26 More Hours in Dillon

Friday Night Lights has been renewed for two more seasons, thirteen episodes each. I remember after the first season how unlikely it was that it would get another season, and now here we are looking at five total.

I have no idea how they are going to keep this season's seniors in the storylines, or if they plan on introducing a whole new cast of students and players. But I do know that they fixed all the mistakes of the second season, and now I have complete faith that this show will continue to be one of the very best on television.

Newt is converting

Newt is set to convert to Catholicism. Good thing he got his affairs out of the way first.

Round One: FIGHT!

After eliminating non-BMBS approved songs, we ended up with 29 nominations, listed below.

"Double Shot (of my Baby's Love)" - The Swinging Medallions
"The Horse/Love is Alright" - Cliff Nobles & Co.
"Up on the Roof" - The Drifters
"What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)" - The Tams
"39-21-40 Shape" - The Showmen
"Backfield in Motion" - Mel and Tim
"Myrtle Beach Days" - The Fantastic Shakers
"Baby Let Me Bang Your Box" - Doug Clark and The Hot Nuts
"I Got the Fever" - Billy Scott and the Georgia Prophets
"Give Me Just a Little More Time" - Chairmen of the Board
"Build me up Buttercup" - The Foundations
"Dancin' in the Moonlight" - King Harvest
"I Love Beach Music" - The Embers
"Under the Boardwalk" - The Drifters
"Stay" - The Chantels
"Ocean Boulevard" - Band of Oz
"Summertime's Calling Me" - The Catalinas
"Twistin' the Night Away" - Sam Cooke
"Having a Party" - Sam Cooke
"Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy" - The Tams
"Carolina Girls" - Chairmen of the Board
"The Way You Do the Things You Do" - The Temptations
"Aint Too Proud To Beg" - The Temptations
"Just My Imagination" - The Temptations
"With this Ring" - The Platters
"Brandy, You're a Fine Girl" - The Sailors
"Tears of a Clown" - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
"Another Saturday Night" - Sam Cooke
"Cupid" - Sam Cooke

And just to make sure we get a nice round number, I added 1 more to reach 30:

"What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)" - Junior Walker and the All-Stars

Starting today, we will vote on a set of 5 randomly selected songs each day. Each set will be up for at least 24 hours, but make sure you check us out at least once a day so you can vote. If you are unfamiliar with some of the titles, most are available on YouTube, so you can sample them there.

The top 3 of each set will advance, eliminating the bottom 2, which will leave us with a "Sweet 18" for next week. If this process seems long, arduous, and superfluous, it's because it is. But we take our beach music seriously here and that's the whole point. The Sweet 18 will also be burned onto a CD that will be available for purchase, so you can look forward to that.

Honorable mentions that should have been nominated but weren't because ya'll were too busy wasting your picks on gay songs:

- It Will Stand - The Showmen
- 60-Minute Man - The Dominoes
- Silly Little Girl - The Tams
- Too Late to Turn Back Now - Cornelius Brothers
- This Old Heart of Mine - Isley Brothers
- Get On Up - The Esquires
- Gimme Some Kind of Sign - Brenton Wood
- Only the Strong Survive - Jerry Butler
- Save the Last Dance for Me - The Drifters
- Patches - Clarence Carter

BMBS Beach Music Challenge

It's warming up outside, the Masters is in a couple weeks, baseball is starting back up, and soon we'll all be at Tybee staring at high school girls and listening to music our parents and grandparents made out to.



