbers might be.) The upshot is that Taiwan won't be able to declare independence without a true, nationwide consensus in favor of that move. Needless to say, that seems highly unlikely any time soon, absent perhaps some belligerence from the mainland.

Relations are always tense across the strait, so I hope we keep an eye on things (especially China's reaction to this vote). But in the short term, things seemed to have cooled off, and we can turn our attention to other pressing matters.

There was some hope that the legislature would adjourn at 1 a.m. this morning and my months-long saga of grueling work and late nights would come to an end. But alas, those hopes were dashed a few hours ago. The Governor will have to authorize a special session so that the legislators can vote on several bills which remain outstanding.

This is a lonely office during normal work hours, save for the lifeline of email. At 3:26 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) when everyone you know or might care to talk to is asleep, it is especially lonely. To anyone who wakes up to an inbox full of early morning emails from me, please accept my apologies for the spam. I'm just tired and bored and tired (exhibit A is the use of a Matchbox 20 lyric for the post title).

UPDATE (9:45 a.m. PDT): I am still here. I have not been assigned any work since 11 a.m. yesterday. Racking up the OT, but goddang am I tired. I'm a little dizzy and I think I see Blue. He looks glorious.

Last week the New Yorker had a brief story about valedictorians: the history of the honor, the current state of it, the families who litigate over it, and the schools that have decided to avoid the mess altogether. It's timely and enjoyable, and I recommend it. Naturally, it reminded me of a story, so I thought I would share my experience, and some thoughts about valedictorianism. (Fitz writes a story straight out of The Cowboys, wheras mine are more like Revenge of the Nerds minus the revenge.)

When I was in high school, the Podunk Preparatory High School of Readin', Writin', and Cipherin' offered four AP classes: U.S. History, U.S. Government, Calculus, and English. Those classes were on A=5.0 scales, along with a Chemistry class which also gave credit at the local community college. So it was possible to get a GPA over 4.0, and we had a few who did. We didn't have much fuss over it, though, probably for a couple of reasons. One was that I don't think we had many uber-competitive people in the class. We had maybe 200 graduates, give or take. If I had to make an educated guess, I would say roughly 40-50% went to a college of any kind, and about half that went to four-year colleges. Our top ten percent were recognized at graduation, and one of them had gotten his good grades in the school's vocational program rather than in the traditional manner. (I'm not disparaging him, just noting that our school wasn't overflowing with bookworms.) Another reason it wasn't a big deal was that for the bulk of our class, their high school graduation was the last one they would ever attend, and it was honor enough for them. They didn't want or need to strive for high academic honors because their chosen paths didn't care about class rank. (Note also how this helps those at the top: they can say they were ranked, say, 30th in a class of 200, and that sounds pretty good, because the college won't always know that 100 of those were just happy to be out.)

But I think that another reason that the particular honor of valedictorian wasn't a big deal: Everyone knew I would get it. I know that sounds like a real ass-ly thing to say, but all through our tender years at dear old alma mater Podunk Preparation-H, my friend Brian and I were at the top of the class. The conventional wisdom was that I would finish just above him. So nobody paid much attention to it. The class before us had a group of five very close girls who were the queens of that class. They all finished at the top of that bunch, with either four of them tied for valedictorian and the other as salutatorian, or vice versa, I don't recall. But everybody liked that because these gals were like a unit anyway, and clearly the cream of that crop. It was the same with Brian and me, or so we thought.

Near the end of the school year, someone got to calculating GPA's, and a funny thing happened. Our school had a policy of only calculating GPA's to one place past the decimal, to the tenths. So none of these Deep Blue-level computations as if we were trying to pin down pi. My GPA ended up at 4.333333..., and Brian's was 4.27-something. Hence, they both rounded to 4.3, and we were going to be co-valedictorians. This was not remotely a big deal to either one of us. It was a big deal to a couple of girls who now saw a glaring vacancy at the salutatorian position. One was my ex-girlfriend Angie, who was uber-competitive (a fiery romance!), but fell just short, and another was an insufferable gal named Jenny. She had taken some advanced math classes at a nearby magnet school, and now her parents argued that those should be weighted on the 5.0 scale too. My recollection is that the school eventually gave in on those classes, but also reconfigured some of our classes because it wasn't about to say that one of its courses wasn't as good as the magnet school's (and likewise with the respective teachers). In the end, Jenny tied with two or three others at the #2 spot, so everyone was mollified.

I remember that we had a meeting a little before graduation, where the officials announced that anyone in the top ten percent could give a speech. (I thought of this when the New Yorker article mentioned a school in California where each of twenty-three valedictorians spoke at graduation. Ugh.) I think maybe three signed up, or even expressed interest (yes, including me). We were all fine with this because it meant a shorter ceremony, and clearly most of these people were not extroverted podium-hounds. The next day, however, we discovered that a few people had changed their minds (read: went home where Mom and Dad told them to give a speech) and we would now be having nine speakers. Nine! The school said with that many speakers we would be limited to ninety seconds apiece. Ninety!

