From a napkin-holder at The Other Side: 

Because you never know if they’ll bring a recorder and put your party on the air. A two-week-old, football-watching party at my place can be heard at the beginning of this report. The “Yes! Yes! Yes!” comes not from some untold debauchary, as it might sound, but instead from the strong lungs and Patriots enthusiasm of my colleague Amy.

Romney gave McCain a huge opening last night, and it’ll be interesting to see if he takes it. In Romney’s post-primary speech, during his usual three-pronged pander (family! military! economy!), he described his business know-how this way: “I spent my entire life in the real economy. I know why jobs come; I know why they go.”

Now here’s how McCain’s speechwriters can use this during tonight’s debate: McCain says, “Governor Romney says his past as a businessman gives him an insight into his economy. Just last night, in fact, he said during a speech, ‘I spent my entire life in the real economy. I know why jobs come; I know why they go.’ And he’s right—because as the hatchet-man for Bain Capital, when he came in and slashed companies for profit, he forced thousands of good Americans out of their jobs. He knows exactly how jobs go, because they go through him.”

This is low-hanging fruit, McCain. You know it.

The beer, in its duty-free bag, before I had to return it.

Dear State Department,

I spent the last week in Prague, on a business trip. It’s a beautiful city; you must go sometime. Before my departure, I stopped in to the duty-free shop in the airport to pick up some famous Czech beer, so I could share a taste of this rich culture with my friends back home. That’s become standard during my travels: I did it in Iceland, I did it in Australia. Both times, like this time, the folks at the airport happily sold me their booze. But when I went through security at the airport in Prague, I was stopped.

“This a mistake,” the woman at the x-ray machine told me.

“No, no,” I said. “I just bought this at the duty-free shop.”

“This a mistake. No beer.”

“But I just bought this at the duty-free shop,” I said, again, as if she missed it.

At the first sign of me getting argumentative, four stern, uniformed men appeared behind me. One pointed at me and said, as if scolding a child, “It is new policy of your country. Your country! No beer. In EU, you can bring beer. To America, no.”

I tried to reason with them, but they weren’t having it. “Policy of your country,” they’d keep saying. My country. My country. And oh, State Department: I was ashamed. Ashamed to be American. Ashamed that here I was, in this foreign land that had been so good and welcoming to me, and yet I cannot be more than a representation our silly, unwelcoming laws. I don’t even know what these laws are for. No beer? Really? What’s a terrorist to do, make the pilot drunk?

Listen, really: There’s fighting religious extremists, and then there’s letting me and my friends have a few beers. And if we (if you!) cannot distinguish between the two, then we too continue to be extremists, a country who actively advertises our distrust, a country whose people (me!) are embarassed when a foreigner says, “The policy of your country,” and I cringe because I feel, like they do, that those words are insulting.

State Department, I don’t ask for much. But really, let me have my fucking beer. Ok? It’s just a few fucking cans of beer.

Thank you.

Might this be the best Romney campaign speech ever? From the New York Times:

Mr. Romney, who has invested most heavily in capturing the Republican delegates to be selected through Tuesday’s Michigan primary, spent the morning speaking to more than 2,000 students at Grand Blanc High School. Though the size of the crowd was impressive, few were old enough to vote and the assembly was mandatory for students.

In a somewhat disjointed speech at the school, Mr. Romney struggled at times with how to engage his teenage audience, starting off with an analogy from a decades-old game show, “Let’s Make a Deal,” about the choices the students faced. Then he trotted out some of his favorite anecdotes, including one about Mike Eruzione, a hero of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team.

Dressed in a suit and tie, Mr. Romney talked variously about “inflection points” in American history, urged the students to get married before having kids, and warned teenagers about getting “hooked” on drugs, saying “your life’s income and your happiness quotient will actually go right down to the basement.”

To which some pimple-faced kid in the back went pale, and whispered with horror, “No, not my happiness quotient!“ 

I’ve followed Romney closer than any other candidate this year — not because I like him, but because he’s the most fascinating. Here’s a guy who, as a Slate writer once said, looks like he decided to run for president 40 years ago and then assembled a family to fit that. He’s so clearly designed himself for this moment, only to discover (in Iowa and New Hampshire, at least, and probably Michigan today Update: I overestimated Michigan) that the perfect candidate isn’t something you can manufacture; it’s something you have to become, something that builds from within. And so here he is, this pitch-perfect spokesman for himself, who can’t figure out how to talk with high-schoolers because he didn’t consult anybody on it the night before. And it’s beautiful.

♣GIVE THIS EDITOR a raise! The Chicago Sun-Times begins a story with, “A 35-year-old woman in her 30s died after being struck by a school bus Friday morning on the West Side, police said.” Look how much you learn in one sentence: a woman died after being hit by a school bus, and 35-year-old people are in their 30s. (Thanks, KC)

♣FOR EVERY SILLY superhero, there is a silly villain. Two artists out-super each other, to decide whose character can be the Superest.