Here are the rules:

1. Anyone (not just members) may nominate up to 5 beach music songs and place them in the comments to this post. Submissions are due by Sunday at noon.
2. A song may only be nominated once, so make sure you check previous nominations before submitting your own.
3. Comments that try to gay it up by being sarcastic and making fun of this process by nominating songs that are obviously not of the beach music genre will be deleted.
4. We will then vote on the songs by breaking them up in a way that prevents people from merely voting for themselves each time. I haven't really thought about how I'm going to do that yet but I'll figure out something. Maybe we'll do a playoff system. It ultimately boils down to how many submissions we get.
5. The person who nominates the highest-scoring songs wins a free slushie at Tybee Tyme. Below is the point schedule:

1st place song - 25 points
2nd place song - 20 points
3rd place - 15 points
4th place - 10 points
5th place - 5 points

Has anyone seen Pat lately?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510722,00.html

The Turning Point

The good news: The economy is starting to turn around. It will be a while until we're in full recovery mode and until job growth really starts to kick in (probably not until 2010), but the worst is finally over and things will gradually begin to improve between now and the end of the year. This is good for those of us leaving school and finally entering the job market.

Look for President Obama, who has only been in office for 60 days, to take credit for this recovery and somehow attribute it to the trillions of dollars that haven't even been spent yet. And look for the media to give him a pass on this.

My hope is that things improve rapidly enough that it will erode Obama's "disaster/crisis" mandate for the trillions in new spending proposals and allow voters to realize that none of what Obama is proposing is necessary or beneficial. It is tragic that the administration feels it necessary to burden us and future generations with massive amounts of new debt when we could have come out of this mess just the same without Washington spending even a dime.

The bad news: once banks start lending again and the expansion takes hold, we are going to have inflation, the likes of which haven't seen since the 70's.

364 More Days!

St. Patrick's Day has come and gone and the post-parade depression has commenced. That being said, it's time for our annual review of the St. Patrick's Day season. Leave your review in the comments section.

Luck of the Irish

I was able to get off of work and will be in attendance tomorrow.

John Stossel's Bailouts and Bull****

Below are a few segments from an hour-long special that aired last night on ABC.

Have a great weekend...

Savannah Morning News

SavannahNow.com continues to be the most poorly designed website on the internet.

T-Minus 4 Days

Weather.com
Tue Mar 17
Mostly Cloudy
Hi: 70
Lo: 49
10% chance of rain.

Accuweather.com
Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 71 °F RealFeel®: 70 °F
Partly sunny
Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 50 °F RealFeel®: 47 °F
Partly cloudy

It looks like the luck of the Irish will prevail once again, but keep saying your prayers!

T-Minus 5 Days

Weather.com
Tue Mar 17
Scattered T-Storms
Hi: 64
Lo: 42

AccuWeather.com
Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 66 °F RealFeel®: 64 °F
Mostly cloudy with rain possible
Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 47 °F RealFeel®: 42 °F
Clear

Last Night's Forecast:
SVA Sing-A-Long was nice.
The beer at SVA was more expensive than Pinkie's
Schiv wore the green jacket.
Shane celebrated.
Sauers06 was there too.
Snuffy & JJH4 made their stage debut at KB's.

Ryan Adams and Mandy Moore Get Married

I'm not sure how many of you listen to Ryan (not Brian) Adams' music, but in general it's really good. Regardless, it looks like he and Mandy Moore got married by a probate judge in Savannah the other day. Hopefully this doesn't influence other Hollywood hipsters to do the same. I like Savannah without Paparazzi and minimal liberalism.

The Whopper Bar

Taken from http://www.inquisitr.com/19632/whopper-bar/:

The Whopper Bar: All Beef

To be clear, the Whopper Bar won’t actually be serving alcohol — but it will be serving plenty of beef. The Burger King venture will offer Whoppers, Double Whoppers, and Steakhouse XT burgers, along with new Bourbon Whoppers, Three-Cheese Steakhouse XT burgers, and Pepper Bacon Steakhouse XT burgers. Each will come with options for 22 different toppings. Among the choices: guacamole, smoked bacon, or steak sauce.

