Mexican-American astronaut calls for immigration amnesty; NASA freaks out

From the LA Times:

After the shuttle returned to this planet last week, Hernandez told Mexican television that he thought the United States should legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants living there so that they can work openly in the U.S. because they are important to the economy.

Officials at NASA flipped. They hastened to announce that Hernandez was speaking for himself and only for himself.

"It all became a big scandal," Hernandez told television viewers Tuesday. "Even the lawyers were speaking to me."

Paul Shirley: Oasis is better than the Beatles

I'm not sure if this is the crappy journeyman basketball player Paul Shirley being a contrarian, being sarcastic or just being plain dumb.

But he decided to write a column about how today's music is better than the Beatles -- which I guess some tone deaf people would agree with. But then he blasts this nugget:

I'd much rather listen to Oasis than The Beatles. Oasis, or any band that came after The Beatles, learned from The Beatles, improving on their work by listening to, building on and perfecting the styles pioneered by The Beatles. The result: The arrangements used by Oasis are more complex, the sound is denser, the production is better.

Seriously?

Shirley, stick to sitting on the bench and not playing basketball instead of trying to analyze music, OK?

Oh yeah, he also says Dean Koontz is a better author than Bram Stoker.

I'm surprised he didn't say that Kobe Bryant is better than Michael Jordan.

People are suddenly rude! Also, get off my lawn.

Umm... OK. The L.A. Times trying to explain recent outbursts of rudeness (Joe Wilson, Kanye West, Serena Williams, etc.):

Some say it reflects a general collapse of manners, rooted in the anti-authoritarian strains of the late 1960s. Some offer a psychological explanation: that such outbursts reveal the person beneath the mask of a public persona. Some see an element of racial animus at work.

To which I say, Kanye has done this before, how many times did we see John McEnroe go crazy on tennis umpires/judges. And, as for politicians from South Carolina, the New Yorker reminds us:

In May, 1856, Charles Sumner, a Democratic abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, gave a speech in the Senate, denouncing the “crime against Kansas.” The Kansas territory had been created and opened to settlement in 1854, but the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory had been left up to the inhabitants of the state. “The South,” Donald writes “determined to create a new slave state in Kansas, had banded together ‘murderous robbers from Missouri,’ ‘hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization,’ ” (in Sumner’s words). Sumner’s impassioned rhetoric against this pro-slavery faction enraged Preston Brooks, a Democratic representative from South Carolina. On May 22nd, he stormed into the Senate and beat Sumner with a gold-handled cane, striking half a dozen blows to Sumner’s head, blinding him with blood.

It takes 2,200 words to say that Jay Leno is an unfunny hack

Vanity Fair, trying to make sense of why Jay Leno is so popular, spends 2,200 words writing about the phenomenon when it could be said better in three words:

Lowest common denominator.

Does anyone out there think that Two and a Half Men is the funniest comedy on TV? Hell no, but it gets high ratings. Because it's familiar and unsurprising -- you always have a pretty good sense what is coming next.

Compare it to The Office or 30 Rock, and it's downright boring.

Jay Leno is the Two and a Half Men of late night TV.

Oh and this part is just 100 percent, completely wrong:

Although Leno is called a conformist and a hack and a survivor and all that kind of thing, he certainly positions himself against his network bosses more aggressively than the more rebellious-seeming Letterman or Stewart. Even with his face plastered on every billboard and bus stop in America over the past few months, he has, in press interviews, taken shots at NBC, questioning the network's wisdom for having unceremoniously nudged him, the No. 1 late-night performer, off the Tonight Show stage. Not exactly playing the good soldier, Leno has also said, with a laugh, concerning Conan's less-than-stellar ratings, “Not my problem.”

Yeah, because David Letterman and Jon Stewart never take shots at CBS or Comedy Central.

Get over yourself, Vanity Fair writer.

Even if you hate the Raiders, or the NFL, you gotta like Nnamdi Asomugha

Because of this article from ESPN on the extremely talented, hardworking, humble and just-plain-smart Raiders cornerback:

Of course he's a little peculiar. He's got rapper Ice Cube waiting for an autograph, the Beatles locked into his iPod and Al Davis on the brain. He doesn't even know how to treat himself. Nnamdi Asomugha signs a $45.3 million contract, one that makes him the highest-paid defensive back in NFL history, and as far as anyone can tell, doesn't spend a dime on bling. He still drives an old, pristinely kept 1997 Nissan Maxima. Ain't broke, Asomugha says, don't fix it. Write that down. It might be the only time the Cal-Berkeley grad, who earned his business management degree in four years, uses poor grammar.

Two things:
1) I do hate the Raiders (as a Chiefs fan, it just comes with the territory)
2) No, I can't spell Nnamdi Asomugha's name without Googling it.

Death of a Marine: An AP photographer's journal

No commentary here, just look at the pictures and listen to Julie Jacobson talk about a firefight in Afghanistan that cost the life of one Marine, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard.

RIP, Lance Cpl. Bernard.

NYT Mag explores Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are"

I have a feeling that this is going to be a great movie that is a tremendous flop at the box office.

But this sounds intriguing:

“It’s in the visual language of, like, some sort of fantasy film, and it is a fantasy film to some degree,” [Spike Jonze] acknowledged, “but the tone of it is its own tone. We wanted it all to feel true to a 9-year-old and not have some big movie speech where a 9-year-old is suddenly reciting the wisdom of the sage.” He hadn’t set out to make a children’s movie, he said, so much as to accurately depict childhood. “Everything we did, all the decisions that we made, were to try to capture the feeling of what it is to be 9.”

And just for the hell of it, here's Jonze's video for the song Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, with some bonus footage at the beginning and end:

Somebody call Ron Burgundy! Video of US' first baby panda

Lacrosse brawl!

Lacrosse did something bigger than college football -- a bigger brawl. While the Oregon-Boise State "fight" was only one punch and a player being restrained from pulling a Ron Artest and going into the crowd.

But this lacrosse brawl, which Deadspin says "lasted ten minutes, resulted in 173 penalty minutes, and led to ten players (including both back-up goalies) getting tossed" definitely topped that.

What caught me is that, like hockey, there is a ritualized, traditional way of doing this. Two guys challenge each other, shed pads, gloves and then proceed to grab onto each other's jersey and attempt to punch the other guy in the face as hard as possible.

All while a ref stands there and watches it go down, only intervening when the fight goes to the ground or one player is too badly hurt. It's bizarre -- imagine if you saw this go down in, say, college basketball.

Bicyclists welcome at one Portland fast food chain's drive thru

From the Boston Globe:

A few weeks ago, Sarah Gilbert, a Portland native who is proudly “car-free,’’ pedaled her bicycle to the drive-through at Burgerville, a local fast-food chain. She ordered four cheeseburgers, one each for her husband and three young sons, who were waiting hungrily at home.

But when Gilbert tried to pay for the food, she was denied. This Burgerville drive-through, an employee told her, did not serve bicyclists.

As you can tell from the headline, this one had a happy ending.