Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart make mashed potatoes.

This is really very charming and funny -- from Snoop's puzzlement over the peeling of potatoes to the controversy over white, not black, pepper to the risqué rearrangement of the red dress on a bottle of cognac:



(I need to "via" someone for this link, but I've forgotten the source. Sorry.)

ADDED: Oh, Metafilter. Sample comments over there:

The fact that Snoop forgets what they're making half way through is hilarious....

She has done more jail time than Snoop...

He's lucky she didn't shank him....

Live-blogging the big "town hall" debate.

6:14 Central Time: I'm just setting up the post so you'll know I'm doing this again.

8:11: After they blame each other for the financial crisis, Obama tells us we don't want to hear them blaming each other. We just want to know how to stay in our homes and pay our bills. McCain sounds a little shaky and winded. He's wearing a shiny dark suit and a pink and red striped tie. Obama -- in an unshiny suit and a blue-purple tie -- seems relaxed. He's got a casual way of sitting on the stool.

8:20: The first 3 questions have been about the crisis, the third being, quite sensibly: How can we trust you guys who let us get into this trouble in the first place? McCain points to his record, and repeatedly tells us he's reached across the aisle. Does that make you trustworthy? The 2 men seem mainly to be recycling their old talking points more than speaking directly to the crisis.

8:28: An old woman emails in her demand that people be asked to make sacrifices. McCain repeats his ideas about cutting spending, and makes a second reference to an overhead projector that Obama procured for the Chicago planetarium. Again with the earmarks. What was the dollar figure on earmarks? I heard $1 billion. That seems like nothing compared to the $750 billion bailout. And what is the sacrifice? Not getting more earmarks? Obama reminds us of the way Bush told us after 9/11 to "go out and shop." Bush, it seems, could have demanded sacrifices, but Obama doesn't say what we should have sacrificed then or now, though he does advise us to be energy efficient. It's really not too inspiring, but I think Obama is trying to seem cool, solid, and not at all exciting. In the background, we see McCain writing, awkwardly, on a note pad, and maybe some of us think about McCain's sacrifices.

8:37: Tom Brokaw is in control! Obama will not be permitted to say something about taxes because "it's important." Ha ha. As I was writing "it's important," O said "it's important" again.

8:41: McCain thinks he's making a big funny by saying "I'll answer the question!" Because, you know, Obama didn't want to go on to the next question before. No one laughs, but he looks so happy with his wisecracks. "Too many lobbyists workin' there," he says, and I think he's trying to sound Palinesque.

8:44: McCain's plan seems to be to sound passionate and caring. And to say "Lieberman" frequently.

8:46: Jac is live-blogging too: "9:30 - Cringe-inducing word choice from Obama: "A lot of you remember the tragedy of 9/11..." He can safely assume we all remember."

8:47: I love Brokaw. Watch the damned lights! He finds it hard to believe the candidates aren't watching the lights. Obama pops up and says he's just trying to keep up with McCain. In other words, he did it first! That seemed a little dorky and childish.

8:50: I was just admiring Obama's elegant gestures with his long, thin hands, when McCain positioned himself in the background and made a hand gesture that can only be described as holding an invisible grapefruit in front of your chest.

8:55: Obama says that health care should be a right. (McCain called it a "responsibility.") Obama seems relaxed and smiling but also oddly pissed that McCain has been "throwing a lot of things out there."

9:01: We've finally arrived at foreign policy, and McCain seems very relieved. Obama takes the subject of Iraq and ties it to the economy: Iraq has a surplus, so why are we spending our money over there? He's made this argument many times, but it has more resonance this week.

9:05: What is Obama's standard for when we should intervene for purely humane reasons, where there are no American interests? I hear no statement of doctrine. What is McCain's doctrine? We should intervene whenever there is a genocide if we have the means to improve the situation. (That's why he stood up to Reagan about Lebanon.)

9:14: Obama says McCain has called him "green behind the ears." Some sort of moss or fungus?

9:27: The question is how we would respond to an attack by Iran on Israel, and McCain makes a strong connection to the military man in the audience who asked the question. Obama's answer recycles material about energy independence. He talks about negotiations and diplomacy. Okay, and then? What if there is an attack? Will you be there? I can't tell.

9:30: "What don't you know and how will you learn it?" A cute question. Cute and disturbing. Obama decides to just deliver his prepared closing statement. The last 8 years sucked. Can't get the same a different result doin' the same thing, so we need change. McCain says what he doesn't know is what we all don't know: the stuff that's going to happen in the future! [CORRECTION, made at 6:53 am: We'd really be screwed if evening doing something different made a different result impossible. I apologize for the accidental pessimism. I will endeavor to confine myself, in the future, to pessimism of the intentional kind.]

