willbardwell

Signing Off

2008-06-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Deebudle-deebudle. That's all, folks.

WillBardwell.com's Final Cheap Shots

2008-06-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Substitute teacher Roger Wicker (R-Citizens Council).

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" sucked.

John McCain is old.

Only sissies listen to Lou Gramm.

71 percent of ClarionLedger.com posters are lunatics.

That is all, for now.

Scruggs: Five Years In The Hole

2008-06-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

So passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion.

One More "Dark Knight" Trailer

2008-06-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

A new trailer is out for "The Dark Knight," which hits theaters three weeks from today. This one -- probably the last, given the film's impending release -- doesn't have much new footage, but it does have some cool shots of Batman and the Joker duking it out. It's worth three wasted minutes of your Friday afternoon.

WillBardwell.com Announces Retirement From Blogging

2008-06-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas)
accompanied Bardwell to the Friday press conference
at which the longtime blogger announced his retirement.
PHOTO: Allen Thigpen.

By Will Bardwell
WillBardwell.com Assistant Sports Editor

OXFORD, Miss. -- Longtime and smalltime blogger Will Bardwell, who wrote a mildly popular and wildly incredible Mississippi-based Web site for nearly four years, has retired from Internet journalism to spend more time with his career.

"Let me stop you right there and go on the record as insisting that very little of what I did qualified as 'journalism,'" Bardwell told reporters at a lightly attended press conference on Friday morning. "This was a blog that routinely boasted the aesthetic qualities of 19th-century Supreme Court justices and once connected a Republican congressman to a 1940s comic book character through six degrees of separation. Whatever that is, it's not journalism."

Nevertheless, WillBardwell.com gained some measure of a following during its nearly four-year-long existence. The blog drew some 200,000 readers since its invention in August 2004, during which Bardwell conceived more than 3,100 posts about politics, meatloaf, Supreme Court decisions, and Sylvester Stallone sequels. And at Friday's press conference, luminaries that drew Bardwell's spotlight heaped praise upon the departing scribe.

Tom DeLay, the former majority leader in the House of Representatives, told reporters that he consulted WillBardwell.com on its long-term future, but that the recent law grad's upcoming work obligations required the blogger to step aside. "I started looking at it. We ran a poll," DeLay said. "I spent a lot of time praying about it, trying to seek what the Lord wanted me to do. And it became more and more obvious that [Bardwell] can do more outside of [the blogosphere] right now than inside."

Michelle Barlow, chief of staff to interim Sen. Roger Wicker, could not be reached for comment, and Washington insiders suggested that WillBardwell.com's demise might leave Wicker's top aides with nothing to do but develop an actual agenda.

Other WillBardwell.com favorites joined DeLay in mourning the blog's end.

"He really represents the best of his family, our state and our country," George W. Bush said in a White House press release. "One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days."

Rocky Balboa, the two-time heavyweight boxing champion whose career was tracked by a six-part documentary series, empathized with Bardwell's desire to leave behind the often-heated forum of the Internet.

"Yeah, well. Was ya ever punched in the face 500 times a night?" Balboa asked. "It stings after a while, ya know?"

But other frequent subjects of WillBardwell.com conversation were less enthusiastic. Reached by phone aboard the battle station Death Star II, noted Sith warlord Darth Vader accused Bardwell of abandoning his calling.

"Perhaps [he is] not as strong as the emperor thought," Vader said.

Mr. Horse, Bardwell's favorite childhood cartoon character, concurred.

"No sir," Horse said. "I don't like it."

Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego Dickie Scruggs' Class Composite?

2008-06-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm the last person to realize this, but with Ole Miss law alum Dickie Scruggs' sentencing set for Friday morning at federal court in Oxford, the Class of May 1977 -- of which Scruggs is a member -- has had its photo composite taken down on campus.

I hope the development is a new one, or else it speaks poorly of my recent presence in the law library.

Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego Dickie Scruggs' Composite?

2008-06-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm the last person to realize this, but with Ole Miss law alum Dickie Scruggs' sentencing set for Friday morning at federal court in Oxford, the Class of August 1977 -- of which Scruggs is a member -- has had its photo composite taken down on campus.