♣EVER WONDER WHY Mike Huckabee is so happy to have a washed-up, popular-because-it’s-ironic actor like Chuck Norris around him all the time? Turns out, it’s because Norris is huge — seriously, no-joke popular — in the strange other world of Christian pop culture. (That link’s a few weeks old, but whatevs: It’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever read about Chuck Norris.)

♣WHAT DO YOU do with a bathtub that’s too old and gross to even sit in anymore? You, uh, make other ways to sit in it. 

♣FINALLY, BULLETPROOF VIDEO evidence that ghosts exist.

♣AND THEN, THERE’S this.

I was in New York the day the New York Post declared Dick Gephardt to be John Kerry’s running-mate. I bought two copies, framed one, and hung it on my wall. Today, as you see here, there’s a new cover to add to the collection (and something to blog about at work). 

Hi & Lois isn’t designed to have ongoing storylines, so characters spend years in a perpetual state — Trixie never growing older or losing interest in sunshine, Hi always being boring, Lois always being boring. So what are we to make of this series? It starts on Jan. 3:

Ditto declares that he won’t wear a dress, and Lois grows a few bags under her eyes. She is distraught. Her traditional, picket-fence family has been disrupted by the boy who won’t cross-dress. And so today, four days later, is it any surprise that we see this?

Lois and Chip are wearing the same outfit. Harmony has been restored to the family unit.

Hey, the winners! On the front page of Nytimes.com! Just look at their proud faces, seeing their hopes, preparing for the challenges for the future. Look at how they came so far, so fast, and triumphed over… wait, who’s that little girl to the left of Huckabee? Why is her neck craned like that? Is she stuck? Being crushed in the crowd? Pinned against that man in a suit? Someone! Hey! Governor Huckabee! This girl needs help! Governor! Governor?

Today’s Boston Globe headline: Tancredo pulls out, backing Romney

I made this shirt for what turned into a failed design contest at work, but I bet this thing can have a second life somewhere. (Note to non-Bostonians: It’s a play off the subway’s Blue Line, which is shaped that way on a map.) So whattaya say, MBTA? They’ll be all the rage. You could sell these shirts and pay off your debt, and I’m happy to trade it to you for, oh, free subway rides for life. Seems pretty generous on my end, I think.

I went to an advance screening of the mock-musical biopic “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” last night, which was far better than I expected it to be. It was unnecessarily heavy on the dick-n-fart jokes (including some full-frontal male nudity, which got the most sustained laughter of the night), but it survived on its clever and smart parody of all things musical.

The low point of the night came from two pimply, college-age chuckleheads who sat next to me, and spent the whole evening alternatively complaining about the movie or laughing hysterically at their own jokes. As they blabbered their way through the film, it became clear that, despite “Walk Hard” being an in-your-face parody, they didn’t really understand what was going on. Whenever the film would take an intentionally corny, cliche, biopic-style twist, the guys would groan about how predictable it was. And during a scene set a few decades ago, when they spotted some modern-day cars driving around in the background, one huffed, ”Those cars aren’t even old!”

Revenge was childish: One of them forgot their sweater on the floor, which I discovered when I accidentially stepped on it. I left it there.

I sat down on the Red Line last night, and saw, diagonally from me, a man wearing a large envelope on his head. My first reaction was to whip out my cell phone and take this picture, because this is funny stuff:

As soon as I put the phone back in my pocket, the guy sitting next to me got up, walked over to the man and gave him a knit hat. And so: I’m an asshole.

From the work blog: Why newspapers shouldn’t love short stories.

It was a hot, boring day in July, 2003, when I was considering quitting my lousy newspaper job and going full-time freelance, when I came upon Sarah Hepola’s hilarious and alarming ”The Key to a Successful Freelance Career.” It did not (and nor did it intend to) convince me that freelancing was the way to go — and although I’d soon forget that lesson and quit my job for freelancing anyway, the story stuck with me, and so did her name. It became one of those bylines I took notice of: If I happen upon ”Sarah Hepola” atop a story, I’ll generally read what comes after. I don’t know anything about her and don’t go Googling for her latest work, but then, nor do I seek out N.R. Kleinfeld, and yet I’ve read a ton of his work, too. And once you’ve read enough of someone’s work, and become familiar enough with their name, you start to feel like you get to know them — not really, of course, but just with that kind of casual familiarity, like all those people you said “hi” to in college but never actually stopped to chat with.

And then one of them takes their shirt off for you, and puts their boobs up in your face. Hey there!

Luckily, it wasn’t N.R. Today I followed a The Morning News link to “Busting Out,” a funny, thoughtful piece Sarah wrote for Salon about her apparently enormous boobs, and her quest for self-acceptance and a fitting bra. Had I not recognized the byline atop this piece, it would have just been an entertaining read, and an insight into large-breasted women. But now I feel a little weird. Creepy, really. Now I feel like I’ve stalked someone on the Internet, and unearthed naked pictures of them. Oh, Sarah. This is awkward. Our relationship is moving faster than expected. What will we say in the morning?