9:34: I began this live-blog with a big mug of lapsang souchong tea, but about 15 minutes ago, I switched to cognac:



9:42: Wow. Over 600 comments! I'll need to go in there and see what you folks are saying. For now though, let's do a little poll:

Who won?
	Obama.
	McCain.
	Both.
	Neither.
pollcode.com free polls

9:55: I was scrolling through my HDTV recording, looking to photograph the "invisible grapefruit," and I noticed that Obama was wearing an earpiece. I photographed the freeze-frame and have set up a new post to display it.

10:09: I reconsider the perception of an earpiece. I don't see it in other frames. I'm sure a real secret earpiece would be way less visible, inside the ear canal.

11:21: I'm reading the comments, and the general opinion is that the debate was very boring. It was boring to me, because they were saying things I've heard before. Maybe some people are listening closely for the first time, and for them, it might have been interesting. But it should have been new and exciting for all of us, given the events of the past week.

6:55 am: When I woke up this morning, I decided to concentrate my mind on the question which man won.... Ah, what am I doing in this old post? Making a couple corrections. My new morning perceptions will be in new post.

Did you enjoy the sturgeon while I was at the surgeon?

I haven't been posting today, because I've been unconscious, which I consider an ironclad excuse for failure to blog. But after my visit to the oral surgeon today, I've slept off all the anaesthesia and eschewed the prescription painkiller, and I'm back in the world of full human awareness, including the awareness of unkilled pain, which is kind of the way I like to think of life itself.

One reason to eschew prescription painkiller is to be able to have a nice glass of soothing cognac, which I'm thinking will go very well with my favorite hour of weekly television: "Survivor," in high definition. Another is that I need to bone up on the news of the week for tomorrow morning's "Week In Review." (At 8 Central Time, Wisconsin Public Radio fans!) All those state legislature stories I've been ignoring... I can't be hearing about them for the first time on the show. Example: "Replacement to Seniorcare drug program touted as improvement." I get an email full of wire stories like that the day before the show, not that the show is likely to cover the uninteresting sounding ones.

Still, I'll do some reading to catch up with the news stories I've let slip throught the cracks in my consciousness. Some reading, some cognac sipping, some HDTV gazing, and then a good night's sleep, and I intend to be radio-ready at 8 a.m.

ADDED: Here's a good evidence for the theory that there's always something interesting inside the boring.

U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today announced the successful inclusion of a two-and-a-half year extension of SeniorCare, Wisconsin’s popular senior drug coverage program, in the Iraq Supplemental Conference Report, a bill that also includes funding for disaster aid, veterans’ health, agricultural disasters, and other emergency funding.

What -- I ask you! -- has more to do with funding the war in Iraq than the interest that old Wisconsinites have in the government paying their expenses that happen to fall into the drug category? But don't be so hard on Feingold and Kohl, because the war funding bill also includes funding for disaster aid, veterans’ health, agricultural disasters, and other emergency funding. You know how the fact that old people use drugs is an emergency.

"In truth, I am so very close to the place where Ann’s favorite post-dinner beverage is made."

Good lord, Nina's back in France again. Investigating cognac, apparently. Me, I'm in the U.S.A., in Madison's southern counterpart, Austin. Where I did have a cognac last night. But first:



On the other side of the table:



(My younger son is older than Ezra Klein. Ezra doesn't like me because I'm "superficial and Maureen Dowd-ish" and because I committed the unforgivable sin of mocking a photograph that one time. I like the way, at that linked post, Fenrisulven shows up and gives the anti-Althouse crowd a lesson on the interpretation of my old satirical post and the meaning of sexual harassment before and after Bill Clinton befogged the minds of partisan Democrats. Meanwhile, Ezra compares me to "conservative bloggers" he likes, never picking up the reality that I'm pretty much a liberal, a liberal who attacks the Democratic Party. Or maybe he does get that, and that's what he hates. He should! I'm dangerous. I might say anything, because I really don't care about your party.)

Isn't it funny that Nina's caught the new blog meme: Althouse drinks? And I'm drinking right now. A huge coffee, lovingly made at The Hideout:



I swivel my head 56 degrees. Man, that building seems to exist to tempt me into the graffiti life.

Rooftop cognac.

It's evening in the Mad City. The table's out on the rooftop garden, where they serve the cognac in a square glass.



It's a mellow feeling, watching the light fade on the church spire distorted by the glass of water:

Why I'm so late getting to the Day 3 hearings.

Well, I just got a tooth pulled, with just novocaine and nitrous. It was pretty intense, involving sawing the tooth in pieces because it was too firmly attached to pull out all at once. I suppose if I'd known that would happen, I'd have gone with the IV sedation. But once you're in the middle of the procedure, you just have to keep going, no matter how crazy it gets! It didn't exactly hurt but it was harrowing, even with nitrous. The good part is, I feel fine now. But the novocaine hasn't worn off yet.