We had a rehearsal a day or so before graduation, and several of the speeches were well over a minute and a half -- some were closer to five or six minutes. Mine was ninety seconds on the nose, perhaps the last time I was ever that precise. Despite stern harrangues to cut the speeches, they went on as rehearsed. Our ceremony was in the gym, and it was stifling. And between nine students speakers and the assorted other pagentry, it took for-freaking-ever. I was sitting on the outside (that is, bleacher-side) of a row. One of the speakers finished her speech and asked everyone to stand. This, of course, was not rehearsed. She launched into "The Lord's Prayer" and I stayed seated. The word my Mom later used to describe her reaction was "mortified," because everyone could see me sitting there on the end. (She has since seen my side of it.) Even then I knew it was unconstitutional, and besides, the gym isn't where I chose to do my praying. I note that she didn't read the first part of that sermon, Matthew 6:5-15, about not praying so you can be seen by everybody but instead doing it in private, but oh well.

So, the point of my sermon is that I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having a valedictorian. But it is important to have an easy and clear and public system in place for choosing one, well in advance of needing it. I liked our system of rounding off, because differences of hundreths or thousandths of a point just aren't significant. Plus, it allows the school to recognize overachievers like me without having to say that someone who had a 4.27 GPA is somehow a failure.

A post-script, since the New Yorker piece mentions a small study of where some valedictorians ended up. We all know what lofty heights I've hit, of course. My co-valedictorian went to a well-regarded liberal arts college to run for its Division III track team. Before school even started, he injured his ankle and never even particpated on the team. He transferred after a year to a big state university and I lost track of him, until I heard a couple of years later that he had dropped out after getting a DUI and was waiting tables at a restaurant on the beach. I don't know whether he ever finished college or not.

1. From Janie Q: "How about your favorite tv show when you were a kid, and why hasn't it been made into a movie, or if it has, how was that movie, or maybe it shouldn't be remade at all?"

This question is hard for me for two reasons. First, I don't remember much from my early childhood. Basically, everything before middle school is fuzzy. If I really sit and ponder a while, and force myself to dwell on specifics, I can remember things like a few of my teachers' names and playing little league baseball and whatnot. Sometimes the bulk of the event comes back to me, and sometimes all I get is a snapshot. One of my grandfathers died when I was nine, and all I remember of him is riding with him and my Dad in a pickup truck -- no destination or conversation, though. Oh, and now that I think about it, I can remember his funeral. I don't recall any details except that it was very long (several old-school Pentecostal preachers). (Aside: This isn't something I remember from the time, but when we got to the cemetery, my Dad took the preachers aside and said, "You've had your show. Let's get this man in the ground.")

Is it weird to not remember stuff from when you were nine or ten years old? I would say that even memories from middle school and early high school are dim at best. I hope this isn't the result of organic brain damage or something. My supposition is that my brain flushed most of the useless knowledge from my childhood to make room for the useless knowledge of my adulthood. Anyway, the point is that I don't really remember having a "favorite" tv show when I was a kid. The other reason this question is hard is that I watched a lot of tv. So I'm sure I had lots of favorites. But looking back, or trying to, I can't be sure if I have real memories of watching certain shows, or whether what I'm remembering is watching reruns from later years, or just my mind playing the trick of knowing that a certain show was on tv back then, knowing that I was probably watching it, and constructing the "memory" of enjoying it. (I don't want to get into the false memory issue, but I do think that we can construct genuine-seeming memories out of whole cloth sometimes.)

But since I have to give an answer, I do seem to recall watching "Looney Tunes" on Saturday mornings when I was younger. I preferred Daffy to Bugs, by the way, but that's my style -- I like Paul better than John, Elwood better than Jake, and, well, Milbarge better than Fitz-Hume. Although the Warner folks would occasionally toss us bits and pieces and cobbled-together shorts, a couple of years ago they did make a full-length original Looney Tunes movie, but I haven't seen it. Oh, and there was the space basketball movie, too, but I didn't see it either. I'm sure they were enjoyed by the target audiences, but I was no longer in one target demographic (kids), and hopefully won't ever be in the other (parents of kids). Still, there's so much material from those characters that they ought to be churning out films as fast as they can make them. People will come, Ray. They will most definitely come.

2. Stag asks: Tell us your favorite vacation or your fav [sic :) ] place to go on vacation."

I think my favorite vacation was probably a trip to San Diego to see some college friends get married (Hi John and Devon!). It was right after we graduated from college, so I was hoping it would be like a less stressful graduation weekend. I look back on it now with fondness, but it was definitely not stress-free. San Diego was nice, and the wedding was lovely, but the highlight was a side trip to Las Vegas and the lowlight was spending the night in the San Diego airport. I will have to write up this story soon -- this summer, I promise -- because it is The Definitive Milbarge Story. To get a quick idea of what that weekend did to me, when I landed back on the East Coast, I had to sit in the airport for an hour before I felt capable of driving home.