A “Contemporary” Edge

The first Whopper Bar opens today at the Universal CityWalk in Orlando. Its look is totally different from the typical BK, as seen in the photo above: The bar boasts an open kitchen, a bar-like countertop, and a whole new color scheme. Employees will also wear different uniforms, matching the red, black, and gray restaurant design. Burger King hopes the updated take will give its brand a new “contemporary” edge, representatives say.

Whopper Bar Plans

Burger King is planning six more Whopper Bars around the globe by the end of 2009, with the next set to open in Munich over the summer. Los Angeles, New York and Singapore will soon see locations as well. Eventually, the company says it could open as many as 500 of the units around the world in everywhere from stadiums to casinos and cruise ships.

*edit: I know the picture gets cut off. This formatting sucks.

T-Minus 6 Days

Weather.com
Tue Mar 17
T-Showers
Hi: 71
Lo: 49
40% chance of rain

AccuWeather.com
Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 62 °F RealFeel®: 58 °F
A morning shower in spots; otherwise, cloudy
Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 43 °F RealFeel®: 36 °F
Partly cloudy and windy

ONE MORE WEEK!

T-Minus 7 Days

Very conflicting reports

Weather.com
Tue Mar 17
Hi: 68
Lo: 45
60% chance of showers

AccuWeather.com
Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 70 °F RealFeel®: 68 °F
Plenty of sunshine
Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 36 °F RealFeel®: 33 °F
Clear and colder

To multiply wealth by dividing it?

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

~~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

A Whole-Hearted Thank You From a Half-Irish Heart

As you may have noticed, I have a St. Patrick's Day problem.

My obsession with this holiday is partly overcompensation for the lack of Irish heritage on my father's side of the family. There are plenty of Flemings from the old sod, but my father's family most likely did not come from Ireland. I can, however, trace my mother's family back to my great, great grandfather, James Whalen, whose arrival in the States from County Wexford coincided with the Great Famine. My grandfather, William Whalen, was proud of his Irish heritage but he did not take part in the revelry of St. Patrick's Day. Therefore, my mother never had any Irish traditions to pass down to me.

It was because of my friends that I discovered the magic of St. Patrick's Day. Growing up with the Leonards, I was practically adopted into their family, much the same way Tom Hagen was taken in by the Corleones. I can remember going to the very first Irish Festival at Grayson Stadium with the Leonards. In addition, Stephen welcomed me to join the Flags of Ireland in the 6th grade. That was the first year I ever marched in the parade.

At BC, I became friends with Mike and Patrick, both of whom have Irish roots on both sides of the family tree. Mike invited me to join the Parade Committee with him in 2005. In 2002, Patrick invited me to my first Clan-na-Erin breakfast. Tom Coffey was the guest speaker, Joe Welch impersonated Father O'Brien, the bar was open and I was hooked.

Now, I am marrying into a family with a rich Irish tradition and I hope to pass this along to a future generation of Flemings. If I am lucky enough to have a son, I can't wait to see him march in the parade as a Benedictine Cadet and to bring him and a few of his friends to their first open bar St. Patrick's Day breakfast. I guess a daughter would be okay, too.

I look forward to celebrating St. Patrick's Day with all of you for many years to come.

T-Minus 8 Days

Conflicting Reports.

From AccuWeather.com

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 72 °F RealFeel®: 71 °F
Times of clouds and sun

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 38 °F RealFeel®: 40 °F
Mostly cloudy


From Weather.com

Tue Mar 17
Showers
Hi: 68
Lo: 49
60% chane of rain

T-Minus 9 Days

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 72 °F RealFeel®: 70 °F
Warmer and humid with rain

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 50 °F RealFeel®: 54 °F
Periods of rain

It's time to bring out the rosary beads.

Things I Hate, Volume I: Places that Only Serve Pepsi Products

It happens every time you decide to hit up Taco Bell or Arby's. You're happy because you've been thinking about that Baja Chalupa all morning or you can't wait to devour a Chicken Bacon & Swiss combo. You place your order, pay the cashier, then, as you walk away from the register with your drink cup, you look to your left and it hits you: you should have just gotten water because this place only serves the worst kind of beverage possible: Pepsi products.