I'm contemplating getting the painkiller prescription filled, but probably won't. When they handed me the prescription, I said, "Is this the stuff Rush Limbaugh was addicted to?" I don't want to feel groggy or be forbidden to drive. And then they told me I couldn't go in and teach my class on those drugs. I didn't say, "But Rush did his radio show!" But I thought it.

I think I'm just going get by on Advil and vanilla Haagen Dazs — and cognac.

They told me to take it easy, which I'm assuming encompasses spending the rest of the day taking in the Roberts hearings. So if you're stopping by here looking for summaries of the Day 3 hijinks, you'll have to give me a little more lead time.

I did hear a little in the car: Dianne Feinstein listing the names of murder victims the Gun-Free School Zones Act would have saved (because, you know, murder isn't illegal), and Chuck Schumer freaking out about how Roberts won't answer the questions. Don't they care that they make themselves look like fools? Or do they just think we won't notice?

Four posts before 5 a.m.?

Did you notice today's posts, up until this one, are all before 5 a.m.? If they have a "bleak, icy" tone, it's not just the pre-dawn vibrations, it was 10 below zero. I love the pre-dawn hours. You feel you have the whole day ahead of you -- even after frittering away three hours, as I did, blogging, answering email, reading the NYT, and inking in the extra-hard (even for a Saturday) crossword. But I shook myself out of that early morning trance, cleaned up the kitchen from last night's ravagings, fried some eggs, watched the news on TV, and then sat down for a session of exam-grading -- yes, yes, there are still exams to grade.



All right. Enough of that. I went out in the cold -- the warmed-up cold: it was +1 now. A little banking. A stop at Mike's Liquor for some cognac and, in honor of "My Dinner With André," one of the favorite movies we might watch tonight, some amaretto. A stop at Whole Foods to get some ground beef for the Bolognese sauce. The man behind me was buying "Peace" cereal ("supporting peace") and vanilla soy milk. (Wonder if he enjoys Maureen Dowd columns about men who are looking for women to serve them?)



Now, it's time for another session with the exams. Tasks to choose from at the end of the next session: unpack the second of the two tables that came from Crate & Barrel and screw on the legs, put the Bolognese sauce together, clean the downstairs rooms, and finally hang the last of the five blinds I have been trying to put up since November. These things will all surely get done, because some blogger pals are coming by at 6 for some TV and pasta. I mean these things will all surely get done -- except the blind.

Tuesday in Madison.

The new school week starts, a day late. The morning is spent reading cases about the Constitution's religion clauses and teaching the class at 11--lots of good discussion, both in class and after class. I tried to memorize the 33 names on the seating chart before class today, then in class, I kept getting the names slightly wrong. I'll get the first letter right, for example. I called Mike Matt, a mistake caused by my mnemonic device, which let me know it was an "M" name, and my readiness to say Matt, which seems to be a really popular name for this cohort. (You know what has become a really popular name in recent years, that I've never run into anyone in Madison actually having for a name? Madison.)



But now it's time for a little lunch and some fresh air, so I walk down Bascom Hill and into the Library Mall. There's the Red Gym and lots of students enjoying the day:







The view toward State Street, with food carts. Notice anything about that tree? It's this tree. See the remnants of the art project?







I go to Fair Trade Coffeeshop and set up at a little table by the window. The garden tables look enticing, but I like it here by the flowers.







The table seems a little wobbly, so I set my coffee mug on the windowsill.







I start to download my photographs. I like this one of a lamppost plastered with leaflets, with a bit of a view of Park Street, as it runs toward the lake.











And here are the nice sidewalk cafés along State Street.







But what is this strange image? Some message from the spirit world? Somehow it's well composed and intriguing. I don't know what it is, but I like it.







And what is this? A leftover photograph from the blogger dinner last Thursday. I was struggling to upload my photos and for some reason, I decided to photograph my struggle. Man, look at the beautiful torte and that lovely glass of cognac. How can I have put a computer on that table! But I wasn't the first. Look, there in the upper right corner of this picture. That's Jeremy's computer.

Day 4 of the Republican Convention.

I see that Instapundit advance-linked me, before heading off to a poker game. Yet here I am at Nina's, consuming a glorious gourmet meal, eating the last of the chocolate torte with the cassis creme anglaise, with a glass of cognac. We've put the Bush speech on. There's a little postage-stamp-sized TV on the counter and now we're all blogging. No one is throwing things at the screen. Occasionally, I put in a good word. Nina is saying "Come on, oh, come on!" Anyway, here are some pictures from earlier in the evening. I'll try to get it together to say something more apt about the President's speech later, but my general sense of the speech, overhearing it through a cognac-haze is that he's saying the things he always says with the speech mannerisms he always has.