3. Soup inquires: "Are you a fan of "Get Fuzzy?

I am aware that this strip exists, and would probably read it if my eyes crossed the comics page, but I'm not a devotee. I used to read almost all the comics -- everything except the old hangers-on like "Mary Worth" and the always-unfunny ones like the godawful "Family Circus." Since I cancelled my newspaper subscriptions, I don't keep up with any. Nowadays I read "Dilbert"most of the time and "Doonesbury" most days because it's on my email home page thingy. So, I'll have to take Soup's word that "Get Fuzzy" is the fuzzizzle.

4. Sebastain Haff has a burning desire [I hope that clears up soon!] to know: "[Which] celebrities [do] you think are most likely to pose in 'Playboy' and why[?]"

For the record, I don't think B. Spears ever will. Hefner has some standards, at least. Is "Penthouse" still publishing? I'm sure Guccione would have given her a shot. Oh well. I guess it's Flynt or bust.

I'll make Soup and Seb's day and suggest Catherine Bell now that "JAG" has gone off the air. She's already done Cinemax soft porn (discussed here in the general, definitional sense, not specific to Bell), so it's not a huge leap to pose for the airbrush.

This reminds me of something, and while it's not related to the question at hand, the whole idea of these questions in the beginning was to give us a reason to write something, so I'll mention it anyway. Seb's pseudonym reminds me of the man from whom he took it, Bruce Campbell. Which reminded me to tell Seb that Campbell has a new "novel" out called Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. It's fiction, but he's the main character, and a lot of it really happened. I decided to buy Campbell's other book, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, first, but I'm sure the new one is hilarious.

5. Energy Spatula gets to the heart of the matter with the final question for the week: "Why don't you write about which one [Fitz-Hume or Milbarge] is a huge liar?"

First, a defense. The context of this was my thoughts about a Milbarge-centric sitcom. I said that there were "so many ways to go" with a law school sitcom that I'm surprised it hasn't been done, and that the nuts we knew would provide some good fodder for the shows. Spats called me on this, noting that Fitz and I have generally declined to replay "crazy law school stories" on the grounds that there aren't any. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, which means that I don't think one of has to be a liar at all, much less a "huge" one.

I will say that if I had been blogging during law school, I'm sure I would have passed along lots of stories that seemed uproarious at the time but I've forgotten since. More likely, I would have introduced and updated the characters in our little play, filling readers in on their latest antics. That's what I think a sitcom could do. It could present a character like Mark in a moment just by showing us how goofy he looked, and letting us hear one of his inane comments to a professor. The viewer would instantly size this guy up. Then, over the course of the season, he would make an appearance whenever we needed a comic foil. Same thing with "The Dude" and "the Hammer" and "The Hurricane" and "Geoffrey" and "Ri-goddam-diculous" and "The Princess, a/k/a Special K." But to tell those stories here would require both a detailed memory that I clearly lack, and so much character development that it would kill the delivery. I guess there are some one-off moments that come to mind, like the wheelbarrow of porn (not mine; it was a raffle prize), a professor asking Fitz "Whose section are you in?" when the answer was "Yours" and he was half-way through a twenty-person seminar with him, the "Glory Days" and "Shaft" parodies during the Law Revue, the liberal Catholic proposing in Con Law that "Congress should just pass a law saying it can make whatever laws it wants" (of course, we have the Supreme Court for that!), or Fitz's comments about "Johnny Law" or the trip to Oz or when the Corporations professor asked him a question about voting shares of stock and Fitz said, "I was told there would be no math." But the scandals we thought would stick with people forever, and the funny moments that we thought we'd never forget, don't stick, and were forgotten. I tell you what: I will get together with Fitz and Cent and my yearbook and see what I can come up with, just for you, E.

Of course, while you're waiting, bear in mind that my real answer to her question is "Me." But if I'm the liar, can you believe that? It's like a logic game!

I've had Texas on my mind a lot lately. TP's mention of wildflowers, Coob's triumphant return to Austin, and an email conversation with Soup regarding essential country songs have combined to make me quite homesick for the Lone Star State.

I miss the smell of a smoky barbeque joint. I miss the Red River Shootout. I miss Lone Star beer. I miss the Cowboys. I miss Taco Bueno. I miss maroon pick-up trucks with Corps of Cadets stickers on the bumpers. I miss hating Red Raider fans. I miss the friendly wave from oncoming traffic on a two-lane road. I miss those glorious Texas sunsets. I miss the carpet of wildflowers - bluebonnets, Indian blanket, coneflowers, cornflowers, and Texas paintbrushes - in the highway medians. I miss the drawl. I miss knowing what's going on with high school football. And I miss, well, you get the point. I had to force myself to drive to work today rather than point the Jeep east for Texas.