I hope the development is a new one, or else it speaks poorly of my recent presence in the law library.

Marriage Amendment: Do We Really Have To Listen To This Song Again?

2008-06-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

As a teenager with a ridiculous sense of humor, WillBardwell.com took fast to "How Bizarre" when it hit American airwaves in 1997. It was the most absurd thing I'd ever heard. The lyrics were ridiculous, and the cat belting out the words sang terribly. And I loved every second of it, precisely because it was so ridiculous. I'm quite sure that wasn't the result the Otera Millionaires Club was shooting for, but it still managed to keep me entertained -- for a while at least. A turnip will yield only so much blood, and WillBardwell.com's sense of humor soon required newer, more innovative fuels.

So it is with the Marriage Protection Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate by substitute teacher Roger Wicker on Wednesday. I mean, are we still playing that song? Is that really all you've got in your iPod, Roger? You're that unoriginal? Gay marriage is soooo 2004, daddy-o.

Regardless of whether you think homosexuals should be able to marry -- I do, but that's beyond the point -- this is a dead issue. The federal government spoke on it 10 years ago. Almost all the states have addressed the issue in their state constitutions, either permitting it or forbidding it as their residents saw fit. Some of those results were more tolerant than others, but they're results nevertheless. For now, it's over. Folks threw out their old, lame OMC album and moved on. At this point, the only reason to keep pressing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is if you think the notion of equal protection does protect same-sex marriage.

But, apparently short on 21st-century party music and new ideas, Mississippi's hard working substitute teacher has pulled out the political trick play of yesteryear -- despite the fact that same-sex marriage is permitted by only two states, both of which have chosen that path for themselves by their respective political processes, and despite the fact that neither of them is named Mississippi.

Regardless of one's opinion of same-sex marriage, the issue is (at the federal level, at least) a broken record. If Roger Wicker wants to dance to it, then fine -- but he ought to do it on his own time and in his own house. And if he can't come up with new tunes to sing between now and November, then he may get the chance to do just that.

Ancient, Lunar, Inconveniently Placed Time Capsules?

2008-06-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

Now this is cool. From Space.com...

Some scientists believe that at least one meteorite found in Antarctica preserves evidence of ancient life on Mars. Now, work by a team of English scientists reinforces an earlier suggestion that evidence of life on the early Earth might be found in meteorites on the moon.

The original idea was presented in a 2002 paper by University of Washington astronomer John Armstrong, who suggested that material ejected from Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment (a period about four billion years ago when the Earth was subjected to a rain of asteroids and comets) might be found on the moon.

Armstrong's suggestion was interesting, but whether a meteor ejected from the Earth might arrive intact on the moon remained an open question.

New research by a team under Ian Crawford and Emily Baldwin of the Birkbeck College School of Earth Sciences used more sophisticated means to simulate the pressures any such terrestrial meteorites might have experienced during their arrival on the lunar surface. This confirmed Armstrong's hypothesis. In many cases, the pressures could be low enough to permit the survival of biological markers, making the lunar surface a good place to look for evidence of early terrestrial life.

Review: "The Dark Knight" Is Coming To Kick All Our Butts

2008-06-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

The first review of next month's "The Dark Knight" (the first one I've heard of, at least) is out in this week's edition of Rolling Stone, and it's glowing, to say the least. An excerpt...

Everything gleams like sin in Gotham City (cinematographer Wally Pfister shot on location in Chicago, bringing a gritty reality to a cartoon fantasy). And the bad guys seem jazzed by their evildoing. Take the Joker, who treats a stunningly staged bank robbery like his private video game with accomplices in Joker masks, blood spurting and only one winner. Nolan shot this sequence, and three others, for the IMAX screen and with a finesse for choreographing action that rivals Michael Mann's Heat. But it's what's going on inside the Bathead that pulls us in. Bale is electrifying as a fallibly human crusader at war with his own conscience.

I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson's broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what's comic is hardly a relief. No plastic mask for Ledger; his face is caked with moldy makeup that highlights the red scar of a grin, the grungy hair and the yellowing teeth of a hound fresh out of hell. To the clown prince of crime, a knife is preferable to a gun, the better to "savor the moment."