I've got to say, getting those pictures up, under the influence of the cognac, has been really really hard. I hope you appreciate the look of this dinner party and forgive me for not minutely dissecting the speech. I will need to do that later. Ah! There is our President and Our First Lady all in orange-red. Now, let's just sleep on all of this speech-making, and wake up tomorrow and begin to take the details of all of these arguments seriously.



UPDATE: "There is our President and Our First Lady ..." That was not a subtle allusion to "Is our children learning." That was just me, blogging under the influence! And what's with the religiously tinged "Our First Lady"? What does that mean? I have no idea at all. Anyway, here's how I looked as I was making these mistakes:







That's from Tonya, whose account of the dinner can be found here. She's got a closeup of the torte and pictures of Jeremy and Nina looking surprised. I forget why. Jeremy has the most dinner coverage, the only real play by play. Good comments section too. Nina, because she did all the cooking--she love to cook! she wanted it this way!--was restricted to after-blogging. And there's another picture of me there too.

The first day of school, the last night of the convention.

Today was the first day of law school, and I had my first "Religion and the Constitution" class. It seems like a lively group. After some preliminaries, we had a nice discussion about a 19th century case that refused to find a religious exception to a ban on polygamy. That class, like my other class, Civil Procedure II, meets at 11 am and runs for an hour, so I'm looking forward to the consistent rhythm through the week. Today, it was a bit hard because we had a long faculty meeting that began at 12, and I had not planned ahead and packed a lunch. So my usual antsiness at long meetings was exacerbated by hunger. But today is a good day for hunger, because Nina is cooking dinner for Tonya, Jeremy, and me. And it is the last night of the Convention I've been simulblogging all week. So unless some frightful breach of dinner party etiquette occurs, my convention blogging will get a later-than-usual start. I probably won't comment on the early evening doings, such as how they performed the National Anthem and what the cleric giving the invocation was wearing. But I'll have my TiVo'd convention to review and I intend to stop back here later and hit the high points or say whatever I happen to think. Now it's time to hop in the car, stop at Steve's to buy some cognac, and make my way over to Nina's.



UPDATE: Okay, live from Nina's, let the record show, Jeremy and Tonya got their computers out before I did. Nina's doing all the cooking, so she's not blogging. Outrageous! I can believe Jeremy is blogging this, but Tonya? Tonya! She's the one who called us on what a breach of etiquette it would be if people blogged at a dinner party. Ah! I took some pictures of Nina rattling the pots and pans. She fried sage leaves in olive oil and they came out like sweet potato chips or some such un-Atkinsy snack, but they're totally Atkins-compliant. Other things that are not so Atkins-compliant include gougere. And now, haricots verts. Nina's a master chef of some kind and now she's ordering us to put away the computers. She's got another course coming. It's tomato, basil, etc. risotto.

Cognac, again.

A while back, I had a post about Cognac, provoked by this post in which Tonya razzed me for ordering a cognac and said: "I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ('The bitch set me up!') Barry." But I've got to do some more cognac-blogging after reading this article in the Business section of today's NYT about Navan, the vanilla-flavored cognac put out by the same company that makes Grand Marnier, the great orange-flavored cognac. The article begins this way:

JUDGING from its prodigious intake of Cognac, the hip-hop generation doesn't seem to share the White House's antipathy toward France. Inspired by the lyrical tributes of rappers from Nas to Ghostface Killah to Busta Rhymes - the last of whom penned the 2002 hit "Pass the Courvoisier" - young urban consumers have taken a shine to the drink. They are largely responsible for its stellar American sales, which climbed 13.8 percent from 2001 to 2003, according to the Adams Beverage Group. ... The rap duo OutKast had this to say about it in the 1998 song "Mamacita": "To the front, to the back, there's Cognac/Got my throat burnin' like burlap."

Well, maybe there are hugely popular rap songs--I wouldn't know--about the Margaritas and Cosmopolitans the rest of you were drinking that night, but if not, I am going to rely on this New York Times business news article as a mark of coolness.

Cognac.

I laughed a long, long time at this, from Tonya's post about Thursday's dinner with Nina, Jeremy, and me:

I also learned a few interesting things about the other bloggers. First, the other bloggers like to have a good time. They are my kind of people because I am always, always, always down for having a good time. Second, Ann drinks cognac. I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ("The bitch set me up!") Barry.

Tonya surmises that I have little else in common with Mayor Barry. Probably Barry would have stayed with the group if it started out going out to dinner in an expensive restaurant and then decided to top off the night by going dancing in a club that was playing hip-hop music. I, however, defected.



As to drinking cognac: it was after dinner. We had gone to a bar to kill some time waiting for the club to open. The others ordered Cosmopolitans and Margueritas, which seems just crazy to me. Those are cocktails. Why would you order that after dinner? I find that weird. Tonya finds it weird that anyone ever drinks cognac. Oh, well. Perhaps all can agree "The bitch set me up" will be funny forever.