And for whatever reason, fountain Pepsi products taste even worse than bottled ones. Combos at Taco Bell normally include those huge drink cups, which at first makes you think you're getting a good deal, until you realize you're only going to be sipping on 24 ounces of the pure carbonated nothingness that is Diet Pepsi.

Now before I begin a typical Ryan or Snuffy-style rant about some little uninteresting nit-picky pet peeve concerning food/entertainment that really has no impact on anyone's well being in the grand scheme of things, let me make clear that Diet Dr. Pepper is entirely exempt from this criticism. I'm not even really sure if Dr. Pepper is considered an actual Pepsi product or if it just happens to conveniently exist alongside the others, but it gets a pass here because it's damn good and made in Texas. This dawned on Chick-fil-A, a stalwart Coke partner and ally, when it added Diet Dr. Pepper to its lineup a few years ago.

Back to my original point, it is clear that Pepsi is symbolic of everything that is wrong with the world. It is the Sega Genesis of soft drinks. Not only is it Yankee, but it's always trying to desperately one-up and out-advertise Coke by mocking Coke's conservatism. It is forced to rely on "extreme" and "hip" marketing tactics to compensate for and cover up what is obviously a far inferior product. It pitches itself as "New Age" and the "New Generation's" drink of choice. Most recently it has even tried to cash in on Obamamania with these new "Hope" billboards. Thatta way to further alienate clear-thinking Americans like me. Good job.

And Pepsi's contamination of society is more widespread than you think. Not only does it infect otherwise respectable establishments like Sbarro, KFC, and Pizza Hut, but typically any restaurant west of the Mississippi or north of Virginia will only serve Pepsi. Next time you're in Vegas or anywhere else out West you will always get the "We don't have Coke, Pepsi's okay right?" question from the server. It's just as bad, if not worse, than discovering the absence of sweet tea anywhere south of Jacksonville. Water obviously ends up being the only real choice in these circumstances.

Finally, back to the Obama thing, it's clear Pepsi's deficiencies parallel the new administration's. It demonstrates how just because something is new does not make it good or right. Flashy advertising, glitzy marketing tools, savvy product placement, and polished delivery techniques do not make what you're ultimately trying to shove down our throats (socialism) taste any better.

T-Minus 10 Days

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 67 °F RealFeel®: 66 °F
Mostly sunny

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 46 °F RealFeel®: 45 °F
Partly cloudy with a couple of showers; warmer late

YAY!

If Pat was Grand Marshal...

T-Minus 11 Days

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 67 °F RealFeel®: 62 °F
A couple of morning showers; otherwise, mostly cloudy

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 38 °F RealFeel®: 31 °F
Rain

Oh shit.

Happy Birthday to Me

UPDATE

I ordered the NY Strip, medium rare, "Oscar-style" with a crab cake drizzled with remoulade sauce on top of a bed of asparagus (thanks for the tip Hank). We had the blackened scallops for an appetizer and ordered a side of the roasted garlic mashed potatoes. It was definitley a Top 5 meal.

T-Minus 12 Days

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 61 °F RealFeel®: 62 °F
Sunny

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 43 °F RealFeel®: 41 °F
Partly cloudy

T-Minus 13 Days

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 70 °F RealFeel®: 71 °F
Times of clouds and sun

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 47 °F RealFeel®: 46 °F
Partly cloudy

This makes me feel much better.

Your First Official St. Patrick's Day Forecast

Courtesy of AccuWeather's 15-Day Forecast.

Tuesday, Mar 17
High: 61 °F RealFeel®: 52 °F
Partly sunny

Tuesday Night, Mar 17
Low: 34 °F RealFeel®: 24 °F
Clear and cold

This makes me a little nervous.

2 Weeks Notice!